It is extremely hard to make a general statement as to fines when offender and offended are of different classes. It may safely be said that the fines assessed average the amount midway between the fines proper to the two classes concerned. Thus, when a poor man offends a rich man, and when a rich man offends a poor man, the average of the fines assessed equals approximately the fine assessed for injuries within the middle class. In questions in which rich and middle class persons are involved, the fines approximate an amount half way between the fines of the rich and of the middle classes.
89. Importance of influential position and personality.—The fact has already been mentioned (see [sec. 4]) that Ifugao administration of justice is remarkably personal in nature. We have just seen, in the example given in section 88, to what an extent personality and war-footing enter into the infliction of fines when offender and offended are of different classes. Nowhere can a man of magnetism and force reap greater benefit from these qualities, relatively speaking, than in an Ifugao controversy. The fact stares us in the face in every phase of Ifugao law, especially in procedure.
89a. Cripples and unfortunates.—Cripples and those afflicted by disfigurements or disfiguring diseases are often in a desperate mood for the reason that life is not at all precious to them. They are likely to be erratic and to constitute exceptions in punishment of crimes and procedure. I remember a case that happened in Baay District a few years ago which illustrates to what extent determination and absolute abandon to a single purpose are valuable in carrying a point in Ifugao procedure. I did not make note of the names but shall designate the rich man as R and the poor man as P. P was afflicted with the disease hiphip—probably ichthyosis—a skin disease in which the skin becomes white, rough, and scaly. R met P one day and sneered at him, saying, “Although you have neither fields, gongs, nor jewelry, I see that you have become a kadongyang, for you are wearing a white coat” (referring to the skin disease). P became violently angry but restrained himself from assaulting R. He calmly informed R that for this insult he fined him a large and valuable field, R’s property in Dayukong; that life meant little to himself, and that if R resisted and interfered with his taking possession of the field, he would certainly kill him. P further stated that he knew that R’s kin would retaliate and that he would lose his own life but that he did not care since he was miserable anyway. None of the women would deign him their favors and being poor—well, what was the use of living! P carried his point and maintains possession of the field to this day. Having the field, he managed to get a wife, who, although homely, has borne him two or three children who are not afflicted with his disease.
Another case in point is the following: Piklud, a fairly wealthy man of Kurug, was paralyzed from the knees down and in his locomotion he had to crawl on all fours. He loaned a neighbor a chicken. There was a quarrel over the repayment of this which left ill feeling between the two. A little while after the quarrel, the neighbor met Piklud crawling along the path through the village, and called to him as to a dog, “Doa! doa! dé-dé-dé!” Piklud pretended not to notice and even feigned amiability. He gossiped a little about the drought which was parching the rice fields. Finally he said, “Let me see your spear.” He felt the edge and then with the words, “It is pretty sharp, isn’t it?” he thrust it upward into the other’s abdomen.
The Principal Crimes and their Frequency
90. List of offenses.—In the Kiangan-Nagakaran-Maggok area, the principal crimes, in order of their probable frequency, are: sorcery; adultery; theft; murder (or in the case of women and children, kidnapping); the putting of an innocent person in the position of being considered an accessory to crime; manslaughter; rape of a married woman; arson; incest. Minor crimes are: insult; slander; false accusation; rape of a girl.
Sorcery
91. The ayak (soul-stealing) is a series of religious ceremonies in which the sorcerer calls to a feast the ancestral spirits of some man whose death he desires to encompass, together with many maleficent spirits and deities, and bribes them to bring to him, incarnated as a blue-bottle fly, a dragon fly, or a bee, the soul of the man whose death he desires. When one of the insects mentioned comes to drink of the rice wine in front of the sorcerer, it is imprisoned and put into a bamboo joint tightly corked. The enemy, being thus deprived of his soul, will die.