academy of soen^es] PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 15 



The body and sleeves of the woman's garment are of different colors. Thus, if the sleeves 

 are black, the body is red and vice versa. Another distinguishing feature is the profuseness of 

 cotton embroidery on the front of the garment. 



The lower garment of the man is a pair of trousers, generally of native cotton and abakd 

 fiber, reaching somewhat below the knees, with cotton embroidery in the above-mentioned colors 

 on the sides and at the bottom. The ends of the draw string that holds the trousers in place hang 

 down in front and are ornamented with tassels of the same colors. 



The lower garment of the women is a doubled sacklike skirt of dbakd fiber, almost invariably 

 of a reddish color, with beautiful designs in horizontal panels or with a series of horizontal equi- 

 distant black stripes. A girdle of human hair or of plaited vegetable fiber, held in place with a 

 shell button or with a plaited cord, retains this garment in place. The consequent gathering of 

 the capacious opening of the skirt at the waist and the bulging out at the bottom (which is just a 

 little below the knees), detracts not a little from the gracefulness of the Manobo woman's figure. 

 From the girdle hang, in varying number and quality, beads, hawk bells, redolent, medicinal, and 

 magic seeds, sea shells, and fragrant herbs. 



The hair is worn long by both sexes. It is dressed much like that of a Chinese woman except 

 that it is twisted and tied up in a chignon on the crown of the head. 



The man wears a long narrow bamboo hat which protects only the top of the head, and which 

 is held on the head by two strings passing from end to end behind the ears. It usually has a plume 

 of feathers standing up at right angles to the back part. The woman wears no hat as a general 

 rule, but in lieu thereof adorns her head with a bamboo comb, at times inlaid with mother-of- 

 pearl, at others covered with a lamina of beaten silver, but nearly always ornamented with deco- 

 rative incisions. A pair of ear plugs with ornamental metal laminae are placed in the enlarged 

 ear lobes. 



I have seen men who had each ear lobe pierced in one or two places and small buttons fas- 

 tened over the orifices, but I never saw a case of a Man6bo woman with any other perforation in 

 the ears than the great aperture in each lobe for her ear disks. 



Around theneck the woman wears in more or less profusion, according to hermeans and oppor- 

 tunities for purchase, necklets of beads, and necklaces of seeds, beads, shells, and crocodile teeth. 



On her forearms she wears one or more sea-shell bracelets, circlets of black coral or of copper 

 wire, and a close-fitting ringlet of plaited nito. This last adornment is also worn by men, who 

 dispense with the use of other forms of bracelets, but who usually adorn the upper arm with a 

 finely plaited ligature made of a dark fibrous vine. Both men and women frequently wear simi- 

 lar ligatures just below one or both knees. On solemn and festive occasions the woman decks her 

 ankles with loose coils of heavy wire. 



A square knapsack of hemp, frequently fringed with cotton yarn of many colors and sus- 

 pended from the back by strings passing over the shoulders and under the arms, constitutes the 

 man's receptacle for his chewing paraphernalia. It may be more or less elaborate in beadwork 

 and embroidery, but as a rule there is no ornamentation of this kind. 



Both sexes blacken the lips with soot black, and continually keep them more or less in that 

 condition by the use of a large quid of tobacco, mixed with lime and mdu-mau juice, the whole 

 being carried between the lips. This mixture serves not only as an indispensable and pleasing 

 narcotic, but also as the principal factor in bringing about the complete and permanent staining 

 of the teeth. 



In order that "they may not look like dogs," both sexes have the upper and lower incisors 

 ground at an early age. They proceed at once to stain what is left with frequent applications of 

 the above-mentioned masticatories. 



As white and sharp teeth are doglike, so beard and body hair are suggestive of the monkey. 

 Hence all straggling hairs are sedulously and constantly eradicated. 



Tattooing by both sexes is universal. It consists of the puncturing of the skin and the rub- 

 bing in of a soot made from a very common variety of resin. The figures tattooed, often artistic, 

 are representations of stars, leaves, crocodiles, etc. 



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