Penal Law
Penalties
The Ifugaos have two punishments for crime: the death penalty and fine. These punishments are inflicted and executed by the offended person and his kin.
75. Nature and reckoning of fines.—Fines are of two sorts: fines of “tens,” bakid, and fines of “sixes,” na-onom, each unit of the ten or six being a portion of the whole fine. The different parts of the fine go to different people. Oftentimes sticks, knots, or notches are used to assist in calculation. In Banaue and neighboring districts these aids to calculation are also kept as a record. The unit payments grow successively smaller from the first to the last.
The first unit of any series is called pu-u, meaning “base.” It is of the greatest value, and goes to the injured individual. The second payment, sometimes, goes to the go-between. In that case, the kin of the injured man take all the rest. If the fee of the go-between be provided for outside of the fine, the kin of the injured man take all except the pu-u, the first unit. This is but just, since they have backed their kinsman in his action against the offender, have perchance risked their lives in his cause, and also stand ready at all times to help pay any fines that others may assess against him.
The second, and sometimes the third and fourth units, are called haynub di pu-u, meaning “followers of the base.” They are of less value than the pu-u. Then follow units consisting, each, of four irons (spear-heads, axes, knives). These units are called natauwinan. Then come units of three irons each, called natuku; then units of two irons each, called nunbadi; then units of one iron each, called na-oha. In the case of fines composed of six units, there is usually no haynub.
The Malay does nothing without first thoroughly talking it over. After a payment has been tentatively consented to by the offender and his family, there yet remain many conferences with the go-between before everything is arranged. An uninitiated white man on seeing a group of these people, squatted in a circle, moving little sticks about, and in heated discussion, might think they were playing some primitive but absorbing native game. And, I am not sure that the attitude of their minds is very different!
The following tables of fines assessed for the four degrees of adultery illustrate the manner of reckoning fines, their amounts, the value of the units, as well as the fines proper to the three classes of society in the Kiangan district.