Crossword-Solution: IBAN 4 letters, 6 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 6

They are a vain, dressy, boastful, excitable, not to say frivolous people -- cheerful, talkative, sociable, fond of fun and jokes and lively stories; though given to exaggeration, their statements can generally be accepted as founded on fact; they are industrious and energetic, and are great wanderers; to the last peculiarity they owe the name of Iban, which has been given them by the Kayans, and which has now been generally adopted even by the Sea Dayaks themselves.

Their attitude in this matter is well expressed by a saying current among them, namely, "Why should we eat the hard caked rice from the edge of the pot when there's plenty of soft rice in the centre?" The Iban women urge on the men to the taking of heads; they make much of those who bring them home, and sometimes a girl will taunt her suitor by saying that he has not been brave enough to take a head; and in some cases of murder by Sea Dayaks, the murderer has no doubt been egged on in this way.

This evil repute is, we have no doubt, largely due to the fact that very few Europeans have acquired any intimate first-hand acquaintance with the Kayans or Kenyahs; and that too often the stories told by Sea Dayaks have been uncritically accepted; for the Sea Dayaks have been bitterly hostile to the Kayans ever since the tribes have been in contact; and the Iban is a great romancer.

They make the brass corsets of the Iban women, tweezers for pulling out the hair of the face, brass ear-rings, and a variety of small articles, and they make use of the larger brass-ware of Malay and Chinese origin as the source of their material.

The Iban works more freely than others, working out the pattern and modifying it to meet the exigencies of his material, section by section, as he goes along.