But there were a good many cases in which the kidnapper’s motive was utterly different. He might wish, for example, to display his valor, or to profit financially by the sale of his captives. Sometimes, too, a head-hunting party, failing to get a head, would capture a woman and carry her back with them to their village. In some parts of Ifugao the woman was ravished for a period of five days by the party of head-hunters. She was then sold into slavery.
The penalty inflicted by the kin of the kidnapper was either death or retaliation by kidnapping.
Incest
116. Rarity of such offenses.—Incest is a very rare crime in Ifugao. It seems to be becoming more frequent, for there has undoubtedly been a growing laxity in morality ever since the establishment of foreign government. A case recently occurred in Mongayan, in which a father, on humane grounds as he put the matter to her, deflowered his own daughter. This case was not punished.
Rape
117. Both parties being unmarried.—The unmarried Ifugaos, from earliest childhood, are accustomed to collect in certain houses, using them as dormitories. Usually both sexes sleep together in these dormitories. Naturally, too, there is a great deal of sexual intercourse each night, for sexual intercourse takes the same place among the Ifugaos that embraces and kisses do in the courtship of some other peoples. The nature of the female human being, says the Ifugao, is to resist the advances of the male. He naïvely points out that the hens, the cows, and, in fact, the females of any species resist the male in this respect, notwithstanding they may be quite as anxious for the sexual act as the male himself. It is so with women, he says. It is considered shocking in some sections of Ifugao for a girl to yield herself to her lover the first time without resistance. This idiosyncracy of feminine nature being a fact, it is sometimes difficult to be certain as to whether the resistance offered by a girl is bona fide or not—as to whether she is willing for the sexual act to occur, half willing, or entirely opposed to it. There may or may not be doubt in the mind of the male—usually there is none—but friends of the girl, by distorting or by putting a slightly different interpretation on what occurred, could make a case of rape in the white man’s courts out of almost any of these common events. Furthermore, a girl on the advice of her parents, were such a rape punishable by fine, might and frequently would, entice some youth into forcing her, in order that her family might benefit financially.
Consequently if a girl be “caught” in a sleeping house by a youth who habitually sleeps there, the Ifugaos do not look upon it as a case of rape, even though force be used. By following this principle a great many questions and “put-up-jobs” are avoided. If a girl be seized and raped by one who does not habitually sleep in or frequent the girl’s dormitory, and the evidence establishes a case of bona fide resistance on the part of the girl, a fine of “six” is assessed against the raptor as follows: