Each ato brought a score of loads of palay, and for two days women threshed it out in a long wooden trough for all to eat in a great feast. This ceremonial threshing is shown in [Pl. CXXXII]. Twenty-four persons, usually all women, lined up along each side of the trough, and, accompanying their own songs by rhythmic beating of their pestles on the planks strung along the sides of the trough, each row of happy toilers alternately swung in and out, toward and from the trough, its long heavy pestles rising and falling with the regular “click, click, thush; click, click, thush!” as they fell rebounding on the plank, and were then raised and thrust into the palay-filled trough.
After heads have been taken by an ato any person of that ato—man, woman, or child—may be tattooed; and in Bontoc pueblo they maintain that tattooing may not occur at any other time, and that no person, unless a member of the successful ato, may be tattooed.
After the captured head has been in the earth under the fawi court of Bontoc about three years it is dug up, washed in the river, and placed in the large basket, the so-lo′-nang, in the fawi, where doubtless it is one of several which have a similar history. At such time there is a three-day’s ceremony, called “mĭn-pa-fa′-kal ĭs nan mo′-kĭng.” It is a rest period for the entire pueblo, with feasting and dancing, and three or four hogs are killed. The women may then enter the fawi; it is said to be the only occasion they are granted the privilege.
In the fawi of ato Sigichan there are at present three skulls of men from Sagada, one of a man from Balugan, and one of a man and two of women from Baliwang. Probably not more than a dozen skulls are kept in a fawi at one time. The final resting place of the skull is again under the stones of the fawi. Samoki does not keep the skull at all; it remains where buried under the ato court. As was stated before, a skull is generally buried under the stones of the fawi court whenever the omens are such that a proposed head-hunting expedition is given up. They are doubtless, also, buried at other times when the basket in the fawi becomes too full. Sigichan has buried twenty-eight skulls in the memory of her oldest member—making a total of thirty-five heads taken, say, in fifty years. Three of these were men’s heads from Ankiling, nine were men’s heads from Tukukan, three were men’s heads from Barlig, three were men’s heads and four women’s heads from Sabangan, and six were men’s heads from Sadanga. During this same period Sigichan claims to have lost one man’s head each to Sabangan and Sadanga.
No small children’s skulls can be found in Bontoc, though some other head-hunters take the heads even of infants. In fact, the men of Bontoc say that babes and children up to about 5 years of age are not killed by the head-hunter. If one should take a child’s head he would shortly be called to fate by some watchful pinteng in language as follows: “Why did you take that babe’s head? It does not understand war. Pretty soon some pueblo will take your head.” And the pinteng is supposed to put it into the mind of some pueblo to get the head of that particularly cruel man.
The friends of a beheaded person take his body home from the scene of death. It remains one day sitting in the dwelling. Sometimes a head is bought back from the victors at the end of a day, the usual price paid being a carabao. After the body has remained one day in the dwelling it is said to be buried without ceremony near the trail leading to the pueblo which took the head. The following day the entire ato has a ceremonial fishing in the river, called “mang-o′-gao” or “tĭd-wĭl.” A fish feast follows for the evening meal. The next day the mang-ay′-yu ceremony occurs. At that time the men of the ato, go near the place where their companion lost his head and ask the beheaded man’s spirit, the pinteng, to return to their pueblo.
[Pl. CXXXVI] shows the burial of a beheaded corpse in Banawi in April, 1903.[2] After the head-taking the body was set up two days under the dwelling of the dead man, and was then carried to the mountain side in the direction of Kambulo, the pueblo which killed the man. It was tied on a war shield and the whole tied to a pole which was borne by two men, as is shown in [Pl. CXXXV]. The funeral procession was made up as follows: First, four warriors proceeded, one after the other, along a narrow path on the dike walls, each beating a slow rhythm with a stick on the long, black, Banawi war shield, each shield, however, being striped differently with white-earth paint. The corpse was borne next, after which followed about a dozen more warriors, most of whom carried the white-marked shield—an emblem of mourning.
About half a mile from the dwelling the party left the sementeras and climbed up a short, steep ascent to a spot resembling the entrance to the earth burrow of some giant animal, and there the strange corpse was placed on the ground. A small group of people, including one old woman, was awaiting the funeral party. At the back end of the burrow two men tore away the earth and disclosed a small wall of loose stones. These they removed and revealed a vertical entrance in the earth about 2 feet high and 2½ feet wide. Through this small opening one of the men crawled, and crouching in the narrow sepulcher scraped up and threw out a few handfuls of earth. We were told that the corpse before us was the fifth to be placed in that old tomb, all being victims of the pueblo of Kambulo, and four of whom were descendants of the first man buried at that place—certainly “blood vengeance” with a vengeance.
We were without means of understanding the two or three simple oral ceremonies said over the body, but the woman played a part which it is understood she does not in the Bontoc area. She carried a slender, polished stick, greatly resembling a baton or “swagger stick,” and with this stood over the gruesome body, thrusting the stick again and again toward and close to the severed neck, meanwhile repeating a short, low-voiced something. After the body was cut from its shield a blanket was wrapped about it—otherwise it was nude, save for a flayed-bark breechcloth—and it was set up in the cramped sepulcher facing Kambulo, and sitting supported away from the earth walls by four short wooden sticks placed upright about it. An old bamboo-headed spear was broken in the shaft and the two sections placed with the corpse.
The stones were again piled across the entrance, and when all was closed except the place for one small stone a man gave a few farewell thrusts through the opening with a stick, uttering at the same time a short low sentence or two. The final stone was placed and the earth heaped against the wall.