soon as this offering is made, the men begin to build the rice granaries; meanwhile the women silently guard the mat and gifts, for until the new storehouses are completed there must be no dancing or merry-making.  When all is ready for the harvest, the wife of the owner goes alone to the field, and having cut a few heads of grain, she carries them back to the house.  One portion is placed in the sabak another on a little platform, gramso, near to the house, as an offering to MElu and Dwata; and the balance is cooked and eaten by the family.  The following morning all the women go to the fields to gather the harvest.  When the last bundle has been carried to the house a celebration begins, agongs and EdEl[2] furnish the music for the dancers, and for a day and a night all feast and make merry; then the workers return to their homes carrying small gifts of cooked food or new rice.

[1] This pole which is here known as sabak is the same as the tambara of the Bagobo.  See p. 66 and Fig. 12.

[2] See p. 110 note. [Transcriber’s note:  30 pages earlier.]

Aside from clearing the land and helping somewhat with the rice crops, the men seldom concern themselves with work in the fields but leave the cultivation of corn, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and the like to the women.

A large part of the food of the tribe is furnished by the fruits and herbs of the jungle and here again the women are the chief providers.  Although in the sago industry both sexes have well defined duties.

Along the edge of the cogon lands are many large buri palms,[2] from which a starch commercially known as sago is secured.  The men cut down a tree close to its roots and remove the hard outer bark, thus exposing the soft fibrous interior (Plate LIII); then a section of bamboo is bent so as to resemble an adze[sic], and with this the men loosen or break up the soft interior portion of the trunk.  This is removed to a near-by stream, and is placed in a bark vat into which water is led by means of bamboo tubes.  Here a woman works it with her hands until the starch grains are separated from the fibrous matter.  As the water drains slowly out the fine starch is carried with it into a coarse cloth sieve, which retains all the larger matter but allows the starch to be carried into another bark vat below.  Fresh water passes slowly through this lower vat, removing the bitter sap from the flour, which is deposited on the bottom of the vat.  From time to time this is scraped up and placed in baskets where it is kept until needed.  The flour, while rather tasteless, is nutritious and in years of drought is the chief source of food supply.

[2] Corypha umbraculifera.

Preparation of the meals, care of the children, basket and mat making, weaving and decoration of clothing, take up most of the time of the women when they are not engaged in the cultivation of the fields or in search of forest products.