Gumangan of Ambabag when a youth, sent an advocate to ask for the hand of the daughter of M of Umbul. He was accepted. But he changed his mind about the girl, and went to Baininan, where he engaged himself to a girl of that village without assuaging the mental agony of his jilted fiancée by paying the hudhud indemnity. M seized a carabao belonging to Gumangan. Gumangan gathered together his kin and went to Umbul—only a quarter of a mile distant—to prevent the slaughter of his animal. But M’s party was so much more powerful that Gumangan’s kin ran away. M’s party then killed and ate the carabao.
Gumangan married in Baininan, and bearing in mind his former humiliation, decided to do something that would restore his prestige and at the same time assure him a sufficiently large body of followers to make him strong to demand and to resist demands. He consequently gave a great uyauwe feast at which the unheard of number of six carabaos was slaughtered, to say nothing of innumerable pigs. And later, he gave the hagabi feast—an even more expensive operation.
Dumalilon of Tupplak borrowed a carabao of Gumangan. Five years elapsed, yet he made no move to repay the debt, notwithstanding repeated demands of Gumangan. Gumangan seized Dumalilon’s field, which had already been spaded, and threw his seed-bed away. Both men led armed parties to the field, but this time Gumangan was careful to have a sufficient number of backers on hand. Dumalilon’s party took to flight.
In Burnai, a fight occurred over the seizure of a rice field that resulted in the killing of four men.
Kodamon of Pindungan and Katiling of Ambabag[6] had a dispute over the boundary of a field. There were paghok to mark the boundary, but Kodamon contended that all memory of the planting of the paghok was absent, and that they were, consequently, without significance in the matter of dispute. They wrestled, and Kodamon lost a little ground, but Katiling tried to take more than was due him according to the verdict of the wrestling matches. Katiling sent men to spade the disputed territory, and led an armed force out to support them. Kodamon led an armed force to the field. At the same time and at a safe distance, the mutual kin of the two parties and a goodly number of neighbors gathered. Kodamon was armed with a Remington rifle whose trigger was broken; Dulinayan, a kinsman of Katiling, with a revolver for which he had no ammunition. The other members of each force however were substantially, if less spectacularly, armed with spears which they well knew how to use. Women rushed in between the two parties, and catching the warriors by the waist tried to lead them away. One can well believe that the air was riven by curses, threats, accusations, upbraidings, imprecations, invocations. The male neutral kin shouted from their safe distance that if Kodamon killed Katiling, they would kill Kodamon (as a vengeance for the death of their kinsman) while if Katiling killed Kodamon, they would avenge their kinsman’s death by killing Katiling. “What kind of a way is this for co-villagers to settle a dispute,” they shouted. “Go back home and beget some children, and marry them to each other, giving them the two fields, and then it will make no difference where the division line is!” There was an exchange of spears in which Buaya, a kinsman of Kodamon’s, was wounded slightly. The matter was then left in abeyance with the understanding that as soon as possible, the two families be united by a marriage, and the two fields given the married couple.
It happened, however, that on account, of the sexes of the unmarried children of the families, a union between them was impossible. Accordingly, Kodamon gave his field to his son Dulnuan, and Katiling traded his field to Pingkihan, his brother. Both of these young men had pregnant wives. Pingkihan’s wife gave birth first, the child being a girl. Shortly afterward, Dulnuan’s wife gave birth. I met Dulnuan, and not knowing of the event, and noticing that he seemed downcast, asked him why he was so sad. “My wife has given birth to a girl baby,” he said. The quarrel over the boundary is as yet unsettled.
Kuyapi of Nagakaran, before the Spanish occupation, sent a slave child to Guminigin of Baay, to be sold in Baliwan (Nueva Vizcaya), stipulating that the child must bring at least five carabaos. Guminigin sold the child for seven carabaos, delivering five to Kuyapi, and kept two.
The Spaniards came. They were exceedingly partial to the people of Kiangan district in which the village of Baay is located. They paid little or no attention to complaints of people of other districts against people of Kiangan district. Many debts owed by Kiangan people were unpaid, for the Kianganites took advantage of the protection given them by the Spaniards. And yet the Nagakaranites and Kianganites were very closely united by marriage and by blood. Indeed Kuyapi and Guminigin were second or third cousins.
Owing to the difficulty the Nagakaran people had in collecting debts owed them by the Kianganites, they conceived for the latter and for the Spaniards a most violent hatred, and began to make reprisals. The Spaniards punished these reprisals by making an expedition to Nagakaran in which they came off second best.[7] They sent another and stronger expedition, which killed a number of people and which burned all the houses in the district. To this day the Nagakaran people have not been able to rebuild their houses—the large trees having long since been cut from nearby forests—and live in wretched shacks built on the ground. They blame the Kiangan people, saying that the latter invited the Spaniards into Ifugao.
Kuyapi claimed that the terms on which he sent the slave to Guminigin were that Guminigin was to receive only one carabao for having effected a sale, and that all the rest were to be delivered to him, and that there was consequently a carabao still due him. It seems likely that the claim was false, and that it was advanced merely as an excuse for making a reprisal.