The reason for these unfriendly intertribal relations and for the consequent defeats of the Manóbos in nearly every instance is not far to seek. The Manóbo lacks the organization of the Mandáya, Debabáon, and Banuáon. Like the Mañgguáñgan he is somewhat hot-headed, and upon provocation, especially while drunk, prefers to take justice into his own hands, striking down with one fell swoop his Mandáya or other adversary, without appealing to a public adjudication. The result of this imprudent proceeding is an attack in which the friends and relatives of the slain one become the aggressors, invading Manóbo territory and executing awful vengeance upon the perpetrator of the wrong. The friends and relatives of the latter, with their inferior tribal organization and their conscious feeling of inferiority in courage, together with a realization of the innumerable difficulties that beset the path of reprisals, very rarely invade the territory of the hostile tribe.
Both from the accounts given in the aforesaid Jesuit letters and from my own observations and information, I know that the same statements may be made of the intertribal relations of Mañgguáñgans and Mandáyas, Mañgguáñgans and Debabáons, and Mañgguáñgans and Manóbos. The Mañgguáñgans are much lower in the scale of culture than the Manóbos, and when they are under the influence of liquor yield to very slight provocation. As a result of a rash blow, the Mañgguáñgan's territory is invaded and his settlement is surrounded. He is an arrant coward as a rule, and, hot-headed fool as he is, jumps from his low, wall-less house only to meet the foeman's lance. Thus it happens that thousands and thousands of them have been killed. If we may believe the testimony of a certain Jesuit missionary, as stated in one of the Jesuit letters, the Mañgguáñgan tribe numbered 30,000 at one time and their habitat extended eastward from the Tágum River and from its eastern tributary, the Sálug, between the Híjo and the Tótui Rivers, to the Agúsan and thence spread still eastward over the Simúlau River. In 1886 Father Pastells estimated them to number some 14,000. In 1910, I made an estimate, based on the reports of their hereditary enemies in Compostela, Gandía, Geróna, and Moncáyo, and venture to state that in that year they did not number more than about 10,000 souls. Their territory, too, at that date, was confined to the low range of mountains that formed the Agúsan-Sálug divide and to the swamp tracts in the region of the Mánat River, with a scattered settlement here and there on the east of the Agúsan to the north of the Mánat River.
The Manóbos of the Ihawán, Baóbo, and Agúsan Rivers played a bloody part in the massacre of the Mañgguáñgans. While on my first visit to the upper Agúsan in 1907, I used to hear once or twice a week of the killing of Mañgguáñgans. Many a time my Mandáya or Manóbo or Debabáon companions would say to me, upon seeing a Mañgguáñgan: "Shoot him, grandpa, he is only a Mañgguáñgan."
I know from the personal accounts of Manóbo, Mandáya, and Debabáon warrior chiefs that in nearly every case they had acquired their title of warrior chief by bloody attacks made upon Mañgguáñgans. The warrior chiefs of the upper Agúsan, upper Karága, upper Manorígau and upper and middle Katí'il had nearly to a man earned their titles from the killing of Mañgguáñgans. This is eminently true of the Debabáon group. Moncáyo itself boasts of more warrior chiefs than any district in eastern Mindanáo, and stands like a mighty watchtower over the thousands and thousands of Mañgguáñgan and Manóbo graves that bestrew the lonely forest from Libagánon to the Agúsan.
INTERCLAN RELATIONS
It must be borne in mind that, judging from the testimony of all with whom I conversed on the subject as well as from my own personal observation, interclan feuds among Manóbos have diminished notably since the beginning of missionary activity and more especially since the establishment of the special government in the Agúsan Valley. Upon the establishment of this government in the lower half of the Agúsan Valley, there was a perceptible decrease in bloody fights due to the effective extension of supervision under able and active officials. Here and there in remote regions, such as the upper reaches of the Baóbo, Ihawán, Umaíam, Argáwan, and Kasilaían Rivers, casual killings took place. On the upper Agúsan, however, where no effective government had been established until after my departure in 1910, interclan relations were not of the most pacific nature. Thus, in 1909, the settlements of Dugmánon and Moncáyo were in open hostility, and up to the time of my departure four deaths had occurred. The Mandáyas of Katí'il and Manorígao had contemplated an extensive movement against Compostela and after my departure did bring about one death. However, the intended move was frustrated happily by the establishment of a military post in Moncáyo in 1910. Several Mañgguáñgans at the headwaters of the Mánat River met their fate in 1909. The whole Mañgguáñgan tribe went into armed vigilance that same year and rendered it impossible for me to meet any but the milder members of the tribe living in the vicinity of Compostela. On one occasion I had made arrangements to meet a Mañgguáñgan warrior chief at an appointed trysting place in the forest. Upon arriving at the spot, one of my companions beat the buttress of a tree as a signal that we had arrived, but it was more than an hour before our Mañgguáñgan friends made their appearance. Upon being questioned as to the delay, they informed us that they had circled around at a considerable distance, examining the number and shape of our footprints in order to make sure that no deception was being practiced upon them. When we approached the purpose of the interview, namely, to request permission to visit their houses, they positively refused to allow it, telling us that they were on guard against three warrior chiefs of the upper Sálug who had recently procured guns and who had threatened to attack them. Upon questioning my companions as to the likely location of the domicile of the Mañgguáñgans, I was assured that they probably lived at the head of the Mánat River in a swampy region and that access to their settlement could be had only by wading through tracts of mud and water thigh deep.
During the same year various other raids were made, notably on the watershed between the Sálug and the Ihawán Rivers. The Manóbos of the Baóbo River, which has been styled by the well-known Jesuit missionary Urios "the river of Bagáni" (warrior chiefs), were reported to be in a state of interclan war. Such a condition, however, was nothing unusual, for I never ascended the upper Agúsan without hearing reports of atrocities on Baóbo River.2
2The Baóbo River rises in a mountain that is very near the confluence of the Sálug and Libagánon Rivers, and empties into one of the myriad channels into which the Agúsan is divided just below Veruéla.
In time of peace, interclan dealings are friendly, but it may be said in general that dealings of any kind are not numerous and that their frequency is in inverse ratio to the distance between the two clans. It is seldom that a given individual has no feudal enemy in one district or another so that in his visits to other clans he usually has either to pass through the territory of an enemy or to run the risk of meeting one at his destination. This does not mean that he will be attacked then and there, for he is on his guard, but it must be remembered that he is in Manóboland and that a mere spark may start a conflagration.