A Survey of the Material and Sociological Culture of the Manobo of Eastern Mindanao

Abstract

THE following synoptical review was written as Chapters II & III of an extensive ethnological monograph on the Manobo of eastern Mindanao, Philippine Islands. The whole manuscript was written for the Bureau of Science, Manila, while the writer was still a member of the now extinct Division of Ethnology during the years 1907-1914. In the preparation of his material the writer had the advantage of having lived, and established schools, among the Manobo for four years, during which time he came to acquire an intensive knowledge of their language and customs. Following that period he lived among them, for purposes of further study, all over the country in the guise of a trader and tribesman, in full conformity with tribal ways, even to the blackening of his teeth and to the growing of hip-long hair. Such procedure, opportunity, and knowledge gave him a familiarity with tribal ways and modes of belief and such an insight into the inner life of these remote people as would have been otherwise unattainable except after a far longer sojourn. Before entering into the introductory details oYf habitat, etc., it may be well to remark here that in his travels among thirty Philippine tribes, some of them never before visited by white men nor even by Filipinos, and one of them by not even the contiguous tribes, he never experienced the slightest danger either to life, limb, or baggage. His experience leads him to believe that the