38. Definition.—Such articles as knives, spears, dishes, baskets, pots, houses, camote fields, fruit-bearing trees, blankets, animals and articles of minor value, are on the same legal basis as personal property among ourselves. Three items in this list demand special attention: houses, valuable trees, and sweet potato fields.
39. Houses.—Dwellings are movable property in Ifugao. A man, with the aid of his kinsmen can, and frequently does, take a house to pieces, move it to a different site and set it up again before sunset. The plot on which a house stands has no value. The value of a house is usually about ten pesos, the range of prices being from six to sixty pesos.
40. Valuable trees.—Cocoanut trees, coffee trees, and areca palms are sold without any sale or transfer of the land on which they stand. The value of a cocoanut tree in full bearing is five pesos; of a coffee tree, one to two pesos; of an areca palm one-half peso. As a rule, the land on which these trees stand has no value. A practice presenting parallel features that leads one to believe that the same manner of selling trees must have prevailed among the Pangasinanes, one of the Christian tribes, is that, in the sale of the cocoanut groves in central Pangasinan, the trees are sold at so much apiece; but in order to get possession of the trees, it is necessary to buy the land at so much a hectare, since the land has a value.
Camote or sweet potato fields are discussed in section 45.
No ceremonials are involved in the transfer of personal property; nor are witnesses necessary, as a general thing.
Perpetual Tenure
Tenure is either perpetual or transient.
41. Rice and forest lands.—Rice-land and forest-land tenures are perpetual.
In case an owner abandons a rice field for any period of time, however long, and another man takes up the field without interference or contrary order of the true owner, clears it of underbrush, builds up the broken dikes, levels once more the terraces, tills and plants it, the latter has the right to use the field for the same number of years that it was abandoned. At the end of this time, the field reverts to the true owner. Should the owner desire possession of his field before the expiration of the time, for which, in accordance with this rule, the field should remain in the possession of him who redeemed it from the wild mountain side, he must repurchase possession.