IFUGAO HEAD DANCE.
Then the Bontoc Igorots followed and gave exhibitions with noisy demonstrations, and two presidentes, or chiefs, who six months before were trying to kill each other, danced and pranced together, while the tom-toms beat and others hopped and circled round. Most of the men were tattooed, each tribe in its own peculiar manner, certain marks indicating that their bearer had killed his man and taken a head—some bore marks of many heads; one man dancing was known to have taken seventeen. Many of the women, too, were tattooed with a feather-like pattern.
And so the dances went on. In some the participants postured fighting and then represented wounded men; in others all were head men together; some were rapid in motion, some slow, but all had real grace, that grace of the wild man; and all were finely formed and well-nourished and healthy looking. When the dancing was over, the groups of savages in their fantastic dress squatting around the plaza behind their spears stuck in the ground, with bolo and head-ax and tom-tom, and the women standing about, made a wonderful scene.
After the dances and speeches the head men came up to the Secretary and handed him weapons as gifts, sometimes their own, with which they had often fought. Mr. Dickinson, of course, received the chiefs and the head men and women afterward, and presented them with shells and blankets and plumes in return. The bartering among them was rather amusing, as they tried to exchange what they had received and didn't want.
WEAPONS OF THE WILD TRIBES.
At the club in the evening of the second day, they gave us a remarkable dinner; all the Americans in the district were present; and the few Filipinos entertained us at a baile, and so our day was finished.
We started out at daylight next morning and hiked back by the same trail; but the views seemed finer in their repetition than even when we first passed through them. We had had most superb weather, although it was the rainy season, and had enjoyed the grand panoramas to the full; but the last afternoon it came on to pour down in torrents, which we enjoyed too as an experience, for we came safely to Tagudin, where the people and the band joined in sending us off, as they had received us, and we were safely taken out through quite a heavy surf and put on board the Coast Guard boat Negros, and had a glass with ice in it again.