The Bontoc Igorot

by Albert Ernest Jenks

Now you are dead; we are all here to see you. We have given you all things necessary, and have made good preparation for the burial. Do not come to call away [to kill] any of your relatives or friends.

Nowhere was there visible any sign of fear or awe or wonder. The women sitting about spun threads on their thighs for making skirts; they talked and laughed and sang at will. Mothers nursed their babes in the dwelling and under its projecting roof. Budding girls patted and loved and dimpled the cheeks of the squirming babes of more fortunate young women, and there was scarcely a child that passed in or out of the house, that did not have to steady itself by laying a hand on the lap of the corpse. All seemed to understand death. One, they say, does not die until the anito calls—and then one always goes into a goodly life which the old men often see and tell about.

In a well-organized and developed modern enterprise the death of a principal man causes little or no break. This is equally true in Igorot life. The former is so because of perfected organization—there are new men trained for all machines; and the latter is true because of absence of organization—there is almost no machinery to be left unattended by the falling of one person.

On the third day the numbers increased. There were twenty-five or thirty men in the vicinity of the house, on the south side of which were half a dozen pots of basi,[11] from which men and boys drank at pleasure, though not half a dozen became intoxicated. Late in the afternoon a double row of men, the sons and sons-in-law of the deceased, lined up on their haunches facing one another, and for half an hour talked and laughed, counted on their fingers and gesticulated, diagrammed on their palms, questioned, pointed with their lips and nodded, as they divided the goodly property of the dead man. There was no anger, no sharp word, or apparent dissent; all seemed to know exactly what was each one’s right. In about half an hour the property was disposed of beyond probable future dispute.

There were more women present the third day than on the second, and at all times about one-third more women than men; and there were usually as many children about as there were grown persons. In all the group of, say, 140 people, nowhere could one detect a sign of the uncanny, or even the unusual. The apparent everydayness of it all to them was what struck the observer most. The young women brushing away the flies touched and turned the fast-blackening hands of the corpse to note the rapid changes. Almost always there were small children standing in the doorway looking into that blackened, swollen face, and they turned away only to play or to loll about their mothers’ necks. Always there were women bending over other women’s heads, carefully parting the hair and scanning it. Women lay asleep stretched in the shade; they talked, and droned, and laughed, and spun.

During the second day men had succeeded in catching in the mountains one of the half-wild carabaos—property of the deceased—and this was killed. Its head was placed in the house tied up by the horns above and facing Som-kad′, so the faces of the dead seemed looking at each other, while on the third day the flesh, bones, intestines, and hide were cooked for the crowd. During the third and fourth days one carabao, one dog, eight hogs, and twenty chickens were killed, cooked, and eaten.

On the fourth day the crowd increased. Custom lays idle all field tools of an ato on the burial day of an adult of that ato; but the day Som-kad′ was buried the field work of the entire pueblo stood still because of common respect for this man, so old and wise, so rich and influential, and probably 200 people were about the house all the day. By noon two well-defined groups of chanting old women had formed—one sitting in the house and the other in front of it. Wordless, melancholy chants were sung in response between the groups. The spaces surrounding the house became almost packed—so much so that a dog succeeded in getting into the doorway, and the threatenings and maledictions that drove it away were the loudest, most disturbed expressions noted during the four days.

Before the house, which faced the west, lay the large pine coffin lid, while to the south of it, turned bottom up, was the coffin with fresh chips beside it hewn out that morning in further excavation. Children played around the coffin and people lounged on its upturned bottom. Near the front of the house a pot of water was always hot over a smoldering, smoking fire. Now and then a chicken was brought, light wood was tossed under the pot, the chicken was beaten to death—first the wings, then the neck, and then the head. The fowl was quickly sprawled over the blaze, its feathers burned to a crisp, and rubbed off with sticks. Its legs were severed from the body with the battle-ax and put in the pot. From its front it was then cut through its ribs with one gash. The back and breast parts were torn apart, the gall examined and nodded over; the intestines were placed beneath a large rock, and the gizzard, breast of the chicken, and back with head attached dropped in the pot. During the killing and dressing neither of the two men who prepared the feast hurried, yet scarcely five minutes passed from the time the first blow was struck on the wing of the squawking fowl until the work was over and the meat in the boiling pot. The cooking of a fowl always brought a crowd of boys who hung over the fragrant vessel, and they usually got their share when, in about twenty minutes, the meat came forth. Three times in the afternoon a fowl was thus distributed. Cooked pork was passed among the people, and rice was always being brought. Twice a man went through the crowd with a large winnowing tray of cooked carabao hide cut in little blocks. This food was handed out on every side, people tending children receiving double share. The people gathered and ate in the congested spaces about the dwelling. The heat was intense—there was scarcely a breath of air stirring. The odor from the body was heavy and most sickening to an American, and yet there was no trace of the unusual on the various faces.

New arrivals came to take their last look at Som-kad′, now a black, bloated, inhuman-looking thing, and they turned away apparently unaffected by the sight.

The sun slid down behind the mountain ridge lying close to the pueblo, and a dozen men armed with digging sticks and dirt baskets filed along the trail some fifteen rods to the last fringe of houses. There they dug a grave in a small, unused sementera plat where only the old, rich men of the pueblo are buried. A group of twenty-five old women gathered standing at the front of the house swaying to the right, to the left, as they slowly droned in melancholy cadence: