Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

CHAP. VII NEGRITOS OF KEDAh 341
I.
—
Semang.
Agriculture.
Kedah Semang* and Pangan.—The wildest Semang
tribes do not eat rice, except when they may have succeeded
in obtaining a scanty supply through the medium
of other Semang more conversant with Malays.
They live, in fact, for the most part upon roots,
eked out by the trophies of their skill in hunting and
fishing, together with the wild fruits of the jungle as
they come in season.
The Semang, who have reached the first and most
rudimentary stage of agriculture, plant by way of a
substitute for rice a species of Chinese millet (" sekoi ")
which is called in Malay " cat's - tail " (" ekor
kuching "), and which is perhaps selected from its
flourishing better than rice on the higher ranges.
The fact of these tribes being millet-eaters, of
which I was first informed by the Semang of Kedah,
1 subsequently found had been already recorded by De
Morgan and several other writers. It is, of course,
conceivable that the fact of their being eaters of millet
may have given the nickname of " Orang Sekoi," or
" Millet-men," to the tribes who bear it. But on the
other hand the name might quite as easily have been
derived from some small stream or river (Sungei
Sekoi), since on the whole this is the more usual
method by which these tribes get their names.
In the next stage of development (in which the
Negritos are still semi -nomadic, and migrate h'om
one district to another as soon as their scanty crop is
harvested) they actually begin to grow rice in a primi-
tive fashion, as well as a few catch-crops, such as
bananas, sugar-cane, tapioca, maize, and sweet potatoes,