The Igorrotes.
A fine race are the Igorrotes, spread over the northern half of Luzon. They are copper-colored, and also wear their hair long. A few are bearded. Their shoulders are broad, and their limbs brawny and powerful. Because of their high cheek-bones, flat noses, and thick lips, they would not, however, by a European or an American, be considered good-looking.
They cultivate sugar-cane, rice, and sweet-potatoes, but have never been able to give up their savage customs for civilization. Their houses are not unlike the huts of the Esquimaux. Polygamy sometimes exists, but adultery is almost unknown. Murder is said to be frequent, and family feuds often take off great numbers.
Their depredations in the interior are often of great annoyance to the domesticated natives; for they carry off their cattle and their crops. Many expeditions have, from time to time, been made by the Spaniards against them; but all have signally failed. The Igorrotes obstinately refuse to be civilized. Spanish dominion holds for these liberty-loving people few advantages; Catholicism offers them little peace; while they maintain that the traditional heaven of the European would not at all suit them.
A Body-guard of Igorrotes.
Upon one occasion a Catholic priest was horrified when an Igorrote asked him why it was that no black man ever became a white man’s Saint? When told that it was possible, he refused to believe it, saying that he, for his part, was content with the religion of his ancestors, and did not intend to bend his knees in adoration of the gods of the pale-faces.