Manobos (3).
The Manobos are a warlike heathen race, widely extended in Mindanao. The great River Agusan, taking its rise in the district of Davao, in 7° N. latitude, falls into the Bay of Butuan about 9° N. latitude. Its general course is parallel to the eastern Cordillera, from which it receives numerous tributaries. At almost 8° 15′ N. latitude it expands, and forms four considerable lakes of no great depth, and varying in extent according to the season. They are partly covered by aquatic plants. These lakes are called Linao, Dagun, Dinagat and Cadocun; they are quite near each other. The Manobos inhabit this spacious valley from Moncado, in 7° 45′, to about 8° 45′ N. latitude on the right bank, where they come in contact with the Mamanúas and Mandayas; but on the left bank they extend nearly to the sea, and up to the eastern slopes of the Central Cordillera. They even extend over the Cordillera to the head waters of the Rio Grande. They occupy the left bank of the Pulangui, and their southern frontier on the Rio Grande is at 7° 30′ N. latitude, where one of their chiefs, called the Datto Capitan Manobo, lives. The river is navigable for vintas up to here, and, in 1863, the gunboat Taal, drawing six feet, steamed to within five miles of this point, say up to the River Simuni. They extend up the Pulangui to about 8° 15′ N. latitude. In appearance they have a Mongolian cast of feature. Their faces are longer than amongst the Mandayas; their noses are not flattened, but straight, and projecting, and slightly curved at the lower end. Their general aspect is robust; their stature is about 5 feet 7 inches. Their usual dress consists of short drawers reaching to the knee, and a sort of singlet, or short shirt.
They live in clans under a bagani, or head-murderer (see Mandayas for explanation), who is usually accompanied by his brothers-in-law. They are polygamists; still, the first wife is the head, and all the others must obey her. Each wife has her own house, just as the late Brigham Young’s harem had at Salt Lake City. But they are satisfied with fewer than that prophet, there being none amongst their dattos who have nineteen wives. They are slaveholders, as the children taken in war become slaves, and all the work of cultivation is done by the women, children and slaves.
Their houses are built on piles, as are also their granaries. They cultivate on a considerable scale, and raise quantities of rice, maize, sweet potatoes and tobacco, not only to supply their own wants, but to sell in boat-loads to the Visayas. Their arms are lances, shields, swords and daggers, and, in some parts, bows and arrows. They are said to be expert archers where they use the bow. They raise numbers of horses for riding.
In valour, and in disposition to come to close quarters in fighting, they resemble the Igorrotes of Luzon. They stand up squarely to the Moros, which few other races have the pluck to do. Like the Igorrotes, their religion consists in ancestor-worship, but they call their idols Dinatas instead of Anitos. They are much impressed by thunder, which they call the voice of the lightning, and a rainbow fills them with awe. Like the Tagals, and some races in British India, they consider the crocodile a sacred animal, and respectfully address it as grandfather. They also, like the old heathen Tagals, consider rocks, caves, or balete trees, as residences of spirits. They celebrate a feast in honour of the Dinatas after the harvest, and make sacrifices of swine.
Tag-Busan is their god of war, and it is usual amongst them to go on the war-path after the harvest is secured; the bagani, as high priest of this god, carries his talisman hung round his neck.
They make ambuscades, and attack neighbours or enemies in the most treacherous manner, either by setting fire to their houses and murdering them as they attempt to escape from the flames, or they cut through the piles supporting the houses, covering themselves with their shields interlocked whilst doing so, and spearing the occupants when the house falls. When an enemy has been felled, the bagani, taking a consecrated sword, never used in fighting, cuts open the chest, and immerses the talisman of the god in the blood; then, tearing out the heart or liver, he eats a piece. The Sácopes are not allowed this privilege, which belongs only to the chief, as the high priest of the god of war. The children of the slain are taken as slaves, and the young women for concubines. One of the prisoners is kept to be sacrificed in some cruel manner to Tag-Busan on the return of the expedition as a thank-offering.
The death of a relative requires to be atoned for by the murder of any innocent person passing by, the avenger concealing himself near a path, and killing the first stranger who comes.
The Manobos are very smart in handling canoes or rafts on their rivers, which are very dangerous to navigate, and have many rapids and whirlpools; the Pulangui even precipitates itself into a chasm, and runs underground for a league and a half. However, the terrible picture I have drawn of their habits is becoming year by year a thing of the past to thousands of Manobos, although still kept up in places. The intrepidity of the Jesuit missionaries is proof against every danger and every privation, has carried them up the River Agusan, on which, at short distances apart, they have established towns or villages, and have brought many thousands of Manobos within the Christian communion.
Father Urios, one of these missionaries, baptized 5200 heathen in one year, and now no less than twenty Christian towns or villages stand on the banks of the River Agusan and its tributaries, populated by perhaps fifteen thousand Manobos, formerly heathens, who have given up their detestable practices and their murderous slave-raids to occupy themselves in cultivating the soil, whilst their children of both sexes are receiving instruction from Visaya school-masters and mistresses. There is always a tendency to remontar amongst them, and sometimes nearly all the inhabitants of a village take to the woods and hills. Yet, secure from attack, the number of converts steadily increases. The Baganis have become gobernadorcillos, and their chief vassals tenientes, jueces de paz, and cuadrilleros. Some of the old Baganis who were well off were so anxious not to be behind the Visayas, that they sent to Manila for hats, black cloth coats and trousers, and patent leather shoes, to wear on the great feasts of the Church, and on the occasion of the annual village festival.
This is a long way from human sacrifices to the Tag-Busan, and ceremonial cannibal rites, which these men formerly practised. I look on this warlike and vigorous race as capable of becoming valuable citizens, but they will require careful handling for some years to come. They must not be rushed, for, if alarmed by innovations, they may take to the woods en masse, and the labour of years will have been wasted.
I look to this tribe, when trained to use fire-arms, and stiffened with a few Americans, to destroy the power of the pirate races—the murderous, slave-hunting Moros, with whom it is useless to make treaties, who cannot be converted till the power of their dattos is broken, and who must be sternly put down by force unless the nascent civilisation of Mindanao is to be thrown back for a century.
In the beginning of June, 1892, a Bagani of the Manobos performed the paghuaga, or human sacrifice, on a hill opposite Veruela, on the River Agusan. The victim was a Christian girl whom he had bought for the purpose from some slave-raiders.