jLudkt 07 sciences] GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 165 



bolts at one of my companions and harm were to befall him I would be fined or killed. I would 

 undergo a similar punishment, I was told on other occasions, for using such tabooed words as 

 crocodile and salt; it was believed that a storm would be the result of the use of these words. 

 On one occasion I thought it prudent to give a carrier of mine a piece of rubber cloth wherewith 

 to cover his salt, for he had threatened to collect from me if it became wet from the storm that 

 was impending, and which all my companions imputed to my deliberate use of the names of 

 certain fish not native to their mountain water. 



LIABILITY ARISING FROM MAGIC CAUSES 



Another pregnant source of fines and of sanguinary feuds is the belief in the possession, by 

 certain individuals, of magic power to do harm. No one that I know of or have heard of, except 

 a few fearless warrior chiefs, has made open avowal of the possession of such power and yet on 

 many occasions I have heard of the supposed possession of it by various individuals. To give 

 an instance, a Manobo on the upper Agiisan had the reputation of having secret poisons. One 

 day another Manobo and his wife visited him. With the exception of a trifling altercation 

 about a debt, everything went well. On her return home the woman was suddenly taken sick 

 and died. Her death was ascribed to the magic power of the person recently visited and the 

 outcome was that the party with the bad reputation had to build a tree house, one of the few 

 that I have seen, and surround his settlement with an abatis of brush and of sharp spikes, all in 

 anticipation of an attack by the deceased woman's husband. 



It was the rule rather than the exception that I, myself, had the same reputation applied to 

 me. Upon arrival in heretofore unvisited regions I was fequently informed that they had heard 

 of my wonderful power of killing. On many occasions it was only by assuming a bold front and 

 by vowing vengeance on my traducers that I freed myself from the imputation. In such cases 

 I always asked for the name of the slanderer, and, upon learning it, announced my intention 

 of seeking him without delay, for the purpose of clearing myself from the imputation and of 

 demanding satisfaction from him. 



THE SYSTEM OF FINES 



It is not intended here to consider the system of fines as penalties for voluntary wrong- 

 doings but only as punishments for certain little acts of forgetfulness or of omission that might 

 be construed as conscious acts of disrespect. The system is a very strange one and, to our way 

 of thinking, very harsh, productive sometimes of bad feeling and even of more serious results. 



Instances that have passed under my personal observation will illustrate the system. Thus, 

 on one occasion an acquaintance of mine left the house without making his intention known to 

 those present. While he was under the house, one of the guests happened to spit through the 

 floor upon the clothes of the man underneath. Upon his return he identified the guilty one both 

 by his position in the house, and by the quality of the chewing material he was using. The case 

 was discussed at length and it was decided that for carelessness the guilty one should make 

 material reparation in the form of a chicken and some drink. 



Again, the dog of a certain individual on the upper Agiisan was guilty of soiling the clothes 

 of a person that happened to be working 1 under the house. As the owner of the sick dog (it had 

 been mangled by a wild boar) had been previously warned of the possibility of something 

 untoward happening, he was fined and was condemned to make further reparation in the form of 

 a convivial meeting in order to remove the ill feeling. 



Instances of fines that were imposed on me will illustrate the principle involved. Upon my 

 arrival in new regions I was almost invariably called upon to pay a certain amount, on the ground 

 that I had had no permission to enter the settlement, or that the local deities had been displeased 

 at my visit, or that I was a spy, or for some other reason. The refusal to pay was always accepted 

 after lengthy explanations and after the distribution of a few trifling gifts to the more vehement 

 members of the settlement, but in one case arms were drawn and I had to take my stand with 

 back to the wall and await developments. 



