Note 6 — Procedure

Kodamon of Pindungan and Katiling of Ambabag6 had a dispute over the boundary of a field. There were paghok to mark the boundary, but Kodamon contended that all memory of the planting of the paghok was absent, and that they were, consequently, without significance in the matter of dispute. They wrestled, and Kodamon lost a little ground, but Katiling tried to take more than was due him according to the verdict of the wrestling matches. Katiling sent men to spade the disputed territory, and led an armed force out to support them. Kodamon led an armed force to the field. At the same time and at a safe distance, the mutual kin of the two parties and a goodly number of neighbors gathered. Kodamon was armed with a Remington rifle whose trigger was broken; Dulinayan, a kinsman of Katiling, with a revolver for which he had no ammunition. The other members of each force however were substantially, if less spectacularly, armed with spears which they well knew how to use. Women rushed in between the two parties, and catching the warriors by the waist tried to lead them away. One can well believe that the air was riven by curses, threats, accusations, upbraidings, imprecations, invocations. The male neutral kin shouted from their safe distance that if Kodamon killed Katiling, they would kill Kodamon (as a vengeance for the death of their kinsman) while if Katiling killed Kodamon, they would avenge their kinsman’s death by killing Katiling. “What kind of a way is this for co-villagers to settle a dispute,” they shouted. “Go back home and beget some children, and marry them to each other, giving them the two fields, and then it will make no difference where the division line is!” There was an exchange of spears in which Buaya, a kinsman of Kodamon’s, was wounded slightly. The matter was then left in abeyance with the understanding that as soon as possible, the two families be united by a marriage, and the two fields given the married couple.