Chapter 4 of 14 · 3955 words · ~20 min read

Part 4

(2) When there are children of the union: The woman has the right to the children, and nearly always exercises it. In some cases, when the mother has no rice fields and the father does have rice fields, and when the children are large enough not to need a mother's care, by special agreement the father takes one or more of the children.

Whoever takes the children takes possession of the property that belongs to them. Usually the woman takes all the children and manages the husband's family property that has been allotted them.

All the property of both the spouses must be assigned to their children at the time of the divorce (except the personal property). The one who takes a child takes also the property of that child and tills it. He may not dispose of it except for the purpose of meeting legitimate obligations against it. Should the child die, its brothers and sisters inherit the property.

DEPENDENTS IN RELATION TO FAMILY LAW

24. Adopted children.--An adopted child is termed inagamid, that is, "taken to one's self"; or it may be termed na-imbalbalayen, "made one's child." The word inagamid is also used to denote a slave taken into a household.

Adoptions are rather rare; for the reason, I suspect, that it is only the propertied class who make them, and that persons of this class, being well nurtured, usually have children of their own. Usually the child adopted is the son or daughter of a brother or sister, and so is really, according to the Ifugao mode of reckoning kinship, the son or daughter of the adopter. Which family the child shall be adopted from [12] is a question that is hard for a man and his wife to agree upon, the wife naturally wishing to adopt from her family and the husband from his. Sometimes two children are adopted, one from each family. More often the adopted child is married to one of the family of the unrelated parent. The two parents by adoption then give or will give their children by adoption a large part or nearly all of their properties. They may not give the adopted children all. They must give something to those who would have been their heirs had they not made the adoption.

25. Servants.--The general term for servants is baal. As a rule no pay is given a servant other than his board and clothing. It is the obligation of the master, however, to furnish animals for sacrifice when the servant falls sick. It is, further, considered good form for the master to furnish animals for sacrifice in case of sickness of the servant's father or mother; but I do not believe it to be an obligation. A servant that has been a long time with his master is called nikkop. It is an obligation resting on the master to furnish the animals and other necessities for a marriage feast for such a servant. As a rule there is no definite time set for the termination of a contract between master and servant, and such contracts are terminable at any time at the will of either party.

Sometimes an unmarried adult goes to the house of a rich man and asks to be taken as a member of the family on such a basis; but as a rule servants are children when first taken. Oftentimes a high degree of affection is felt for a faithful member of the family of this class, and if a child he is treated as a son or daughter. Sometimes a rice field is assigned to him, and he inherits as though he were the youngest son or daughter.

26. Slaves.--Before the American occupation, except in those few parts 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.

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.