There are a thousand or so Bontoc Igorots in Benguet to-day, contracting for railroad excavation work. Times have changed.
When Nueva Vizcaya was first organized, its non-Christian inhabitants greatly outnumbered its Filipino population, as there were at least one hundred fifteen thousand Ifugaos in addition to several thousand Ilongots and a few Benguet Igorots, locally known as Isinayes, who had strayed over the boundary line. With the transfer of the Ifugao territory to the Mountain Province, the Filipinos were left in the decided majority. Later all of the Ilongot territory which had previously belonged to the provinces of Isabela, Tayabas, Nueva Ecija and Pangasinán was added to Nueva Vizcaya, in order that the members of this wild and primitive tribe might be brought under one provincial administration.
The Ilongots are a strictly forest-inhabiting people. Many of them have a considerable admixture of Negrito blood and live a semi-nomadic life. Their settlements, which are small and more or less transient, are usually situated in remote and inaccessible places surrounded by the densest jungle. It is at present impracticable to open up horse trails through their country, for the number of inhabitants is so small, in comparison with the area occupied, that such trails could not be built with Ilongot labour, nor indeed could they be maintained even if built. One main trail is, however, being constructed, and it is planned to build foot trails from this to the more important of the settlements which it does not reach.
A special assistant to the Provincial Governor of Nueva Vizcaya for work among the Ilongots has been appointed and assigned to duty at Baler, on the Pacific coast of Luzón, from which place he can more conveniently reach the Ilongots east of the coast range. These people were very wild at the outset, and it proved difficult to establish friendly relations with them, but this has now been successfully accomplished, and their fear of the white man is largely a thing of the past.
There is a school for Ilongot children at Campoté. They prove to be bright, capable pupils.
At the same place there has been established a government exchange, where the Ilongots can sell such articles of their own manufacture as they wish to market, and can purchase what they need at moderate cost.
They still fight more or less with each other, but depredations by them upon Filipinos have ceased.
[1] Equivalent to one dollar.
[2] Nearly all our trails are on steep mountain sides.