4A pikul is the equivalent of 137.5 Spanish pounds.
5An arroba is 25 Spanish pounds.
Another method of defraudation consisted in false accounts. The Manóbo had no account book to rely upon in his dealings with the trader, but trusted to his memory and to the honesty of his friend. The payment was made in occasional deliveries of hemp or other articles, such deliveries covering a period usually of many months. When the day for settling accounts came, the Manóbo was allowed to spread out his little grains of corn or little bits of wood on the floor and to perform the calculation as best he could. Any mistakes in his own favor were promptly corrected by the trader, but mistakes or omissions in favor of the trader were allowed to pass unobserved. The account would then be closed and the trader would mark with a piece of charcoal on a beam, rafter, or other convenient place, the amount of the debt still due him, for it was extremely rare that he allowed the poor tribesman to escape from his clutches.
Defraudation by usury and excessive prices.--Another method of exploitation consisted in a system of usury, practiced throughout the valley but more especially on the upper Agúsan. An example will illustrate this: A Bisáya advances 5 pesos in various commodities with the understanding that at the next harvest he is to receive 10 sacks of paddy in payment. At the next harvest the Manóbo is unable to pay more than 6 sacks. He is given to understand that he must pay the balance within two months. After that period the trader goes upstream again and proceeds to collect. The paddy is not forthcoming, so the trader informs his customer that the prevailing price of paddy in such and such a town is actually 5 pesos per sack and that he accordingly loses 20 pesos by the failure to receive the paddy stipulated for and that the debtor must answer for the amount. The poor Manóbo then turns over a war bolo or perhaps a spear at one-half their original value, for the contract called for paddy and not weapons. In that way he pays up a certain amount, let us say 10 pesos, and has still a balance of 10 pesos against him, he having no available resources wherewith to settle the account in full. He is then offered the alternative of paying 20 sacks at the next harvest or of performing some work that he is unwilling to do, so he accepts the former alternative. The bargain is then clinched with many threats on the part of the trader to the effect that the Americans will cut off his head or commit some other outrageous act should he fail to fulfill this second contract.
The worst depredation committed on the Manóbo consisted of the advancing of merchandise at exorbitant rates just before harvest time with a view to purchasing rice and tobacco. It is principally at this time that the Manóbo stands in special need of a supply of pigs and chickens for the celebrations, religious and social, that invariably take place. As he has little foresight in his nature and rarely, if ever, speculates, he was accustomed to bartering away in advance a large amount of his paddy and tobacco. The result was that after paying up as much of his paddy debts and tobacco debts as he could, he found that his stock was meager, barely sufficient for a few months. So the time came when he had to repurchase at from 3 to 10 pesos per bamboo joint that which he had sold for 25 centavos.
Exploitation by the system of commutation.--Another means of defrauding perpetrated on the Manóbo was the system of commutation by which the debt had to be paid, if the creditor so desired, in other effects than those which were stipulated in the contract. The value of the goods thus substituted was reckoned extraordinarily low. For example, in the event of a failure to pay the stipulated amount of tobacco, its value in some other part of the Agúsan, where that commodity was high, would be calculated in money, and any object would be asked for that the trader might desire. Suppose the customary value of this object, a pig for instance, to be 10 pesos, at which price it would be offered to the trader, who would reply that he had contracted for tobacco and not pigs. He would go on to show that he had no use for pigs, that he could procure a pig of the same size for 2 pesos in another town, and he would finally persuade the debtor to turn over the pig for 2 pesos.
I adjudicated unofficially, at the request of the Manóbos, several cases where the Bisáya trader tried to collect not only the value of a sow but of the number of young ones that it might have given birth to had it lived. These pigs had been left with Manóbos for safe-keeping and either had died from natural causes or had been killed. One Bisáya went so far as to demand payment for the chickens that a hen would have produced had it not been stolen from the Manóbo to whom it had been entrusted. This part of the claim I did not allow, so the claimant demanded pay for the eggs that might have been laid.