of the habitat that were prosperous and in which the obtaining of the
daily ration was not a serious problem, the selling by parents who
found themselves poverty stricken of one of their children was not at
all uncommon. The price that a child brought his parents varied from
five pigs to five carabaos. There was no difference in value between
a male and a female child. A slave was most valuable at the age of
eighteen or twenty. Some men were slave dealers, and carried great
numbers of children to Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela. In those parts a
slave was worth from five to twenty carabaos.
Among the Ifugao a slave was absolutely the property of his owner. The
latter had power of life and death over him. Even if the master killed
the slave it was not considered that the slave's family would be
justified in avenging the death. But a slave's children, even though
they be the children by another slave parent, were free. Frequently one
of them was assigned to take the place of the father and another of the
mother, and these two then became free. In the lowlands, however, the
children of slaves were slaves, which accounts partly for the higher
prices paid for slaves in those parts. It would be interesting to know
whether the lowland (Christian) Filipino held children of slaves as
slaves before his civilization and christianization by the Spaniard,
or whether his practice then was that of his Ifugao brethren.
The purchase of a slave was celebrated by a very pretentious series
of religious ceremonials. Oftentimes, with the Ifugao, a slave was
set free, at or before the death of his master, and was given a rice
field. Unless set free he was inherited by the master's heirs as any
other property. Sometimes a slave child was adopted by a childless
couple as their own son or daughter.
The following "Pocahontas" story is told of a slave who lived at his
master's house in Anao. The master treated him ill, and the slave,
a young man, ran away. He went to the enemy village of Alimit. The
men of that town were going to kill him, hearing his Anao accent,
and believing him to be one of their hereditary enemies. But a
handsome girl, the daughter of a rich man, protected him with her
own body and begged for his life. She afterward married him and
bought his freedom. There was no actual necessity for her buying his
freedom, since the last thing in the world the Anao master could have
accomplished would have been the recovery of his property. She bought
his freedom, however, in order that the children of herself and her
husband might never be called the "offspring of a slave."
Mention should be made, also, of those who voluntarily entered into
slavery as a means of paying a debt. The word "voluntarily" in this
connection needs explanation, however. A man was usually frightened
into entering into servitude by the probability that if he did not
he would be killed.
In parts of Ifugao, the killing of women or children in feuds was a
disgraceful thing, and rarely, if ever, practiced. Instead they were
made prisoners and sold for debt. Sometimes, too, women or children
were carried off and held for debt. This form of collection of debts
was legal, or at least semi-legal. In case the debt was paid, the
captive was returned; otherwise, he was sold as a slave.
ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN
27. Definition of illegitimacy; its frequency.--A bastard is one whose
father refuses to take the mother as his legal wife for any period
of time, however short. The marriage of the parents after the birth
of the bastard, consequently, legitimizes the child.
Bastardy is not very frequent. It is extremely frequent, however, for
a girl to become pregnant before her marriage. But in such cases her
lover usually marries her. It is usually in cases of doubtful parentage
and in cases in which one of the parents is of vastly different status
as to wealth that a marriage does not follow pregnancy. But there
are also a few cases of bastardy surrounded by other circumstances.
28. Obligations of father to bastard child.--The father of a bastard
must give his child a rice field if he has a field unassigned. He
must also give the mother an oban, or blanket, with which to carry
the child after the Ifugao fashion on her back. The value of this gift
is principally in its constituting a formal recognition of the child.
The mother's rights are enforced by her kin. To a certain extent
the same is true of the bastard's rights. A man is never forced to
marry a woman against his will--an Ifugao woman would be ashamed to
ask such a thing. Such a marriage, too, would not be congenial. The
mere making of a bastard a legitimate child is not of sufficient
importance to justify such a marriage. Besides, the Ifugaos have a
saying, kumadangyang di inlaglaga: "The bastard becomes a rich man."
Except in the matter of division of estates, the bastard has the same
rights as legitimate children. His father's kin back him in legal
procedures and avenge his wrongs as if he were legitimate. The father
and his kin assist him in his marriage feast and in other feasts that
may be necessary.
29. Determination of parentage.--The ordeal is employed when two or
more men are accused of being the father of a bastard. The woman's word
is not sufficient to settle the parentage. The one she accuses may
lay the matter at the door of another. The ordeals used are the duel
with runo stalks, or eggs, and the hot water test. The woman, holding
the babe in her arms, sits half way between the two controversants.
The Ifugao has the remnant of a peculiar belief that a child may
be begotten by two fathers. They say, for example, that if A and B,
two men, are having sexual intercourse with a woman, Z, and that if
it is settled by fate that A and B each shall beget a child of the
male sex, Z will conceive and the child may be the son of both of
them. But if A is fated to beget a female child, and B to beget a
male child, the semen of the one undoes that of the other, and the
woman does not conceive. This belief is not taken seriously as a rule;
but I have heard it advanced in a case of illegitimate birth. [13]
Accordingly, should each of the two men be struck by the eggs thrown
in the duel to decide the parentage of the child, or should both be
scalded by hot water, the Ifugao, formerly at least, held that the
child belonged to each of them.
RECIPROCAL OBLIGATIONS OF PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN
30. Duties of parents to children.--The Ifugao family exists
principally for the child members of it. The parents are supposed to
love, and do love their children more than the children love them. The
parents are under the obligation to provide food and clothing for
their children, and to impart to them the tribal knowledge that is
necessary to a respectable and well regulated Ifugao life. The child
may be forced to assist, according to his ability, in the matter of
household tasks, work in the fields, and the like.
Corporal punishment may be, but very rarely is, administered. It is
the mothers, strange to say, rather than the fathers, who use this
form of punishment. I never saw or heard of a father whipping his
child. Such a thing as a right of life and death over a child is as
unthought of, as it would be abhorrent, to the Ifugao if mentioned.
The Ifugao child, even at the age of ten or twelve, begins to look upon
his parents' property as his own, or at least that portion of it that
will fall to his share. A little later, he becomes independent--he
does not obey his parents unless he wants to do so. He is fully
as likely to command them as to obey them. And the parent is under
the obligation early to allow the children to displace him from his
possession. He must turn over all his property to them as soon as
they are able to marry or care for themselves. Should there be but
a single field, he assigns it to his eldest. From the time that the
fields are turned over, the father's offices are those of priest and
counselor; the mother's offices are those of priestess (sometimes)
and of household drudge (always).
31. Obligations of children to parents.--The obligations of children
to their parents are:
(a) To provide animals and other things requisite to religious feasts
that are thought necessary to keep them in good health and to restore
them when sick. This obligation is by far the most burdensome one,
usually.
(b) To provide food and clothing for them, and to care for them when
sick or helpless.
(c) To provide requisites for a funeral feast in accord with the
station of the deceased.
In case the child has not yet obtained possession of his allotment,
these obligations do not rest upon the child, but are a charge upon
the property allotted him. If the child has obtained possession of
his share in the family estate, the obligation rests upon the child
himself.
The law of primogeniture holds with respect to these obligations. Civil
obligations rest more heavily upon the older children and as nearly
as possible in proportion to the amounts of property received from
the parents. Children who receive no family property contribute
very little.
One might ask how compliance with these obligations is
enforced. Compliance with them is really not enforced. They are the
most sacred of all duties. Not to meet them would bring upon one's
self such universal reproach as to render life unbearable.
THE PROPERTY LAW
THE KINDS OF PROPERTY
32. The Ifugao's classification of properties.--The Ifugao clearly
distinguishes between two classes of property. His language,
and indeed his thought, is very poor in abstractions, however,
and he bases his classification upon the difference in the method
of transferring property by sale. The one class he calls ma-ibuy,
"that for whose transfer by sale an ibuy ceremony is necessary";
and the other, adi ma-ibuy, "that for whose transfer by sale an ibuy
ceremony is not necessary." Classifying them upon their essential
differences in status in Ifugao law and culture, I term the former
family property and the latter personal property.
FAMILY PROPERTY
33. The Ifugao attitude toward family property.--Family properties
consist of rice lands, forest lands, and heirlooms. The Ifugao
attitude is that lands and articles of value that have been handed
down from generation to generation cannot be the property of any
individual. Present holders possess only a transient and fleeting
possession, or better, occupation, insignificant in duration in
comparison with the decades and perhaps centuries that have usually
elapsed since the field or heirloom came into the possession of the
family. Their possession is more of the nature of a trust than an
absolute ownership--a holding in trust for future generations.
It is a misfortune when family property that has long been in the
possession of a family must be sold out of it. But if it be sold
to a member of another branch of the same family, the misfortune is
accounted less in proportion to the nearness of the kinship. However,
the rights of the living and of the ancestors departed, are
greater than the rights of the unborn. Consequently, a field may
properly be sold and so depart from the family, if it be in order
to provide animals to accompany the spirit of a deceased ancestor
to the spirit world, or in order to provide animals for sacrifices
to secure the recovery from dangerous sickness of some member of the
family. Inherited property, however, is not to be disposed of without
exhausting every effort to keep it within the family. Nor must it
ever be disposed of for light or trivial reasons. Except when sold to
satisfy the needs of the departed or living (in these cases, a forced
sale) family properties when sold bring exorbitant prices. Fields or
other properties which have been recently acquired or constructed,
sell at considerably lower prices, even though their intrinsic value
be the same.
Nothing that I know of in the Ifugao make-up, is so characteristically
oriental as is this subordination of individual to family rights.
34. Rice lands.--A "field" consists of all the contiguous paddies
in one place that are the property of one man. In sales and in
transfers arising out of family relationship, and in balal (pawning),
a field is never divided. If there be two heirs and only one field
to be inherited, the elder of the heirs takes the entire field. The
reason for this and for the rights of primogeniture (see sec. 53)
in inheritance and assignment of property, is to be found in the fact
that the Ifugao social consciousness considers it better--and it is
better--that a family have at least one powerful member round whom
the kin may rally and to whom they may look for aid, than that the
family property be split into insignificant parcels that would affect
but little the property of all. Aside from this consideration there is
also the practical difficulty of dividing a field. In the process of
dividing, the family unity--which is the dearest and most necessary
thing in Ifugao society--would probably be destroyed by quarrels and
squabbles. Even if an equitable division could be arranged, a great
deal of the field would be taken up in dikes and division lines. It
is a rare thing to find an Ifugao rice field as large as one acre
in extent.
There is no formal recognition of the eldest as the head of the
family. But together with the lion's share of the property, the
first-born inherits certain well defined and rather stringent
obligations. In this we seem to have the savor of a system of
patriarchy.
35. Forest lands.--Such lands, valuable principally because of the
woods upon them, are often the common property of a group of kinsmen
and their families. They are sometimes partitioned. They are nearly
sure to be partitioned if wood be scarce, or if part of the land be
suitable for rice fields.
36. Heirlooms.--Heirlooms consist of such articles as gold
neck-ornaments (intrinsic value of the gold being about 10 pesos to
20 pesos; current price among the Ifugaos, 60 pesos to 120 pesos);
gongs (value 8 pesos to 250 pesos); rice-wine jars (value 60 pesos to
400 pesos); pango, or strings of amber colored glass beads (value 80
pesos to 160 pesos); and bungol, long strings of agates and bloodstones
which are very rarely sold (value about 250 pesos). These articles
are used fully as much by the owner's kin as by the owner himself;
for they wear the beads and ornaments, play the gongs in feasts,
and brew rice wines in the jars.
37. Sale of family property.--The selling of rice fields, forest
lands, gold neck-ornaments, rice-wine jars, and the like is a matter
of practical concern to the entire family. Selling them, except in
cases of necessity and after consultation with the kin, would lead to
ill feeling toward the seller on the part of his kin, and a refusal
to assist and back him. Since there is no form of political government
in Ifugao culture, and since every man must, with the help of his kin,
"get his own justice," this would be no small punishment. How serious
a punishment it would be, the reader will, perhaps, realize when he
reads the chapter on procedure.
The sale of family property is registered by ceremonies in which
the near kin of both buyer and seller take part. In comparison with
the solemnity of these transfers, our real estate transfers are
commonplace. In comparison with their complexity, our transfers are
simplicity itself.
PERSONAL PROPERTY
38. Definition.--Such articles as knives, spears, dishes, baskets,
pots, houses, camote fields, fruit-bearing trees, blankets, animals
and articles of minor value, are on the same legal basis as personal
property among ourselves. Three items in this list demand special
attention: houses, valuable trees, and sweet potato fields.
39. Houses.--Dwellings are movable property in Ifugao. A man, with the
aid of his kinsmen can, and frequently does, take a house to pieces,
move it to a different site and set it up again before sunset. The plot
on which a house stands has no value. The value of a house is usually
about ten pesos, the range of prices being from six to sixty pesos.
40. Valuable trees.--Cocoanut trees, coffee trees, and areca palms
are sold without any sale or transfer of the land on which they
stand. The value of a cocoanut tree in full bearing is five pesos;
of a coffee tree, one to two pesos; of an areca palm one-half peso. As
a rule, the land on which these trees stand has no value. A practice
presenting parallel features that leads one to believe that the same
manner of selling trees must have prevailed among the Pangasinanes,
one of the Christian tribes, is that, in the sale of the cocoanut
groves in central Pangasinan, the trees are sold at so much apiece;
but in order to get possession of the trees, it is necessary to buy
the land at so much a hectare, since the land has a value.
Camote or sweet potato fields are discussed in section 45.
No ceremonials are involved in the transfer of personal property;
nor are witnesses necessary, as a general thing.
PERPETUAL TENURE
Tenure is either perpetual or transient.
41. Rice and forest lands.--Rice-land and forest-land tenures are
perpetual.
In case an owner abandons a rice field for any period of time, however
long, and another man takes up the field without interference or
contrary order of the true owner, clears it of underbrush, builds up
the broken dikes, levels once more the terraces, tills and plants it,
the latter has the right to use the field for the same number of years
that it was abandoned. At the end of this time, the field reverts to
the true owner. Should the owner desire possession of his field before
the expiration of the time, for which, in accordance with this rule,
the field should remain in the possession of him who redeemed it from
the wild mountain side, he must repurchase possession.
It is not incumbent on a man to secure permission of the owner of an
abandoned field before working it; it is incumbent on the owner to
prevent others from working his field against his will.
In the event a rice field is made on privately owned forest lands
from which the timber has long been cut, the owner of the land,
when he has proved title, demands payment for the land. But he may
not take advantage of the labor that the other has spent on the land
in making rice fields, to demand an exorbitant payment. To take such
a course would invite danger to himself.
Forest lands that have been divested of their wood may be planted in
camotes (sweet potatoes) by any person without asking the consent of
the owner. If the owner does not want his land so planted or intends to
use it himself, it is his business to inform any who may have started
to work the land. But if he is tardy in making this prohibition,
he must pay for the labor expended, or must allow the continuance of
the work, and the harvesting of one crop of camotes from the land. I
am not certain that this is the case in all parts of Ifugao.
42. "Homesteading."--That land which is not rice fields or forest land
and which is not owned by some individual by reason of its having
been one or the other formerly, becomes the property of whomsoever
makes it into rice fields. The tenure so acquired is perpetual.
43. Paghok, or landmarks.--Whenever a rice-field terrace is walled,
the terrace wall is an unfailing and unimpeachable landmark. But
in many districts, the terraces are not walled. In such cases, the
division lines between fields are marked by large chunks of wood or
by large stones, buried three or four feet deep along the division
line. A boulder is of course a most excellent landmark.
Weather and the elements are continually wearing back an unwalled
terrace. The amount each year is very small. But when in the course
of years the displacement is sufficient to justify it, the owner may
take that part of the field in the terrace below that belongs to him.
The moving of a landmark is said never to occur, since it would
take two or three men to lift the heavy stones, and would require a
long time. Moreover it could not be done without leaving plain and
indisputable evidence of the crime.
44. Right of way through property owned by others.--In order to get
rid of insect pests, clay is sometimes conveyed to a field to form
a layer over it about two inches thick. The clay is shovelled into
a stream of water above, and carried as silt to the field and there
allowed to settle. Sometimes leaf mold and other fertilizers are
conveyed to a field in this manner.
It makes no difference how many fields there may be above that on
which it is desired to deposit the sediment, the owner of the last
has a right to cut a ditch through the upper fields as a conduit for
the stream of water. He must, however, repair all the upper terraces
so as to leave them as they were before.
TRANSIENT TENURE
45. Tenure of sweet potato fields.--Sweet potato, or camote, fields
are clearings on the mountain sides about the village. They are nearly
always steep slopes, and quickly lose their fertility. For that reason,
they are abandoned after a period that varies in different districts
of Ifugao according as camotes are a more or less important factor
in the subsistence of the people. Thus in Banaue, where camotes form
a very large part of the subsistence of the people, the fields are
cultivated for five or even six years, if located near the village;
if more distant, they are abandoned after about two years. In Kiangan,
where camotes do not play such an important part in subsistence, the
fields are in any case abandoned after one or two years. The reason
for abandoning the fields is that the soil wears out soon, so that the
camotes grow small, and the yield does not repay the labor spent in
cultivation. But in case a large area about the village be cultivated,
rather than face the necessity of going far from the village to make
clearings, the old fields are tended to a point at which the yield
becomes almost nil. After abandoning a field, the owner still has a
claim on it, but only until such time as the field grows up in weeds,
in which case the labor spent by him in making the clearing may be
fairly presumed to have been undone. After abandonment, the field
regains its fertility slowly. The first person who begins clearing
the field again becomes its possessor for a new term of years. It
is exceedingly rare that quarrels arise over camote fields. Camote
fields are sometimes sold, but it is not the land that is sold,
but the crop with temporary possession of the land.
TRANSFERS OF PROPERTY FOR A CONSIDERATION
There are two kinds of transfer of family property for "consideration":
the balal (pawn), and outright sale.
46. The balal.--In case a man finds himself under the necessity of
raising a considerable sum of money--usually in order to provide funds
for a funeral feast or a sacrifice--he frequently borrows the sum,
giving a rice field into the hands of his creditor as a security and
as a means of paying the interest on debt. The creditor holds, plants,
and harvests the field until the debt be repaid. The field is to all
purposes his, except that he cannot sell it. He can, however, transfer
it as a balal into the hands of another. But he must transfer it for
the same or a less amount of money; that is, if he has loaned fifty
pesos on the field, he must not borrow more than that sum, unless,
of course, he be able to secure the owner's consent. This is a very
wise provision of Ifugao law that insures the prompt return of the
field to the owner as soon as he be able to get together the amount
needed to redeem the field. An example will make this clear. A borrows
fifty pesos of B, giving his field as a balal into B's charge; B gives
it as a balal to C for the same or a less amount, who gives it as a
balal to D and so on. When A is able to repay the debt, he goes to B
and delivers him the sum plus the fee of the agent through whom the
deal was effected. With this amount, including the fee, B goes to C,
C goes to D, and so on. Were B to have borrowed without A's consent
more than fifty pesos, say seventy pesos, and were he not financially
able to obtain the difference (twenty pesos) between his debt to C
and the debt that A had just paid him, there would be an excellent
beginning for a quarrel that might end in lance throwing.