Ilongotes (15).
The Ilongotes inhabit the rocky fastnesses of the range of mountains on the east coast, called the Caraballo de Baler, the whole length of the Distrito del Principe, the north-east corner of Nueva Vizcaya and a strip of the southern part of Isabela.
Their neighbours on the east are the Negritos, who live along the sea-shore. These people are also their neighbours on the north, where they inhabit the mountains.
On the west they have the Ifugaos in the northerly part of their boundary, and civilised Indians of mixed races in the southern part. Their nearest neighbours to the south are some scattered Tagals.
Blumentritt describes them from a photograph lent him by Dr. A. B. Meyer, as having eyes long and deeply sunk, upper lip and chin hairy, the hair long plaited in a tail, and often reaching the hips. A Spanish authority describes them as similar to the other hillmen, but wearing long hair, and dirty and disagreeable in their aspect
Their dress is as primitive as that of the other savage races, the adult men wearing a band of beaten bark round the waist, the women wearing a tapis, and the children going quite naked. They wear rings or spirals of brass wire on their arms, necklaces, and other ornaments. But when the men have occasion to go into the Christian villages, they wear shirts and trousers. I have myself seen instances of this custom amongst the Tagbanúas in Palawan.
They are clever smiths and know how to temper their weapons. Their lances have different shaped heads, and the shafts are made of Palma Brava. Their swords are well-made and ornamented, and are carried in a wooden scabbard from a belt of webbing. This appears to be their favourite weapon. They never go unarmed, even for a few paces, and they sleep with their weapons beside them. Their shields are of light wood, carved, and painted red.
Their domestic life is not unlike that of the Christian natives, for they are not polygamists; they, however, are more careless and dirty. They purchase their wife from her parents. They subsist by hunting and fishing, and by cultivating rice, maize, sweet potatoes, and other vegetables. They grow tobacco, which they exchange for other goods with the Christian natives. They catch the wild carabaos in traps. They are ineradicably addicted to head-hunting, and wage a continual war with all their neighbours, but if an interval of peace occurs, they fight one family or clan against another, for they must have heads. The marriage ceremony cannot be completed till the bridegroom has presented the bride with some of these grisly trophies; heads of Christians for choice.
They signify war by placing arrows in the path and sprinkling blood upon it. Treaties of peace, or rather truces, are sometimes ratified by human sacrifices, and the ceremony of blood-brothership is practised.
They have few religious practices, although they believe in a Supreme Being, and in the ancestor-worship common to the country. The relatives assemble to celebrate a birth by a feast. On the fifth day a name is given to the infant. They take care of the sick and endeavour to cure them with herbs, to which they ascribe medicinal virtues. If the patient dies, the relatives devour everything in the house in order to mitigate their grief, and they bury the corpse within twenty-four hours of death, placing some provisions upon the grave. From a statement in a Spanish official publication, the Ilongote dialect is spoken in two towns and twenty-two rancherias of Nueva Vizcaya, and in four rancherias in the district of Principe. This shows that at least on their western border they are now somewhat held in check. But the poor Negritos still have to suffer their incursions.