CHAPTER XXI 



POLITICAL ORGANIZATION: INTERTRIBAL AND OTHER RELATIONS 



INTERTRIBAL RELATIONS 



Dealings on the part of Manobos with other tribes such as the Banuaon, the Debabaon, 

 and the Mandaya are almost without exception of the most pacific kind. I made frequent 

 inquiries, especially while on the upper Agusan River, as to the reason for this, and was always 

 given to understand that any trouble with another tribe was carefully avoided because it might 

 give rise to unending complications and to interminable war. I am of the opinion that, in his 

 avoidance of war with neighboring tribes, there is ever present in the Manobo's mind a 

 consciousness of his inferiority to the Mandaya, Debabaon, and Banuaon, and a realization 

 of the consequences that would inevitably follow in case of a clash with them. Thus the 

 Manobos of the upper Agusan, who had provoked the Mandayas of the Kati'il River at the 

 beginning of the Christian conquest, suffered a dire reprisal on the Hulip River, upper Agusan, 

 when some 180 of them were massacred in one night. 1 



The current accounts of Debabaon warriors, as narrated to me by many of them on the 

 upper Salug River, show the severe losses suffered by Manobos of the upper Agusan in their 

 conflicts with Debabaons. The same holds true of the Manobos on the lower Agusan when 

 they matched their strength with the Banuaons of the Maasam, Libafig, and Ohut Rivers. 

 A perusal of the "Cartas de los PP. de la Compania de Jesus" will give one a vivid picture of 

 the devastation caused by not only the Banudons but by the Mandayas and the Debabaons in 

 Manoboland. 



The reason for these unfriendly intertribal relations and for the consequent defeats of the 

 Manobos in nearly every instance is not far to seek. The Manobo lacks the organization of 

 the Mandaya, Debabaon, and Banuaon. Like the Mafigguangan he is somewhat hot-headed, 

 and upon provocation, especially while drunk, prefers to take justice into his own hands, striking 

 down with one fell swoop his Mandaya or other adversary, without appealing to a public adjudi- 

 cation. The result of this imprudent proceeding is an attack in which the friends and relatives 

 of the slain one become the aggressors, invading Manobo territory and executing awful ven- 

 geance upon the perpetrator of the wrong. The friends and relatives of the latter, with their 

 inferior tribal organization and their conscious feeling of inferiority in courage, together with a 

 realization of the innumerable difficulties that beset the path of reprisals, very rarely invade 

 the territory of the hostile tribe. 



Both from the accounts given in the aforesaid Jesuit letters and from my own observations 

 and information, I know that the same statements may be made of the intertribal relations 

 of Mafigguangans and Mandayas, Mangguangans and Debabaons, and Mafigguafigans and 

 Manobos. The Mafigguangans are much lower in the scale of culture than the Man6bos, 

 and when they are under the influence of liquor yield to very slight provocation. As a result 

 of a rash blow, the Mafigguafigan's territory is invaded and his settlement is surrounded. 

 He is an arrant coward as a rule, and, hot-headed fool as he is, jumps from his low, wall-le^s 

 house only to meet the foeman's lance. Thus it happens that thousands and thousands of 

 them have been killed. If we may believe the testimony of a certain Jesuit missionary, aa 

 stated in one of the Jesuit letters, the Mafigguangan tribe numbered 30,000 at one tune and 

 their habitat extended eastward from the Tagum River and from its eastern tributary, the 

 Salug, between the Hijo and the Totui Rivers, to the Agusan and thence spread still eastward 

 over the Simulau River. In 1886 Father Pastells estimated them to number some 14,000. 

 In 1910, I made an estimate, based on the reports of their hereditary enemies in ComposteUa, 



> See Cartas de los PP. de la Conipafila de Jesus, 5: 22, 1883. 

 176 





