The Legend of Kibambangan

Author: Philip Litak

The Fruitful Location

There is a beautiful place in the Tambunan Plain where a tribe of people used to live long ago. That tribe no longer exists. The place sits on a hillside where four rivers meet: the Pagalan and Mauwa rivers come from the north, and the Tombatu and Sunsuron rivers come from the west. The people who lived there planted many bambangan trees. These trees grew fruit every two years. When the fruit appeared, thousands of people came from everywhere to collect it. There were also other fruit trees like langsat, durian, and coconut trees. But there were more bambangan trees than any other kind. Because of all these bambangan trees, the place got its name: Ki-bambangan, which means "the place of many bambangan trees." People sang songs about this place, and many stories and legends were told about it.

The Young Boy's Transgression

This is one of those legends. It is a sad story that explains why the people left Kibambangan and moved down to the plain below.

A long time ago, during bambangan fruit season, a young boy named Kintum left his home to visit his friends. But his friends were not at home. Their parents told him his friends had gone to collect fruit. They showed him which way to go, and Kintum ran after them. He found them at a place where they were eating fruit happily. It was a beautiful evening, and they decided to stay until the moon came up to give them light. They spent the time eating fruit and telling stories.

The Transformed Fruit

When the moon rose above the northern hills, Kintum threw away a half-eaten bambangan fruit. It landed about six yards away on some stones near a little stream. He heard it splash into the water. A few moments later, Kintum was surprised—the fruit came flying back to him at his feet! Nobody else noticed it. Without telling anyone, he picked it up and threw it back. But quick as lightning, it came back again! This time it had a different shape—it looked like a human finger!

Now the other children saw it too. They came and stood around Kintum, too shocked to speak. Kintum picked up the finger and felt it. It felt fresh, but there was no blood. He threw it back and watched it fly away. It came back and hit his face, then fell at his feet. Now they could see it was not just a finger—it was a human arm! All the children ran home as fast as they could without even looking back. In their rush, some of them left their parangs (hunting knives) behind.

The Witchdoctor's Warning

The villagers were alarmed when the boys came running and shouting into the village. Many older people did not believe their story and wanted to go see for themselves. But the witchdoctors would not let them. One witchdoctor said: "I know what this means. This will bring great trouble to our village. Kintum did wrong when he threw away that half-eaten fruit. Do you know what happened? The fruit must have hit one of the evil spirits—maybe a child spirit, maybe an adult, I do not know. But we will find out."

The people went home feeling very sad after hearing what the witchdoctor said. They knew he was right because witchdoctors had helped them many times before. When people got sick, the witchdoctors could cure them. Evil spirits cause sickness, and good spirits driven by the witchdoctor's prayers can drive them away. The people had great faith in their witchdoctors.

The Plague

A few days after the fruit incident, Kintum became sick and died. His parents tried all kinds of medicine and spoke to many witchdoctors. But every witchdoctor said the same thing: Kintum could not be saved. He had made the evil spirit angry, and nothing could be done. Within a few days, all the boys in the village died. Not one could be saved. Every day, more graves appeared in the burial ground.

It was not just the boys who died. The girls got sick too and died from the same curse. The old people in the village did nothing but dig graves from sunrise to sunset.

When all the teenagers had died, the younger children began to get sick. Soon, there were so many dead that people could not bury them one by one anymore. They began using large rice containers and huge jars to bury many people together. So many people were dying that this was the only way.

Migration and Survival

Some families still had young children alive. They left the hill and moved down to the plain below. They settled on the bank of the Sunsuron river in a place called Talungan. But death followed them there too. Some people survived, and they became the ancestors of the people who live around Talungan today.

Talungan is no longer a village. In 1933, floods split the village into two parts and some people drowned. The Sunsuron river flooded again in 1960. Four houses were washed away. One of those houses belonged to an old witchdoctor. The people still remember this and connect it to the sad events that happened many hundreds of years before.

This narrative is part of Sabah Stories, a collection of traditional tales and indigenous folklore originally gathered and rendered into English by scholars attending Saint Francis Xavier High School in Keningau, Sabah, North Borneo, throughout 1968–1973. The text presented here has been entirely rewritten using contemporary language and phrasing whilst preserving all factual content, cultural terminology, place names, character designations, and the substantive narrative elements of the original source. This is not a reproduction of the original material.