The people of our country had a significant segment that were headhunters. In fact, they were headhunting up into the 1970s and even beyond. In a village just a couple of years ago we saw seven human heads, some with flesh still on them. So in isolated places this still goes on, but as a general rule that practice has been done away with.
Well there was a man by the name of Ta Tong, and he probably was the most famous headhunter of all. From all description he was a giant of a man, and from all accounts this man must have been 6’6″ or above –just a giant of a man among the people.
Well he was an Animist, and it was their belief that in order to ensure a good crop they had to go out and get human heads, post them on stakes around their farm in appeasement to the spirits. So every springtime they would go out in search of human heads. They were not cannibals, they were only headhunters.
Ta Tong was probably the best there ever was. He took more than 51 heads in his lifetime. Ta Tong was on quite a journey. The last two heads he took seemed to change his life, and the direction of his life.
He crept up on two people who were sleeping in a small bamboo hut, and while they were sleeping he cut their heads off. When he was finished he sat down next to these two bodies and he thought to himself, “What glory was there in this?”
So he began to question his animism and his spirit worship. He actually moved from that kind of animism to a milder form of animism that didn’t require the headhunting, but he found no peace in that either.
A few years later he encountered some Buddhist people who told him about the Buddha and the meditation. So he converted to Buddhism, but he found that it didn’t satisfy his heart either. He could not rid himself of the guilt of the 51 humans that he had killed during his lifetime.
By and by, God sent along a man, a pastor, who began to share the Gospel with him. Ta Tong said, “When I heard this message of a God who loved me, and a God who would forgive me for all that I had ever done, I knew that this was the true message, and I became a follower of Jesus.”
So his journey was a long journey, from one kind of animism and headhunting, to another kind of animism to Buddhism, and finally to Christianity.
The last 20 years of his life, he lived as a farmer and evangelist sharing the Gospel with his people throughout the mountains of that particular area.
It is said when he was baptized, he felt his guilt was so much that when they immersed him, he stayed under for nearly two minutes thinking that maybe this would ensure his sin would be washed away. When he came up, he came up with great joy that God had forgiven him for all that he had done.
His story stands out among all of the stories of the headhunters as probably one of the most significant. When he was dying he called his children together, and he said to them, “Don’t you worry about me. Don’t you worry about me; I know where I’m going. You just make sure you follow me.”
