The Bontoc Igorot

by Albert Ernest Jenks

They say there were three small guardhouses on the outskirts of Bontoc pueblo, and armed Igorot from an outside town were not allowed to enter. They were disarmed, and came and went under guard.

The Spanish comandantes in charge of the province seem to have remained only about two years each. Saldero was the last one. Early in the eighties of the nineteenth century the comandante took his command to Barlig, a day east of Bontoc, to punish that town because it had killed people in Tulubin and Samoki; Barlig all but exterminated the command—only three men escaped to tell the tale. Mandicota, a Spanish officer, went from Manila with a battalion of 1,000 soldiers to erase Barlig from the map; he was also accompanied from Bontoc by 800 warriors from that vicinity. The Barlig people fled to the mountains, losing only seven men, whose heads the Bontoc Igorot cut off and brought home.

Comandante Villameres is reported to have taken twenty soldiers and about 520 warriors of Bontoc and Samoki to punish Tukukan for killing a Samoki woman; the warriors returned with three heads.

They say that in 1891 Comandante Alfaro took 40 soldiers and 1,000 warriors from the vicinity of Bontoc to Ankiling; sixty heads adorned the triumphant return of the warriors.

In 1893 Nevas is said to have taken 100 soldiers and 500 warriors to Sadanga; they brought back one head.

A few years later Saldero went to “clear up” rebellious Sagada with soldiers and Igorot warriors; Bontoc reports that the warriors returned with 100 heads.

The insurrectos appeared before Cervantes two or three months after Saldero’s bloody work in Sagada. The Spanish garrison fled before the insurrectos; the Spanish civilians went with them, taking their flocks and herds to Bontoc. A thousand pesos was the price offered by the Igorot of Sagada to the insurrectos for Saldero’s head when the Philippine soldiers passed through the pueblo; but Saldero made good his escape from Bontoc, and left the country by boat from Vigan.

The Bontoc Igorot assisted the insurrectos in many ways when they first came. About 2 miles west of Bontoc is a Spanish rifle pit, and there the Spanish soldiers, now swelled to about 600 men, lay in wait for the insurrectos. There on two hilltops an historic sham battle occurred. The two forces were nearly a mile apart, and at that distance they exchanged rifle bullets three days. The Spaniards finally surrendered, on condition of safe escort to the coast. For fifty years they had conquered their enemy who were armed only with spear and ax; but the insurrectos were armed with guns. However, the really hard pressing came from the rear—there were still the ax and spear—and few soldiers from cuartel or trench who tried to bring food or water for the fighting men ever reported why they were delayed.

The feeling of friendship between the Igorot and insurrectos was so strong that when the insurrectos asked the Igorot to go to Manila to fight the new enemy (the Americans), 400 warriors, armed only with spear, battle-ax, and shield, went a three weeks’ journey to get American heads. At Caloocan, just outside Manila, they met the American Army early in February, 1899. They threw their spears, the Americans fired their guns—“which must be brothers to the thunder,” the Igorot said—and they let fall their remaining weapons, and, panic stricken, started home. All but thirteen arrived in safety. They are not ashamed of their defeat and retreat; they made a mistake when they went to fight the Americans, and they were quick to see it. They are largely blessed with the saving sense of humor, and some of the warriors who were at Caloocan have been known to say that they never stopped running until they arrived home.

When these men told their people in Bontoc what part they and the insurrectos played in the fight against the Americans, the tension between the Igorot and insurrectos was at its greatest. The insurrectos were evidently worse than the Spaniards. They did all the things the Spaniards had done, and more—they robbed through falsehood. Consequently, insurrectos frequently lost their heads.