Mandaya/Manobo sword (not Visayan)

[Ian]

... with Tom and Zel. I have a real fondness and respect for the Mindanao tribes that are neither Christian nor Muslim, and have survived with their own cultures. These people must have been resilient fighters to avoid being totally overwhelmed by their more "powerful" neighbors.

The weapons of the Lumad tribes are not highly favored or discussed among collectors internationally, and are largely ignored by Filipino collectors. Indeed, weapons of the "Igorot groups" are much better known, probably because they reside on Luzon and came into more contact with Americans in the first half of the 20th C and the Spanish before then.

To my thinking the Lumad tribes crafted better edged weapons and with greater skill than their northern counterparts. The Igorots were probably better in the areas of projectiles: bow/arrow and sumpit (blow pipe).