As white and sharp teeth are doglike, so beard and body hair are suggestive of the monkey. Hence all straggling hairs are sedulously and constantly eradicated.
Tattooing by both sexes is universal. It consists of the puncturing of the skin and the rubbing in of a soot made from a very common variety of resin. The figures tattooed, often artistic, are representations of stars, leaves, crocodiles, etc.
Both sexes are tattooed on the breast, arms, and fingers, but it is customary for women to have an extra design on the calves of the legs and sometimes on the whole leg.
As to the Christianized Manóbos, it is obvious that the great majority have adopted the garb of their Bisáya brethren and abandoned the use of ornaments and mutilations characteristic of their pagan compeers. The change was enjoined by Spanish missionaries for religious reasons and, in the case of clothing, was encouraged by Bisáya traders for commercial motives, but did not benefit the new Christians, as far as my observation goes, either religiously, financially, or esthetically.
CHAPTER III
A SURVEY OF THE MATERIAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL CULTURE OF THE MANÓBOS OF EASTERN MINDANÁO
GENERAL MATERIAL CULTURE
DWELLINGS
For a home the Manóbo selects a site that is clearly approved by supernatural agencies, and that is especially suitable for agricultural purposes by reason of its fertility, and for defense, because of its strategic position. Hereon he builds an unpretentious, square, one-roomed building at a height of from 1.50 meters to 8 meters from the ground. The house measures ordinarily about 3 meters by 5 meters. Posts, usually light, and varying in number between 4 and 16, support the floor, roof, and intervening parts. The materials are all rattan lashed and seldom consist of anything but light materials taken from the immediate vicinity. The floor is made of slats of palm or bamboo, the roof is thatched with palm leaves, and the walls are light, horizontal, superimposed poles laid to about the height of the shoulders of a person sitting on the floor. The space between the top of the walls and the roof constitutes a continuous window. This open space above the low house wall permits the inmates during a fight to shoot their arrows at the enemy in any direction.