Putting Another in the Position of an Accomplice
109. The tokom, or fine for compromising another.—He who, voluntarily or involuntarily, puts another in the position of an accomplice, or in such a light that he might be regarded as being an accomplice in the commission of a crime, and so be liable to punishment as such, must pay the person so injured a fine, called tokom. It may almost be said that he who causes another person’s name to be prominently mentioned or bandied in connection with a crime must pay this fine.
The following are instances in which a tokom would be demanded:
A of another district comes to the house of B, and is received by B as a guest. While he is going home and while he is in the outskirts of the district he is speared by C, a neighbor of B’s or a resident of the same district. B must force C to pay a tokom.
B steals or illegally confiscates property belonging to A. C sees B in the act. He demands a tokom—in this case it may be the bolo or spear that B is carrying—and so puts himself “on record” as not having been an accomplice. But he says nothing about the crime unless it come to light that he was a witness of it. In this case he proves by the tokom that he received that he had no connection with it. As a matter of practice it would seem that a gift received from the thief would tend to lead the witness to conceal the crime.
A gives an uyauwe feast. At the attendant drink feast B in a drunken brawl kills C. A and the manikam D must demand a tokom from B in order to clear their reputations.
The following is the amount of the tokom usually demanded in the case of murder, head-hunting, or slaughter:
In case of the death of a kadangyang Honga
| In case of the death of a middle-class manHonga
| In case of the death of a poor man Honga
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One who is put in a position in which a tokom is due him must collect the tokom. It is not sufficient that he demand the payment of it—he must enforce the payment. Otherwise he will be considered by the kin of the injured as having been an accomplice, and liable to punishment accordingly.
Should the culprit refuse to pay the tokom, the obligation rests on those to whom the tokom is due to take the leading part in the punishment of the crime. Thus, in the first example given above, if C does not pay the tokom to B, the obligation rests on B more heavily even than it rests on A’s relatives to kill C, and so avenge A’s death. Should he not do this, he would be held liable to punishment by A’s relatives along with C.
Visitors came to the house of Timbuluy of Ambabag from the district of Maggok. It was suggested that a contract of friendship and alliance be accomplished between Timbuluy and his Maggok visitors by means of the feast called monbiyao. A day was appointed for this feast, and Binwag of Bolog was named as the go-between in matters pertaining to the feast. These preliminaries having been finished, the Maggok people started home. On the road they were killed by some people from Wingian.
The following persons were under obligation to demand a tokom: Timbuluy, whose guests they had been, and Binwag, the go-between. But the murderers were poor people, while the murdered were wealthy. It would have been impossible for the murderers to have paid the tokom proper for having killed a kadangyang. Consequently without any ado, Binwag killed one of the murderers, and Timbuluy kidnapped one of the women folk of another.
Timbuluy sold this woman to slavery in Nueva Vizcaya, receiving four carabaos. He gave one carabao to each of the four villages Pindungan, Ambabag, Bango, and Baay—all in Kiangan valley—on the consideration that if the people of Wingian retaliated by capturing a Kiangan woman in the open territory surrounding or adjacent to one of these villages, the people of that village would collect the necessary sum and redeem the woman.