160 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



town, and I walked a long way on the American road with the wire, 236 to 

 meet my own brother. I think I am a little pangalinan™ 1 and the smallest 

 boy in the world, because I did not bring any areca-nut. It is not right 

 for you to say, "My nearest brother," when you ask me for betel. I think 

 you do not feel kindly to me, because 1 heard bad words from you alter I 

 cam-'. After that, I did not care to keep the areca-nuts and the betel-leaf." 



Rite of Human Sacrifice, called Pag-Huaga 



A fundamental feature of the worship of certain gods is the 

 offering to them, from time to time, of a human victim, with ap- 

 propriate rites. The war-god, Mandarangan, demands this sacrifice; 

 and the persons who take part in the ceremony pray that lie will 

 keep them from sickness and death, in return for the human blood 

 which they, for their part, are pouring out for him to drink. At 

 the Ginum a deity of the altar, called Tolus ka Balekat, is the 

 one for whom, from ancient times, the human sacrifice has been 

 killed and ceremonially offered up. 



Three hundred and fifty odd years ago, when the Spanish priests 

 began the religious conquest of the Islands, the custom of killing a 

 human victim as a religious ceremony was widespread among 

 Tagalog and Yisayan peoples of Luzon and the Visayas, as well 

 as through the mountain tribes of Mindanao. These last-named 

 have never given up the custom, in spite of persistent efforts 

 made by the missionaries to crush it out. The attack has been 

 renewed by the American government, but the human sacrifice 

 represents so vital an element in the religious life of the Bagobo 

 and of the other tribes who have always performed it that it dies 

 very hard. There have been numerous references by many authors 

 to the sacrifice, and we have three or four detailed accounts id' it; 

 but all of these were given to the various writers by Bagobo in- 

 dividuals, for, so far as we know, no white person has ever had 

 the opportunity of being present at the rite. It is doubtful if any 

 investigator will ever lie in a position to record from personal ob- 

 servation a human sacrifice. But of the significance, and of the 



108 A good illustration of the tendency of the native to Incorporate recent happen 

 with tin; ancient elements of his story. Atah had walked along some part of the coa-: 

 between Davao and Bolton, where telephone connections were estahlished about 1906. 

 Thence he had taken the path up the mountain trail to Talon. 



•"The traditional small boy of the old stories (ulil) who, though poor and often 

 dirty and covered with sores, eventually becomes a great datu, or a famous malaki. 



