The principal feast is called Birclog, and it lasts eight days. A large shed is built, the priests offer prayers to the before-mentioned gods, and sacrifice swine and poultry. The pigs are strangled by a rope held or jerked by all the priests, and are placed on the altar one at a time. Above the carcass is placed a live cock, which they kill by wounding it through the mouth and letting it bleed to death. They also offer tobacco, rice, and pangasi.
The offerings are taken away to be cut up and cooked. They are then served, and the pangasi goes round, the priests being always served first and getting the best of everything, as seems to be the case all the world over.
When the first lot of people have been fed, they vacate the shed, which is instantly filled by a fresh lot. Sometimes in one of these feasts they consume twenty pigs and forty ten-gallon jars of the strong rice-beer. When intoxicated, their conduct, according to Father Sanchez, S.J., is apt to overstep the bounds of propriety, but in this they are very much like more civilised people in the same condition.
The only vessels possessed by the Subanos are some canoes, or dug-outs, on the rivers. These are sometimes of great length, and are called by them Sacayan. They propel them with great skill, using a long double-ended paddle which they use standing up, and alternately on either side. Like many other races of the Far East, they consider a lunar eclipse as the precursor of great calamities, and make a deafening noise to frighten away the serpent or dragon which is swallowing the moon. They consider the turtle-dove, or limocon, as an omen-bird, and will halt or perhaps return if they hear its cry when starting on a journey. Also if they hear any one sneeze whilst going down the ladder of the house, they return, and remain within doors.
Some of the Subanos bear Moro titles, such as Timuay, which is equivalent to third class judge. Father Vilaclara, S.J., a bold and enterprising missionary, visited, in 1890, the house of a Subano named Audos, who had recently succeeded his father as Timuay of the Sindangan River.
He counted twenty-nine persons, great and small, in the house, but this did not include the whole family, as several were absent at their occupations. The house was built on piles, according to the universal custom, and the floor could not be reached from the ground by the longest lance. It measured eighteen yards long by ten yards wide, and formed one vast apartment, there being no partitions of any kind. The floor was made of strips of bamboo, and on this account it must be out of reach, for as the inhabitants sleep on grass mats laid on the floor, they could easily be speared in the night through the interstices of the canes.
Five married couples and their children occupied this apartment, each having its own part of the floor, its own store of rice, its own pigs and poultry. Each family cooked and ate independently, but all showed the greatest respect to the aged grandparents, and consulted them about their affairs. Father Vilaclara appears to have ultimately converted the whole family, beginning with the boys, whom he took under his charge, dressed and fed them, and taught them to speak Visaya.
Gold-washing and gold-mining is practised by the Subanos between Dapitan and Misamis, where there is a vast extension of gold-bearing sand and earth. Near Pigtao auriferous iron pyrites occurs. The native name for this ore is Inga.
Horses are very abundant in the district of Misamis, and in common use for riding and as pack carriers.
The Subanos have the reputation of being war-like, yet until lately they were entirely dominated by the Moros wherever they came in contact. Since 1893 the Spaniards have isolated them from the Ilanao Moros by establishing a chain of forts, and making a Trocha, or military road, across the narrow neck of land from Tucuran on the Bahia Illana to Balatacan on Bahia Panquil. The width of the isthmus here is about sixteen miles, and the forts are called Alfonso XIII, Infanta Isabel, Sta. Paz, and Sta. Eulalia, and Maria Cristina.