Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.
– Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian general
As young Malaysians we are more familiar with Sarawak’s Iban minister and founding member of Malaysia, the flamboyant Tun Temenggong Jugah Barieng – the man with pony tail and Beatles hair-cut.
But little have we heard about Jugah’s more famous forebear – Temenggong Koh Jubang, Kapit’s most powerful native chief whose clan has ruled the Balui River in Upper Rajang for 100 years since Rajah Charles Brooke.
I only learnt about Koh through his youngest son Temenggong Kenneth Kanyan, a political secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office and MP, who commissioned me to write his father’s life story.
Born in 1870, Koh’s family migrated from Batang Kanyau in the Indonesian district of upper Kapuas in West Kalimantan to Sarawak in the district of Lubok Antu.
His family first stayed below Kapit town before they finally travelled 60km upriver and built a settlement at Nanga Entawau, the confluence of the Baleh River.
In an interview with Radio Sarawak on April 27, 1952 Koh said he was 25 years old when he met a ‘Remaung’ a mythical flying tiger.
Days later Koh received news that his uncle Muling, a renowned Iban chief who married an aristocratic Badang (Kenyah) princess, had been killed by Badang warriors.
Gathering 70 of his bravest warriors in two ‘Bangkong’ war boats, Koh’s men visited the Badang village, to bring the assassins back to Kapit for trial by the Brooke administration.
As the story goes at 8 am Koh arrived at a Karangan (pebbled riverbank) in the headwaters of the Plieran (close to the Indonesian border) and called out to the Badang chief.
Said Koh: “I wanted the chief to surrender the assassins but instead the Badang chief preferred to fight my men and said that whoever won, could have possession of Muling’s smoked head.”
In the ensuing battle, Koh’s men took 40 heads, captured 46 women and children and burnt down all eight longhouses.
Koh himself took at least close to a dozen heads, adding to his grand total of at least 60 trophies during his lifetime.
A. M. Cooper in “Men of Sarawak (1968)” said: “He (Koh) then began to decorate the back of his hands from the back of his finger joints to the wrists and then to his fingernails with a blue-black vegetable dye as a sign that he had taken many human heads.”
Koh’s second important dream was when he met Tugau, the mythical Melanau King, who asked him to travel to Nanga Pasai at the Batang Igan because he had a special gift.
On reaching at the location, his boat ran into a whirlpool when a ‘Nabau’ river dragon measuring 200 feet long emerged.
“As I came closer, I noticed a small object in its yawning mouth and without fear dived into river and retrieved a ‘Batu Gemala’ stone and swam back to the boat as the dragon disappeared into the water,” said Koh.
From that day on his ‘Batu Gemala’ stone which is renowned for its magical powers, changed his life into one of ‘fame and fortune’.
Within the next three decades Koh had bought hundreds of acres of land and built the first block of wooden shop lots in Kapit town.
Koh also fostered a close friendship with the ‘Raja Muda’ Vyner Brooke, heir-apparent of Sarawak, who was Kapit Resident just before he became Sarawak Rajah on May 24, 1917.
On November 16, 1924 Rajah Vyner attended the Great Kapit Peace-Making and Koh who had organised the meeting between the Iban and arch-enemies from Belaga and Kalimantan, became the first paramount chief of all of Dayaks of Kapit
During his 3rd Council Negri meeting, the government accepted the Hammond Report and started building schools for the natives – at least one native school was in operation in 1940 and by 1958 schools had been built in 16 Iban communities.
Soon after attending his 4th Council Negri meeting , Koh was shocked to find that the Japanese had occupied Sarawak and yet he remained loyal to the British.
He suffered in silence as the Japanese committed atrocities against pro-British Ibans, Brooke’s officers and soldiers detained at the Batu Lintang POW camp.
His chance to avenge the death and sufferings of his Iban subjects and 23 Brooke civil servants led by Kapit Resident Andrew McPherson, who were executed by the Japanese at Long Nawang, came weeks before the war ended.
Joining the ‘Semut’ operatives who swept down Belaga, Kapit and Sibu he flew in an Allied Forces Catalina seaplane, guiding the crew on a bombing raid at Song killing dozens of Japanese hiding in trenches.
When the chieftain died in 1956 at the age of 86, Governor General of South East Asia Sir Malcolm MacDonald, who was a close friend, described him in the publication ‘Borneo People’ saying:
“Koh the pre-eminent Iban of his time, the wisest, the best and the most honoured. If the natives wrote their racial histories and invented titles by which to remember particular heroes, he would be known as Koh the Great.”
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
