The Manóbos of Mindanáo / Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir

by John M. Garvan

Like all tribes of eastern Mindanáo, Manóbos, both men and women, wear sufficient clothes to cover the private parts of the body. Children up to the age of 5 or 6 years may go without clothes, but female children commonly wear a triangular pubic shield¹ of coconut shell, suspended by a waist string. Men, though they may denude themselves completely when bathing, always conceal their pudenda from one another's gaze.

¹Pú-ki.

Married and elderly women may occasionally expose the upper part of their persons, but unmarried girls seldom do so. No delicacy is felt in exposing the breasts during the suckling of a babe.

VARIETY IN QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF CLOTHES

The quantity and quality of clothes worn varies slightly in different localities. The farther away from settlements the people live, the poorer and less elaborate is the dress, due to their inability to obtain the imported cloth and cotton yarn, for which they entertain a high preference. On the upper Agúsan, where the Manóbos have adopted a certain amount of Mandáya culture, their apparel partakes of the more gorgeous character of that of the Mandáya. In places where they are of Mañgguáñgan descent, as is often the case on the upper Agúsan, on the Mánat, on the upper Ihawán and tributaries, and on the upper Sálug, their clothes resemble those of their poor progenitors. In the middle Agúsan (including the Wá-wa, Kasilaían, lower Argáwan, lower Umaíam, lower Ihawán, Híbung, and Simúlau Rivers) the dress may be called characteristically Manóbo.

THE USE OF BARK CLOTH

The use of bark cloth² in a region situated somewhere between the headwaters of the Libagánon and the Sábud, a western tributary of the Ihawán, was reported to me. My informants, both on the Sálug River and on the Umaíam River, spoke of the people of that locality as true Manóbos, very dark in color, and wearing bark clothes. If this report is correct, and I am inclined to give credence to it, it is probably the only case at the present time of the use of bark cloth in Mindanáo, excepting perhaps among the Manánuas[sic].

²A-ga-hán.