academy of SCENES i INTERTRIBAL AND OTHER RELATIONS 179 



or of an arroba 6 of hemp, so that he was utterly at the mercy of the trader. The steelyards used 

 by Christian traders from 1905 to 1908 were never less than 30 per cent out of true and frequently 

 as much as 50 per cent. One pair of scales I found to be so heavily leaded that the hemp that 

 weighed 25 pounds on them weighed between 38 and 39 pounds on a true English scales. 



Another method of defraudation consisted in false accounts. The Man6bo had no account 

 book to rely upon in his dealings with the trader, but trusted to his memory and to the honesty 

 of his friend. The payment was made in occasional deliveries of hemp or other articles, such deliv- 

 eries covering a period usually of many months. When the day for settling accounts came, the 

 Manobo was allowed to spread out his little grains of corn or httle bits of wood on the floor and 

 to perform the calculation as best he could. Any mistakes in his own favor were promptly 

 corrected by the trader, but mistakes or omissions in favor of the trader were allowed to pass 

 unobserved. The account would then be closed and the trader would mark with a piece of 

 charcoal on a beam, rafter, or other convenient place, the amount of the debt still due him, for 

 it was extremely rare that he allowed the poor tribesman to escape from his clutches. 



Defraudation by usury and excessive prices. — Another method of exploitation consisted in a 

 system of usury, practiced throughout the valley but more especially on the upper Agusan. 

 An example will illustrate this: A Bisaya advances 5 pesos in various commodities with the under- 

 standing that at the next harvest he is to receive 10 sacks of paddy in payment. At the next 

 harvest the Manobo is unable to pay more than 6 sacks. He is given to understand that he must 

 pay the balance within two months. After that period the trader goes upstream again and pro- 

 ceeds to collect. The paddy is not forthcoming, so the trader informs his customer that the 

 prevailing price of paddy in such and such a town is actually 5 pesos per sack and that he accord- 

 ingly loses 20 pesos by the failure to receive the paddy stipulated for and that the debtor must 

 answer for the amount. The poor Manobo then turns over a war bolo or perhaps a spear at 

 one-half their original value, for the contract called for paddy and not weapons. In that way he 

 pays up a certain amount, let us say 10 pesos, and has still a balance of 10 pesos against him, 

 he having no available resources wherewith to settle the account in full. He is then offered the 

 alternative of paying 20 sacks at the next harvest or of performing some work that he is unwilling 

 to do, so he accepts the former alternative. The bargain is then clinched with many threats on 

 the part of the trader to the effect that the Americans will cut off his head or commit some other 

 outrageous act should he fail to fulfill this second contract. 



The worst depredation committed on the Manobo consisted of the advancing of merchandise 

 at exorbitant rates just before harvest time with a view to purchasing rice and tobacco. It is prin- 

 cipally at this time that the Manobo stands in special need of a supply of pigs and chickens for 

 the celebrations, religious and social, that invariably take place. As he has httle foresight in his 

 nature and rarely, if ever, speculates, he was accustomed to bartering away in advance a large 

 amount of his paddy and tobacco. The result was that after paying up as much of his paddy 

 debts and tobacco debts as he could, he found that his stock was meager, barely sufficient for a 

 few months. So the time came when he had to repurchase at from 3 to 1 pesos per bamboo joint 

 that which he had sold for 25 centavos. 



Exploitation by the system of commutation. — Another means of defrauding perpetrated on the 

 Manobo was the system of commutation by which the debt had to be paid, if the creditor so 

 desired, in other effects than those which were stipulated in the contract. The value of the goods 

 thus substituted was reckoned extraordinarily low. For example, in the event of a failure to 

 pay the stipulated amount of tobacco, its value in some other part of the Agusan, where that 

 commodity was high, would be calculated in money, and any object would be asked for that the 

 trader might desire. Suppose the customary value of this object, a pig for instance, to be 10 

 pesos, at which price it would be offered to the trader, who would reply that he had contracted 

 for tobacco and not pigs. He would go on to show that he had no use for pigs, that he could 

 procure a pig of the same size for 2 pesos in another town, and he would finally persuade the debtor 

 to turn over the pig for 2 pesos. 



1 An arroba is 25 Spanish pounds. 



M858 O - 41 - 13 



