Bisaya - Economy

The Bisaya staple food is rice, which is grown by both wet and dry horticulture in swiddens. Because of declining fertility, disputes, and omens, wet-rice swiddens rarely are used for more than two years. The Bisaya use a dibble stick rather than the plow. Rice swiddens also produce the following crops (raised between rice plants) for sale: chilies, corn, cucumbers, gourds, pumpkins, yams, and others. Fruits raised are bananas, breadfruit, coconut, and jackfruit. Hunting is much more important than fishing; game includes wild pigs, wild buffalo, deer, and pheasants, which are killed with guns, spears, and blowguns. Bisaya women (and some men) gather ferns, amaranths, and fruits for food, as well as medicinal plants, honey, camphor, and gutta percha. The Bisaya also raise buffalo, pigs, and chickens. Though they are accomplished carpenters, the Bisaya never learned to smelt or forge metal or to weave cloth. (Before they traded for cloth, clothing was made of bark.) They trade primarily with the Chinese (and formerly with Malays), receiving cloth, metal goods, and pottery items. All property belongs to one of the following classes: ancestral property, personal property, marital property, and house-group property. Real property rights are inherited ambilineally. Once land is abandoned, however, it becomes available for use by anyone living in the village.