“Just as American girls expect candy and flowers from the young men who are attentive to them, so Dyak maidens expect freshly severed human heads. The warrior who refused to present his lady-love with such grisly evidences of his devotion would be rejected by her and ostracized by his tribe. Nor does head-hunting end with marriage, for the standing of both the man and his wife in the community depends upon the number of grinning skulls which swing from the ridgepole of their hut. Heads are to a Dyak what money is to a man in civilized countries — the more he has, the greater his importance.”
— From Where the Strange Trails Go Down (1921) by E. Alexander Powell
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