An Inter-village Law
142. Neutrality.—When a war expedition or party passed through a village en route against another village, the intermediate village might signify its neutrality by casting a spear at the party. The spear never struck a member of the party, of course, nor was its casting taken as an unfriendly act. It was merely a declaration of neutrality. Should a village fail to cast a spear in these circumstances at such a party, the people of it would be held as enemies and accomplices of the members of the war party.
[1] Thus A and B, two brothers, are members of the same family until they marry. After marriage A’s family consists of his blood kin and of his relatives by marriage, and the same holds of B’s family. Thus after marriage only half the individuals of the families of the two brothers are identical. The families of two cousins are identical as to one-half the component individuals before their marriage and as to one-fourth of the component individuals after their marriage.
[2] The word monkalun comes from the root kalun, meaning advise. The Ifugao word has the double sense, too, of our word advise, as used in the following sentences, “I have the honor to advise you of your appointment” and “I advise you not to do that.”
[3] When a crime such as theft has been committed, and it cannot be determined from any evidence at hand who was the culprit, the injured person frequently resorts to the hapud. One form of this ceremony consists in placing an egg or areca nut on the edge of a knife or the bevel of a spear and repeating the prayers necessary to make the egg or areca nut balance and stand on end at the mention of the guilty person. Another form consists in spanning an agba stick. At the mention of the guilty person the stick grows longer, as revealed by its length in relation to the span of the priest. These sticks are kept for generations. Many of them are over a hundred years old. These ceremonies are not of virtue as evidence and are entirely without the pale of Ifugao procedure. They are of value only to the injured person in assisting him to determine who has committed the crime.
[4] The very day that I wrote this, the ownership of a field was settled by a wrestling match. An Ifugao some time before pawned a field to a christianized Ifugao. This worthy had the temerity to sell the field. Although the pawner would have surely been sustained in his right had he appealed to the lieutenant-governor, nevertheless, he was so confident, being in the right, that he would not lose, that he consented to settle the ownership by a wrestling match. He won. The christianized Ifugao may possibly now have more faith in the tenet of his former religion that the ancestral spirits uphold him who is in the right.
[5] He may gratuitously add an insult by implanting a few of them in a pile of fecal matter.
[6] The villages of Pindungan and Ambabag are less than a mile distant from each other.
[7] The Nagakaran people claim that only five out of forty of the first expedition returned.
[8] This was the usual method of treating kidnapped persons. It is interesting to note an almost parallel practice on the part of the Allies in the present war. When prisoners are taken, the buttons are cut off their clothing, in order to keep their hands engaged during the march to the rear.