The whole payment or compensation is not exacted at once but a suitable length of time for the completion of it is always agreed upon. The defendant receives a strip of rattan with a number of knots and is at times made to take the wax-burning oath.
His conduct on these occasions is apparently submissive for he does not want to run counter to tribal opinion, but it happens sometimes that upon leaving the house of adjudication he expresses his dissatisfaction with the decision or throws the blame upon somebody else. In this case there may arise another contention. On the whole, however, he abides by the decision.
In the great majority of cases the convicted man makes the stipulated payment, for a refusal to do so would lead to more serious difficulties than those already settled, and excuses for nonfulfillment are not accepted as readily as before. Moreover, a second arbitration subjects his opponent and his opponent's relatives to unnecessary trouble and long journeys. Hence, realizing that a second trial will only serve to exasperate his opponent and arm public opinion against him, he fulfills his obligations faithfully.
CHAPTER XXI
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION: INTERTRIBAL AND OTHER RELATIONS
INTERTRIBAL RELATIONS
Dealings on the part of. Manóbos with other tribes such as the Banuáon, the Debabáon, and the Mandáya are almost without exception of the most pacific kind. I made frequent inquiries, especially while on the upper Agúsan River, as to the reason for this, and was always given to understand that any trouble with another tribe was carefully avoided because it might give rise to unending complications and to interminable war. I am of the opinion that, in his avoidance of war with neighboring tribes, there is ever present in the Manóbo's mind a consciousness of his inferiority to the Mandáya, Debabáon, and Banuáon, and a realization of the consequences that would inevitably follow in case of a clash with them. Thus the Manóbos of the upper Agúsan, who had provoked the Mandáyas of the Katí'il River at the beginning of the Christian conquest, suffered a dire reprisal on the Húlip River, upper Agúsan, when some 180 of them were massacred in one night.1
1See Oartas de los PP. de la Compañía de Jesús, 5:22, 1883.
The current accounts of Debabáon warriors, as narrated to me by many of them on the upper Sálug River, show the severe losses suffered by Manóbos of the upper Agúsan in their conflicts with Debabáons. The same holds true of the Manóbos on the lower Agúsan when they matched their strength with the Banuáons of the Maásam, Líbañg, and Óhut Rivers. A perusal of the "Cartas de los PP. de la Compañía de Jesús" will give one a vivid picture of the devastation caused by not only the Banuáons but by the Mandáyas and the Debabáons in Manóboland.