All the dattos are baganis; they could hardly possess enough prestige to govern their sácopes without this title.
The Mandayas are superstitious, and much attached to their own beliefs, and on this account it is difficult to convert them to Christianity. The devotion of the Jesuits, however, has not been in vain, and several pueblos on the east coast round about Bislig, Caraga, and Cateel-Baganga are now inhabited by Christian Mandayas, some of whom have intermarried with the Visayas, or “old Christians.” These Mandayas are now safe from attack. They give their attention to cultivation, and are increasing in numbers and rising in the scale of civilisation.
Ancestral-worship is their religion, and their Dinatas, or wooden idols, are stained red with the sap of the narra tree. They have priestesses whom they call Bailanes, and they are said to occasionally make human sacrifices.
As amongst other tribes in Mindanao, the Limbucun, or turtle-dove, is a sacred bird, and rice and fruit is placed for its use on a small raised platform, and it is never molested.
They are organised in a strict feudal system, the headman or datto of each village is in fact the only free man of his clan. The others are Sácopes—that is, followers or vassals who, as well as the datto, possess slaves. A Mandaya datto can seldom raise more than fifty spears; sometimes two or three federate, but expeditions on a large scale cannot be undertaken, for it would be impossible to feed several hundred men in their country, such is the poverty of the inhabitants.
Sometimes a small group of Mandaya dattos recognises as suzerain some neighbouring datto of the piratical Moros, who always tries to keep them isolated and to prevent any intercourse or trade with the Christians, unless through themselves.
The Mandayas have canoes and bamboo rafts on the streams and rivers running through their territory. They catch a good many fish.
Their agriculture is on a very reduced scale, and is limited to small plantations of rice and sweet potatoes near their villages; they keep poultry. They do not dare to travel far from their houses for fear they might be seized for slaves, or even sold to be sacrificed on the death of a datto. Sometimes when a man has been condemned to death for some crime his datto sells him to some person requiring a victim for the death-vengeance, if he is assured that it is intended to kill him. The datto thus combines the execution of justice with a due regard to his own profit.