If the challenge is accepted, as it usually is, an ax or spear is given the messenger, and he hastens home to exclaim to his people, “Ĭn-tang-i′-cha mĕn-fu-sul′-ta-ko”—that is, “They care to contest in war.”
A peace thus canceled is followed by a battle between practically all the men of both sides. It is customary for the challenging people, within a few days, to appear before the pueblo of their late friends, and the men at once come out in answer to the challenging cries of the visitors—“Come out if you dare to fight us?” Or it may he that those challenged appear near the other pueblo before it has time to back its challenge.
If the challenged pueblo does not wish to fight, the spokesman tells the messenger that they do not wish war; they desire continued friendship; and the messenger returns to his people, not with a weapon of war, but with a chicken or a pig; and he repeats to his people the message he received from the old man.
After a peace has been canceled the two pueblos keep up a predatory warfare, with a head lost here and there, and with now and then a more serious battle, until one or the other again sues for peace, and has its prayer granted. In this predatory warfare the entire body of enemies, one or more ato, at times lays in hiding to take a few heads from lone people at their daily toil. Or when the country about a trail is covered with close tropical growth an enemy may hide close above the path and practically pick his man as he passes beneath him. He hurls or thrusts his spear, and almost always escapes with his own life, frequently bursting through a line of people on the trail, and instantly disappearing in the cover below. Should the injured pueblo immediately retaliate, it finds its enemies alert and on guard.
At two places near the mountain trail between Samoki and Tulubin is a trellis-like structure called “ko′-mĭs.” It consists of several posts set vertically in the ground, to which horizontal poles are tied, The posts are the stem and root sections of the beautiful tree ferm. They are set root end up, and the fine, matted rootlets present a compact surface which the Igorot has carved in the traditional shape of the “anito.” Some of these heads have inlaid eyes and teeth of stone. Hung on the ko′-mĭs are baskets and frames in which chickens and pigs have been carried to the place for ceremonial feasting.
These two ko′-mĭs were built four years ago when Bontoc and Samoki had their last important head-hunting forays with Tulubin. When Bontoc or Samoki (and usually they fight together) sought Tulubin heads they spent a night at one of the ko′-mĭs, remaining at the first one, if the signs were propitious—but, if not, they passed on to the second, hoping for better success. They killed and ate their fowls and pigs in a ceremony called “fi-kat′,” and, if all was well, approached the mountains near Tulubin and watched to waylay a few of her people when they came to the sementeras in the early morning. If a crow flew cawing over the trail, or a snake or rat crossed before the warriors, or a rock rolled down the mountain side, or a clod of earth caved away under their feet, or if the little omen bird, “i′-chu,” called, the expedition was abandoned, as these were bad omens.
The ceremony of the ko′-mĭs is held before all head-hunting expeditions, except in the unpremeditated outburst of a people to immediately punish the successful foray or ambush of some other. The ko′-mĭs is built along all Bontoc war trails, though no others are known having the “anito” heads. So persistent are the warriors if they have decided to go to a particular pueblo for heads that they often go day after day to the ko′-mĭs for eight or ten days before they are satisfied that no good omens will come to them. If the omens are persistently bad, it is customary for the warriors to return to their ato and hold the mo-gĭng ceremony, during which they bury under the stone pavement of the fawi court one of the skulls then preserved in the ato.
In this way they explode their extra emotions and partially work off their disappointment.
Occasionally a town has a bad strain of blood, and two or three men break away without common knowledge and take heads. The entire body of warriors in the pueblo where those murdered lived promptly rises and pours itself unheralded on the pueblo of the murderers. If these people are not warned the slaughter is terrible—men, women, and children alike being slain. None is spared, except mere babes, unless they belong to the offended pueblo, marriage having taken them away from home. Preceding a known attack on a pueblo it is customary for the women and children to flee to the mountains, taking with them the dogs, pigs, chickens, and valuable household effects. However, Bontoc pueblo, because of her strength, is not so evacuated—she expects no enemy strong enough to burst through and reach the defenseless.
In the Banawi area, where the dwellings are built on prominences frequently a hundred or more feet above the surrounding territory, they say the women often remain and assist in the defense by hurling rocks. They are safer there than they would be elsewhere.