23Lim botung.
This armor is intended to resist arrows, and is said to be efficient when the wearer is at long range. At short range, however, it helps only to lessen the penetration, as I had occasion to observe after an attack on the upper Agúsan, in which one of my warrior friends was wounded on the shoulder by an arrow. A band of Debabáons went to make a demonstration at the house of one of their enemies on the River Nábuk. The particular warrior chief referred to, desiring to initiate his young son into the art of warfare, carried him on his back to the scene of the demonstration. After surrounding the house, the attacking party broke out into the war cry and challenged their foes to a hand-to-hand combat. The surrounded party replied with a shower of arrows, one of which struck the chief on the shoulder. As he explained to me, he was so solicitous about guarding his child that he exposed his person and received the arrow in his shoulder. The point, he said penetrated to a depth of about 3 centimeters.
I once saw another form of protective clothing on the River Argáwan. It was a very long strip of cotton cloth which, it was said, was used for wrapping around and around the body before an attack. This article, as I later ascertained, was of Banuáon manufacture and use.24
24As a further protection in war there is used, it is said, a conical piece of wood on which the hair is bound up. I never saw this device in use and doubt if it is employed commonly by Manóbos. It was reported to me as also being of Banuáon origin and make.
TRAPS AND CALTROPS
The dwellings of Manóbos who live in actual fear of attack are always surrounded by traps and by bamboo caltrops of one or two varieties. These form an efficient and common means of defense.
The trap is of the type described in the chapter on hunting. When this trap is used as a means of defense, the spear is set at such a height that it will wound a human being between the shoulders and the thigh. The traps are set in varying numbers in the immediate vicinity of the house, though if an attack is considered imminent they are set on the trails leading to the house and some distance away. They may be so set that they will not strike the one who releases them but the first or second person following him. It is always prudent for a white man in a hostile country to so safeguard himself and his men that no one will be injured by these traps.
The bamboo caltrops referred to are slivers of sharpened bamboo, about 60 centimeters long, set in the ground at an angle of 45°, and at some point where the enemy has to descend to a lower level. A favorite spot is behind a log or at the descent to a stream. They are carefully concealed and, to a white man not aware of the use of such traps, a dangerous device.
Another form of caltrops very common indeed, and very treacherous in its character, consists of small spikes made of slivers of bamboo, about 18 centimeters long, or of pointed pieces of hardwood. These are set in goodly numbers in the trails that lead from the adjoining forest to the house. The peculiar danger of these is that they protrude only about 2 or 3 centimeters above the ground, the soil being loosened around them so that the pressure of the wayfarer's foot presses down the loose soil, thereby giving the treacherous spike an opportunity to pierce the foot to a considerable depth.