Group of prominent men, Bontoc pueblo.

Photo by Jenks.

The Bontoc Igorot

Albert Ernest Jenks

Manila 1905

Letter of Transmittal

Department of the Interior, The Ethnological Survey,

Manila, February 3, 1904.

Sir: I have the honor to submit a study of the Bontoc Igorot made for this Survey during the year 1903. It is transmitted with the recommendation that it be published as Volume I of a series of scientific studies to be issued by The Ethnological Survey for the Philippine Islands.

Respectfully,

Albert Ernst Jenks,

Chief of The Ethnological Survey.

Hon. Dean C. Worcester, Secretary of the Interior, Manila, P. I.

Table of Contents

Illustrations

Preface

After an expedition of two months in September, October, and November, 1902, among the people of northern Luzon it was decided that the Igorot of Bontoc pueblo, in the Province of Lepanto-Bontoc, are as typical of the primitive mountain agriculturist of Luzon as any group visited, and that ethnologic investigations directed from Bontoc pueblo would enable the investigator to show the culture of the primitive mountaineer of Luzon as well as or better than investigations centered elsewhere.

Accompanied by Mrs. Jenks, the writer took up residence in Bontoc pueblo the 1st of January, 1903, and remained five months. The following data were gathered during that Bontoc residence, the previous expedition of two months, and a residence of about six weeks among the Benguet Igorot.

The accompanying illustrations are mainly from photographs. Some of them were taken in April, 1903, by Hon. Dean C. Worcester, Secretary of the Interior; others are the work of Mr. Charles Martin, Government photographer, and were taken in January, 1903; the others were made by the writer to supplement those taken by Mr. Martin, whose time was limited in the area. Credit for each photograph is given with the halftone as it appears.

I wish to express my gratitude for the many favors of the only other Americans living in Bontoc Province during my stay there, namely, Lieutenant-Governor Truman K. Hunt, M.D.; Constabulary Lieutenant (now Captain) Elmer A. Eckman; and Mr. William F. Smith, American teacher.

In the following pages native words have their syllabic divisions shown by hyphens and their accented syllables and vowels marked in the various sections wherein the words are considered technically for the first time, and also in the vocabulary in [the last chapter]. In all other places they are unmarked. A later study of the language may show that errors have been made in writing sentences, since it was not always possible to get a consistent answer to the question as to what part of a sentence constitutes a single word, and time was too limited for any extensive language study. The following alphabet has been used in writing native words.

It seems not improper to say a word here regarding some of my commonest impressions of the Bontoc Igorot.

Physically he is a clean-limbed, well-built, dark-brown man of medium stature, with no evidence of degeneracy. He belongs to that extensive stock of primitive people of which the Malay is the most commonly named. I do not believe he has received any of his characteristics, as a group, from either the Chinese or Japanese, though this theory has frequently been presented. The Bontoc man would be a savage if it were not that his geographic location compelled him to become an agriculturist; necessity drove him to this art of peace. In everyday life his actions are deliberate, but he is not lazy. He is remarkably industrious for a primitive man. In his agricultural labors he has strength, determination, and endurance. On the trail, as a cargador or burden bearer for Americans, he is patient and uncomplaining, and earns his wage in the sweat of his brow. His social life is lowly, and before marriage is most primitive; but a man has only one wife, to whom he is usually faithful. The social group is decidedly democratic; there are no slaves. The people are neither drunkards, gamblers, nor “sportsmen.” There is little “color” in the life of the Igorot; he is not very inventive and seems to have little imagination. His chief recreation—certainly his most-enjoyed and highly prized recreation—is head-hunting. But head-hunting is not the passion with him that it is with many Malay peoples.

His religion is at base the most primitive religion known—animism, or spirit belief—but he has somewhere grasped the idea of one god, and has made this belief in a crude way a part of his life.

He is a very likable man, and there is little about his primitiveness that is repulsive. He is of a kindly disposition, is not servile, and is generally trustworthy. He has a strong sense of humor. He is decidedly friendly to the American, whose superiority he recognizes and whose methods he desires to learn. The boys in school are quick and bright, and their teacher pronounces them superior to Indian and Mexican children he has taught in Mexico, Texas, and New Mexico.[1]

Briefly, I believe in the future development of the Bontoc Igorot for the following reasons: He has an exceptionally fine physique for his stature and has no vices to destroy his body. He has courage which no one who knows him seems ever to think of questioning; he is industrious, has a bright mind, and is willing to learn. His institutions—governmental, religious, and social—are not radically opposed to those of modern civilization—as, for instance, are many institutions of the Mohammedanized people of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago—but are such, it seems to me, as will quite readily yield to or associate themselves with modern institutions.

I recall with great pleasure the months spent in Bontoc pueblo, and I have a most sincere interest in and respect for the Bontoc Igorot as a man.

[1] The proof sheets of this paper came to me at the Philippine Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., July, 1904. At that time Miss Maria del Pilar Zamora, a Filipino teacher in charge of the model school at the Exposition, told me the Igorot children are the brightest and most intelligent of all the Filipino children in the model school. In that school are children from several tribes or groups, including Christians, Mohammedans, and pagans.

Introduction

The readers of this monograph are familiar with the geographic location of the Philippine Archipelago. However, to have the facts clearly in mind, it will be stated that the group lies entirely within the north torrid zone, extending from 4° 40′ northward to 21° 3′ and from 116° 40′ to 126° 34′ east longitude. It is thus about 1,000 miles from north to south and 550 miles from east to west. The Pacific Ocean washes its eastern shores, the Sea of Celebes its southern, and the China Sea its western and northern shores. It is about 630 kilometers, or 400 miles, from the China coast, and lies due east from French Indo-China. The Batanes group of islands, stretching north of Luzon, has members nearer Formosa than Luzon. On the southwest Borneo is sighted from Philippine territory.

Briefly, it may be said the Archipelago belongs to Asia—geologically, zoölogically, and botanically—rather than to Oceania, and that, apparently, the entire Archipelago has shared a common origin and existence. There is evidence that it was connected with the mainland by solid earth in the early or Middle Tertiary. For a long geologic time the land was low and swampy. At the end of the Eocene a great upheaval occurred; there were foldings and crumplings, igneous rock was thrust into the distorted mass, and the islands were considerably elevated above the sea. During the latter part of the Tertiary period the lands seem to have subsided and to have been separated from the mainland.

About the close of the subsidence eruptions began which are continued to the present by such volcanoes as Taal and Mayon in Luzon and Apo in Mindanao. No further subsidence appears to have occurred after the close of the Tertiary, though the gradual elevation beginning then had many lapses, as is evidenced by the numerous sea beaches often seen one above the other in horizontal tiers. The elevation continues to-day in an almost invisible way. The Islands have been greatly enlarged during the elevation by the constant building of coral around the submerged shores.

It is believed that man had appeared in the great Malay Archipelago before this elevation began. It is thought by some that he was in the Philippines in the later Tertiary, but there are no data as yet throwing light on this question.

To-day the Archipelago lies like a large net in the natural pathway of people fleeing themselves from the supposed birthplace of the primitive Malayan stock, namely, from Java, Sumatra, and the adjacent Malay Peninsula, or, more likely, the larger mainland. It spreads over a large area, and is well fitted by its numerous islands—some 3,100—and its innumerable bays and coastal pockets to catch up and hold a primitive, seafaring people.

There are and long have been daring Malayan pirates, and there is to-day among the southern islands a numerous class—the Samal—living most of the time on the sea, yet they all keep close to land, except in time of calm, and when a storm is brewing they strike out straight for the nearest shore like scared children. The ocean currents and the monsoons have been greatly instrumental in driving different people through the seas into the Philippine net.[1] The Tagakola on the west coast of the Gulf of Davao, Mindanao, have a tradition that they are descendants of men cast on their present shores from a distant land and of the Manobo women of the territory. The Bagobo, also in the Gulf of Davao, claim they came to their present home in a few boats generations ago. They purposely left their former land to flee from head-hunting, a practice in their earlier home, but one they do not follow in Mindanao. What per cent of the people coming originally to the Archipelago was castaway, nomadic, or immigrant it is impossible to judge, but there have doubtless also been many systematic and prolonged migrations from nearby lands, as from Borneo, Celebes, Sangir, etc.

Primitive man is represented in the Philippines to-day not alone by one of the lowest natural types of savage man the historic world has looked upon—the small, dark-brown, bearded, “crisp-woolly”-haired Negritos—but by some thirty distinct primitive Malayan tribes or dialect groups, among which are believed to be some of the lowest of the stock in existence.

In northern Luzon is the Igorot, a typical primitive Malayan. He is a muscular, smooth-faced, brown man of a type between the delicate and the coarse. In Mindoro the Mangiyan is found, an especially lowly Malayan, who may prove to be a true savage in culture. In Mindanao is the slender, delicate, smooth-faced brown man of which the Subano, in the western part, is typical. There are the Bagobo and the extensive Manobo of eastern Mindanao in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Davao, the latter people following the Agusan River practically to the north coast of Mindanao. In southeastern Mindanao, in the vicinity of Mount Apo and also north of the Gulf of Davao, are the Ata. They are a scattered people and evidently a Negrito and primitive Malayan mixture. In Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, Isabela, and perhaps Principe, of Luzon, are the Ibilao. They are a slender, delicate, bearded people, with an artistic nature quite different from any other now known in the island, but somewhat like that of the Ata of Mindanao. Their artistic wood productions suggest the incised work of distant dwellers of the Pacific, as that of the people of New Guinea, Fiji Islands, or Hervey Islands. The seven so-called Christian tribes,[2] occupying considerable areas in the coastwise lands and low plains of most of the larger islands of the Archipelago, represent migrations to the Archipelago subsequent to those of the Igorot and comparable tribes.

The last migrations of brown men into the Archipelago are historic. The Spaniard discovered the inward flow of the large Samal Moro group—after his arrival in the sixteenth century. The movement of this nomadic “Sea Gipsy” Samal has not ceased to-day, but continues to flow in and out among the small southern islands.

Besides the peoples here cited there are a score of others scattered about the Archipelago, representing many grades of primitive culture, but those mentioned are sufficient to suggest that the Islands have been very effective in gathering up and holding divers groups of primitive men.[3]

[1] There are many instances on record showing that people have been planted on Pacific shores many hundred miles from their native land. It seems that the primitive Pacific Islanders have sent people adrift from their shores, thus adding a rational cause to those many fortuitous causes for the interisland migration of small groups of individuals.

“In 1696, two canoes were driven from Ancarso to one of the Philippine Islands, a distance of eight hundred miles. They had run before the wind for seventy days together, sailing from east to west. Thirty-five had embarked, but five had died from the effects of privation and fatigue during the voyage, and one shortly after their arrival. In 1720, two canoes were drifted from a remote distance to one of the Marian Islands. Captain Cook found, in the island of Wateo Atiu, inhabitants of Tahiti, who had been drifted by contrary wind in a canoe, from some islands to the eastward, unknown to the natives. Several parties have, within the last few years, (prior to 1834), reached the Tahitian shores from islands to the eastward, of which the Society Islands had never before heard. In 1820, a canoe arrived at Maurua, about thirty miles west of Borabora, which had come from Rurutu, one of the Austral Islands. This vessel had been at sea between a fortnight and three weeks; and, considering its route, must have sailed seven or eight hundred miles. A more recent instance occurred in 1824: a boat belonging to Mr. Williams of Raiatea left that island with a westerly wind for Tahiti. The wind changed after the boat was out of sight of land. They were driven to the island of Atiu, a distance of nearly eight hundred miles in a south-westerly direction, where they were discovered several months afterwards. Another boat, belonging to Mr. Barff of Huahine, was passing between that island and Tahiti about the same time, and has never since been heard of; and subsequent instances of equally distant and perilous voyages in canoes or open boats might be cited.”—(Ellis) Polynesian Researches, vol. I, p. 125.

“In the year 1799, when Finow, a Friendly Island chief, acquired the supreme power in that most interesting group of islands, after a bloody and calamitous civil war, in which his enemies were completely overpowered, the barbarian forced a number of the vanquished to embark in their canoes and put to sea; and during the revolution that issued in the subversion of paganism in Otaheite, the rebel chiefs threatened to treat the English missionaries and their families in a similar way. In short, the atrocious practice is, agreeably to the Scotch law phrase, “use and wont,” in the South Sea Islands.”—John Dunmore Lang, View of the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation, London, 1834, pp. 62, 63.

[2] The Christianized dialect groups are: Bikol, of southern Luzon and adjacent islands; Cagayan, of the Cagayan Valley of Luzon; Ilokano, of the west coast of northern Luzon; Pampango and Pangasinan, of the central plain of Luzon; Tagalog, of the central area South of the two preceding; and the Visayan, of the central islands and northern Mindanao.

[3] No pretense is now made for permanency either in the classification of the many groups of primitive people in the Philippines or for the nomenclature of these various groups; but the groups of non-Christian people in the Archipelago, as they are to-day styled in a more or less permanent way by The Ethnological Survey, are as follows: Ata, north and west of Gulf of Davao in southeastern Mindanao; Batak, of Paragua; Bilan, in the southern highlands west of Gulf of Davao, Mindanao; Bagobo, of west coast of Gulf of Davao, Mindanao; Bukidnon, of Negros; Ibilao or Ilongot, of eastern central Luzon; Igorot, of northern Luzon; the Lanao Moro, occupying the central territory of Mindanao between the Bays of Iligan and Illana, including Lake Lanao; Maguindanao Moro, extending in a band southeast from Cotabato, Mindanao, toward Sarangani Bay, including Lakes Liguasan and Buluan; Mandaya, of southeastern Mindanao east of Gulf of Davao; Mangiyan, of Mindoro: Manobo, probably the most numerous tribe in Mindanao, occupying the valley of the Agusan River draining northward into Butuan Bay and the extensive table-land west of that river, besides in isolated territories extending to both the east and west coasts of the large body of land between Gulf of Davao and Illana Bay; Negrito, of several areas of wild mountains in Luzon, Negros, Mindanao, and other smaller islands; the Sama, of the islands in Gulf of Davao, Mindanao; Samal Moro, of scattered coastal areas in southern Mindanao, besides the eastern and southern islands of the Sulu or Jolo Archipelago; the Subano, probably the second largest tribal group in Mindanao, occupying all the mountain territory west of the narrow neck of land between Illana Bay and Pangul Bay; the Sulu Moro, of Jolo Island; the Tagabili, on the southern coast of Mindanao northwest of Sarangani Bay; the Tagakola, along the central part of the west coast of Gulf of Davao, Mindanao; Tagbanua, of Paragua; Tinguian, of western northern Luzon; Tiruray, south of Cotabato, Mindanao; Yakan Moro, in the mountainous interior of Basilan Island, off the Mindanao coast at Zamboanga. Under the names of these large groups must be included many more smaller dialect groups whose precise relationship may not now be confidently stated. For instance, the large Igorot group is composed of many smaller groups of different dialects besides that of the Bontoc Igorot of which this paper treats.

Chapter I

The Igorot Culture Group

Igorot land

Northern Luzon, or Igorot land, is by far the largest area in the Philippine Archipelago having any semblance of regularity. It is roughly rectangular in form, extending two and one-half degrees north and south and two degrees east and west.

There are two prominent geographic features in northern Luzon. One is the beautifully picturesque mountain system, the Caraballos, the most important range of which is the Caraballos Occidentales, extending north and south throughout the western part of the territory. This range is the famous “Cordillera Central” for about three-quarters of its extent northward, beyond which it is known as “Cordillera del Norte.” The other prominent feature is the extensive drainage system of the eastern part, the Rio Grande de Cagayan draining northward into the China Sea about two-thirds of the territory of northern Luzon. It is the largest drainage system and the largest river in the Archipelago.

The surface of northern Luzon is made up of four distinct types. First is the coastal plain—a consistently narrow strip of land, generally not over 3 or 4 miles wide. The soil is sandy silt with a considerable admixture of vegetable matter. In some places it is loose, and shifts readily before the winds; here and there are stretches of alluvial clay loam. The sandy areas are often covered with coconut trees, and the alluvial deposits along the rivers frequently become beds of nipa palm as far back as tide water. The plain areas are generally poorly watered except during the rainy season, having only the streams of the steep mountains passing through them. These river beds are broad, “quicky,” impassable torrents in the rainy season, and are shallow or practically dry during half the year, with only a narrow, lazy thread flowing among the bowlders.

This plain area on the west coast is the undisputed dwelling place of the Christian Ilokano, occupying pueblos in Union, Ilokos Sur, and Ilokos Norte Provinces. Almost nothing is known of the eastern coastal plain area. It is believed to be extremely narrow, and has at least one pueblo, of Christianized Tagalog—the famous Palanan, the scene of Aguinaldo’s capture.

The second type of surface is the coastal hill area. It extends from the coastal plain irregularly back to the mountains, and is thought to be much narrower on the eastern coast than on the western—in fact, it may be quite absent on the eastern. It is the remains of a tilted plain sloping seaward from an altitude of about 1,000 feet to one of, say, 100 feet, and its hilly nature is due to erosion. These hills are generally covered only with grasses; the sheltered moister places often produce rank growths of tall, coarse cogon grass.[1] The soil varies from dark clay loam through the sandy loams to quite extensive deposits of coarse gravel. The level stretches in the hills on the west coast are generally in the possession of the Christian peoples, though here and there are small pueblos of the large Igorot group. The Igorot in these pueblos are undergoing transformation, and quite generally wear clothing similar to that of the Ilokano.

The third type of surface is the mountain country—the “temperate zone of the Tropics”; it is the habitat of the Igorot. From the western coastal hill area the mountains rise abruptly in parallel ranges lying in a general north and south direction, and they subside only in the foothills west of the great level bottom land bordering the Rio Grande de Cagayan. The Cordillera Central is as fair and about as varied a mountain country as the tropic sun shines on. It has mountains up which one may climb from tropic forest jungles into open, pine-forested parks, and up again into the dense tropic forest, with its drapery of vines, its varied hanging orchids, and its graceful, lilting fern trees. It has mountains forested to the upper rim on one side with tropic jungle and on the other with sturdy pine trees; at the crest line the children of the Tropics meet and intermingle with those of the temperate zone. There are gigantic, rolling, bare backs whose only covering is the carpet of grass periodically green and brown. There are long, rambling, skeleton ranges with here and there pine forests gradually creeping up the sides to the crests. There are solitary volcanoes, now extinct, standing like things purposely let alone when nature humbled the surrounding earth. There are sculptured lime rocks, cities of them, with gray hovels and mansions and cathedrals.

The mountains present one interesting geologic feature. The “hiker” is repeatedly delighted to find his trail passing quite easily from one peak or ascent to another over a natural connecting embankment. On either side of this connecting ridge is the head of a deep, steep-walled canyon; the ridge is only a few hundred feet broad at base, and only half a dozen to twenty feet wide at the top. These ridges invariably have the appearance of being composed of soft earth, and not of rock. They are appreciated by the primitive man, who takes advantage of them as of bridges.

The mountains are well watered; the summits of most of the mountains have perpetual springs of pure, cool waters. On the very tops of some there are occasional perpetual water holes ranging from 10 to 100 feet across. These holes have neither surface outlet nor inlet; there are two such within two hours of Bontoc pueblo. They are the favorite wallowing places of the carabao, the so-called “water buffalo,”[2] both the wild and the half-domesticated animals.

The mountain streams are generally in deep gorges winding in and out between the sharp folds of the mountains. Their beds are strewn with bowlders, often of immense size, which have withstood the wearing of waters and storms. During the rainy season the streams racing between the bases of two mountain ridges are maddened torrents. Some streams, born and fed on the very peaks, tumble 100, 500, even 1,500 feet over precipices, landing white as snow in the merciless torrent at the mountain base. During the dry season the rivers are fordable at frequent intervals, but during the rainy season, beginning in the Cordillera Central in June and lasting well through October, even the natives hesitate often for a week at a time to cross them.

The absence of lakes is noteworthy in the mountain country of northern Luzon—in fact, in all of northern Luzon. The two large lakes frequently shown on maps of Cagayan Province, one east and one west of the Rio Grande de Cagayan near the eighteenth parallel, are not known to exist, though it is probable there is some foundation for the Spaniards’ belief in the existence of at least the eastern one. In the bottom land of the Rio Grande de Cagayan, about six hours west of Cabagan Nuevo, near the provincial border of Cagayan and Isabela, there were a hundred acres of land covered with shallow water the last of October, 1902, just at the end of the dry season of the Cagayan Valley. The surface was well covered with rank, coarse grasses and filled with aquatic plants, especially with lilies. Apparently the waters were slowly receding, since the earth about the margins was supporting the short, coarse grasses that tell of the gradual drying out of soils once covered with water. In the mountains near Sagada, Bontoc Province, there is a very small lake, and one or two others have been reported at Bontoc; but the mountains must be said to be practically lakeless.

Another mountain range of northern Luzon, of which practically no details are known, is the Sierra Madre, extending nearly the full length of the country close to the eastern coast. It seems to be an unbroken, continuous range, and, as such, is the longest mountain range in the Archipelago.

The fourth type of surface is the level areas. These areas lie mainly along the river courses, and vary from a few rods in width to the valley of the Rio Grande de Cagayan, which is often 50 miles in width, and probably more. There are, besides these river valleys, varying tracts of level plains which may most correctly be termed mountain table-lands. The limited mountain valleys and table-lands are the immediate home of the Igorot. The valleys are worn by the streams, and, in turn, are built up, leveled, and enriched by the sand and alluvium deposited annually by the floods. They are generally open, grass-covered areas, though some have become densely forested since being left above the high water of the streams.

The broad valley of the Rio Grande de Cagayan is not occupied by the Igorot. It is too poorly watered and forested to meet his requirements. It is mainly a vast pasture, supporting countless deer; along the foothills and the forest-grown creek and river bottoms there are many wild hogs; and in some areas herds of wild carabaos and horses are found. Near the main river is a numerous population of Christians. Many are Ilokano imported originally by the tobacco companies to carry on the large tobacco plantations of the valley, and the others are the native Cagayan.

The table-lands were once generally forested, but to-day many are deforested, undulating, beautiful pastures. Some were cleared by the Igorot for agriculture, and doubtless others by forest fires, such as one constantly sees during the dry season destroying the mountain forests of northern Luzon.

General observations have not been made on the temperature and humidity of much of the mountain country of northern Luzon. However, scientific observations have been made and recorded for a series of about ten years at Baguio, Benguet Province, at an altitude of 4,777 feet, and it is from the published data there gathered that the following facts are gained.[3] The temperature and rainfall are the average means deduced from many years’ observations:

MonthMean temperatureNumber of rainy daysRainfall
°FInches
January63.510.06
February62.120.57
March66.931.46
April70.510.32
May68.3164.02
June67.22612.55
July66.52614.43
August64.63137.03
September67.02311.90
October67.0134.95
November68.2132.52
December66.0165.47

It is seen that April is the hottest month of the year and February is the coldest. The absolute lowest temperature recorded is 42.10° Fahrenheit, noted February 18, 1902. Of course the temperature varies considerably—a fact due largely to altitude and prevailing winds. The height of the rainy season is in August, during which it rains every day, with an average precipitation of 37.03 inches. Baguio is known as much rainier than many other places in the Cordillera Central, yet it must be taken as more or less typical of the entire mountain area of northern Luzon, throughout which the rainy season is very uniform. Usually the days of the rainy season are beautiful and clear during the forenoon, but all-day rains are not rare, and each season has two or three storms of pelting, driving rain which continues without a break for four or five days.

Igorot peoples

In several languages of northern Luzon the word “Ĭg-o-rot′” means “mountain people.” Dr. Pardo de Tavera says the word “Igorrote” is composed of the root word “golot,” meaning, in Tagalog, “mountain chain,” and the prefix “i,” meaning “dweller in” or “people of.” Morga in 1609 used the word as “Igolot;” early Spaniards also used the word frequently as “Ygolotes”—and to-day some groups of the Igorot, as the Bontoc group, do not pronounce the “r” sound, which common usage now puts in the word. The Spaniards applied the term to the wild peoples of present Benguet and Lepanto Provinces, now a short-haired, peaceful people. In after years its common application spread eastward to the natives of the comandancia of Quiangan, in the present Province of Nueva Vizcaya, and northward to those of Bontoc.

The word “Ĭg-o-rot′” is now adopted tentatively as the name of the extensive primitive Malayan people of northern Luzon, because it is applied to a very large number of the mountain people by themselves and also has a recognized usage in ethnologic and other writings. Its form as “Ĭg-o-rot′” is adopted for both singular and plural, because it is both natural and phonetic, and, because, so far as it is possible to do so, it is thought wise to retain the simple native forms of such words as it seems necessary or best to incorporate in our language, especially in scientific language.

The sixteenth degree of north latitude cuts across Luzon probably as far south as any people of the Igorot group are now located. It is believed they occupy all the mountain country northward in the island except the territory of the Ibilao in the southeastern part of the area and some of the most inaccessible mountains in eastern Luzon, which are occupied by Negritos.

There are from 150,000 to 225,000 Igorot in Igorot land. The census of the Archipelago taken in 1903 will give the number as about 185,000. In the northern part of Pangasinan Province, the southwestern part of the territory, there are reported about 3,150 pagan people under various local names, as “Igorrotes,” “Infieles” [pagans], and “Nuevos Christianos.” In Benguet Province there are some 23,000, commonly known as “Benguet Igorrotes.” In Union Province there are about 4,400 primitive people, generally called “Igorrotes.” Ilokos Sur has nearly 8,000, half of whom are known to history as “Tinguianes” and half as “Igorrotes.” The Province of Ilokos Norte has nearly 9,000, which number is divided quite evenly between “Igorrotes,” “Tinguianes,” and “Infieles.” Abra Province has in round numbers 13,500 pagan Malayans, most of whom are historically known as “Alzados” and “Tinguianes.” These Tinguian ethnically belong to the great Igorot group, and in northern Bontoc Province, where they are known as Itneg, flow into and are not distinguishable from the Igorot; but no effort is made in this monograph to cut the Tinguian asunder from the position they have gained in historic and ethnologic writings as a separate people. The Province of Lepanto-Bontoc has, according to records, about 70,500 “Igorrotes,” “Tinguianes,” and “Caylingas,” but I believe a more careful census will show it has nearer 100,000. Nueva Ecija is reported to have half a hundred “Tinguianes.” The Province of Nueva Vizcaya has some 46,000 people locally and historically known as “Bunnayans,” a large group in the Spanish comandancia of Quiangan; the “Silapanes,” also a large group of people closely associated with the Bunayan; the Isinay, a small group in the southern part of the province; the Alamit, a considerable group of Silipan people dwelling along the Alamit River in the comandancia of Quiangan; and the small Ayangan group of the Bunayan people of Quiangan. Cagayan Province has about 11,000 “Caylingas” and “Ipuyaos.” Isabela Province is reported as having about 2,700 primitive Malayans of the Igorot group; they are historically known as “Igorrotes,” “Gaddanes,” “Calingas,” and “Ifugaos.”

The following forms of the above names of different dialect groups of Ĭg-o-rot′ have been adopted by The Ethnological Survey: Tĭn-gui-an′, Ka-lĭn′-ga, Bun-a-yan′, I-sa-nay′, A-la′-mĭt, Sĭl-i-pan′, Ay-an′-gan, Ĭ-pu-kao′, and Gad-an′.

It is believed that all the mountain people of the northern half of Luzon, except the Negritos, came to the island in some of the earliest of the movements that swept the coasts of the Archipelago from the south and spread over the inland areas—succeeding waves of people, having more culture, driving their cruder blood fellows farther inland. Though originally of one blood, and though they are all to-day in a similar broad culture-grade—that is, all are mountain agriculturists, and all are, or until recently have been, head-hunters—yet it does not follow that the Igorot groups have to-day identical culture; quite the contrary is true. There are many and wide differences even in important cultural expressions which are due to environment, long isolation, and in some cases to ideas and processes borrowed from different neighboring peoples. Very misleading statements have sometimes been made in regard to the Igorot—customs from different groups have been jumbled together in one description until a man has been pictured who can not be found anywhere. All except the most general statements are worse than wasted unless a particular group is designated.

An illustration of some of the differences between groups of typical Igorot will make this clearer. I select as examples the people of Bontoc and the adjoining Quiangan district in northern Nueva Vizcaya Province, both of whom are commonly known as Igorot. It must be noted that the people of both areas are practically unmodified by modern culture and both are constant head-hunters. With scarcely one exception Bontoc pueblos are single clusters of buildings; in Banawi pueblo of the Quiangan area there are eleven separate groups of dwellings, each group situated on a prominence which may be easily protected by the inhabitants against an enemy below them; and other Quiangan pueblos are similarly built. As will be brought out in succeeding chapters, the social and political institutions of the two peoples differ widely. In Bontoc the head weapon is a battle-ax, in Quiangan it is a long knife. Most of the head-hunting practices of the two peoples are different, especially as to the disposition of the skulls of the victims. Bontoc men wear their hair long, and have developed a small pocket-hat to confine the hair and contain small objects carried about; the men of Quiangan wear their hair short, have nothing whatever of the nature of the pocket-hat, but have developed a unique hand bag which is used as a pocket. In the Quiangan area a highly conventionalized wood-carving art has developed—beautiful eating spoons with figures of men and women carved on the handles and food bowls cut in animal figures are everywhere found; while in Bontoc only the most crude and artless wood carving is made. In language there is such a difference that Bontoc men who accompanied me into the northern part of the large Quiangan area, only a long day from Bontoc pueblo, could not converse with Quiangan men, even about such common things as travelers in a strange territory need to learn.

It is because of the many differences in cultural expressions between even small and neighboring communities of the primitive people of the Philippine Archipelago that I wish to be understood in this paper as speaking of the one group—the Bontoc Igorot culture group; a group however, in every essential typical of the numerous Igorot peoples of the mountains of northern Luzon.

[1] Imperata arundicea.

[2] Bubalus kerabau ferus (Nehring).

[3] Pages 72–74 of the Report of the Director of the Philippine Weather Bureau, 1901–1902; Part First, The Climate of Baguio (Benguet), by Rev. Fr. José Algué, S. J. (Manila, Observatory Printing Office, 1902.)

Chapter II

The Bontoc Culture Group

Bontoc culture area

The Bontoc culture area nearly equals the old Spanish Distrito Politico-Militar of Bontoc, presented to the American public in a Government publication in 1900.[1]

The Spanish Bontoc area was estimated about 4,500 square kilometers. This was probably too large an estimate, and it is undoubtedly an overestimate for the Bontoc culture area, the northern border of which is farther south than the border of the Spanish Bontoc area.

The area is well in the center of northern Luzon and is cut off by watersheds from other territory, except on the northeast. The most prominent of these watersheds is Polis Mountain, extending along the eastern and southern sides of the area; it is supposed to reach a height of over 7,000 feet. The western watershed is an undifferentiated range of the Cordillera Central. To the north stretches a large area of the present Province of Bontoc, though until 1903 most of that northern territory was embraced in the Province of Abra. The Province of Isabela lies to the east; Nueva Vizcaya and Lepanto border the area on the south, and Lepanto and Abra border it on the west.

The Bontoc culture area lies entirely in the mountains, and, with the exception of two pueblos, it is all drained northeastward into the Rio Grande de Cagayan by one river, the Rio Chico de Cagayan; but the Rio Sibbu, coursing more directly eastward, is a considerable stream.

To-day one main trail enters Bontoc Province. It was originally built by the Spaniards, and enters Bontoc pueblo from the southwest, leading up from Cervantes in Lepanto Province. From Cervantes there are two trails to the coast. One passes southward through Baguio in Benguet Province and then stretches westward, terminating on the coast at San Fernando, in Union Province. The other, the one most commonly traveled to Bontoc, passes to the northwest, terminating on the coast at Candon, in the Province of Ilokos Sur. The main trail, entering Bontoc from Cervantes, passes through the pueblo and extends to the northeast, quite closely following the trend of the Chico River. In Spanish times it was seldom traveled farther than Bassao, but several parties of Americans have been over it as far as the Rio Grande de Cagayan since November, 1902. A second trail, also of Spanish origin, but now practically unused, enters the area from the south and connects Bontoc pueblo, its northern terminus, with the valley of the Magat River far south. It passes through the pueblos of Bayambang, Quiangan, and Banawi, in the Province of Nueva Vizcaya.

The main trail is to-day passable for a horseman from the coast terminus to Tinglayan, three days beyond Bontoc pueblo. Practically all other trails in the area are simply wild footpaths of the Igorot. Candon, the coast terminus of the main trail, lies in the coastal plain area about 4¼ miles from the sea. From the coast to the small pueblo of Concepcion at the western base of the Cordillera Central is a half-day’s journey. The first half of the trail passes over flat land, with here and there small pueblos surrounded by rice sementeras. There are almost no forests. The latter half is through the coastal hill area, and the trail frequently passes through small forests; it crosses several rivers, dangerous to ford in the rainy season, and winds in and out among attractive hills bearing clumps of graceful, plume-like bamboo.

From Concepcion the trail leads up the mountain to Tilud Pass, historic since the insurrection because of the brave stand made there by the young, ill-fated General del Pilar. The climb to Tilud Pass, from either side of the mountain, is one of the longest and most tedious in northern Luzon. The trail frequently turns short on itself, so that the front and rear parts of a pack train are traveling face to face, and one end is not more than eight or ten rods above the other on the side of the mountain. The last view of the sea from the Candon-Bontoc trail is obtained at Tilud Pass. From Concepcion to Angaki, at the base of the mountain on the eastern side of the pass, the trail is about half a day long. From the pass it is a ceaseless drop down the steep mountain, but affords the most charming views of mountain scenery in northern Luzon. The shifting direction of the turning trail and the various altitudes of the traveler present constantly changing scenes—mountains and mountains ramble on before one. From Angaki to Cervantes the trail passes over deforested rolling mountain land, with safe drinking water in only one small spring. Many travelers who pass that part of the journey in the middle of the day complain loudly of the heat and thirst experienced there.

Cervantes, said to be 70 miles from Candon, is the capital of the dual Province of Lepanto-Bontoc. Bontoc pueblo lies inland only about 35 miles farther, but the greater part of two days is usually required to reach it. Twenty minutes will carry a horseman down the bluff from Cervantes, across the swift Abra—if the stream is fordable—and start him on the eastward mountain climb.

The first pueblo beyond Cervantes is Cayan, the old Spanish capital of the district. About twenty-five years ago the site was changed from Cayan to Cervantes because there was not sufficient suitable land at Cayan. Cayan is about four hours from Cervantes, and every foot of the trail is up the mountain. A short distance beyond Cayan the trail divides to rejoin only at the outskirts of Bontoc pueblo; but the right-hand or “lower” trail is not often traveled by horsemen. Up and up the mountain one climbs from about 1,800 feet at Cervantes to about 6,000 feet among the pines, and then slowly descends, having crossed the boundary line between Lepanto and Bontoc subprovinces to the pueblo of Bagnen—the last one before the Bontoc culture area is entered. It is customary to spend the night on the trail, as one goes into Bontoc, either at Bagnen or at Sagada, a pueblo about two hours farther on.

Only along the top of the high mountain, before Bagnen is reached, does the trail pass through a forest—otherwise it is always climbing up or winding about the mountains deforested probably by fires. Practically all the immediate territory on the right hand of the trail between Bagnen and Sagada is occupied by the beautifully terraced rice sementeras of Balugan; the valley contains more than a thousand acres so cultivated. At Sagada lime rocks—some eroded into gigantic, massive forms, others into fantastic spires and domes—everywhere crop out from the grassy hills. Up and down the mountains the trail leads, passing another small pine forest near Ankiling and Titipan, about four hours from Bontoc, and then creeps on and at last through the terraced entrance way into the mountain pocket where Bontoc pueblo lies, about 100 miles from the western coast, and, by Government aneroid barometer, about 2,800 feet above the sea.

Marks of Bontoc culture

It is difficult and often impossible to state the essential difference in culture which distinguishes one group of people from another. It is more difficult to draw lines of distinction, for the culture of one group almost imperceptibly flows into that of another adjoining it.

However, two fundamental institutions of the people of Bontoc seem to differ from those of most adjoining people. One of these institutions has to do with the control of the pueblo. Bontoc has not developed the headman—the “principal” of the Spaniard, the “Bak-nan′” of the Benguet Igorot—the one rich man who becomes the pueblo, leader. In Benguet Province the headman is found in every pueblo, and he is so powerful that he often dominates half a dozen outlying barrios to the extent that he receives a large share, often one-half, of the output of all the productive labors of the barrio. Immediately north of the Bontoc area, in Tinglayan, the headman is again found. He has no place whatever in Bontoc. The control of the pueblos of the Bontoc area is in the hands of groups of old men; however, each group, called “intugtukan,” operates only within a single political and geographic portion of the pueblo, so that no one group has in charge the control of the pueblo. The pueblo is a loose federation of smaller political groups.

The other institution is a social development. It is the olag, an institution of trial marriage. It is not known to exist among adjoining people, but is found throughout the area in which the intugtukan exists; they are apparently coextensive. I was repeatedly informed that the olag is not found in the Banawi area south of Bontoc, or in the Tinglayan area east, or among the Tinguian to the north, or in Benguet far southwest, or in Lepanto immediately southwest—though I have some reason to believe that both the intugtukan and olag exist in a crumbling way among certain Lepanto Igorot.

Besides these two institutions there are other differing marks of culture between the Bontoc area and adjoining people. Some of these were suggested a few pages back, others will appear in following pages.

Without doubt the limits of the spread of the common culture have been determined mainly by the physiography of the country. One of the two pueblos in the area not on the common drainage system is Lias, but Lias was largely built by a migration from Bontoc pueblo—the hotbed of Bontoc culture. Barlig, the other pueblo not on the common drainage system (both Barlig and Lias are on the Sibbu River), lies between Lias and the other pueblos of the Bontoc culture area, and so naturally has been drawn in line and held in line with the culture of the geographic area in which it is located—its institutions are those of its environment.

The Bontoc man

Introduction

The Bontoc Igorot has been in Bontoc longer than the endurance of tradition, for he says he never lived elsewhere, that he never drove any people out before him, and that he was never driven; and has always called himself the “Ĭ-pu-kao′” or “Ĭ-fu-gao′”—the “people.”

This word for people survives not only throughout the Province of Bontoc but also far toward the northern end of Luzon, where it appears as “Apayao” or “Yaos.” Bontoc designates the people of the Quiangan region as “Ĭ-fu-gao′,” though a part of them at least have a different name for themselves.

The Bontoc Igorot have their center in the pueblo of Bontoc, pronounced “Ban-tâk′,” a Spanish corruption of the Igorot name “Fun-tâk′,” a common native word for mountain, the original name of the pueblo. To the northwest their culture extends to that of the historic Tinguian, a long-haired folk physiographically cut off by a watershed. To the east of the Cordillera Central the Tinguian call themselves “Ĭt-nĕg′.” To the northeast the Bontoc culture area embraces the pueblo of Basao, stopping short of Tinglayan. The eastern limit of Bontoc culture is fixed by the pueblos of Lias and Barlig, and is thus about coextensive with the province. Southward the area includes all to the top of the watershed of Polis Mountain, which turns southward the numerous streams feeding the Rio Magat. The pueblos south of this watershed—Lubong, Gisang, Banawi, etc.—belong to the short-haired people of Quiangan culture. To the west Bontoc culture extends to the watershed of the Cordillera Central, which turns westward the various affluents of the Rio del Abra. On the southwest this cuts off the short-haired Lepanto Igorot, whose culture seems to be more allied to that of Benguet than Bontoc.

The men of the Bontoc area know none of the peoples by whom they are surrounded by the names history gives or the peoples designate themselves, with the exception of the Lepanto Igorot, the Ĭt-nĕg′, and the Ilokano of the west coast. They do not know the “Tinguian” of Abra on their north and northwest by that name; they call them “Ĭt-nĕg′.” Farther north are the people called by the Spaniards “Nabayuganes,” “Aripas,” and “Ipugaos;” to the northeast and east are the “Caylingas,” “Comunanges,” “Bayabonanes,” “Dayags,” and “Gaddannes”—but Bontoc knows none of these names. Bontoc culture and Kalinga culture lie close together on the east, and the people of Bontoc pueblo name all their eastern neighbors Ĭt-nĕg′—the same term they apply to the Tinguian to the west and northwest, because, they say, they all wear great quantities of brass on the arms and legs. To the south of Bontoc are the Quiangan Igorot, the Banawi division of which, at least, names itself May′-yo-yĕt, but whom Bontoc calls “Ĭ-fu-gao′.” They designate the people of Benguet the “Igorot of Benguet,” but these peoples designate themselves “Ĭb-a-loi′” in the northern part, and “Kan-ka-nay′” in the southern part, neither of which names Bontoc knows.

She has still another set of names for the people surrounding her—people whom she vaguely knows are there but of whom or of whose lands she has no first-hand knowledge. The people to the north are “Am-yan′-an,” and the northern country is “La′-god.” The “Day′-ya” are the eastern people, while “Bar′-lĭg” is the name of the eastern and southeastern land. “Ab-a-ga′-tan” are the people of the south, and “Fi′-lĭg ab-a-ga′-tan,” is the south land. The people of the west are “Loa′-od,” and “Fi′-lĭg lao′-od,” or “Lo′-ko” (the Provinces of Ilokos Norte and Ilokos Sur) is the country lying to the west and southwest.

Some of the old men of Bontoc say that in the past the Igorot people once extended to the seacoast in the Provinces of Ilokos Norte and Ilokos Sur. This, of course, is a tradition of the prehistoric time before the Ilokano invaded northern Luzon; but, as has been stated, the Bontoc people claim never to have been driven by that invasion, neither have they any knowledge of such a movement. It is not improbable, however, that traditions of the invasion may linger with the people nearer the coast and farther north.

Historical sketch

It is regretted that the once voluminous historical records and data which the Spaniards prepared and kept at Bontoc were burned—tons of paper, they say—probably late in 1898 or early in 1899 by Captain Angels, an insurrecto. However, from scanty printed historical data, but mostly from information gathered in Bontoc from Igorot and resident Ilokano, the following brief sketch is presented, with the hope that it will show the nature of the outside influences which have been about Bontoc for the past half century prior to American occupation. It is believed that the data are sufficiently truthful for this purpose, but no claim is made for historical accuracy.

It seems that in 1665 the Spanish governor of the Philippines, Governor-General D. Diego de Salcedo, sent an expedition from Manila into northern Luzon. Some time during the three years the expedition was out its influence was felt in Fidelisan and Tanolang, two pueblos in the western part of the Bontoc culture area, for history says they paid tribute.[2] It is not probable that any considerable party from the expedition penetrated the Igorot mountain country as far as the above pueblos.

After the year 1700 expeditions occasionally reached Cayan, which, until about twenty-five years ago, as has been stated, was a Spanish capital. In 1852 the entire territory of present Lepanto-Bontoc and a large part of northern Nueva Vizcaya were organized as an independent “distrito,” under the name of “Valle de Cayan;”[3] and a few years later, though the author does not give the date, Bontoc was established as an independent “distrito.”

The Spaniards and Ilokano in and about Bontoc Province say that it was about fifty years ago that the Spaniards first came to Bontoc. The time agrees very accurately with the time of the establishment of the district. From then until 1899 there was a Spanish garrison of 200 or 300 men stationed in Bontoc pueblo. Christian Ilokano from the west coast of northern Luzon and the Christian Tagalog from Manila and vicinity were the soldiers.

The Spanish comandante of the “distrito,” the head of the political-military government, resided there, and there were also a few Spanish army officers and an army chaplain. A large garrison was quartered in Cervantes; there was a church in both Bontoc and Cervantes. In the district of Bontoc there was a Spanish post at Sagada, between the two capitals, Bontoc and Cervantes. Farther to the east was a post at Tukukan and Sakasakan, and farther east, at Basao, there was a post, a church, and a priest.

Most of the pueblos had Ilokano presidentes. The Igorot say that the Spaniards did little for them except to shoot them. There is yet a long, heavy wooden stock in Bontoc pueblo in which the Igorot were imprisoned. Igorot women were made the mistresses of both officers and soldiers. Work, food, fuel, and lumber were not always paid for. All persons 18 or more years old were required to pay an annual tax of 50 cents or an equivalent value in rice. A day’s wage was only 5 cents, so each family was required to pay an equivalent of twenty days’ labor annually. In wild towns the principal men were told to bring in so many thousand bunches of palay—the unthreshed rice. If it was not all brought in, the soldiers frequently went for it, accompanied by Igorot warriors; they gathered up the rice, and sometimes burned the entire pueblo. Apad, the principal man of Tinglayan, was confined six years in Spanish jails at Bontoc and Vigan because he repeatedly failed to compel his people to bring in the amount of palay assessed them.

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.

Major Marsh went through Bontoc close after Aguinaldo in December, 1899. The Igorot befriended the Americans; they brought them food and guided them faithfully along the bewildering mountain trails when the insurrectos split and scattered—anywhere, everywhere, fleeing eastward, northward, southward, in the mountains.

When Major Marsh returned through Bontoc, after following Aguinaldo into the heart of the Quiangan area, he left in the pueblo some sixty shoeless men under a volunteer lieutenant. The lieutenant promptly appointed an Ilokano presidente, vice-presidente, secretary, and police force in Bontoc and also in Sagada, and when the soldiers left in a few weeks he gave seven guns to the “officials” in Bontoc and two to those in Sagada. A short time proved that those “officials” were untrustworthy men; many were insurrectos who had dropped behind Aguinaldo. They persecuted the Igorot even worse than had the insurrectos. They seemed to have the American Army behind them—and the Igorot stood in awe of American arms.

The crisis came. An Igorot obtained possession of one of the guns, and the Ilokano chief of police was killed and his corporal wounded.

This shooting, at the time apparently unpremeditated, but, in reality, carefully planned and successfully executed, was the cause of the arrival in Bontoc pueblo of the first American civilians. At that time a party of twenty Americans was at Fidelisan, a long day northwest of Bontoc; they were prospecting and sightseeing. The Ilokano sent these men a letter, and the Igorot sent a messenger, begging them to come to the help of the pueblo. Three men went on August 27, 1900; they were Truman K. Hunt, M.D., Mr. Frank Finley, and Mr. Riley. The disagreement was settled, and several Ilokano families left Bontoc under the protection of Mr. Riley.

August 9, 1901, when the Board of Health for the Philippine Islands was organized, Dr. Hunt, who had remained in Bontoc most of the preceding year, was appointed “superintendent of public vaccination and inspection of infectious diseases for the Provinces of Bontoc and Lepanto.” He was stationed at Bontoc. About that time another American civilian came to the province—Mr. Reuben H. Morley, now secretary-treasurer of the Province of Nueva Vizcaya, who lived nearly a year in Tulubin, two hours from Bontoc. December 14 Mr. William F. Smith, an American teacher, was sent to Bontoc to open a school.

Early in 1902 Constabulary inspectors, Lieutenants Louis A. Powless and Ernest A. Eckman, also came. May 28, 1902, the Philippine Commission organized the Province of Lepanto-Bontoc; on June 9 Dr. Hunt was appointed lieutenant-governor of the province. May 1, 1903, Dr. Hunt resigned and E. A. Wagar, M.D., became his successor.

The Spaniard was in Bontoc about fifty years. To summarize the Spanish influence on the Igorot—and this includes any influence which the Ilokano or Tagalog may have had since they came among the people under Spanish protection—it is believed that no essential institution of the Igorot has been weakened or vitiated to any appreciable degree. No Igorot attended the school which the Spaniards had in Bontoc; to-day not ten Igorot of the pueblo can make themselves understood in Spanish about the commonest things around them. I fail to detect any occupation, method, or device of the Igorot which the Spaniards’ influence improved; and the Igorot flatly deny any such influence.

The Spaniard put the institution of pueblo presidente pretty well throughout the area now in province, but the presidente in no way interferes with the routine life of the people—he is the mouthpiece of the Government asking for labor and the daily necessities of a nonproductive, resident foreign population.

The “tax” levied was scarcely in the nature of a modern tax; it was more the means taken by the Spaniard to secure his necessary food. In no other way was the political life and organization of the pueblo affected. In the realm of religion and spirit belief the surface has scarcely been scratched. The only Igorot who became Christians were the wives of some of the Christian natives who came in with the Spaniard, mainly as soldiers. There are now eight or ten such women, wives of the resident Ilokanos of Bontoc pueblo, but those whose husbands left the pueblo have reverted to Igorot faith.

In the matter of war and head-hunting the effect of the Spaniard was to intensify the natural instinct of the Igorot in and about Bontoc pueblo. Nineteen men in twenty of Bontoc and Samoki have taken a human head, and it has been seen under what conditions and influences some of those heads were taken. An Igorot, whose confidence I believe I have, an old man who represents the knowledge and wisdom of the people, told me recently that if the Americans wanted the people of Bontoc to go out against a pueblo they would gladly go; and he added, suggestively, that when the Spaniards were there the old men had much better food than now, for many hogs were killed in the celebration of war expeditions—and the old men got the greater part of the meat. The Igorot is a natural head-hunter, and his training for the last sixty years seems to have done little more for him than whet this appetite.

Somatology

Man

The Bontoc men average about 5 feet 4⅛ inches in height, and have the appearance of being taller than they are. Again and again one is deceived by their height, and he repeatedly backs a 5-foot-7-inch Igorot up against a 6-foot American, vainly expecting the stature of the brown man to equal that of the white. Almost never does the Bontoc man appear heavy or thickset, as does his brother, the Benguet Igorot—the human pack horse seen so constantly on the San Fernando-Baguio trail—muscularly one of the most highly developed primitive people in the world to-day

Of thirty-two men measured from Bontoc and vicinity the shortest was 4 feet 9⅛ inches and the tallest was slightly more than 5 feet 9 inches. The following table presents the average measurements of the thirty-two men:

Average measurements of Bontoc men
Measurements
Cm.
Stature160.287
Spread of arms165.684
Head length19.212
Head breadth15.203
Cephalic index (per cent)79.1328
Nasal length5.25625
Nasal breadth4.1625
Nasal index (per cent)79.191

From these measurements it appears that the composite man—the average of the combined measurements of thirty-two men—is mesaticephalic. Among the thirty-two men the extremes of cephalic index are 91.48 and 67.48. This first measurement is of a young man between 20 and 25 years of age. It stands far removed from other measurements, the one nearest it being 86.78, that of a man about 60 years old. The other extreme is 67.48, the measure of a young man between 25 and 30 years of age. Among the thirty-two men, nine are brachycephalic—that is, their cephalic index is greater than 80; twenty of the thirty-two are mesaticephalic, with cephalic index between 75 and 80; and only three are dolichocephalic—that is, the cephalic index is below 75.

The nasal indexes of the thirty-two men show that the Bontoc man has the “medium” or mesorhine nose. They also show that one is very extremely platyrhine, the index being 104.54, and one is very leptorhine, being 58.18. Of the total, five are leptorhine—that is, have the “narrow” nose with nasal index below 70. Seventeen men are mesorhine, with the “medium” nose with nasal index between 70 and 85; and ten are platyrhine—that is, the noses are “broad,” with an index greater than 85.

The Bontoc men are never corpulent, and, with the exception of the very old, they are seldom poor. During the period of a man’s prime he is usually muscled to an excellent symmetry. His neck, never long, is well formed and strong and supports the head in erect position. His shoulders are broad, even, and full muscled, and with seeming ease carry transportation baskets laden with 75 to 100 pounds. His arms are smoothly developed and are about the same relative length as the American’s. The hands are strong and short. The waist line is firm and smaller than the shoulders or hips. The buttocks usually appear heavy. His legs are generally straight; the thighs and calves are those of a prime pedestrian accustomed to long and frequent walks. The ankles are seldom thick; and the feet are broad and relatively short, and, almost without exception, are placed on the ground straight ahead. He has the feet of a pedestrian—not the inturned feet of the constant bearer of heavy burdens on the back or the outturned feet of the man who sits or stands. The perfection of muscular development of two-thirds of the men of Bontoc between the ages of 25 and 30 would be the envy of the average college athlete in the States.

In color the men are brown, though there is a wide range of tone from a light brown with a strong saffron undertone to a very dark brown—as near a bronze as can well be imagined. The sun has more to do with the different color tones than has anything else, after which habits of personal cleanliness play a very large rôle. There are men in the Bontoc Igorot Constabulary of an extremely light-brown color, more saffron than brown, who have been wearing clothing for only one year. During the year the diet of the men in the Constabulary has been practically the same as that of their darker brothers among whom they were enlisted only twelve months ago. All the members of the Constabulary differ much more in color from the unclothed men than the unclothed differ among themselves. Man after man of these latter may pass under the eye without revealing a tint of saffron, yet there are many who show it faintly. The natural Igorot never washes himself clean. He washes frequently, but lacks the means of cleansing the skin, and the dirtier he is the more bronze-like he appears. At all times his face looks lighter and more saffron-tinted than the remainder of his body. There are two reasons for this—because the face is more often washed and because of its contrast with the black hair of the head.

The hair of the head is black, straight, coarse, and relatively abundant. It is worn long, frequently more than half way to the hips from the shoulders. The front is “banged” low and square across the forehead, cut with the battle-ax; this line of cut runs to above and somewhat back of the ear, the hair of the scalp below it being cut close to the head. When the men age, a few gray hairs appear, and some old men have heads of uniform iron-gray color. I have never seen a white-haired Igorot. A few of the old men have their hair thinning on the crown, but a tendency to baldness is by no means the rule.

Bontoc pueblo is no exception to the rule that every pueblo in the Philippines has a few people with curly or wavy hair. I doubt whether to-day an entire tribe of perfectly straight-haired primitive Malayan people exists in the Archipelago. Fu-nĭt is a curly-haired Bontoc man of about 45 years of age. Many people told me that his father and also his grandfather were members of the pueblo and had curly hair. I have never been able to find any hint at foreign or Negrito blood in any of the several curly haired people in the Bontoc culture area whose ancestors I have tried to discover.

The scanty growth of hair on the face of the Bontoc man is pulled out. A small pebble and the thumb nail or the blade of the battle-ax and the bulb of the thumb are frequently used as forceps; they never cut the hair of the face. It is common to see men of all ages with a very sparse growth of hair on the upper lip or chin, and one of 50 years in Bontoc has a fairly heavy 4-inch growth of gray hair on his chin and throat; he is shown in [Pl. XIII]. Their bodies are quite free from hair. There is none on the breast, and seldom any on the legs. The pelvic growth is always pulled out by the unmarried. The growth in the armpits is scant, but is not removed.

The iris of the eye is brown—often rimmed with a lighter or darker ring. The brown of the iris ranges from nearly black to a soft hazel brown. The cornea is frequently blotched with red or yellow. The Malayan fold of the upper eyelid is seen in a large majority of the men, the fold being so low that it hangs over and hides the roots of the lashes. The lashes appear to grow from behind the lid rather than from its rim.

The teeth are large and strong, and, whereas in old age they frequently become few and discolored, during prime they are often white and clean. The people never artificially stain the teeth, and, though surrounded by betel-nut chewers with dark teeth or red-stained lips, they do not use the betel.

Since the Igorot keeps no record of years, it is impossible to know his age, but it is believed that sufficient comparative data have been collected in Bontoc to make the following estimates reliable:

At the age of 20 a man seems hardly to have reached his physical best; this he attains, however, before he is 25. By 35 he begins to show the marks of age. By 45 most of the men are fast getting “old”; their faces are seamed, their muscles losing form, their carriage less erect, and the step slower. By 55 all are old—most are bent and thin. Probably not over one or two in a hundred mature men live to be 70 years old.

The following census taken from a Spanish manuscript found in Quiangan, and written in 1894, may be taken as representative of an average Igorot pueblo:

Census of Magulang, district of Quiangan
YearsFemalesMales
0 to 1191200
1 to 5209210
5 to 10144123
10 to 15132159
15 to 20129114
20 to 30121134
30 to 40212239
40 to 50118126
50 and over7962
Total1,3351,367

From this census it seems that the Magulang Igorot man is at his prime between the ages of 30 and 40 years, and that the death rate for men between the ages of 40 and 50 is nearly as great as the death rate among children between 5 to 10 years of age, being 52.7 per cent. Beyond the age of 50 collapse is sudden, since all the men more than 50 years old are less than half the number of those between the ages of 40 and 50 years.

Woman

The women average 4 feet 9⅜ inches in height. In appearance they are short and stocky. Twenty-nine women from Bontoc and vicinity were measured; the tallest was 5 feet 4¾ inches, and the shortest 4 feet 4¾ inches. The following table presents the average measurements of twenty-nine women:

Average measurements of Bontoc women
Measurements
Cm.
Stature145.800
Spread of arms149.603
Head length18.593
Head breadth14.706
Cephalic index (per cent)79.094
Nasal length4.582
Nasal breadth3.608
Nasal index (per cent)78.744

These measurements show that the composite woman—the average of the measurements of twenty-nine women—is mesaticephalic. The extremes of cephalic index are 87.64 and 64.89; both are measurements of women about 35 years of age. Of the twenty-nine women twelve are brachycephalic; twelve are mesaticephalic; and five are dolichocephalic.

The Bontoc woman has a “medium,” or mesorhine, nose, as is shown by the above figures. Four of the twenty-nine women have the “narrow” leptorhine nose with nasal index below 70; seven have platyrhine or the “broad” nose with index greater than 85; while seventeen have the “medium” or mesorhine nose with nasal index between 70 and 85. The broadest nose has an index of 97.56, and the narrowest an index of 58.53.

The women reach the age of maturity well prepared for its responsibilities. They have more adipose tissue than the men, yet are never fat. The head is carried erect, but with a certain stiffness—often due, in part, no doubt, to shyness, and in part to the fact that they carry all their burdens on their heads. I believe the neck more often appears short than does the neck of the man. The shoulders are broad, and flat across the back. The breasts are large, full, and well supported. The hips are broad and well set, and the waist (there is no natural waist line) is frequently no smaller than the hips, though smaller than the shoulders. Their arms are smooth and strong, and they throw stones as men do, with the full-arm throw from the shoulder. Their hands are short and strong. Their legs are almost invariably straight, but are probably more frequently bowed at the knees than are the men’s. The thighs are sturdy and strong, and the calves not infrequently over-large. This enlargement runs low down, so the ankles, never slender, very often appear coarse and large. In consequence of this heavy lower leg, the feet, short at best, usually look much too short. They are placed on the ground straight ahead, though the tendency to inturned feet is slightly more noticeable than it is among the men.

Their carriage is a healthful one, though it is not always graceful, since their long strides commonly give the prominent buttocks a jerky movement. They prove the naturalness of that style of walking which, in profile, shows the chest thrust forward and the buttocks backward; the abdomen is in, and the shoulders do not swing as the strides are made.

It can not be said that at base the color of the women’s skin differs from that of the men, but the saffron undertone is more commonly seen than it is in the unclothed men. It shows on the shaded parts of the body, and where the skin is distended, as on the breast and about certain features of the face.

The hair of the head is like that of the man’s; it is worn long, and is twisted and wound about the head. It has a tendency to fall out as age comes on, but does not seem thin on the head. The tendency to gray hairs is apparently somewhat less than it is with the men. The remainder of the body is exceptionally free from hair. The growth in the armpits and the pelvic hair are always pulled out by the unmarried, and a large per cent of the women do not allow it to grow even in old age.

Their eyes are brown, varied as are those of the men, and with the Malayan fold of the upper eyelid.

Their teeth are generally whiter and cleaner than are those of their male companions, a condition due largely, probably, to the fact that few of the women smoke.

They seem to reach maturity at about 17 or 18 years of age. The first child is commonly born between the ages of 16 and 22. At 23 the woman has certainly reached her prime. By 30 she is getting “old”; before 45 the women are old, with flat, pendent folds of skin where the breasts were. The entire front of the body—in prime full, rounded, and smooth—has become flabby, wrinkled, and folded. It is only a short time before collapse of the tissue takes place in all parts of the body. An old woman, say, at 50, is a mass of wrinkles from foot to forehead; the arms and legs lose their plumpness, the skin is “bagged” at the knees into half a dozen large folds; and the disappearance of adipose tissue from the trunk-front, sides, and back—has left the skin not only wrinkled but loose and flabby, folding over the girdle at the waist.

The census of Magulang, page 42, should be again referred to, from which it appears that the death rate among women is greater between the ages of 40 and 50 years than it is with men, being 55.66 per cent. The census shows also that there are relatively a larger number of old women—that is, over 50 years old—than there are old men.

Child

The death rate among children is large. Of fifteen families in Bontoc, each having had three or more children, the death rate up to the age of puberty was over 60 per cent. According to the Magulang census the death rate of children from 5 to 10 years of age is 63.73 per cent.

The new-born babe is as light in color as the average American babe, and is much less red, instead of which color there is the slightest tint of saffron. As the babe lies naked on its mother’s naked breast the light color is most strikingly apparent by contrast. The darker color, the brown, gradually comes, however, as the babe is exposed to the sun and wind, until the child of a year or two carried on its mother’s back is practically one with the mother in color.

Some of the babes, perhaps all, are born with an abundance of dark hair on the head. A child’s hair is never cut, except that from about the age of 3 years the boy’s hair is “banged” across the forehead. Fully 30 per cent of children up to 5 or 6 years of age have brown hair—due largely to fading, as the outer is much lighter than the under hair. In rare cases the lighter brown hair assumes a distinctly red cast, though a faded lifeless red. Before puberty is reached, however, all children have glossy black hair.

The iris of a new-born babe is sometimes a blue brown; it is decidedly a different brown from that of the adult or of the child of five years. Most children have the Malayan fold of the eyelid; the lower lid is often much straighter than it is on the average American. When, in addition to these conditions, the outer corner of the eye is higher than the inner, the eye is somewhat Mongolian in appearance. About one-fifth of the children in Bontoc have this Mongolian-like eye, though it is rarer among adults—a fact due, in part, apparently, to the down curving and sagging of the lower lid as one’s prime is reached and passed.

Children’s teeth are clean and white, and very generally remain so until maturity.

The child from 1 to 3 years of age is plump and chubby; his front is full and rounded, but lacks the extra abdominal development so common with the children of the lowlands, and which has received from the American the popular name of “banana belly.” By the age of 7 the child has lost its plump, rounded form, which is never again had by the boys but is attained by the girls again early in puberty. During these last half dozen years of childhood all children are slender and agile and wonderfully attractive in their naturalness. Both girls and boys reach puberty at a later time than would be expected, though data can not be gathered to determine accurately the age at puberty. All the Ilokano in Bontoc pueblo consistently maintain that girls do not reach puberty until at least 16 and 17 years of age. Perhaps it is arrived at by 14 or 15, but I feel certain it is not as early as 12 or 13—a condition one might expect to find among people in the tropics.

Pathology

The most serious permanent physical affliction the Bontoc Igorot suffers is blindness. Fully 2 per cent of the people both of Bontoc and her sister pueblo, Samoki, are blind; probably 2 per cent more are partially so. Bontoc has one blind boy only 3 years old, but I know of no other blind children; and it is claimed that no babes are born blind. There is one woman in Bontoc approaching 20 years of age who is nearly blind, and whose mother and older sister are blind. Blindness is very common among the old people, and seems to come on with the general breaking down of the body.

A few of the people say their blindness is due to the smoke in their dwellings. This doubtless has much to do with the infirmity, as their private and public buildings are very smoky much of the time, and when the nights are at all chilly a fire is built in their closed, low, and chimneyless sleeping rooms. There are many persons with inflamed and granulated eyelids whose vision is little or not at all impaired—a forerunner of blindness probably often caused by smoke.

Twenty per cent of the adults have abnormal feet. The most common and most striking abnormality is that known as “fa′-wĭng”; it is an inturning of the great toe. Fa′-wĭng occurs in all stages from the slightest spreading to that approximating forty-five degrees. It is found widely scattered among the barefoot mountain tribes of northern Luzon. The people say it is due to mountain climbing, and their explanation is probably correct, as the great toe is used much as is a claw in securing a footing on the slippery, steep trails during the rainy reason. Fa′-wĭng occurs quite as commonly with women as with men, and in Ambuklao, Benguet Province, I saw a boy of 8 or 9 years whose great toes were spread half as much as those shown in [Pl. XXV]. This deformity occurs on one or both feet, but generally on both if at all.

An enlargement of the basal joint of the great toe, probably a bunion, is also comparatively common. It is not improbable that it is often caused by stone bruises, as such are of frequent occurrence; they are sometimes very serious, laying a person up ten days at a time.

The feet of adults who work in the water-filled rice paddies are dry, seamed, and cracked on the bottoms. These “rice-paddy feet,” called “fung-as′,” are often so sore that the person can not go on the trails for any considerable distance.

I believe not 5 per cent of the people are without eruptions of the skin. It is practically impossible to find an adult whose body is not marked with shiny patches showing where large eruptions have been. Babes of one or two months do not appear to have skin diseases, but those of three and four are sometimes half covered with itching, discharging eruptions. Babes under a year old, such as are most carried on their mother’s backs, are especially subject to a mass of sores about the ankles; the skin disease is itch, called ku′-lĭd. I have seen babes of this age with sores an inch across and nearly an inch deep in their backs.

Relatively there are few large sores on the people such as boils and ulcers, but a person may have a dozen or half a hundred itching eruptions the size of a half pea scattered over his arms, legs, and trunk. From these he habitually squeezes the pus onto his thumb nail, and at once ignorantly cleans the nail on some other part of the body. The general prevalence of this itch is largely due to the gregarious life of the people—to the fact that the males lounge in public quarters, and all, except married men and women, sleep in these same quarters where the naked skin readily takes up virus left on the stone seats and sleeping boards by an infected companion. In Banawi, in the Quiangan culture area, a district having no public buildings, one can scarcely find a trace of skin eruption.

There are two adult people in Samoki pueblo who are insane; one of them at least is supposed to be affected by Lumawig, the Igorot god, and is said, when he hallooes, as he does at times, to be calling to Lumawig. Bontoc pueblo has a young woman and a girl of five or six years of age who are imbecile. Those four people are practically incapacitated from earning a living, and are cared for by their immediate relatives. There are two adult deaf and dumb men in Bontoc pueblo, but both are industrious and self-supporting.

Igorot badly injured in war or elsewhere are usually killed at their own request. In May, 1903, a man from Maligkong was thrown to the earth and rendered unconscious by a heavy timber he and several companions brought to Bontoc for the school building. His companions immediately told Captain Eckman to shoot him as he was “no good.” I can not say whether it is customary for the Igorot to weed out those who faint temporarily—as the fact just cited suggests; however, they do not kill the feeble aged, and the presence of the insane and the imbecile shows that weak members of the group are not always destroyed voluntarily.

[1] Map No. 7 in the Atlas of the Philippine Islands. (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1900.)

[2] R. P. Fr. Angel Perez, Igorrotes, Estudio Geográfico y Etnográfico, etc. (Manila, 1902), p. 7.

[3] Op. cit., p. 29.

Chapter III

General Social Life

The pueblo

Bontoc and Samoki pueblos, in all essentials typical of pueblos in the Bontoc area, lie in the mountains in a roughly circular pocket called Pa-pas′-kan. A perfect circle about a mile in diameter might be described within the pocket. It is bisected fairly accurately by the Chico River, coursing from the southwest to the northeast. Its altitude ranges from about 2,750 feet at the river to 2,900 at the upper edge of Bontoc pueblo, which is close to the base of the mountain ridge at the west, while Samoki is backed up against the opposite ridge to the southeast. The river flows between the pueblos, though considerably closer to Samoki than to Bontoc.

The horizon circumscribing this pocket is cut at the northeast, where the river makes its exit, and lifting above this gap are two ranges of mountains beyond. At the south-southeast there is another cut, through which a small affluent pours into the main stream. At the southwest the river enters the pocket, although no cut shows in the horizon, as the stream bends abruptly and the farther range of mountains folds close upon the near one.

Bontoc lies compactly built on a sloping piece of ground, roughly about half a mile square. Through the pueblo are two water-cut ravines, down which pour the waters of the mountain ridge in the rainy season, and in which, during much of the remainder of the year, sufficient water trickles to supply several near-by dwellings.

Adjoining the pueblo on the north and west are two small groves where a religious ceremonial is observed each month. Granaries for rice are scattered all about the outer fringe of dwellings, and in places they follow the ravines in among the buildings of the pueblo. The old, broad Spanish trail runs close to the pueblo on the south and east, as it passes in and out of the pocket through the gaps cut by the river. About the pueblo at the east and northeast are some fifteen houses built in Spanish time, most of them now occupied by Ilokano men with Igorot or half-breed wives. There also were the Spanish Government buildings, reduced to a church, a convent, and another building used now as headquarters for the Government Constabulary.

The pueblo, now 2,000 or 2,500 people, was probably at one time larger. There is a tradition common in both Bontoc and Samoki that in former years the ancestors of this latter pueblo lived northeast of Bontoc toward the northern corner of the pocket. They say they moved to the opposite side of the river because there they would have more room. There they have grown to 1,200 or 1,500 souls. Still later, but yet before the Spanish came, a large section of people from northeastern Bontoc moved bodily to Lias, about two days to the east. They tell that a Bontoc woman named Fank′-a was the wife of a Lias man, and when a drought and famine visited Bontoc the section of the pueblo from which she came moved as a whole to Lias, then a small collection of people. Still later, La′-nao, a detached section of Bontoc on the lowland near the river, was suddenly wiped out by a disease.

The Igorot is given to naming even small areas of the earth within his well-known habitat, and there are four areas in Bontoc pueblo having distinct names. These names in no way refer to political or social divisions—they are not the “barrio” of the coast pueblos of the Islands, neither are they in any way like a “ward” in an American city, nor are they “additions” to an original part of the pueblo—they are names of geographic areas over which the pueblo was built or has spread. From south to north these areas are A-fu′, Mag-e′-o, Dao′-wi, and Um-fĕg′.

Ato

Bontoc is composed of seventeen political divisions, called “a′-to.” The geographic area of A-fu′ contains four a′-to, namely, Fa-tay′-yan, Po-lup-o′, Am-ka′-wa, and Bu-yay′-yĕng; Mag-e′-o contains three, namely, Fi′-lĭg, Mag-e′-o, and Cha-kong′; Dao′-wi has six, namely, Lo-wĭng′-an, Pud-pud-chog′, Si-pa′-at, Si-gi-chan′, So-mo-wan′, and Long-foy′; Um-fĕg′ has four, Po-ki′-san, Lu-wa′-kan, Ung-kan′, and Cho′-ko. Each a′-to is a separate political division. It has its public buildings; has a separate governing council which makes peace, challenges to war, and accepts or rejects war challenges, and it formally releases and adopts men who change residence from one a′-to to another.

Border a′-to Fa-tay′-yan seems to be developing an offspring—a new a′-to; a part of it, the southwestern border part, is now known as “Tang-e-ao′.” It is disclaimed as a separate a′-to, yet it has a distinctive name, and possesses some of the marks of an independent a′-to. In due time it will doubtless become such.

In Sagada, Agawa, Takong, and near-by pueblos the a′-to is said to be known as dap′-ay; and in Balili and Alap both names are known.

The pueblo must be studied entirely through the a′-to. It is only an aggregate of which the various a′-to are the units, and all the pueblo life there is is due to the similarity of interests of the several a′-to.

Bontoc does not know when her pueblo was built—she was always where she now is—but they say that some of the a′-to are newer than others. In fact, they divide them into the old and new. The newer ones are Bu-yay′-yĕng, Am-ka′-wa, Po-lup-o′, Cha-kong′, and Po-ki′-san; all these are border a′-to of the pueblo.

The generations of descendants of men who did distinct things are kept carefully in memory; and from the list of descendants of the builders of some of the newer a′-to it seems probable that Cha-kong′ was the last one built. One of the builders was Sal-lu-yud′; he had a son named Tam-bul′, and Tam-bul′ was the father of a man in Bontoc now some twenty-five years old. It is probable that Cha-kong′ was built about 1830—in the neighborhood of seventy-five years ago. The plat of the pueblo seems to strengthen the impression that Cha-kong′ is the newest a′-to, since it appears to have been built in territory previously used for rice granaries; it is all but surrounded by such ground now.

One of the builders of Bu-yay′-yĕng, an a′-to adjoining Cha-kong′, and also one of the newer ones, was Ba-la-ge′. Ba-la-ge′ was the great-great-great-grandfather of Mud-do′, who is a middle-aged man now in Bontoc. The generations of fathers descending from Ba-la-ge′ to Mud-do′ are the following: Bang-ĕg′, Cag-i′-yu, Bĭt-e′, and Ag-kus′. It seems from this evidence that the a′-to Bu-yay′-yĕng was built about one hundred and fifty years ago. These facts suggest a much greater age for the older a′-to of the pueblo.

An a′-to has three classes of buildings occupied by the people—the fawi and pabafunan, public structures for boys and men, and the olag for girls and young women before their permanent marriage; and the dwellings occupied by families and by widows, which are called afong. Each of these three classes of buildings plays a distinct rôle in the life of the people.

Pabafunan and fawi

The pa-ba-fu′-nan is the home of the various a′-to ceremonials. It is sacred to the men of the a′-to, and on no occasion do the women or girls enter it.

All boys from 3 or 4 years of age and all men who have no wives sleep nightly in the pa-ba-fu′-nan or in the fa′-wi.

The pa-ba-fu′-nan building consists of a low, squat, stone-sided structure partly covered with a grass roof laid on a crude frame of poles; the stone walls extend beyond the roof at one end and form an open court. The roofed part is about 8 by 10 feet, and usually is not over 5 feet high in any part, inside measure; the size of the court is approximately the same as that of the roofed section. In some pa-ba-fu′-nan a part of the court is roofed over for shelter in case of rain, but is not walled in. Under this roof skulls of dogs and hogs are generally found tucked away. Carabao horns and chicken feathers are also commonly seen in such places.

In many cases the open court is shaded by a tree. Posts are found reared above most of the courts. Some are old and blackened; others are all but gone—a short stump being all that projects above the earth. The tops of some posts are rudely carved to represent a human head; on the tops of others, as in a′-to Lowingan and Sipaat, there are stones which strikingly resemble human skulls. It is to the tops of these posts that the enemy’s head is attached when a victorious warrior returns to his a′-to. Both the roofed and court sections are paved with stone, and large stones are also arranged around the sides of the court, some more or less elevated as seats; they are worn smooth and shiny by generations of use. In the center of the court is the smoldering remains of a fire. The only opening into the covered part is a small doorway connecting it with the court. This door is barely large enough to permit a man to squeeze in sidewise; it is often not over 2½ feet high and 10 inches wide. The occupants of the pa-ba-fu′-nan usually sleep curled up naked on the smooth, flat stones. A few people have runo slat mats, some of which roll up, while others are inflexible, and they lie on these over the stone pavement. Fires are built in all sleeping rooms when it is cold, and the rooms all close tightly with a door.

In the court of the building the men lounge when not at work in the fields; they sleep, or smoke and chat, tend babies, or make utensils and weapons. The pa-ba-fu′-nan is the man’s club by day, and the unmarried man’s dormitory by night, and, as such, it is the social center for all men of the a′-to, and it harbors at night all men visiting from other pueblos.

Each a′-to, except Chakong, has a pa-ba-fu′-nan. When the men of Chakong were building theirs they met the pueblo of Sadanga in combat, and one of the builders lost his head to Sadanga. Then the old men of Chakong counciled together; they came to the conclusion that it was bad for the a′-to to have a pa-ba-fu′-nan, and none has ever been built. This absence of the pa-ba-fu′-nan in some way detracts from the importance of the a′-to in the minds of the people. For instance, in the early stages of this study I was told several times that there are sixteen (and not seventeen) a′-to in Bontoc. The first list of a′-to written did not include Chakong; it was discovered only when the pueblo was platted, and at that time my informants sought to pass it over by saying “It is Chakong, but it has no pa-ba-fu′-nan.” The explanation of the obscurity of Chakong in the minds of the Igorot seems to be that the a′-to ceremonial is more important than the a′-to council—that the emotional and not the mental is held uppermost, that the people of Bontoc flow together through feeling better than they drive together through cold force or control.

The a′-to ceremonials of Chakong are held in the pa-ba-fu′-nan of neighboring a′-to, as in Sigichan, Pudpudchog, or Filig, and this seems partially to destroy the esprit de corps of the unfortunate a′-to.

Each a′-to has a fa′-wi building—a structure greatly resembling to the pa-ba-fu′-nan, and impossible to be distinguished from it by one looking at the structure from the outside. The fa′-wi and pa-ba-fu′-nan are shown in [Pls. XXX], [XXXI], and [XXXII]. [Pl. XXIX] shows a section of Sipaat a′-to with its fa′-wi and pa-ba-fu′-nan. The fa′-wi is the a′-to council house; as such it is more frequented by the old men than by the younger. The fa′-wi also shelters the skulls of human heads taken by the a′-to. Outside the pueblo, along certain trails, there are simple structures also called “fa′-wi,” shelters where parties halt for feasts, etc., while on various ceremonial journeys.

The fa′-wi and pa-ba-fu′-nan of each a′-to are near together, and in five they are under the same roof, though there is no doorway for intercommunication. What was said of the pa-ba-fu′-nan as a social center is equally true of the fa′-wi; each is the lounging place of men and boys, and the dormitory of unmarried males.

In Samoki each of the eight a′-to has only one public building, and that is known simply as “a′-to.”

One is further convinced of an extensive early movement of the primitive Malayan from its pristine nest by the presence of institutions similar to the pa-ba-fu′-nan and fa′-wi over a vast territory of the Asiatic mainland as well as the Asiatic Islands and Oceania. That these widespread institutions sprang from the same source will be seen clearly in the quotations appearing in the footnote below.[1] The visible exponent of the institutions is a building forbidden to women, the functions of which are several; it is a dormitory for men—generally unmarried men—a council house, a guardhouse, a guest house for men, a center for ceremonials of the group, and a resting place for the trophies of the chase and war—a “head house.”

Olag

The o′-lâg is the dormitory of the girls in an a′-to from the age of about 2 years until they marry. It is a small stone and mud-walled structure, roofed with grass, in which a grown person can seldom stand erect. It has but a single opening—a door some 30 inches high and 10 inches wide. Occupying nearly all the floor space are boards about 4 feet long and from 8 to 14 inches wide; each board is a girl’s bed. They are placed close together, side by side, laid on a frame about a foot above the earth. One end, where the head rests, is slightly higher that the other, while in most o′-lâg a pole for a foot rest runs along the foot of the beds a few inches from them. The building as shown in [Pl. XXXIII] is typical of the nineteen found in Bontoc pueblo—though it does not show, what is almost invariably true, that it is built over one or more pigsties. This condition is illustrated in [Pl. XXIX], where a widow’s house is shown literally resting above the stone walls of several sties. Unlike the fawi and pabafunan, the o′-lâg has no adjoining court, and no shady surroundings. It is built to house the occupants only at night.

The o′-lâg is not so distinctly an ato institution as the pabafunan and fawi. Ato Ungkan never had an o′-lâg. The demand is not so urgent as that of some ato, since there are only thirteen families in Ungkan. The girls occupy o′-lâg of neighboring ato.

The o′-lâg of Luwakan, of Lowingan, and of Sipaat (the last situated in Lowingan) are broken down and unused at present. There are no marriageable girls in any of these three ato now, and the small girls occupy near-by o′-lâg. These three o′-lâg will be rebuilt when the girls are large enough to cook food for the men who build. The o′-lâg of Amkawa is in Buyayyeng near the o′-lâg of the latter; it is there by choice of the occupants.

Mageo, with her twenty families, also has two o′-lâg, but both are situated in Pudpudchog.

The o′-lâg is the only Igorot building which has received a specific name, all others bear simply the class name.[2]

In Sagada and some nearby pueblos, as Takong and Agawa, the o′-lâg is said to be called Ĭf-gan′.

Mr. S. H. Damant is quoted from the Calcutta Review (vol. 61, p. 93) as saying that among the Năgăs, frontier tribes of northeast India—

Only very young children live entirely with their parents; … the women have also a house of their own called the “dekhi chang,” where the unmarried girls are supposed to live.

Again Mr. Damant wrote:

I saw Dekhi chang here for the first time. All the unmarried girls sleep there at night, but it is deserted in the day. It is not much different from any ordinary house.[3]

Separate sleeping houses for girls similar to the o′-lâg, I judge, are also found occasionally in Assam.[4]

Whereas, so far as known, the o′-lâg occurs with the Igorot only among the Bontoc culture group, yet the above quotations and references point to a similar institution among distant people—among some of the same people who have an institution very similar to the pabafunan and fawi.

Afong

A′-fong is the general name for Bontoc dwellings, of which there are two kinds. The first is the fay′-ü ([Pls. XXXIV] and [XXXVI]), the large, open, board dwelling, some 12 by 15 feet square, with side walls only 3½ feet high, and having a tall, top-heavy grass roof. It is the home of the prosperous. The other is the kat-yu′-fong ([Pl. XXXVII]), the smaller, closed, frequently mud-walled dwelling of poor families, and commonly of the widows.

The family dwelling primarily serves two purposes—it is the place where the man, his wife, and small child sleep, and where the entire family takes its food.

The fay′-ü is built at considerable expense. Three or four men are required for a period of about two months to get out the pine boards and timbers in the forest. Each piece of timber for any permanent building is completed at the time it is cut from the tree, and is left to season in the mountains; sometimes it remains several years. (See [Pl. XXXV].) When all is ready to construct the dwelling the owner announces his intention. Some 200 men of the pueblo gather to erect the building, and two or three dozen women come to prepare and cook the necessary food, for, whereas no wage is paid the laborers, all are feasted at the cost of much rice and several hogs and a carabao or two. The toiling and feasting continue about ten days.

The following description of a fay′-ü is of an ordinary dwelling in Bontoc pueblo: The fay′-ü are all constructed on the same plan, though a few are larger than the one here described, and some few are smaller. The front and back walls of the house are 3 feet 6 inches high and 12 feet 6 inches long. The two side walls are the same height as the ends, but are 15 feet 6 inches long. The rear wall is built of stones carefully chinked with mud. The side walls consist each of two boards extending the full length of the structure. The front wall is cut near the middle from top to bottom with a doorway 1 foot 4 inches wide; otherwise the front wall is like the two side walls, except that it has a roughly triangular timber grooved along the lower side and fitted over the top board as a cap. The doorposts are two timbers sunk in the ground; their tops fit into the two “caps,” and each has a groove from top to bottom into which the ends of the boards of the front wall are inserted. A few dwellings have a door consisting of a single board set on end and swinging on a projection sunk in a hole in a doorsill buried in the earth; the upper part of the door swings on a string secured to the doorpost and passing through a hole in the door.

At each of the four corners of the building, immediately inside the walls, is a post set in the ground and standing 6 feet 9 inches high. The boards of the walls are tied to these corner posts, and the greater part of the weight of the roof rests on their tops. Four other posts, also planted in the ground and about as high as the corner posts, stand about 4 feet inside the walls of the house equidistant from the corner post and marking the corners of a rectangle about 5½ feet square. They directly support the second story of the building.

There is no floor except the earth in the first story of the Bontoc dwelling, and from the door at the front of the building to the two rear posts of the four central ones there is an unobstructed passage or aisle called “cha-la′-nan.” At one’s left, as he enters the door, is a small room called “chap-an′” 5½ feet square separated from the aisle by a row of low stones partially sunk in the earth. The earth in this room is excavated so that the floor is about 1 foot lower than that of the remainder of the building, and in its center the peculiar double wooden rice mortar is imbedded in the earth. It is in the chap-an′ that the family rice and millet is threshed. At the left of the aisle and immediately beyond the chap-an′, separated from it by a board partition the same height as the outside walls of the house, is the cooking room, called “cha-le-ka-nan′ si mo-o′-to.” It is approximately the same size as the threshing room. There are neither boards nor stones to cut this cooking room off from the open aisle of the house, but its width is determined by a low pile of stones built along its farther side from the outer house wall toward the aisle and ending at the rear left post of the four central ones. In the face of this stone wall are three concavities—fireplaces over which cooking pots are placed. Arranged along the outer wall, and about 2 feet high, is a board shelf on which the water jars are kept.

At the right of the aisle, as one enters the building, is a broad shelf about 12 feet long; in width it extends from the side wall to the two right central posts. On this shelf, called “chûk′-so,” are placed the various baskets and other utensils and implements of everyday use. Beneath it are stored the small cages or coops in which the chickens sleep at night. There are a few fay′-ü in Bontoc in which the threshing room and cooking room are on the right of the aisle and the long bench is on the left, but they are very rare exceptions.

In the rear of the building is a board partition apparently extending from one side wall to the other. The bench at the right of the aisle ends against this partition, and on the left the stone fireplaces are built against it. This rear section is covered over with boards at the height of the outside wall, so that a low box is formed, 3½ feet high and 4¼ feet wide. At the rear of the aisle a door 3 feet high and 1 foot 4 inches wide swings into this rear apartment, which, when the door is again closed, is as black as night. An examination of the inside of this section shows it to be entirely walled with stones except where the narrow door cuts it. By inside measure it is only 3 feet 6 inches wide and 6 feet 6 inches long. This is the sleeping apartment, and is called ang-an′. As one crawls into this kennel he is likely to place his hands among ashes and charred sticks which mark the place for a fire on cold nights. The left end of the ang-an′ contains two boards or beds for the man and his wife. Each board is about 18 inches wide and 4 feet long; they are raised 2 or 3 inches from the earth, and the head of the bed is slightly higher than the foot. A pole is laid across the apartment at the lower end of the sleeping boards, and on this the occupants rest their feet and toast them before the small fire. At both ends of the ang-an′, outside the store walls, is a small hidden secret space called “kûb-kûb,” in which the family hides many of its choice possessions. During abundant camote[5] gathering, however, I have seen the kûb-kûb filled with camotes. I should probably not have discovered these spaces had there not been so great a discrepancy between the inside measure of the sleeping room and width of the building.

I know of no other primitive dwellings in the Philippines than the ones in the Bontoc culture area which are built directly on the ground. Most of them are raised on posts several feet from the earth. Some few have side walls extending to the ground, but even those have a floor raised 2, 3, or more feet from the ground and which is reached by means of a short ladder.

The second story of the Bontoc dwelling is supported on the four central posts. On all sides it projects beyond them, so that it is about 7 feet square; it is about 5 feet high. A door enters the second story directly from the aisle, and is reached by an 8-foot ladder. This second story is constructed, floor and side walls, of boards. The side walls cease at about the height of 2 feet where a horizontal shelf is built on them extending outside of them to the roof. It is about 2 feet wide and is usually stored with unthreshed rice and millet or with jars of preserved meats. Just at the left on the floor, as one enters the second story, is an earth-filled square corner walled in by two poles. On this earth are three stones—the fireplace, where each year a chicken is cooked in a household ceremony at the close of rice harvests.

Rising above the second story is a third. In the smaller dwellings this third story is only an attic of the second, but in the larger buildings it is an independent story. To be sure, it is entered through the floor, but a ladder is used, and its floor is of strong heavy boards. It is at all times a storeroom, usually only for cereals. In the smaller houses it amounts simply to a broad shelf about the height of one’s waist as he stands on the floor of the second story and his head and upper body rise through the hole in the floor. In the larger houses a person may climb into the third story and work there with practically as much freedom as in the second.

The 5-foot ridgepole of the steep, heavy, grass roof is supported by two posts rising from the basal timbers of the third story. The roof falls away sharply from the ridgepole not only at the sides but at the ends, so that, except at the ridge, the roof appears square. Immediately beneath both ends of the ridgepole there is a small opening in the grass through which the smoke of the cooking fires is supposed to escape. However, I have scarcely ever seen smoke issue from them, and, since the entire inner part of the building from the floor of the second story to the ridgepole is thickly covered with soot, it seems that little unconsumed carbon escapes through the smoke holes. The lower part of the roof, for 3½ feet, descends at a less steep angle, thus forming practically an awning against sun and rain. Its lower edge is about 4 feet from the ground and projects some 4 feet beyond the side walls of the lower story.

The kat-yu′-fong, the dwelling of the poor, consists of a one-story structure built on the ground with the earth for the floor. Some such buildings have a partition or partial partition running across them, beyond which are the sleeping boards, and there are shelves here and there; but the kat-yu′-fong is a makeshift, and consequently is not so fixed a type of dwelling as the fay′-ü.

Piled close around the dwellings is a supply of firewood in the shape of pine blocks 3 or 4 feet long, usually cut from large trees. These blocks furnish favorite lounging places for the women. The people live most of the time outside their dwellings, and it is there that the social life of the married women is. Any time of day they may be seen close to the a′-fong in the shade of the low, projecting roof sitting spinning or paring camotes; often three or four neighbors sit thus together and gossip. The men are seldom with them, being about the ato buildings in the daytime when not working. A few small children may be about the dwelling, as the little girls frequently help in preparing food for cooking.

During the day the dwelling is much alone. When it is so left one and sometimes two runo stalks are set up in the earth on each side of the door leaning against the roof and projecting some 8 feet in the air. This is the pud-i-pud′, the “ethics lock” on an Igorot dwelling. An Igorot who enters the a′-fong of a neighbor when the pud-i-pud′ is up is called a thief—in the mind of all who see him he is such.

The family

Bontoc families are monogamous, and monogamy is the rule throughout the area, though now and then a man has two wives. The presidente of Titipan has five wives, for each of whom he has a separate house, and during my residence in Bontoc he was building a sixth house for a new wife; but such a family is the exception—I never heard of another.

Many marriage unions produce eight and ten children, though, since the death rate is large, it is probable that families do not average more than six individuals.

Childbirth

A woman is usually about her daily labors in the house, the mountains, or the irrigated fields almost to the hour of childbirth. The child is born without feasting or ceremony, and only two or three friends witness the birth. The father of the child is there, if he is the woman’s husband; the girl’s mother is also with her, but usually there are no others, unless it be an old woman.

The expectant woman stands with her body bent strongly forward at the waist and supported by the hands grasping some convenient house timber about the height of the hips; or she may take a more animal-like position, placing both hands and feet on the earth.

The labor, lasting three or four hours, is unassisted by medicines or baths; but those in attendance—the man as well as the woman—hasten the birth by a gently downward drawing of the hands about the woman’s abdomen.

During a period of ten days after childbirth the mother frequently bathes herself about the hips and abdomen with hot water, but has no change of diet. For two or three days she keeps the house closely, reclining much of the time.

The Igorot woman is a constant laborer from the age of puberty or before, until extreme incapacity of old age stays the hands of toil; but for two or three months following the advent of each babe the mother does not work in the fields. She busies herself about the house and with the new-found duties of a mother, while the husband performs her labors in the fields.

The Igorot loves all his children, and says, when a boy is born, “It is good,” and if a girl is born he says it is equally “good”—it is the fact of a child in the family that makes him happy. People in the Igorot stage of culture have little occasion to prize one sex over the other. The Igorot neither, even in marriage. One is practically as capable as the other at earning a living, and both are needed in the group.

Six or seven days after birth a chicken is killed and eaten by the family in honor of the child, but there is no other ceremony—there is not even a special name for the feast.

If a woman gives birth to a stillborn child it is at once washed, wrapped in a bit of cloth, and buried in a camote sementera close to the dwelling.

Twins

The Igorot do not understand twins,—na-a-pĭk′, as they say. Carabaos have only one babe at a birth, so why should women have two babes? they ask. They believe that one of the twins, which unfortunate one they call “a-tĭn-fu-yang′,” is an anito child; it is the offspring of an anito.[6] The anito father is said to have been with the mother of the twins in her unconscious slumber, and she is in no way criticised or reproached.

The most quiet babe, or, if they are equally quiet, the larger one, is said to be “a-tĭn-fu-yang′,” and is at once placed in an olla[7] and buried alive in a sementera near the dwelling.

On the 13th of April, 1903, the wife of A-li-koy′, of Samoki, gave birth to twin babies. Contrary to the advice and solicitations of the old men and the universal custom of the people, A-li-koy′ saved both children, because, as he pointed out, an Ilokano of Bontoc had twin children, now 7 years old, and they are all right. Thus the breaking down of this peculiar form of infanticide may have begun.

Abortion

Both married and unmarried women practice abortion when for any reason the prospective child is not desired. It is usual, however, for the mother of a pregnant girl to object to her aborting, saying that soon she would become “po′-ta”—the common mate of several men, rather than the faithful wife of one.

Abortion is accomplished without the use of drugs and is successful only during the first eight or ten weeks of pregnancy. The abdomen is bathed for several days in hot water, and the body is pressed and stroked downward with the hands. The foetus is buried by the woman. Only the woman herself or her mother or other near female friend is present at the abortion, though no effort is made at secrecy and its practice is no disgrace.

Child

Care of child in parents’ dwelling

All male babes are called “kil-lang′” and all girl babes “gna-an′.” All live practically the same life day after day. Their sole nourishment is their mother’s milk, varied now and then by that of some other woman, if the mother is obliged to leave the babe for a half day or so. When the babe’s first teeth appear it has a slight change of diet; its attendant now and then feeds it cooked rice, thoroughly masticated and mixed with saliva. This food is passed to the child’s mouth directly from that of the attendant by contact of lips—quite as the domestic canary feeds its young. The babes are always unclothed, and for several months are washed daily in cold water, usually both morning and night. It is a common sight at the river to see the mother, who has come down with her babe on her back for an olla of water, bathe the babe, who never seems at all frightened in the process, but to enjoy it—this, too, at times when the water would seem to be uncomfortably cold. One often sees the father or grandmother washing the older babes at the river.

But in spite of these baths the Igorot babe, at least after it has reached the age of six or eight months, when seen in the pueblo is almost without exception very dirty; a child of a year or a year and a half is usually repulsively so. Its head has received no attention since birth, and is scaly and dirty if not actually full of sores. Its baths are now relatively infrequent, and its need of them as it plays on the dirt floor of the dwelling or pabafunan even more urgent than when it spent most of its time in the carrying blanket.

Babes have no cradles or stationary places for rest or sleep. A babe, slumbering or awake, is never laid down alone because of the fear that an anito will injure it. At night the babe sleeps between its parents, on its mother’s arm. It spends its days almost without exception sitting in a blanket which is tied over the shoulder of one of its parents, its brother, or its sister. There it hangs, awake or asleep, sitting or sprawling, often a pitiable little object with the sun in its eyes and the flies hovering over its dirty face. Frequently a child of only 5 or 6 years old may be seen with a babe on its back, and older children are constant baby tenders. Babes may be found in the fawi and pabafunan where the men are lounging ([Pl. XXXII]), and the old men and women also care for their grandchildren. Grown people quite as commonly carry the babe astride one hip if they have an empty hand which they can put around it, and often a mother along the trail carries it at her breast where it seemingly nurses as contentedly as when in the shade of the dwelling.

Children are generally weaned long before they are 2 years old, but twice I have seen a young pillager of 5 years, while patting and stroking his mother’s hips and body as she transplanted rice, yield to his early baby instinct and suckle from her pendant breasts.

After the child is about 2 years of age it is not customary for it to sleep longer at the home of the parents; the girl goes nightly to the olag, and the boy to the pabafunan or the fawi. However, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, and the age at which the child goes to the olag or fawi depends much on circumstances. The length of time it sleeps with the parents doubtless depends upon the advent or nonadvent of another child. If a little girl has a widowed grandmother or aunt she may sleep for a few years with her. During the warmer months one or two children may sleep on the stationary broad bench, the chukso, in the open part of the parents’ house. It is safe to say that after the ages of 6 or 7 all children are found nightly in the olag, pabafunan, or fawi. I have seen a group of little girls from 4 to 10 years old, immediately after supper and while some families were still eating, sitting around a small blaze of fire just outside the door of their olag. The Igorot child as a rule knows its parents’ home only as a place to eat. There is almost an entire absence of anything which may be called home life.

Naming

The Igorot has no definite system of naming. Parents may frequently change the name of a child, and an individual may change his during maturity. There are several reasons why names are changed, but there is no system, nor is it ever necessary to change them.

A child usually receives its first personal name between the years of 2 and 5. This first name is always that of some dead ancestor, usually only two or three generations past. The reason for this is the belief that the anito of the ancestor cares for and protects its descendants when they are abroad. If the name a child bears is that of a dead ancestor it will receive the protection of the anito of the ancestor; if the child does not prosper or has accidents or ill health, the parents will seek a more careful or more benevolent protector in the anito of some other ancestor whose name is given the child.

To illustrate this changing of names: A boy in Tukukan, two hours from Bontoc, was first named Sa-pang′ when less than a year old. At the end of a year the paternal grandfather, An-ti′-ko, died in Tukukan, and the babe was named An-ti′-ko. In a few years the boy’s father died, and the mother married a man in Bontoc, the home of her childhood. She moved to Bontoc with her boy, and then changed his name to Fa-li-kao′, her dead father’s name. The reason for this last change was because the anito of An-ti′-ko, always in or about Tukukan, could not care for the child in Bontoc, whereas the anito of Fa-li-kao′ in Bontoc could do so.

The selection of the names of ancestors is shown by the following generations:

Mang-i-lot′ (4) is the baby name of an old man now about 60 years old; it was the name of his great-grandfather (1). Numbers 5 a, 5 b, 5 c, and 5 d are the sons of Mang-i-lot′ (4), all of whom died before receiving a second name. The child Kom-lĭng′ (5 a) was given the name of his paternal grandfather (3). Ta-kay′-yĕng (5 b) bears the name of his maternal great-grandfather. Tĕng-ab′ (5 c) and Ka-wĕng′ (5 d) both bear the names of uncles, brothers of the boy’s mother. The present name of Mang-i-lot′ (4) is O-lu-wan′; this is the name of a man at Barlig whose head was the first one taken by Mang-i-lot′. A man may change his name each time he takes a head, though it is not customary to do so more than once or twice.

Girls as well as boys may receive during childhood two or three names, that they may receive the protection of an anito. In Igorot names there is no vestige of a kinship group tracing relation through either the paternal or maternal line.

The people are generally reticent about telling their names; and when they do tell, the name given is usually the one borne in childhood; an old man will generally answer “am-a′-ma,” meaning simply “old man.”

Circumcision

Most boys are circumcised at from 4 to 7 years of age. The act of circumcision, called “sĭg-i-at′,” occurs privately without feasting or rite. The only formality is the payment of a few leaves of tobacco to the man who performs the operation. There are one or two old men in each ato who understand circumcision, but there is no cult for its performance or perpetuation.

The foreskin is cut lengthwise on the upper side for half an inch. Either a sharp, blade-like piece of bamboo is inserted in the foreskin which is cut from the inside, or the back point of a battle-ax is stuck firmly in the earth, and the foreskin is cut by being drawn over the sharp point of the blade.

The Igorot say that if the foreskin is not cut it will grow long, as does the unclipped camote vine. What the origin or purpose of circumcision was is not now known by the people of Bontoc. The practice is believed to have come with them from an earlier home; it is widespread in the Archipelago.

Amusements

The life of little girls is strangely devoid of games and playthings. They have no dolls and, I have never seen them play with the puppies which are scattered throughout the pueblo much of the year—both common playthings for the girls of primitive people. It is not improbable that the instinct which compels most girls, no matter what their grade of culture, to play the mother is given full expression in the necessary care of babes—a care in which the girls, often themselves almost babes, have a much larger part than their brothers. Girls also go to the fields with their parents much more than do the boys.

Girls and boys never play together in the same group. Time and again one comes suddenly on a romping group of chattering, naked little boys or girls. They usually run noiselessly into the nearest foliage or behind the nearest building, and there stand unmoving, as a pursued chicken pokes its head into the grass and seems to think itself hidden. They need not be afraid of one, seeing him every day, yet the instinct to flee is strong in them—they do exactly what their mothers do when suddenly met in the trail—they run away, or start to.

Several times I have found little girls building tiny sementeras with pebbles, and it is probable they play at planting and harvesting the crops common to their pueblo. They have one game called “I catch your ankle,” which is the best expression of unfettered childplay and mirth I have ever seen.

After the sun had dropped behind the mountain close to the pueblo, from six to a dozen girls ranging from 5 to 10 or 11 years of age came almost nightly to the smooth grass plat in front of our house to play “sĭs-sĭs′-ki” (I catch your ankle). They laid aside their blankets and lined up nude in two opposing lines twelve or fifteen feet apart. All then called: “Sĭs-sĭs′-ki ad wa′-ni wa′-ni!” (which is, “I catch your ankle, now! now!”). Immediately the two lines crouched on their haunches, and, in half-sitting posture, with feet side by side, each girl bounced toward her opponent endeavoring to catch her ankle. After the two attacking parties met they intermingled, running and tumbling, chasing and chased, and the successful girl rapidly dragged her victim by the ankle along the grass until caught and thrown by a relief party or driven away by the approach of superior numbers. They lined up anew every five or ten minutes.

During the entire game, lasting a full half hour or until night settled on them or a mother came to take home one of the little, romping, wild things—just as the American child is called from her games to an early bed—peal after peal of the heartiest, sweetest laughter rang a constant chorus. The boys have at least two systematic games. One is fûg-fûg-to′, in imitation of a ceremonial of the men after each annual rice harvest. The game is a combat with rocks, and is played sometimes by thirty or forty boys, sometimes by a much smaller number. The game is a contest—usually between Bontoc and Samoki—with the broad, gravelly river bed as the battle ground. There they charge and retreat as one side gains or loses ground; the rocks fly fast and straight, and are sometimes warded off by small basket-work shields shaped like the wooden ones of war. They sometimes play for an hour and a half at a time, and I have not yet seen them play when one side was not routed and driven home on the run amid the shouts of the victors.

The other game is kag-kag-tin′. It is also a game of combat and of opposing sides, but it is not so dangerous as the other and there are no bruises resulting. Some half-dozen or a dozen boys play kag-kag-tin′ charging and retreating, fighting with the bare feet. The naked foot necessitates a different kick than the one shod with a rigid leather shoe; the stroke from an unshod foot is more like a blow from the fist shot out from the shoulder. The foot lands flat and at the side of or behind the kicker, and the blow is aimed at the trunk or head—it usually lands higher than the hips. This game in a combat between individuals of the opposing sides, though two often attack a single opponent until he is rescued by a companion. The game is over when the retreating side no longer advances to the combat.

The boys are constantly throwing reed spears, and they are fairly expert spearmen several years before they have a steel-bladed spear of their own. Frequently they roll the spherical grape fruit and throw their reeds at the fruit as it passes.

Here, there, and everywhere, singly or in groups, boys perform the Igorot dance step. A tin can in a boy’s hands is irresistibly beaten in rhythmic time, and the dance as surely follows the peculiar rhythmic beating as the beating follows the possession of the can. As the boys come stringing home at night from watching the palay fields, they come dancing, rhythmically beating a can, or two sticks, or their dinner basket, or beating time in the air—as though they held a gangsa[8]. The dance is in them, and they amuse themselves with it constantly.

Both boys and girls are much in the river, where they swim and dive with great frolic.

During the months of January and February, 1903, when there was much wind, the boys were daily flying kites, but it is a pastime borrowed of the Ilokano in the pueblo. Now and then a little fellow may be seen with a small, very rude bow and arrow, which also is borrowed from the Ilokano since the arrival of the Spaniard.

Puberty

Puberty is reached relatively late, usually between the fourteenth and sixteenth years. No notice whatever is taken of it by the social group. There is neither feast nor rite to mark the event either for the individual or the group.

This nonobservance of the fact of puberty would be very remarkable, since its observance is so widespread among primitive people, were it not for the fact that the Igorot has developed the olag—an institution calculated to emphasize the fact and significance of puberty.

Life in olag

Though the o′-lâg is primarily the sleeping place of all unmarried girls, in the mind of the people it is, with startling consistency, the mating place of the young people of marriageable age.

A common sight on a rest day in the pueblo is that of a young man and woman, each with an arm around the other, loitering about under the same blanket, talking and laughing, one often almost supporting the other. There seems at all times to be the greatest freedom and friendliness among the young people. I have seen both a young man carrying a young woman lying horizontally along his shoulders, and a young woman carrying a young man astride her back. However, practically all courtship is carried on in the o′-lâg.

The courtship of the Igorot is closely defined when it is said that marriage never takes place prior to sexual intimacy, and rarely prior to pregnancy. There is one exception. This is when a rich and influential man marries a girl against her desires, but through the urgings of her parents.

It is customary for a young man to be sexually intimate with one, two, three, and even more girls at the same time. Two or more of them may be residents of one o′-lâg, and it is common for two or three men to visit the same o′-lâg at one time.

A girl is almost invariably faithful to her temporary lover, and this fact is the more surprising in the face of the young man’s freedom and the fact that the o′-lâg is nightly filled with little girls whose moral training is had there.

Young men are boldly and pointedly invited to the o′-lâg. A common form of invitation is for the girl to steal a man’s pipe, his pocket hat, or even the breechcloth he is wearing. They say one seldom recovers his property without going to the, o′-lâg for it.

When a girl recognizes her pregnancy she at once joyfully tells her condition to the father of the child, as all women desire children and there are few permanent marriages unblessed by them. The young man, if he does not wish to marry the girl, may keep her in ignorance of his intentions for two or three months. If at last he tells her he will not marry her she receives the news with many tears, it is said, but is spared the gossip and reproach of others, and she will later become the wife of some other man, since her first child has proved her power to bear children.

When the mother notices her condition she asks who the father of the child is, and on being told that the man will not marry her the mother often tries to exert a rather tardy influence for better morals. She says, “That is bad. Why have you done this?” (when the chances are that the unfortunate, girl was born into a family of but one head); “it will be well for him to give the child a sementera to work.” About the same time the young man informs his mother of his relations with the girl, and of her condition, and again the maker of a people’s morals seems to attempt to mold the already hardened clay. She says, “My son, that is bad. Why have you done it? Why do you not marry her?” And the son answers simply and truthfully, “I have another girl.” Without attempt at remonstrance the father gives a rice sementera to the child when it is 6 or 7 years old, for that is the price fixed by the group conscience for deserting a girl with a child.

It is not usual for a married man to go to the o′-lâg, though a young man may go if one of his late mates is still alone. He is usually welcomed by the girl, for there may yet be possibilities of her becoming his permanent wife. A man whose wife is pregnant, however, seldom visits the o′-lâg, because he fears that, if he does, his wife’s child will be prematurely born and die.

The o′-lâg is built where the girls desire it and is said to be commonly located in places accessible to the men; this appears true to one going over the pueblo with this statement in mind.

The life in the o′-lâg does not seem to weaken the boys or girls or cause them to degenerate, neither does it appear to make them vicious. Whereas there is practically no sense of modesty among the people, I have never seen anything lewd. Though there is no such thing as virtue, in the modern sense of the word, among the young people after puberty, children before puberty are said to be virtuous, and the married woman is said always to be true to her husband.

According to a recent translator of Blumentritt[9] that author is made to say (evidently speaking of the o′-lâg):

Amongst most of the tribes [Igorot] the chastity of maidens is carefully guarded, and in some all the young girls are kept together till marriage in a large house where, guarded by old women, they are taught the industries of their sex, such as weaving, pleating, making cloth from the bark of trees, etc.

There is no such institution in Bontoc Igorot society. The purpose of the o′-lâg is as far from enforcing chastity as it well can be. The old women never frequent the o′-lâg, and the lesson the girls learn there is the necessity for maternity, not the “industries of their sex”—which children of very primitive people acquire quite as a young fowl learns to scratch and get its food.

Marriage

The ethics of the group forbid certain unions in marriage. A man may not marry his mother, his stepmother, or a sister of either. He may not marry his daughter, stepdaughter, or adopted daughter. He may not marry his sister, or his brother’s widow, or a first cousin by blood or adoption. Sexual intercourse between persons in the above relations is considered incest, and does not often occur. The line of kin does not appear to be traced as far as second cousin, and between such there are no restrictions.

Rich people often pledge their small children in marriage, though, as elsewhere in the world, love, instead of the plans of parents, is generally the foundation of the family. In February, 1903, the rich people of Bontoc were quite stirred up over the sequel to a marriage plan projected some fifteen years before. Two families then pledged their children. The boy grew to be a man of large stature, while the girl was much smaller. The man wished to marry another young woman, who fought the first girl when visited by her to talk over the matter. Then the blind mother of the pledged girl went to the dwelling, accompanied by her brother, one of the richest men in the pueblo, whereupon the father and mother of the successful girl knocked them down and beat them. To all appearances the young lovers will marry in spite of the early pledges of parents. They say such quarrels are common.

If a man wishes to marry a woman and she shares his desire, or if on her becoming pregnant he desires to marry her, he speaks with her parents and with his. If either of her parents objects, no marriage occurs; but he does not usually falter, even though his parents do object. They say the advent of a babe seldom fails to win the good will of the young man’s parents. In the case of the girl’s pregnancy, marriage is more assured, and her father builds or gives her a house. The olag is no longer for her. In her case it has served its ultimate purpose—it has announced her puberty and proved her powers of womanhood. In the case of a desire of marriage before the girl is pregnant she usually sleeps in the olag, as in the past, and the young man spends most of his nights with her. It is customary for the couple to take their meals with the parents of the girl, in which case the young man gives his labors to the family. The period of his labors is usually less than a year, since it is customary for him to give his affections to another girl within a year if the first one does not become pregnant.

In other words their union is a true trial union. If the trial is successful the girl’s father builds her a dwelling, and the marriage ceremony occurs immediately upon occupation of the dwelling. The ceremony is in two parts. The first is called “in-pa-ke′,” and at that time a hog or carabao is killed, and the two young people start housekeeping. The kap′-i-ya ceremony follows—among the rich this marriage ceremony occupies two days, but with the poor only one day. The kap′-i-ya is performed by an old man of the ato in which the couple is to live. He suggestively places a hen’s egg, some rice, and some tapui[10] in a dish before him while he addresses Lumawig, the one god, as follows:

Thou, Lumawig! now these children desire to unite in marriage. They wish to be blessed with many children. When they possess pigs, may they grow large. When they cultivate their palay, may it have large fruitheads. May their chickens also grow large. When they plant their beans may they spread over the ground, May they dwell quietly together in harmony. May the man’s vitality quicken the seed of the woman.

The two-day marriage ceremony of the rich is very festive. The parents kill a wild carabao, as well as chickens and pigs, and the entire pueblo comes to feast and dance. It is customary for the pueblo to have a rest day, called “fo-sog′,” following the marriage of the rich, so the entire period given to the marriage is three days. Each party to the, marriage receives some property at the time from the parents. There are no women in Bontoc pueblo who have not entered into the trial union, though all have not succeeded in reaching the ceremony of permanent marriage. However, notwithstanding all their standards and trials, there are several happy permanent marriages which have never been blessed with children. There are only two men in Bontoc who have never been married and who never entered the trial stage, and both are deaf and dumb.

Divorce

The people of Bontoc say they never knew a man and woman to separate if a child was born to the pair and it lived and they had recognized themselves married. But, as the marriage is generally prompted because a child is to be born, so an unfruitful union is generally broken in the hope that another will be more successful.

If either party desires to break the contract the other seldom objects. If they agree to separate, the woman usually remains in their dwelling and the man builds himself another. However, if either person objects, it is the other who relinquishes the dwelling—the man because he can build another and the woman because she seldom seeks separation unless she knows of a home in which she will be welcome.

Nothing in the nature of alimony, except the dwelling, is commonly given by either party to a divorce. There are two exceptions—in case a party deserts he forfeits to the other one or more rice sementeras or other property of considerable value; and, again, if the woman bore her husband a child which died he must give her a sementera if he leaves her.

The widowed

If either party to a marriage dies the other does not remarry for one year. There is no penalty enforced by the group for an earlier marriage, but the custom is firmly fixed. Should the surviving person marry within a year he would die, being killed by an anito whose business it is to punish such sacrilege. The widowed frequently remarry, as there are certain advantages in their married life. It is quite impossible for a man or woman alone to perform the entire round of Igorot labors. The hours of labor for the lone person must usually be long and tiresome.

Most of the widowed live in the katyufong, the smaller dwelling of the poor. The reason for this is that even if one has owned the better class of dwelling, the fayu, it is generally given to a child at marriage, the smaller house being sufficient and suitable for the lone person, especially as the widowed very frequently take their meals with some married child.

Orphans

Orphans without homes of their own become members of the household of an uncle or aunt or other near relative. The property they received from their parents is used by the family into whose home they go. Upon marriage the children receive the property as it was left them, the annual increase having gone to the family which cared for them.

If there are no relatives, orphans with property readily find a home; if there are neither relatives nor property, some family receives the children more as servants than as equals. When they are married they are usually not given more than a dwelling.

The aged

There are few old and infirm persons who have not living relatives. Among these relatives are usually descendants who have been materially benefited by property accumulated or kept intact by their aged kin. It is the universal custom for relatives to feed and otherwise care for the aged. Not much can be done for the infirm, and infirmity is the beginning of the end with all except the blind.

The chances are that the old who have no relatives have at least a little property. Such persons are readily cared for by some family which uses the property at the time and falls heir to it when the owner dies. There are a very few blind persons who have neither relatives nor property, and these are cared for by families which offer assistance, and two of these old blind men beg rice from dwelling to dwelling.

Sickness, disease, and remedies

All disease, sickness, or ailment, however serious or slight, among the Bontoc Igorot is caused by an a-ni′-to. If smallpox kills half a dozen persons in one day, the fell work is that of an a-ni′-to; if a man receives a stone bruise on the trail an a-ni′-to is in the foot and must be removed before recovery is possible. There is one exception to the above sweeping charge against the a-ni′-to—the Igorot says that toothache is caused by a small worm twisting and turning in the tooth.

Igorot society contains no person who is so malevolent as to cause another sickness, insanity, or death. So charitable is the Igorot’s view of his fellows that when, a few years ago, two Bontoc men died of poison administered by another town, the verdict was that the administering hands were directed by some vengeful or diabolical a-ni′-to.

As a people the Bontoc Igorot are healthful. It is seldom that an epidemic reaches them; bubonic plague and leprosy are unknown to them.

By far the majority of deaths among them is due to what the Igorot calls fever—as they say, “im-po′-os nan a′-wak,” or “heat of the body”—but they class as “fever” half a dozen serious diseases, some almost always fatal.

The men at times suffer with malaria. They go to the low west coast as cargadors or as primitive merchants, and they return to their mountain country enervated by the heat, their systems filled with impure water, and their blood teeming with mosquito-planted malaria. They get down with fever, lose their appetite, neither know the value of nor have the medicines of civilization, their minds are often poisoned with the superstitious belief that they will die—and they do die in from three days to two months. In February, 1903, three cargadors died within two weeks after returning from the coast.

Measles, chicken pox, typhus and typhoid fevers, and a disease resulting from eating new rice are undifferentiated by the Igorot—they are his “fever.” Measles and chicken pox are generally fatal to children. Igorot pueblos promptly and effectually quarantine against these diseases. When a settlement is afflicted with either of them it shuts its doors to all outsiders—even using force if necessary; but force is seldom demanded, as other pueblos at once forbid their people to enter the afflicted settlement. The ravages of typhus and typhoid fever may be imagined among a people who have no remedies for them. The diseased condition resulting each year from eating new rice has locally been called “rice cholera.” During the months of June, July, and August—the two harvest months of rice and the one following—considerable rice of the new crop is annually eaten. If rice has been stored in the palay houses until it is sweated it is in every way a healthful, nutritious food, but when eaten before it sweats it often produces diarrhea, usually leading to an acute bloody dysentery which is often followed by vomiting and a sudden collapse—as in Asiatic cholera.

In 1893 smallpox, ful-tâng′, came to Bontoc with a Spanish soldier who was in the hospital from Quiangan. Some five or six adults and sixty or seventy children died. The ravage took half a dozen in a day, but the Igorot stamped out the plague by self-isolation. They talked the situation over, agreed on a plan, and were faithful to it. All the families not afflicted moved to the mountains; the others remained to minister or be ministered to, as the case might be. About thirty-five years ago smallpox wiped out a considerable settlement of Bontoc, called La′-nao, situated nearer the river than are any dwellings at present.

About thirty years ago cholera, pĭsh-ti′, visited the people, and fifty or more deaths resulted.

Some twelve years ago ka-lag′-nas, an unidentified disease, destroyed a great number of people, probably half a hundred. Those afflicted were covered with small, itching festers, had attacks of nausea, and death resulted in about three days.

Two women died in Bontoc in 1901 of beri-beri, called fu-tut. These are the only cases known to have been there.

About ten years ago a man died from passing blood—an ailment which the Igorot named literally “ĭn-ĭs′-fo cha′-la or ĭn-tay′-es cha′-la.” It was not dysentery, as the person at no time had a diarrhea. He gradually weakened from the loss of small amounts of blood until, in about a year, he died.

The above are the only fatal diseases now in the common memory of the pueblo of Bontoc.

It is believed 95 per cent of the people suffer at some time, probably much of the time, with some skin disease. They say no one has been known to die of any of these skin diseases, but they are weakening and annoying. Itch, ku′-lĭd, is the most common, and it takes an especially strong hold on the babes in arms. This ku′-lĭd is not the ko′-lud or gos-gos, the white scaly itch found among the people surrounding those of the Bontoc culture area but not known to exist within it.

Two or three people suffer with rheumatism, fĭg-fĭg, but are seldom confined to their homes.

One man has consumption, o′-kat. He has been coughing five or six years, and is very thin and weak.

Diarrhea, or o-gi′-âk, frequently makes itself felt, but for only one or two days at a time. It is most common when the locusts swarm over the country, and the people eat them abundantly for several days. They say no one, not even a babe, ever died of diarrhea.

Two of the three prostitutes of Bontoc, the cast-off mistresses of Spanish soldiers, have syphilis, or na-na. Formerly one civilian was afflicted, and at present four or five of the Constabulary soldiers have contracted the disease.

Lang-ĭng′-i, a disease of sores and ulcers on the lips, nostrils, and rectum, afflicted a few people three or four years ago. This disease is very common in the pueblo of Ta-kong′, but is reported as never causing death.

Goiter, fi-kĕk′ or fĭn-to′-kĕl, is quite common with adults, and is more common with women than men.

Varicose veins, o′-pat, are not uncommon on the calves of both men and women.

Many old people suffer greatly with toothache, called “pa-tug′ nan fob-a′.” They say it is caused by a small worm, fi′-kĭs, which wriggles and twists in the tooth. When one has an aching tooth extracted he looks at it and inquires where “fi′-kĭs” is.

They suffer little from colds, mo-tug′, and one rarely hears an Igorot cough.

Headache, called both sa-kĭt′ si o′-lo and pa-tug′ si o′-lo, rarely occurs except with fever.

Sore eyes, a condition known as ĭn-o′-ki, are very frequently seen; they doubtless precede most cases of blindness.

The Igorot bears pain well, but his various fatalistic superstitions make him often an easy victim to a malady that would yield readily to the science of modern medicine and from which, in the majority of cases, he would probably recover if his mind could only assist his body in withstanding the disease.

One is surprised to find that sores from bruises do not generally heal quickly.

The Igorot attempts no therapeutic remedies for fevers, cholera, beri-beri, rheumatism, consumption, diarrhea, syphilis, goiter, colds, or sore eyes.

Some effort, therapeutic in its intent, is made to assist nature in overcoming a few of the simplest ailments of the body.

For a cut, called “na-fa′-kag,” the fruit of a grass-like herb named la-lay′-ya is pounded to a paste, and then bound on the wound.

Burns, ma-la-fûb-chong′, are covered over with a piece of bark from a tree called ta-kum′-fao.

Kay-yub′, a vegetable root, is rubbed over the forehead in cases of headache.

Boils, fu-yu-i′, and swellings, nay-am-an′ or kĭn-may-yon′, are treated with a poultice of a pounded herb called ok-ok-ong′-an.

Millet burned to a charcoal, pulverized, and mixed with pig fat is used as a salve for the itch.

An herb called a-kûm′ is pounded and used as a poultice on ulcers and sores.

For toothache salt is mixed with a pounded herb named ot-o′-tĕk and the mass put in or around the aching tooth.

Leaves of the tree kay′-yam are steeped, and the decoction employed as a bath for persons with smallpox.

Death and burial

It must be said that the Bontoc Igorot does not take death very sorrowfully, and he does not take it at all passionately. A mother weeps a day for a dead child or her husband, but death is said not to bring tears from any man. Death causes no long or loud lamentation, no tearing of the hair or cutting the body; it effects no somber colors to deaden the emotions; no earth or ashes for the body—all widespread mourning customs among primitive peoples. However, when a child or mature man or woman dies the women assemble and sing and wail a melancholy dirge, and they ask the departed why he went so early. But for the aged there are neither tears nor wailings—there is only grim philosophy. “You were old,” they say, “and old people die. You are dead, and now we shall place you in the earth. We too are old, and soon we shall follow you.”

All people die at the instance of an anito. There have been, however, three suicides in Bontoc. Many years ago an old man and woman hung themselves in their dwellings because they were old and infirm, and a man from Bitwagan hung himself in the Spanish jail at Bontoc a few years ago.

The spirit of the person who dies a so-called natural death is called away by an anito. The anito of those who die in battle receive the special name “pĭn-tĕng′”; such spirits are not called away, but the person’s slayer is told by some pĭn-tĕng′, “You must take a head.” So it may be said that no death occurs among the Igorot (except the rare death by suicide) which is not due directly to an anito.

Since they are warriors, the men who die in battle are the most favored, but if not killed in battle all Igorot prefer to die in their houses. Should they die elsewhere, they are at once taken home.

On March 19, 1903, wise, rich Som-kad′, of ato Luwakan, and the oldest man of Bontoc, heard an anito saying, “Come, Som-kad′; it is much better in the mountains; come.” The sick old man laboriously walked from the pabafunan to the house of his oldest son, where he had for nearly twenty years taken his food, and there among his children and friends he died on the night of March 21. Just before he died a chicken was killed, and the old people gathered at the house, cooked the chicken, and ate, inviting the ancestral anitos and the departing spirit of Som-kad′ to the feast. Shortly after this the spirit of the live man passed from the body searching the mountain spirit land for kin and friend. They closed the old man’s eyes, washed his body and on it put the blue burial robe with the white “anito” figures woven in it as a stripe. They fashioned a rude, high-back chair with a low seat, a sung-a′-chil ([Pl. XLI]), and bound the dead man in it, fastening him by bands about the waist, the arms, and head—the vegetal band entirely covering the open mouth. His hands were laid in his lap. The chair was set close up before the door of the house, with the corpse facing out. Four nights and days it remained there in full sight of those who passed.

One-half the front wall of the dwelling and the interior partitions except the sleeping compartment were removed to make room for those who sat in the dwelling. Most of these came and went without function, but day and night two young women sat or stood beside the corpse always brushing away the flies which sought to gather at its nostrils.

During the first two days few men were about the house, but they gathered in small groups in the vicinity of the fawi and pabafunan, which were only three or four rods distant. Much of the time a blind son of the dead man, the owner of the house where the old man died, sat on his haunches in the shade under the low roof, and at frequent intervals sang to a melancholy tune that his father was dead, that his father could no longer care for him, and that he would be lonely without him. On succeeding days other of the dead man’s children, three sons and five daughters, all rich and with families of their own, were heard to sing the same words. Small numbers of women sat about the front of the house or close in the shade of its roof and under its cover. Now and then some one or more of them sang a low-voiced, wordless song—rather a soothing strain than a depressing dirge. During the first days the old women, and again the old men, sang at different times alone the following song, called “a-na′-ko” when sung by the women, and “e-ya′-e” when by the men:

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:

You were old, and old people die. You are dead, and now we shall place you in the earth. We too are old, and soon we shall follow you.

Again and again they droned, and when they ceased others within the house took up the strain. During the singing the carabao head was brought from the house, and the horns, with small section of attached skull, chopped out, and the head returned to the ceiling of the dwelling.

Presently a man came with a slender stick to measure the coffin. He drove a nursing mother, with a woman companion and small child, from comfortable seats on the upturned wood. The people, including the group of old women, were driven away from the front of the house, the coffin was laid down on the ground before the door, and an unopened 8-gallon olla of “preserved” meat was set at its foot. An old woman, in no way distinguishable from the others by paraphernalia or other marks, muttering, squatted beside the olla. Two men untied the bands from the corpse, and one lifted it free from the chair and carried it in his arms to the coffin. It was most unsightly, and streams of rusty-brown liquid ran from it. It was placed face up, head elevated even with the rim, and legs bent close at the knees but only slightly at the hips. The old woman arose from beside the olla and helped lay two new breechcloths and a blanket over the body. The face was left uncovered, except that a small patch of white cloth ravelings, called “fo-ot′,” was laid over the eyes, and a small white cloth was laid over the hair of the head. The burden was quickly caught up on men’s shoulders and hurried without halting to the grave. Willing bands swarmed about the coffin. At all times as many men helped bear it as could well get hold, and when they mounted the face of a 7-foot sementera wall a dozen strong pairs of hands found service drawing up and supporting the burden. Many men followed from the house one brought the coffin cover and another the carabao horns—but the women and children remained behind, as is their custom at burials.

At the grave the coffin rested on the earth a moment[12] while a few more basketfuls of dirt were thrown out, until the grave was about 5 feet deep. The coffin was then placed in the grave, the cover laid on, and with a joke and a laugh the pair of horns was placed facing it at the head. Instantly thirty-two men sprang on the piles of fresh, loose dirt, and with their hands and the half dozen digging sticks filled and covered the grave in the shortest possible time, probably not over one minute and a half. And away they hurried, most of them at a dogtrot, to wash themselves in the river.

From the instant the corpse was in the coffin until the grave was filled all things were done in the greatest haste, because cawing crows must not fly over, dogs must not bark, snakes or rats must not cross the trail—if they should, some dire evil would follow.

Shortly after the burial a ceremony, called “kap-i-yan si na-tü′,” is performed by the relatives in the dwelling wherein the corpse sat. It is said to be the last ceremony given for the dead. Food is eaten and the one in charge addresses the anito of the dead man as follows:

We have fixed all things right and well for you. When there was no rice or chicken for food, we got them for you—as was the custom of our fathers—so you will not come to make us sick. If another anito seeks to harm us, you will protect us. When we make a feast and ask you to come to it, we want you to do so; but if another anito kills all your relatives, there will be no more houses for you to enter for feasts.

This last argument is considered to be a very important one, as all Igorot are fond of feasting, and it is assumed that the anito has the same desire.

The night following the burial all relatives stay at the house lately occupied by the corpse.

On the day after the burial all the men relatives go to the river and catch fish, the small kacho. The relatives have a fish feast, called “ab-a-fon′,” at the hour of the evening meal. To this feast all ancestral anito are invited.

All relatives again spend the night at the house, from which they return to their own dwellings after breakfast of the second day and each goes laden with a plate of cooked rice.

In this way from two to eight days are given to the funeral rite, the duration being greater with the wealthier people.

Only heads of families are buried in the large pine coffins, which are kept ready stored beside the granaries everywhere about the pueblo. As in the case of Som-kad′, all old, rich men are buried in a plat of ground close to the last fringe of dwellings on the west of the pueblo, but all other persons except those who lose their heads are buried close to their dwellings in the camote sementeras.

The burial clothes of a married man are the los-a′-dan, or blue anito-figured burial robe, and a breechcloth of beaten bark, called “chi-nang-ta′.” In the coffin are placed a fa′-a, or blue cotton breechcloth made in Titipan, the fan-cha′-la, a striped blue-and-white cotton blanket, and the to-chong′, a foot-square piece of beaten bark or white cloth which is laid on the head.

A married woman is buried in a kay-ĭn′, a particular skirt made for burial in Titipan, and a white blue-bordered waistcloth or la-ma. In the coffin are placed a burial girdle, wâ′-kĭs, also made in Titipan, a blue-and-white-striped blanket called bay-a-ong′, and the to-chong′, the small cloth or bark over the hair.

The unmarried are buried in graves near the dwelling, and these are walled up the sides and covered with rocks and lastly with earth; it is the old rock cairn instead of the wooden coffin. The bodies are placed flat on their backs with knees bent and heels drawn up to the buttocks. With the men are buried, besides the things interred with the married men, the basket-work hat, the basket-work sleeping hat, the spear, the battle-ax, and the earrings if any are possessed. These additional things are buried, they say, because there is no family with which to leave them, though all things interred are for the use of the anito of the dead.

In addition to the various things buried with the married woman, the unmarried has a sleeping hat.

Babes and children up to 6 or 7 years of age are buried in the sementera wrapped in a crude beaten-bark mantle. This garment is folded and wrapped about the body, and for babes, at least, is bound and tied close about them.

Babies are buried close to the dwelling where the sun and storm do not beat, because, as they say, babes are too tender to receive harsh treatment.

For those beheaded in battle there is another burial, which is described in a later chapter.

[1] Major Godwin-Austen says of the Gāro hill tribes, Bengal, India:

“In every village is the ‘bolbang,’ or young men’s house. … In this house all the unmarried males live, as soon as they attain the age of puberty, and in this any travelers are put up.”—The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. II, p. 393. See also op. cit., vol. XI, p. 199.

S. E. Peal says:

“Barracks for the unmarried young men are common in and around Assam among non-Aryan races. The institution is here seen in various stages of decline or transition. In the case of ‘head-hunters’ the young men’s barracks are invariably guardhouses, at the entrance to the village, and those on guard at night keep tally of the men who leave and return.”—Op. cit., vol. XXII, p. 248.

Gertrude M. Godden writes at length of the young men’s house of the Nágá and other frontier tribes of northeast India: “Before leaving the Nágá social customs one prominent feature of their village society must be noticed. This is the dekha chang, an institution in some respects similar to the bachelors’ hall of the Melanesians, which again is compared with the balai and other public halls of the Malay Archipelago. This building, also called a Morang, was used for the double purpose of a sleeping place for the young men and as a guard or watch house for the village. The custom of the young men sleeping together is one that is constantly noticed in accounts of the Nágá tribes, and a like custom prevailed in some, if not all, cases for the girls. … “The young men’s hall is variously described and named. An article in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1848, says that among the Nágás the bachelors’ hall of the Dayak village is found under the name of ‘Mooring.’ In this all the boys of the age of 9 or 10 upward reside apart. In a report of 1854 the ‘morungs’ are described as large buildings generally situated at the principal entrances and varying in number according to the size of the village; they are in fact the main guardhouse, and here all the young unmarried men sleep. In front of the morung is a raised platform as a lookout, commanding an extensive view of all approaches, where a Nágá is always kept on duty as a sentry. … In the Morungs are kept skulls carried off in battle; these are suspended by a string along the wall in one or more rows over each other. In one of the Morungs of the Changuae village, Captain Brodie counted one hundred and thirty skulls. … Besides these there was a large basket full of broken pieces of skulls. Captain Holroyd, from whose memorandum the above is quoted, speaks later of the Morung as the ‘hall of justice’ in which the consultations of the clan council are held.

“The ‘Morangs’ of another tribe, the ‘Naked’ Nágá, have recently been described as situated close to the village gate, and consist of a central hall, and back and front verandahs. In the large front verandah are collected all the trophies of war and the chase, from a man’s skull down to a monkey’s. Along both sides of the central hall are the sleeping berths of the young men. …

“Speaking of the Mao and Muran tribes [continues Miss Godden], Dr. Brown says, ‘the young men never sleep at home, but at their clubs, where they keep their arms always in a state of readiness.’ …

“With the Aos at the present day the custom seems to be becoming obsolete; sleeping houses are provided for bachelors, but are seldom used except by small boys. Unmarried girls sleep by twos and threes in houses otherwise empty, or else tenanted by one old woman.

“The analogy between the Dakha Chang, or Morang, of the Nágás and the men’s hall of the Melanesians is too close to be overlooked, and in view of the significance of all evidence concerning the corporate life of early communities a description of the latter is here quoted. I am aware of no recorded instance of the women’s house, other than these Nágá examples. ‘In all the Melanesian groups it is the rule that there is in every village a building of public character where the men eat and spend their time, the young men sleep, strangers are entertained; where as in the Solomon Islands the canoes are kept; where images are seen, and from which women are generally excluded; … and all these no doubt correspond to the balai and other public halls of the Malay Archipelago.’ ”—Op. cit., vol. XXVI, pp. 179–182.

Similar institutions appear to exist also in Sumatra.

In Borneo among the Land Dyaks “head houses,” called “pangah,” are found in each village. Low says of them: “The Pangah is built by the united efforts of the boys and unmarried men of the tribe, who, after having attained the age of puberty, are obliged to leave the houses of the village; and do not generally frequent them after they have attained the age of 8 or 9 years.”—Sir Hugh Low, Sarawak, its Inhabitants and Productions (London, 1848), p. 280.

Lieutenant F. Elton writes of the natives of Solomon Islands: “In every village they have at least one so-called tamboo house of tohe, generally the largest building in the settlement. This is only for the men, it being death for a female to enter there. It is used as a public place and belongs to the community. Any stranger coming to the village goes to the tamboo house and remains there until the person he is in quest of meets him there.”—The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. XVII, p. 97.

Mr. H. O. Forbes writes of the tribes of Timor (islands between New Guinea and Australia) that they have a building called “Uma-lulik.” He says: “The lulik can be at once recognized, were it by nothing else than by the buffalo crania with which it is decorated on the outside.” An officer who holds one of the highest and certainly the most influential positions in the kingdom has charge of the building, and presides over the sacred rites which are conducted in them. … The building is cared for by some old person, sometimes by a man and his wife, but they must not both—being of opposite sex—stay all night.”—Op. cit., XIII, pp. 411, 412.

[2] The o′-lâg of Buyayyeng is known as La-ma′-kan; that of Amkawa, in Buyayyeng, is Ma-fa′-lat; that of Polupo is Ma-lu-fan′. The two of Fatayyan are Ka-lang′-kang and A-la′-ti. Ta-tĭng′ is the o′-lâg in the Tang-e-ao′ section of Fatayyan. Chung-ma′ is the one in Filig. Lang-i-a′ and Ab-lo′ are the two of Mageo, both in Pudpudchog. The o′-lâg of Chakong is called Kat′-sa, and that of Lowingan is Si-mang′-an. The one of Pudpudchog is Yûd-ka′. Sung-ub′ is the o′-lâg of Sipaat, situated in Lowingan. Kay-pa′, Tek-a-lĭng, and Sak-a-ya′ are, respectively, the o′-lâg of Sigichan, Somowan, and Pokisan. Ag-lay′-ĭn is the o′-lâg of Luwakan, and Tal-pug and Say-ki′-pĭt are o′-lâg of Choko and Longfoy, respectively.

[3] The Journal of The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. XXVI, pp. 179, 180.

[4] Op. cit., vol. XXII, p. 248.

[5] Sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas.—J.H.

[6] An anito, as is developed in a later chapter, is the name given the spirit of a dead person. The anito dwell in and about the pueblo, and, among other of their functions, they cause almost all diseases and ailments of the people and practically all deaths.

[7] Earthenware pot.—J.H.

[8] Gong.—J.H.

[9] David J. Doherty, M.D., translator of The Philippines, A Summary Account of their Ethnological, Historical, and Political Conditions, by Ferdinand Blumentritt, etc. (Chicago, 1900), p. 16.

[10] A fermented drink.

[11] A fermented drink.

[12] The accompanying photo was an instantaneous exposure, taken in the twilight. The people could not be induced to wait for a time exposure.

Chapter IV

Economic Life

Production

Under the title “Economic life” are considered the various activities which a political economist would consider if he studied a modern community—in so far as they occur in Bontoc. This method was chosen not to make the Bontoc Igorot appear a modern man but that the student may see as plainly as method will allow on what economic plane the Bontoc man lives. The desire for this clear view is prompted by the belief that grades of culture of primitive peoples may be determined by the economic standard better than by any other single standard.

Natural production

It would be impossible for the Bontoc Igorot at present to subsist themselves two weeks by natural production. It is doubtful whether at any time they could have depended for even as much as a day in a week on the natural foods of the Bontoc culture area. The country has wild carabaos, deer, hogs, chickens, and three animals which the Igorot calls “cats,” but all of these, when considered as a food supply for the people, are relatively scarce, and it is thought they were never much more abundant than now. Fish are not plentiful, and judging from the available waters there are probably as many now as formerly. It is believed that no nut foods are eaten in Bontoc, although an acorn is found in the mountains to the south of Bontoc pueblo. The banana and pineapple now grow wild within the area, but they are not abundant. Of small berries, such as are so abundant in the wild lands of the United States, there are almost none in the area. On the outside, near Suyak of Lepanto, there is a huckleberry found so plentifully that they claim it is gathered for food in its season.

Hunting

A large pile of rocks stands like a compact fortress on the mountain horizon to the north of Bontoc pueblo. Here a ceremony is observed twice annually by rich men for the increase of ay-ya-wan′, the wild carabao. It is claimed that there are now seventeen wild carabaos in Ma-ka′-lan Mountain near the pueblo. There are others in the mountains farther to the north and east, and the ceremony has among its objects that of inducing these more distant herds to migrate to the public lands surrounding the pueblo.

The men go to the great rock, which is said to be a transformed anito, and there they build a fire, eat a meal, and have the ceremony called “mang-a-pu′-i si ay-ya-wan′,” freely, “fire-feast for wild carabaos.” The ceremony is as follows:

Ay-ya-wán ad Sa-ka′-pa a-li-ká is-ná ma-am′-mung is-ná.
Ay-ya-wán ad O-ki-kí a-li-ká is-ná ma-am′-mung is-ná.
Fay-cha′-mi ya′-i nan a-pu′-i ya pa′-tay.

This is an invitation addressed to the wild carabaos of the Sakapa and Okiki Mountains to come in closer to Bontoc. They are also asked to note that a fire-feast is made in their honor.

The old men say that probably 500 wild carabaos have been killed by the men of the pueblo. There is a tradition that Lumawig instructed the people to kill wild carabaos for marriage feasts, and all of those killed—of which there is memory or tradition—have been used in the marriage feasts of the rich. The wild carabao is extremely vicious, and is killed only when forty or fifty men combine and hunt it with spears. When wounded it charges any man in sight, and the hunter’s only safety is in a tree.

The method of hunting is simple. The herd is located, and as cautiously as possible the hunters conceal themselves behind the trees near the runway and throw their spears as the desired animal passes. No wild carabaos have been killed during the past two years, but I am told that the numbers killed three, four, six, seven, and eight years ago were, respectively, 5, 8, 7, 10, and 8.

Seven men in Bontoc have dogs trained to run deer and wild boar. One of the men, Aliwang, has a pack of five dogs; the others have one or two each. The hunting dogs are small and only moderately fleet, but they are said to have great courage and endurance. They hunt out of leash, and still-hunt until they start their prey, when they cry continually, thus directing the hunter to the runway or the place where the victim is at bay.

Not more than one deer, og′-sa, is killed annually, and they claim that deer were always very scarce in the area. A large net some 3½ feet high and often 50 feet long is commonly employed in northern Luzon and through the Archipelago for netting deer and hogs, but no such net is used in Bontoc. The dogs follow the deer, and the hunter spears it in the runway as it passes him or while held at bay.

The wild hog, la′-man or fang′-o, when hunted with dogs is a surly fighter and prefers to take its chances at bay; consequently it is more often killed then by the spearman than in the runway. The wild hog is also often caught in pitfalls dug in the runways or in its feeding grounds. The pitfall, fi′-to, is from 3 to 4 feet across, about 4 feet deep, and is covered over with dry grass.

In the forest feeding grounds of Polus Mountains, between the Bontoc culture area and the Banawi area to the south, these pitfalls are very abundant, there frequently being two or three within a space one rod square.

A deadfall, called “ĭl-tĭb′,” is built for hogs near the sementeras in the mountains. These deadfalls are quite common throughout the Bontoc area, and probably capture more hogs than the pitfall and the hunter combined. The hogs are partial to growing palay and camotes, and at night circle about a protecting fence anxious to take advantage of any chance opening. The Igorot leaves an opening in a low fence built especially for that purpose, as he does not commonly fence in the sementeras. The ĭl-tĭb′ is built of two sections of heavy tree trunks, one imbedded in the earth, level with the ground, and the other the falling timber. As the hog enters the sementera, the weight of his body springs the trigger which is covered in the loose dirt before the opening, and the falling timber pins him fast against the lower timber firmly buried in the earth. From half a dozen to twenty wild hogs are annually killed by the people of the pueblo. They are said to be as plentiful as formerly.

Bontoc pueblo does not catch many wild fowls. Fowl catching is an art she never learned to follow, although two or three of her boys annually catch half a dozen chickens each. The surrounding pueblos, as Tukukan, Sakasakan, Mayinit, and Maligkong, secure every year in the neighborhood of fifty to one hundred fowl each. The sa′-fûg, or wild cock, is most commonly caught in a snare, called “shi′-ay,” to which it is lured by another cock, a domestic one, or often a half-breed or a wild cock partially domesticated, which is secured inside the snare set up in the mountains near the feeding grounds of the wild fowls.

The shi′-ay when set consists of twenty-four si′-lu, or running loops, attached to a cord forming three sides of an open square space. As the snare is set the open side is placed against a rock or steep base of a rise. The shi′-ay is made of braided bejuco, and when not in use, is compactly packed away in a basket for the purpose (see [Pl. XLIV]). There are also five pegs fitted into loops in the basket, four of which are employed in pegging out the three sides of the snare, and the other for securing the lure cock within the square. Only cocks are caught with the shi′-ay, and they come to fight the intruder who guides them to the snare by crowing his challenge. As the wild cock rushes at the other he is caught by one of the loops closing about him. The hunter, always hiding within a few feet of the snare, rushes upon the captive, and at once resets his snare for another possible victim.

A spring snare, called kok-o′-lâng, is employed by the Igorot in catching both wild cocks and hens. It is set in their narrow runways in the heavy undergrowth. It consists of two short uprights driven into the ground one on either side of the path. These are bound together at the tops with two crosspieces. Near the lower ends of these uprights is a loose crosspiece, the trigger, which the fowl in passing knocks down, thus freeing the short upright, marked c, in [fig. 1]. When this is freed the loop, e, at once tightens around the victim, as the cord is drawn taut by the releasing of the spring—a shrub bent over and secured by the upper end of the cord. This spring is not shown in the drawing.

Figure 1.

Spring snare, Kok-o′-lâng. (a, Kok-o′-lâng; b, I-pĭt′ c, Tĭng′-a; d, Chûg-shi′; e, Lo-fĭd′.)

Bontoc has two or three quadrupeds which it names “cats.” One of these is a true cat, called in′-yao. It is domesticated by the Ilokano in Bontoc and becomes a good mouser.[1] The kok-o′-lâng is used to catch this cat. [Pl. XLVI] shows with what success this spring snare may be employed. The cat shown was caught in the night while trying to enter a chicken coop. He was a wild in′-yao, was beautifully striped like the American “tiger cat,” and measured 35 inches from tip to tip. The in′-yao is plentiful in the mountains, and is greatly relished by the Igorot, though Bontoc has no professional cat hunters and probably not a dozen of the animals are captured annually.

The Igorot claim to have two other “cats,” one called “co′-lang,” as large as in′-yao, with large legs and very large feet. A Spaniard living near Sagada says this animal eats his coffee berries. The other so-called “cat” is named “si′-le” by the Igorot. It is said to be a long-tailed, dark-colored animal, smaller than the in′-yao. It is claimed that this si′-le is both carnivorous and frugivorous. These two animals are trapped at times, and when caught are eaten.

During the year the boys catch numbers of small birds, all of which are eaten. Probably not over 200 are captured, however, during a year.

The ling-an′, a spring snare, is the most used for catching birds. I saw one of them catch four shrikes, called ta′-la, in a single afternoon, and a fifth one was caught early the next morning. [Pl. XLVII] shows the ling-an′ as it is set, and also shows ta′-la as he is caught.

The kok-o′-lâng is also employed successfully for such birds as run on the ground, especially those which run in paths. The si-sĭm′ is another spring snare set on the open ground. Food is scattered about leading to it, and is placed abundantly in an inclosure, the entrance to which is through the fatal noose which tightens when the bird perches on the trigger at the opening to the inclosure.

When the palay is in the milk a great many birds which feed upon it are captured by means of a broom-like bundle of runo. As the birds fly over the sementeras a boy sweeps his broom, the ka-lĭb′, through the flock, and rarely fails to knock down a bird. The ka-lĭb′ is about 7 feet long, 2½ inches in diameter at the base, and flattened and broadened to 14 or 15 inches in width at the outer end. What the ka-lĭb′ really does for the boy is to give him an arm about 9 feet long and a long open hand a foot and a quarter wide.

Fishing

The only water available to Bontoc pueblo for fishing purposes is the river passing between it and her sister pueblo, Samoki. In the dry season, where it is not dammed, the river is not over six and eight rods across in its widest places, and is from a few inches to 3 feet deep. All the water would readily pass, at the ordinary velocity of the stream, in a channel 20 feet wide and 6 feet deep.

Three methods are employed in fishing in this river—the first, catching each fish in the hand; the second, driving the fish upstream by fright into a receptacle; a third, a combined process of driving the fish downstream by fright and by water pressure into a receptacle.

The Igorot seems not to have a general word for fish, but he has names for the three varieties found in the river. One, ka-cho′, a very small, sluggish fish, is captured during the entire year. In February these fish were seldom more than 2 inches in length, and yet they were heavy with spawn. The ka-cho′ is the fish most commonly captured with the hands. It is a sluggish swimmer and is provided with an exterior suction valve on its ventral surface immediately back of the gill opening. This valve seems to enable the fish to withstand the ordinary current of the river which, in the rainy season, becomes a torrent. This valve is also one of the causes of the Igorot’s success in capturing the fish, which is not readily frightened, but clings to the bed of the stream until almost brushed away, and then ordinarily swims only a few inches or feet. Small boys from 6 to 10 years old capture by hand a hundred or more ka-cho′ during half a day, simply by following them in the shallow water.

The ka-cho′ is also caught in great numbers by the second or driving method. Twenty to forty or more men fish together with a large, closely woven, shovel-like trap called ko-yûg′, and the operation is most interesting to witness. At the river beach the fishermen remove all clothing, and stretch out on their faces in the warm, sun-heated sand. Three men carry the trap to the middle of the swift stream, and one holds it from floating away below him by grasping the side poles which project at the upper end for that purpose. The two other men, below the trap at its mouth, put large stones on their backs between the shoulder blades, so they will not float downstream, and disappear beneath the water. As quickly as possible, coming up a dozen times to breathe during the process, they clear away the rocks below the trap, piling them in it over its floor, until it finally sinks and remains stationary on the cleared spot of sandy bed. Their task being ended, the three trap setters come to shore, and sprawl on the hot sands to warm their dripping skins, while the sun dries and toasts their backs.

Then the drivers or beaters enter the river and stretch in a line from shore to shore about 75 feet below the trap. Each fellow squats in the water and places a heavy stone on his back. One of the men calls, and the row of strange, hump-backed creatures disappears beneath the water. There the men work swiftly, and, as later appears, successfully. Each turns over all the bowlders within his reach as large or larger than his two fists, and he works upstream 4 to 6 feet. They come up blowing, at first a head here and there, but soon all are up with renewed breath, waiting the next call to beat up the prey. This process is repeated again and again, and each time the outer ends of the line bend upstream, gradually looping in toward the trap. When the line of men has become quite circular and is contracting rapidly, a dozen other men enter the river from the shore and line up on each side of the mouth of the trap, a flank movement to prevent the fish running upstream outside the snare. From the circle of beaters a few now drop out; the others are in a bunch, the last stone is turned, and the prey seeks covert under the rocks in the trap, which the flankers at once lift above the water. The rocks are thrown out and the trap and fish carried to the shore.

In each drive they catch about three quarts of fish. These are dumped into baskets, usually the carrying basket of the man, and when the day’s catch is made and divided each man receives an equal share, usually about 1 pound per household. A procession of men and boys coming in from the river, each carrying his share of fish in his basket hat in his hand and the last man carrying the fish trap, is a sight very frequently seen in the pueblo.

The ka-cho′ is also caught in a small trap, called ob-o′-fü, by the third method mentioned above. A small strip of shallow water along the shore is quite effectually cut off from the remainder of the stream by a row of rocks. The lower end of this strip is brought to a point where the water pours out and into the upturned ob-o′-fü, carrying with it the ka-cho′ which happen to be in the swift current, the fish having been startled from their secure resting places by the fishermen who have gradually proceeded downstream overturning the stones.

A fish called “li′-lĭng,” which attains a length of about 6 inches, is also caught by the last-described method. It is not nearly so plentiful as the ka-cho′.

One man living in Bontoc may be called a fisherman. He spends most of his time with his traps in the river, and sells his fish to the Ilokano and Igorot residents of the pueblo. He places large traps in the deep parts of the stream, adjusts them, and revisits them by swimming under the water, and altogether is considered by the Igorot boys as quite a “water man.” He catches each year many ka-cho′ and li′-lĭng, and one or more large fish, called “cha-lĭt.” The cha-lĭt is said to acquire a length of 3, 4, or 5 feet.

Women and small children wade about the river and pick up quantities of small crabs, called “ag-ka′-ma,” and also a small spiral shell, called “ko′-ti.” It is safe to say that every hour of a rainless day one or more persons of Bontoc is gathering such food in the river. Immediately after the first rain of the season of 1903, coming April 5, there were twenty-four persons, women and small children, within ten rods of one another, searching the river for ag-ka′-ma and ko′-ti.

The women wear a small rump basket tied around the waist in which they carry their lunch to the rice sementeras, and once or twice each week they bring home from a few ounces to a pound of small crustaceans. One variety is named song′-an, another is kit-an′, a third is fĭng′-a, and a fourth is lis′-chûg. They are all collected in the mud of the sementeras.

Vegetal production

All materials for timbers and boards for the dwellings, granaries, and public buildings, all wood for fires, all wood for shields, for ax and spear handles, for agricultural implements, and for household utensils, and all material for splints employed in various kinds of basket work, and for strings (warp and woof) employed in the weaving of Bontoc girdles and skirts, are gathered wild with no effort at cultural production. There are three exceptions to this statement, however. One small shrub, called “pü-üg′,” is planted near the house as a fiber plant, and is no longer known to the Igorot in the wild state. Much of the bamboo from which the basket-work splints are made is purchased from people west of Bontoc. And, lastly, there is no doubt that a certain care is taken in preserving pine trees for large boards and timbers and for coffins; there is a cutting away of dead and small branches from these trees. Moreover, the cutting of other trees and shrubs for firewood certainly has a beneficial effect upon the forest trees left standing. In fact, all persons preserve the small pitch-pine trees on private lands, and it is a crime to cut them on another’s land, although a poor man may cut other varieties on private lands when needed.

Cultural production

Agriculture

In all of Igorot culture the most apparent and strikingly noteworthy fact is its agriculture. In agriculture the Igorot has reached his highest development. On agriculture hangs his claim to the rank of barbarian—without it he would be a savage.

Igorot agriculture is unique in Luzon, and, so far as known, throughout the Archipelago, in its mountain terraces and irrigation.

There are three possible explanations of the origin of Philippine rice terraces. First, that they (and those of other islands peopled by primitive and modern Malayans, and those of Japan and China) are indigenous—the product of the mountain lands of each isolated area; second, that most of them are due to cultural influences from one center, or possibly more than one center, to the north of Luzon—as influences from China or Japan spreading southward from island to island; third, that they, especially all those of the Islands—excluding only China—are due to influences originating south of the Philippines, spreading northward from island to island.

Terracing may be indigenous to many isolated areas where it is found, and doubtless is to some; it is found more or less marked wherever irrigation is or was practiced in ancient or modern agriculture. However, it is believed not to be an original production of the Philippines. Certain it is that it is not a Negrito art, nor does it belong to the Moro or to the so-called Christian people.

Different sections of China have rice terraces, and as early as the thirteenth century Chinese merchants traded with the Philippines, yet there is no record that they traded north of Manila—where terracing is alone found. Besides, the Chinese record of the early commerce with the Islands—written by Chao Jukua about 1250 it is claimed—specifically states that the natives of the Islands were the merchants, taking the goods from the shore and trading them even to other islands; the Chinese did not pass inland. Even though the Chinaman brought phases of his culture to the Islands, it would not have been agriculture, since he did not practice it here. Moreover, whatever culture he did leave would not be found in the mountains three or four days inland, while the people with whom he traded were without the art. The same arguments hold against the Japanese as the inspirers of Igorot terraces. There is no record that they traded in the Islands as early as did the Chinese, and it is safe to say, no matter when they were along the coasts of Luzon, that they never penetrated several days into the mountains, among a wild, head-hunting people, for what the agricultural Igorot had to sell.

The historic cultural movements in Malaysia have been not from the north southward but from Sumatra and Java to the north and east; they have followed the migrations of the people. It is believed that the terrace-building culture of the Asiatic islands for the production of mountain rice by irrigation during the dry season has drawn its inspiration from one source, and that such terraces where found to-day in Java, Lombok, Luzon, Formosa, and Japan are a survival of very early culture which spread from the nest of the primitive Malayan stock and left its marks along the way—doubtless in other islands besides these cited. If Japan, as has Formosa, had an early Malayan culture, as will probably be proved in due time, one should not be surprised to find old rice terraces in the mountains of Batanes Islands and the Loo Choo Islands which lie between Luzon and Japan.

Building the sementera

It must be noted here that all Bontoc agricultural labors, from the building of the sementera to the storing of the gathered harvest, are accompanied by religious ceremonials. They are often elaborate, and some occupy a week’s time. These ceremonials are left out of this chapter to avoid detail; they appear in [the later chapter on religion].

There are two varieties of sementeras—garden patches, called “pay-yo′”—in the Bontoc area, the irrigated and the unirrigated. The irrigated sementeras grow two crops annually, one of rice by irrigation during the dry season and the other of camotes, “sweet potatoes,” grown in the rainy season without irrigation. The unirrigated sementera is of two kinds. One is the mountain or side-hill plat of earth, in which camotes, millet, beans, maize, etc., are planted, and the other is the horizontal plat (probably once an irrigated sementera), usually built with low terraces, sometimes lying in the pueblo among the houses, from which shoots are taken for transplanting in the distant sementeras and where camotes are grown for the pigs. Sometimes they are along old water courses which no longer flow during the dry season; such are often employed for rice during the rainy season.

The unirrigated mountain-side sementera, called “fo-ag′,” is built by simply clearing the trees and brush from a mountain plat. No effort is made to level it and no dike walls are built. Now and then one is hemmed in by a low boundary wall.

The irrigated sementeras are built with much care and labor. The earth is first cleared; the soil is carefully removed and placed in a pile; the rocks are dug out; the ground shaped, being excavated and filled until a level results. This task for a man whose only tools are sticks is no slight one. A huge bowlder in the ground means hours—often days—of patient, animal-like digging and prying with hands and sticks before it is finally dislodged. When the ground is leveled the soil is put back over the plat, and very often is supplemented with other rich soil. These irrigated sementeras are built along water courses or in such places as can be reached by turning running water to them. Inasmuch as the water must flow from one to another, there are practically no two sementeras on the same level which are irrigated from the same water course. The result is that every plat is upheld on its lower side, and usually on one or both ends, by a terrace wall. Much of the mountain land is well supplied with bowlders and there is an endless water-worn supply in the beds of all streams. All terrace walls are built of these undressed stones piled together without cement or earth. These walls are called “fa-nĭng′.” They are from 1 to 20 and 30 feet high and from a foot to 18 inches wide at the top. The upper surface of the top layer of stones is quite flat and becomes the path among the sementeras. The toiler ascends and descends among the terraces on stone steps made by single rocks projecting from the outside of the wall at regular intervals and at an angle easy of ascent and descent (see [Pl. LIII]).

These stone walls are usually weeded perfectly clean at least once each year, generally at the time the sementera is prepared for transplanting. This work falls to the women, who commonly perform it entirely nude. At times a scanty front-and-back apron of leaves is worn tucked under the girdle.

In the Banawi district, south of the Bontoc area, there are terrace walls certainly 75 feet in height, though many of these are not stoned, since the earth is of such a nature that it does not readily crumble.

It is safe to say that nine-tenths of the available water supply of the dry season in the Bontoc area is utilized for irrigation. In some areas, as about Bontoc pueblo, there is practically not a gallon of unused water where there is space for a sementera.

A single area consisting of several thousand acres of mountain side is frequently devoted to sementeras, and I have yet to behold a more beautiful view of cultivated land than such an area of Igorot rice terraces. Winding in and out, following every projection, dipping into every pocket of the mountain, the walls ramble along like running things alive. Like giant stairways the terraces lead up and down the mountain side, and, whether the levels are empty, dirt-colored areas, fresh, green-carpeted stairs, or patches of ripening, yellow grain, the beholder is struck with the beauty of the artificial landscape and marvels at the industry of an otherwise savage people.

Irrigating

By irrigation is meant the purposeful distribution of water over soil by man by means of diverting streams or by the use of canals in the shape of ditches or troughs for conveying and directing part of a water supply, or by means of some other man-directed power to raise water to the required level.

The Igorot employ three methods of irrigation: One, the simplest and most natural, is to build sementeras along a small stream which is turned into the upper sementera and passes from one to another, falling from terrace to terrace until all water is absorbed, evaporated, or all available or desired land is irrigated. Usually such streams are diverted from their courses, and they are often carried long distances out of their natural way. The second method is to divert a part of a river by means of a stone dam. The third method is still more artificial than the preceding—the water is lifted by direct human power from below the sementera and poured to run over the surface.

The first method is the most common, since the mountains in Igorot land are full of small, usually perpetual, streams. There are practically no streams within reach of suitable pueblo sites which are not exhausted by the Igorot agriculturist. Everywhere small streams are carefully guarded and turned wherever there is a square yard of earth that may be made into a rice sementera. Small streams in some cases have been wound for miles around the sides of a mountain, passing deep gullies and rivers in wooden troughs or tubes.

Much land along the river valleys is irrigated by means of dams, called by the Igorot “lung-ud′.” During the season of 1903 there was one dam (designated the main dam in [Pl. LVII]—see also [Pls. LV] and [LVI]) across the entire river at Bontoc, throwing all the water which did not leak through the stones into a large canal on the Bontoc side of the valley. Half a mile above this was another dam (called the upper dam in [Pl. LVII]) diverting one-half the stream to the same valley, only onto higher ground. Immediately below the main dam were two low piles of stones (designated weirs) jutting into the shallow stream from the Bontoc side, and each gathering sufficient water for a few sementeras. Within a quarter of a mile below the main dam were three other loose, open weirs of rocks, two of which began on a shallow island, throwing water to the Samoki side of the river. In the stream a short distance farther down a shallow row of rocks and gravel turned water into three new sementeras constructed early in the year on a gravel island in the river.

The main dam is about 12 feet high, 2 feet broad at the top, 8 or 10 at the bottom, and is about 300 feet long. It is built each year during November and December, and requires the labor of fifteen or twenty men for about six weeks. It is constructed of river-worn bowlders piled together without adhesive. The top stones are flat on the upper surface, and the dam is a pathway across the river for the people from the time of its completion until its destruction by the freshets of June or July.

The upper dam is a new piece of primitive engineering. It, with its canal, has been in mind for at least two years; but it was completed only in 1903. The dam is small, extending only half way across the river, and beginning on an island. This dam turns water into a canal averaging 3 feet wide and carrying about 5 inches of water. The canal, called “a′-lak,” is about 3,000 feet long from the dam at a in [Pl. LVII] to the place of discharge into the level area at b. For about 530 feet of this distance it was impossible for the primitive engineer to construct a canal in the earth, as the solid rock of the mountain dips vertically into the river. About fifty sections of large pine trees were brought and hollowed into troughs, called “ta-la′-kan,” which have been secured above the water by means of buttresses, by wooden scaffolding, called “to-kod′,” and by attachment to the overhanging rocks, until there is now a continuous artificial waterway from the dam to the tract of irrigated land.

Considerable engineering sense has been shown and no small amount of labor expended in the construction of this last irrigating scheme. The pine logs are a foot or more in diameter, and have a waterway dug in them about 10 or 12 inches deep and wide. These trees were felled and the troughs dug with the wasay, a short-handled tool with an iron blade only an inch or an inch and a half wide, and convertible alike into ax and adz.

There seems to be a fall of about 22 feet between a at the upper dam and b at the discharge from the troughs.[2] This fall in a distance of about 3,000 feet seems needlessly great; however, the primitive engineer has shown excellent judgment in the matter. First, by putting the dam (upper dam) where it is, only half the stream had to be built across. Second, there is a rapids immediately below the dam, and, had the Igorot built his dam below the rapids, a dam of the same height would have raised the water to a much lower level; this would have necessitated a canal probably 10 or 12 feet deep instead of three. Third, the height of the water at the upper dam has enabled him to lay the log section of the waterway above the high-water mark of the river, thus, probably, insuring more or less permanence. Had the dam been built much lower down the stream the troughs would have been near the surface of the river and been torn away annually by the freshets, or the people would be obliged each year to tear down and reconstruct that part of the canal. As it now is it is probable that only the short dam will need to be rebuilt each year.

All dams and irrigating canals are built directly by or at the expense of the persons benefited by the water. Water is never rented to persons with sementeras along an artificial waterway. If a person refuses to bear his share of the labor of construction and maintenance his sementeras must lie idle for lack of water.

All sementera owners along a waterway, whether it is natural or artificial, meet and agree in regard to the division of the water. If there is an abundance, all open and close their sluice gates when they please. When there is not sufficient water for this, a division is made—usually each person takes all the water during a certain period of time. This scheme is supposed to be the best, since the flow should be sufficient fully to flood the entire plat—a 100-gallon flow in two hours is considered much better than an equal flow in two days.

During the irrigating season, if there is lack of water, it becomes necessary for each sementera owner to guard his water rights against other persons on the same creek or canal. If a man sleeps in his house during the period in which his sementeras are supposed to receive water, it is pretty certain that his supply will be stolen, and, since he was not on guard, he has no redress. But should sleep chance to overtake him in his tiresome watch at the sementeras, and should some one turn off and steal his water, the thief will get clubbed if caught, and will forfeit his own share of water when his next period arrives.

The third method of irrigation—lifting the water by direct human power—is not much employed by the Igorot. In the vicinity of Bontoc pueblo there are a few sementeras which were never in a position to be irrigated by running water. They are called “pay-yo′ a kao-u′-chan,” and, when planted with rice in the dry season, need to be constantly tended by toilers who bring water to them in pots from the river, creeks, or canals. On the Samoki side of the valley during a week or so of the driest weather in May, 1903, there were four “well sweeps,” each with a 5-gallon kerosene-oil can attached, operating nearly all day, pouring water from a canal into sementeras through 60 or 80 feet of small, wooden troughs.

Turning the soil

Since rice, called “pa-kü′.” is the chief agricultural product of the Igorot it will be considered in the following sections first, after which data of other vegetable products will be given.

Turning the soil for the annual crop of irrigated rice begins in the middle of December and continues nearly two months. The labor of turning and fertilizing the soil and transplanting the young rice is all in progress at the same time—generally, too, in the same sementera. Since each is a distinct process, however, I shall consider each separately. Before the soil is turned in a sementera it has given up its annual crop of camotes, and the water has been turned on to soften the earth. From two to twenty adults gather in a sementera, depending on the size of the plat, of which there are relatively few containing more than 10,000 square feet. They commonly range from 30 square feet to 1,500 or 2,000. The following description is one of several made in detail while watching the rice industry of the Bontoc Igorot.

The sementera is about 20 by 50 feet, or about 1,000 square feet, and lies in the midst of the large valley area between Bontoc and Samoki. It is on the Samoki side of the river, but is the property of a Bontoc family. There are two groups of soil turners in the sementera—three men in one, and two unmarried women, an older married woman, and a youth in the other. At one end of the plat two, and part of the time three, women are transplanting rice. Four men are bringing fertilizer for the soil. Strange to say, each of the men in the group of three is “clothed”—one wears his breechcloth as a breechcloth, and the other two wear theirs simply as aprons, hanging loose in front. Three of the men bringing fertilizer are entirely nude except for their girdles, since they ford the river with their loads between the sementera and Bontoc and do not care to wet their breechcloths; the other man wears a bladder bag hanging from his girdle as an apron. One of the young women turning the soil wears a skirt; the other one and the old woman wear front-and-back aprons of camote vines; the youth with them is nude. The three transplanters wear skirts, and one of them wears an open jacket. Besides these there are three children in and about the sementera; one is a pretty, laughing girl of about 9 years; one is a shy, faded-haired little girl of 3 or 4 years; and the other is a fat chunk of a boy about 5 years. All three are perfectly naked. It is impossible to say what clothing these toilers wore before I went among them to watch their work, but it is certain they were not more clothed.

Let us watch the typical group of the three women and the youth: Each has a sharpened wooden turning stick, the kay-kay, a pole about 6 feet long and 2 inches in diameter. The four stand side by side with their kay-kay stuck in the earth, and, in unison, they take one step forward and push their tools from them, the earth under which the tools are thrust falling away and crumbling in the water before them. While it is falling away the toilers begin to sing, led by the elder woman. The purport of the most common soil-turning song is this: “It is hard work to turn the soil, but eating the rice is good.” The song continues while the implements are withdrawn from the earth and jabbed in again in a new place, while the syllable pronounced at that instant is also noticeably jabbed into the air. Again they withdraw their implements and, singing and working in rhythmic unison, again jab kay-kay and syllable. The implements are now thrust about 8 inches below the surface; the song ceases; each toiler pries her section of the soil loose and, in a moment, together they push their tools from them, the mass of soil—some 2 feet long, 1 foot wide, and 8 inches deep—falls away in the water, and the song begins again. As the earth is turned a camote, passed by in the camote harvest, is discovered; the old woman picks it up and lays it on the dry ground beside her. The little girl shyly comes for it and stores it in a basket on the terrace wall with a few dozen others found during the morning.

After a section of earth 10 or 15 feet square has been turned the rhythmic labor and song ceases. Each person now grasps her kay-kay with one hand at the middle and the other near the sharpened end and with it rapidly crumbles and spreads about the new-turned soil. Now they trample the bed thoroughly, throwing out any stones or pebbles discovered by their feet, and frequently using the kay-kay further to break up some small clod of earth. Finally a large section of the sementera is prepared, and the toilers form in line abreast and slowly tread back and forth over the plat, making the bed soft and smooth beneath the water for the transplanting.

It is a delightful picture in the soil-turning season to see the acres of terraces covered by groups of toilers, relieving their labors with almost constant song.

I saw only one variation from the above methods in the Bontoc area. In some of the large sementeras in the flat river bottom near Bontoc pueblo a herd of seventeen carabaos was skillfully milled round and round in the water, after the soil was turned, stirring and mixing the bed into a uniform ooze. The animals were managed by a man who drove them and turned them at will, using only his voice and a long switch. It is impossible to get carabaos to many irrigated sementeras because of the high terrace walls, but this herd is used annually in the Bontoc river bottom.

After each rice harvest the soil of the irrigated sementera is turned for planting camotes, but this time it is turned dry. More effort is needed to thrust the kay-kay deep enough into the dry soil, and it is thrust three or four times before the earth may be turned. Only one-half the surface of a sementera is turned for camotes. Raised beds are made about 2 feet wide and 8 to 12 inches high. The spaces between these beds become paths along which the cultivator and harvester walks. The soil is turned from the spaces used as paths over the spaces which become beds, but the earth under the bed is not turned or loosened.

Bontoc beds are almost invariably constructed like parallel-sided, square-cornered saw teeth standing at right angles to the blade of the saw, which is also a camote bed, and are well shown in [Pl. LXII]. In Tulubin this saw-tooth bed also occurs, but the continuous spiral bed and the broken, parallel, straight beds are equally as common; they are shown in [figs. 2] and [3].

Figure 2.

Fig 2.—Parallel camote beds.

Figure 3.

Fig 3.—Spiral camote beds.

The mountain-side sementera for camotes, maize, millet, and beans is prepared simply by being scratched or picked an inch or two deep with the woman’s camote stick, the su-wan′. If the plat is new the grass is burned before the scratching occurs, but if it is cultivated annually the surface seldom has any care save the shallow work of the su-wan′; in fact, the surface stones are seldom removed.

In the season of 1903, the first rains came April 5, and the first mountain sementera was scratched over for millet April 10, after five successive daily rains.

Fertilizing

Much care is taken in fertilizing the irrigated sementeras. The hog of a few pueblos in the Bontoc area, as in Bontoc and Samoki, is kept confined all its life in a walled, stone-paved sty dug in the earth (see [Pl. LXXVII]). Into this inclosure dry grasses and dead vines are continually placed to absorb and become rotted by the liquids. As the soil of the sementera is turned for the new rice crop these pigsties are cleaned out and the rich manure spread on the beds.

The manure is sometimes carried by women though generally by men, and the carriers in a string pass all day between the sementeras and the pueblo, each bearing his transportation basket on his shoulder containing about 100 pounds of as good fertilizer as agricultural man ever thought to employ.

The manure is gathered from the sties with the two hands and is dumped in the sementera in 10-pound piles about 5 feet apart after the soil has been turned and trod soft and even.

It is said that in some sections of Igorot land dry vegetable matter is burned so that ash may be had for fertilizing purposes.

I have seen women working long, dry grass under the soil in camote sementeras at the time the crop was being gathered ([Pl. LXIV]), but I believe fertilizers are seldom employed, except where rice is grown. Mountain-side sementeras are frequently abandoned after a few years’ service, as they are supposed to be exhausted, whereas fertilization would restore them.

Seed planting

Pad-cho-kan′ is the name of the sementera used as a rice seed bed. One or more small groups of sementeras in every pueblo is so protected from the cold rains and winds of November and December and is so exposed to the warm sun that it answers well the purposes of a primitive hotbed; consequently it becomes such, and anyone who asks permission of the owner may plant his seed there (see [Pl. LXV]).

The seed is planted in the beds after they have been thoroughly worked and softened, the soil usually being turned three times. The planting in Bontoc occurs the first part of November. November 15, 1902, the rice had burst its kernel and was above water in the Bontoc beds. The seed is not shelled before planting, but the full fruit heads, sĭn-lu′-wi, are laid, without covering, on the soft ooze, under 3 or 4 inches of water. They are laid in rows a few inches apart, and are so close together that by the time the young plants are 3 inches above the surface of the water the bed is a solid mass of green.

Bontoc pueblo has six varieties of rice. Neighboring pueblos have others; and it is probable that fifty, perhaps a hundred, varieties are grown by the different irrigating peoples of northern Luzon. In Bontoc, ti′-pa is a white beardless variety. Ga′-sang is white, and cha-yĕt′-ĭt is claimed to be the same grain, except it is dark colored; it is the rice from which the fermented beverage, tapui, is made. Pu-i-a-pu′-i and tu′-pĕng are also white; tu′-pĕng is sowed in unirrigated mountain sementeras in the rainy season. Gu-mĭk′-i is a dark grain.

Camotes, or to-ki′, are planted once in a long period in the sementeras surrounding the buildings in the pueblo. There is nothing to kill them, the ground has no other use, so they are practically perpetual.

The average size of all the eight varieties of Bontoc camotes is about 2 by 4 inches in diameter. Six of the varieties are white and two are red. The white ones are the following: Li-no′-ko, pa-to′-ki, ki′-nûb fa-fay′-i, pi-i-nĭt′, ki-wĕng′, and tang-tang-lab′. The red ones are si′-sĭg and pĭt-ti′-kan.

To illustrate the many varieties which may exist in a small area I give the names of five other camotes grown in the pueblo of Balili, which is only about four hours from Bontoc. The Balili white camotes are bi-tâk′-no, a-go-bang′-bang, and la-ung′-an and the red are gĭs-gĭs′-i and ta-mo′-lo.

Millet, called “sa′-fug,” is sowed on the surface of the earth. The sowing is “broadcast,” but in a limited way, as the fields are usually only a few rods square. The seed is generally sowed by women, who carry a small basket or dish of it in one hand and scatter the seed from between the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger of the free hand.

There are said to be four varieties of millet in Bontoc. Mo-di′ and poy-nĕd′ are light-colored seeds; pi-tĭng′-an is a darker seed—the Igorot says “black;” and si-nang′-a is the fourth. I have never seen it but I am told it is white.

Maize, or pi′-ki, and beans, practically the only other seeds planted, are planted annually in “hills.” The rows of “hills” are quite irregular. Maize, as is also millet, is planted immediately after the first abundant rains, occurring early in April.

The Bontoc man has three varieties of beans. One is called ka′-lap; the kernel is small, being only one-fifth of an inch long. Usually it is pale green in color, though a few are black; both have an exterior white germ. I′-tab is about one-third of an inch long. It is both gray and black in color, and has a long exterior white germ. The third variety is black with an exterior white germ. It is called ba-la′-tong, and is about one-fourth of an inch in length.

Transplanting

Transplanting is always the work of women, since they are recognized as quicker and more dexterous in most work with the hands than are the men.

The women pull up the young rice plants in the seed beds and tie them in bunches about 4 inches in diameter. They transport them by basket to the newly prepared sementera and dump them in the water so they will remain fresh.

As has been said, the manure fertilizer is placed about the sementera in piles. The women thoroughly spread this fertilizer with their hands and feet when they transplant (see [Pl. LIX]). When the soil is ready the transplanter grasps a handful of the plants, twists off 3 or 4 inches of the blades, leaving the plant about 6 inches long, and, while holding the plants in one hand, with the other she rapidly thrusts them one by one into the soft bed. They are placed in fairly regular rows, and are about 5 inches apart. The planter leans enthusiastically over her work, usually resting one elbow on her knee—the left elbow, since most of the women are right-handed—and she sets from forty to sixty plants per minute.

When the sementeras are planted they present a clean and beautiful appearance—even the tips of the rice blades twisted off are invariably crowded into the muddy bed to assist in fattening the crop.

As many as a dozen women often work together in one sementera to hasten the planting. There are usually two or three little girls with their mothers, who while away the hours playing work. They stuff up the chinks of the stone walls with dirt and vegetable matter; they carry together the few camotes discovered in this last handling of the old camote bed; and they quite successfully and industriously play at transplanting rice, though such small girls are not obliged to work in the field.

Camotes are also transplanted. The women cut or pick off the “runners” from the perpetual vines in the sementeras near the dwellings. These they transplant in the unirrigated mountain sementeras after the crops of millet and maize have been gathered.

The irrigated sementeras are also planted to camotes by transplanting from these house beds. This transplanting lasts about six weeks in Bontoc, beginning near the middle of July.

Some little sugar cane is grown by the Igorot of the Bontoc area. It is claimed to grow up each year from the roots left at the preceding harvest. At times new patches of cane are started by transplanting shoots from the parent plants. It is said that in January the stalks are cut and set in a rich mud, and that in the season of Baliling, from about July 15 until early in September, the rooted shoots are transplanted to the new beds.

Cultivating

The chief cultivation given to Igorot crops is bestowed on rice, though all cultivated lands are remarkably free from weeds. The rice sementeras are carefully weeded, “suckers” are pulled out, and the beds are thinned generally, so that each plant will have all needful chance to develop fruit. This weeding and thinning is the work of women and half-grown children. Every day for nearly two months, or until the fruit heads appear, the cultivators are diligently at work in the sementeras. No tools or agricultural implements other than bare hands are used in this work.

The men keep constant watch of the sementera walls and the irrigating canals, repairing all, thus indirectly assisting the women in their cultivation by directing water to the growing crop and by conserving it when it is obtained.

Protecting

The rice begins to fruit early in April, at which time systematic effort to protect the new grain from birds, rats, monkeys, and wild hogs commences. This effort continues until the harvest is completed, practically for three months. Much of this labor is performed by water power, much by wind power, and about all the children and old people in a pueblo are busied from early dawn until twilight in the sementera as independent guards. Besides, throughout the long night men and women build fires among the sementeras and guard their crop from the wild hog. It is a critical time with the Igorot.

The most natural, simplest, and undoubtedly the most successful protection of the grain is the presence of a person on the terrace walls of the sementera, whether by day or night. Hundreds of fields are so guarded each day in Bontoc by old people and children, who frequently erect small screens of tall grass to shade and protect themselves from the sun.

The next simplest method is one followed by the boys. They employ a hollow section of carabao horn, cut off at both ends and about 8 inches in length; it is called “kong-ok′.” This the boys beat when birds are near, producing an open, resonant sound which may readily be heard a mile.

The wind tosses about over the growing grain various “scarecrows.” The pa-chĕk′ is one of these. It consists of a single large dry leaf, or a bunch of small dry leaves, suspended by a cord from a heavy, coarse grass 6 or 8 feet high; the leaf, the sa-gi-kak′, hangs 4 feet above the fruit heads. It swings about slightly in the breeze, and probably is some protection against the birds. I believe it the least effective of the various things devised by the Igorot to protect his rice from the multitudes of ti-lĭn′—the small, brown ricebird[3] found broadly over the Archipelago.

The most picturesque of these wind-tossed bird scarers is the ki′-lao. The ki′-lao is a basket-work figure swung from a pole and is usually the shape and size of the distended wings of a large gull, though it is also made in other shapes, as that of man, the lizard, etc. The pole is about 20 feet high, and is stuck in the earth at such an angle that the swinging figure attached by a line at the top of the pole hangs well over the sementera and about 3 or 4 feet above the grain (see [Pl. LXVII]). The bird-like ki′-lao is hung by its middle, at what would be the neck of the bird, and it soars back and forth, up and down, in a remarkably lifelike way. There are often a dozen ki′-lao in a space 4 rods square, and they are certainly effectual, if they look as bird-like to ti-lĭn′ as they do to man. When seen a short distance away they appear exactly like a flock of restless gulls turning and dipping in some harbor.

Figure 4.

Bird scarer in rice field.

The water-power bird scarers are ingenious. Across a shallow, running rapids in the river or canal a line, called “pi-chug′,” is stretched, fastened at one end to a yielding pole, and at the other to a rigid pole. A bowed piece of wood about 15 inches long and 3 inches wide, called “pit-ug′,” is suspended by a line at each end from the horizontal cord. This pit-ug′ is suspended in the rapids, by which it is carried quickly downstream as far as the elasticity of the yielding pole and the pi-chug′ will allow, then it snaps suddenly back upstream and is ready to be carried down and repeat the jerk on the relaxing pole. A system of cords passes high in the air from the jerking pole at the stream to other slender, jerked poles among the sementeras. From these poles a low jerking line runs over the sementeras, over which are stretched at right angles parallel cords within a few feet of the fruit heads. These parallel cords are also jerked, and their movement, together with that of the leaves depending from them, is sufficient to keep the birds away. One such machine may send its shock a quarter of a mile and trouble the birds over an area half an acre in extent.

Other Igorot, as those of the upper Abra River in Lepanto Province, employ this same jerking machine to produce a sharp, clicking sound in the sementera. The jerking cord repeatedly raises a series of hanging, vertical wooden fingers, which, on being released, fall against a stationary, horizontal bamboo tube, producing the sharp click. These clicking machines are set up on two supporting sticks a few feet above the grain every three or four yards about the sementeras.

There are many rodents, rats and mice, which destroy the growing grain during the night unless great care is taken to cheek them. The Igorot makes a small dead fall which he places in the path surrounding the sementera. I have seen as many as five of these traps on a single side of a sementera not more than 30 feet square. The trap has a closely woven, wooden dead fall, about 10 or 15 inches square; one end is set on the path and the other is supported in the air above it by a string. One end of this string is fastened to a tall stick planted in the earth, the lower end is tied to a short stick—a part of the “spring” held rigid beneath the dead fall until the trigger is touched. The dead fall drops when the rat, in touching the trigger, releases the lower end of the cord. The animal springs the trigger either by nibbling a bait on it or by running against it, and is immediately killed, since the dead fall is weighted with stones.

Sementeras near some forested mountains in the Bontoc area are pestered with monkeys. Day and night people remain on guard against them in lonely, dangerous places—just the kind of spot the head-hunter chooses wherein to surprise his enemy.

All border sementeras in every group of fields are subject to the night visits of wild hogs. In some areas commanding piles of earth for outlooks are left standing when the sementeras are constructed. In other places outlooks are erected for the purpose. Permanent shelters, some of them commodious stone structures, are often erected on these outlooks where a person remains on guard night and day ([Pl. LXVIII]), at night burning a fire to frighten the wild hogs away.

At this season of the year when practically all the people of the pueblo are in the sementeras, it is most interesting to watch the homecoming of the laborers at night. At early dusk they may be seen coming in over the trails leading from the sementeras to the pueblo in long processions. The boys and girls 5 or 6 years old or more, most of them entirely naked, come playing or dancing along—the boys often marking time by beating a tin can or two sticks—seemingly as full of life as when they started out in the morning. The younger children are toddling by the side of their father or mother, a small, dirty hand smothered in a large, labor-cracked one; or else are carried on their father’s back or shoulder, or perhaps astride their mother’s hip. The old men and women, almost always unsightly and ugly, who go to the sementera only to guard and not to toil, come slowly and feebly home, often picking their way with a staff. There is much laughing and coquetting among the young people. A boy dashes by with several girls in laughing pursuit, and it is not at all likely that he escapes them with all his belongings. Many of the younger married women carry babies; some carry on their heads baskets filled with weeds used as food for the pigs, and all have their small rump baskets filled with “greens” or snails or fish.

A man may carry on his shoulder a huge short log of wood cut in the mountains, the wood partially supported on the shoulder by his spear; or he perhaps carries a large bunch of dry grass to be thrown into the pigpen as bedding; or he comes swinging along empty handed save for his spear used as a staff. Most of the returning men and boys carry the empty topil, the small, square, covered basket in which rice for the noon meal is carried to the sementera; sometimes a boy carries a bunch of three or four, and he dangles them open from their strings as he dances along.

For an hour or more the procession continues—one almost-naked figure following another—all dirty, most of them doubtless tired, and yet seemingly happy and content with the finish of their day of toil. It is long after dark before the last straggler is in.

Harvesting

Rice harvesting in Bontoc is a delightful and picturesque sight to an American, and a most serious religious matter to the Igorot.

Though ceremonials having to do with agriculture have purposely been omitted from this chapter, yet, since one of the most striking and important features of the harvesting is the harvest ceremonial, it is thought best to introduce it here.

Sa-fo′-sab is the name of the ceremony. It is performed in a pathway adjoining each sementera before a single grain is gathered. In the path the owner of the field builds a tiny fire beside which he stands while the harvesters sit in silence. The owner says:

“So-mi-ka-ka′ pa-kü′ ta-mo i-sa′-mi sĭk′-a kĭn-po-num′ nan a-lang′,” which, freely rendered, means, “Palay, when we carry you to the granary, increase greatly so that you will fill it.”

As soon as the ceremonial is said the speaker harvests one handful of the grain, after which the laborers arise and begin the harvest.

In the trails leading past the sementera two tall stalks of runo are planted, and these, called “pud-i-pud′,” warn all Igorot that they must not pass the sementera during the hours of the harvest. Nor will they ignore the warning, since if they do they are liable to forfeit a hog or other valuable possession to the owner of the grain.

I spent half a day trying to get close enough to a harvesting party to photograph it. All the harvesters were women, and they scolded our party long and severely while we were yet six or eight rods distant; my Igorot boys carrying the photographic outfit—boys who had lived four months in my house—laughingly but positively refused to follow me closer than three or four rods to the sementera. No photographs were obtained at that time. It was only after the matter was talked over by some of the men of the pueblo that photographs could be willingly obtained, and the force of the warning pud-i-pud′ withdrawn for our party. Even during the time my Igorot boys were in the trail by a harvest party all other Igorot passed around the warning runo. The Igorot says he believes the harvest will be blasted even while being gathered should one pass along a pathway skirting any side of the sementera.

Several harvesters, from four to a dozen, labor together in each sementera. They begin at one side and pass across the plat, gathering all grain as they pass. Men and women work together, but women are recognized the better harvesters, since their hands are more nimble. Each fruited stalk is grasped shortly below the fruit head, and the upper section or joint of the stalk, together with the fruit head and topmost leaf, is pulled off. As most Bontoc Igorot are right-handed, the plucked grain is laid in the left hand, the fruit heads projecting beyond between the thumb and forefinger while the leaf attached to each fruit head lies outside and below the thumb. When the proper amount of grain is in hand (a bunch of stalks about an inch in diameter) the useless leaves, all arranged for one grasp of the right hand, are stripped off and dropped; the bunch of fruit heads, topping a 6-inch section of clean stalk or straw is handed to a person who may be called the binder. This person in all harvests I have seen was a woman. She binds all the grain three, four, or five persons can pluck; and when there is one binder for every three gatherers the binder finds some time also to gather.

The binder passes a small, prepared strip of bamboo twice around the palay stalks, holds one end between her teeth and draws the binding tight; then she twists the two ends together, and the bunch is secure. The bunch, the manojo of the Spaniard, the sĭn fĭng-e′ of the Igorot, is then piled up on the binder’s head until a load is made. Before each bunch is placed on the pile the fruitheads are spread out like an open fan. These piles are never completed until they are higher than the woman’s arm can reach—several of the last bunches being tossed in place, guided only by the tips of the fingers touching the butt of the straw. The women with their heads loaded high with ripened grain are striking figures—and one wonders at the security of the loads.

When a load is made it is borne to the transportation baskets in some part of the harvested section of the sementera, where it is gently slid to the earth over the front of the head as the woman stoops forward. It is loaded into the basket at once unless there is a scarcity of binders in the field, in which case it awaits the completion of the harvest.

In all agricultural labors the Igorot is industrious, yet his humor, ever present with him, brings relief from continued toil. The harvest field is no exception, since there is much quiet gossip and jest during the labors.

In 1903 rice was first harvested May 2. The harvest continued one month, the crop of a sementera being gathered here and there as it ripened. The Igorot calls this first harvest month the “moon of the small harvest.” During June the crop is ripened everywhere, and the harvest is on in earnest; the Igorot speaks of it as the “moon of the all harvest.”

I had no view of the harvest of millet or maize; however, I have seen in the pueblo much of each grain of some previous harvest. The millet I am told, is harvested similarly to the rice, and the clean-stalked bunches are tied up in the same way—only the bunches are four or five times larger.

The fruit head, or ears, of the maize is said to be plucked off the stalks in the fields as the American farmer gathers green corn or seed corn. It is stored still covered with its husks.

The camote harvest is continued fairly well throughout the year. Undoubtedly some camotes are dug every day in the year from the dry mountain-side sementeras, but the regular harvest occurs during November and December, during which time the camotes are gathered from the irrigated sementeras preparatory to turning the soil for the transplanting of new rice.

Women are the camote gatherers. I never saw men, nor even boys, gathering camotes. At no other time does the Igorot woman look so animal like as when she toils among the camote vines, standing with legs straight and feet spread, her body held horizontal, one hand grasping the middle of her short camote stick and the other in the soil picking out the unearthed camotes. She looks as though she never had stood erect and never would stand erect on two feet. Thus she toils day after day from early morning till dusk that she and her family may eat.

Storing

No palay is carried to the a-lang′, the separate granary building, or to the dwelling for the purpose of being stored until the entire crop of the sementera is harvested. It may be carried part way, but there it halts until all the grain is ready to be carried home.

It is spread out on the ground or on a roof in the sun two or three days to dry before storing. When the grain is to be stored away an old man—any man—asks a blessing on it that it may make men, hogs, and chickens well, strong, and fat when they consume it. This ceremony is called “ka-fo′-kab,” and the man who performs it is known by the title of “in-ka-fa′.”

The Igorot granary, the a-lang′, is a “hip-roofed” structure about 8 feet long, 5 wide, 4 feet high at the sides and 6 at the ridgepole. Its sides are built of heavy pine planks, which are inserted in grooved horizontal timbers, the planks being set up vertically. The floor is about a foot from the earth. The roof consists of a heavy, thick cover of long grass securely tied on a pole frame. It is seldom that a granary stands alone—usually there are two or more together, and Bontoc has several groups of a dozen each, as shown in [Pl. LXXII]. When built together they are better protected from the rain storms. The roofs also are made so they extend close to the earth, thus almost entirely protecting the sides of the structure from the storms. All cracks are carefully filled with pieces of wood wedged and driven in. Even the door, consisting of two or three vertical planks set in grooved timbers, is laboriously wedged the same way. The building is rodent proof, and, because of its wide, projecting roof and the fact that it sets off the earth, it is practically moisture proof.

Most palay is stored in the granaries in the small bunches tied at harvest. The a-lang′ is carefully closed again after each sementera crop has been put in. There are granaries in Bontoc which have not been opened, it is said, in eight or more years, except to receive additional crops of palay, and yet the grain is as perfectly preserved as when first stored. Some palay, especially that needed for consumption within a reasonable time, is stored in the upper part of the family dwelling.

Maize and millet are generally stored in the dwelling, in the second and third stories, since not enough of either is grown to fill an a-lang′, it is said.

Camotes are sometimes stored in the granary after the harvest of the irrigated fields. Often they are put away in the kubkub, the two compartments at either end of the sleeping room on the ground floor of the dwelling. At other times one sees bushels of camotes put away on the earth under the broad bench extending the full length of the dwelling. In the poorer class of dwellings the camotes are frequently dumped in a corner.

Beans are dried and shelled before storing and are set away in a covered basket, usually in the upper part of the dwelling. Only one or two cargoes are grown by each family, so little space is needed for storage.

Since rice is the staple food and may be preserved almost indefinitely, the Igorot has developed a means and place to care for it. Maize and millet, while probably capable of as long preservation, are generally not grown in sufficient quantity to require more storage space than the upper part of the dwelling affords. The Igorot has not developed a way to preserve his camotes long after harvest; they are readily perishable, consequently no place has been differentiated as a storehouse.

Expense and profit

An irrigated sementera 60 by 100 feet, having 6,000 square feet of surface, is valued at two carabaos, or, in money, about 100 pesos. It produces an average annual crop of ten cargoes of palay, each worth 1 peso. Thus there is an annual gross profit of ten per cent on the value of the permanent investment.

It requires ten men one day to turn the soil and fertilize the plat. The wage paid in palay is equivalent to 5 cents per laborer, or 50 cents. Five women can transplant the rice in one day; cost, 25 cents. Cultivating and protecting the crop falls to the members of the family which owns the sementera, so the Igorot say; he claims never to have to pay for such labor. Twenty people can harvest the crop in a day; cost, 1 peso.

The total annual expense of maintaining the sementera as a productive property is, therefore, equivalent to 1.75 pesos. This leaves 8.25 pesos net profit when the annual expense is deducted from the annual gross profit. A net profit of 8.25 per cent is about equivalent to the profit made on the 10,000-acre Bonanza grain farms in the valley of the Red River of the North, and the 5,000-acre corn farm of Iowa.

Zoöculture

The carabao, hog, chicken, and dog are the only animals domesticated by the Igorot of the Bontoc culture area.

Cattle are kept by Benguet Igorot throughout the extent of the province. Some towns, as Kabayan, have 300 or 400 head, but the Bontoc Igorot has not yet become a cattle raiser.

In Benguet, Lepanto, and Abra there are pueblos with half a hundred brood mares. Daklan, of Benguet, has such a bunch, and other pueblos have smaller herds.

In Bontoc Province between Bontoc pueblo and Lepanto Province a few mares have recently been brought in. Sagada and Titipan each have half a dozen. Near the east side of the Bontoc area there are a few bunches of horses reported among the Igorot, and in February, 1903, an American brought sixteen head from there into Bontoc. These horses are all descendants of previous domestic animals, and an addition of half a hundred is said to have been made to the number by horses abandoned by the insurgents about three years past. Some of the sixteen brought out in 1903 bore saddle marks and the brands common in the coastwise lands. These eastern horses are not used by the Igorot except for food, and no property right is recognized in them, though the Igorot brands them with a battle-ax brand. He exercises about as much protecting control over them as the Bontoc man does over the wild carabao.

Carabao

The people of Bontoc say that when Lumawig came to Bontoc they had no domestic carabaos—that those they now have were originally purchased, before the Spaniards came, from the Tinguian of Abra Province.

There are in the neighborhood of 400 domestic carabaos owned in Bontoc and Samoki. Most of them run half wild in the mountains encircling the pueblos. Such as are in the mountains receive neither herding, attention in breeding, feed, nor salt from their owners. The young are dropped in February and March, and their owners mark them by slitting the ear, each person recognizing his own by the mark.

A herd of seventeen, consisting of animals belonging to five owners, ranges in the river bottom and among the sementeras close to Bontoc. These animals are more tame than those of the mountains, but receive little more attention, except that they are taught to perform a certain unique labor in preparing the sementeras for rice, as has been noted in the section on agriculture. This is the only use to which the Bontoc carabao is put as a power in industry. He is seldom sold outside the pueblo and is raised for consumption, chiefly on various ceremonial occasions.

Four men in Bontoc own fifty carabaos each. Three others have a herd of thirty in joint ownership. Others own five and six each, and again a single carabao may be the joint property of two and even six individuals. Carabaos are valued at from 40 to 70 pesos.

Hog

Bontoc has no record of the time or manner of first acquiring the hog, chicken, or dog. The people say they had all three when Lumawig came.

Sixty or 70 per cent of the pigs littered in Bontoc are marked lengthwise with alternate stripes of brick-red or yellowish hair, the other hair being black or white; the young of the wild hog is marked the same. All the pigs, both domestic and wild, outgrow this red or yellow marking at about the age of six months, and when they are a year old become fine-looking black hogs with white marking not unlike the Berkshire of the States. There is no chance to doubt that the Igorot domestic hog was the wild hog in the surrounding mountains a few generations ago.

The Bontoc hog is bred, born, and raised in a secure pen, yet wild blood is infused direct, since pigs are frequently purchased by Bontoc from surrounding pueblos, most of whose hogs run half wild and intermingle with the wild ones of the mountains. That the domestic hog in some places in northern Luzon does thus interbreed with the wild ones is a proved fact. In the Quiangan area I was shown a litter of half-breeds and was told that it was customary for the pueblo sows to breed to the wild boar of the mountains.

The Bontoc hog in many ways is a pampered pet. He is at all times kept in a pen and fed regularly three times each day with camote vines when in season, with camote parings, and small camotes available, and with green vegetal matter, including pusleys, gathered by the girls and women when there are no camote vines. All of his food is carefully washed and cooked before it is given to him.

The pigsty consists of a pit in the earth about 4 feet deep, 5 or 6 feet wide, and 8 or 12 feet long. It is entirely lined with bowlders, and the floor space consists of three sections of about equal size. One end is two or more feet deeper than the other, and it is into this lower space that the washings of the pen are stored in the rotted straw and weeds, and from which the manure for fertilizer is taken. The other end is covered over level with the outside earth with timbers, stones, and dirt; it is the pig’s bed and is entered by a doorway in the stone wall. Most of these “beds” have a low, grass roof about 30 inches high over them. Underneath the roof is an opening in the earth where the people defecate. Connecting the “bed” section and the opposite lower section of the sty is an incline on which the stone “feed” troughs are located.

As soon as a pig is weaned he is kept in a separate pen, and one family may have in its charge three or four pens. The sows are kept mainly for breeding, and there are many several years old. The richest man in Bontoc owns about thirty hogs, and these are farmed out for feeding and breeding—a common practice. When one is killed it is divided equally between the owner and the feeder. When a litter of pigs is produced the bunch is divided equally, the sow remaining the property of the owner and counting as one in the division. Throughout the Island of Luzon it is the practice to leave most male animals uncastrated. But in Bontoc the boar not intended for breeding is castrated.

Hogs are raised for ceremonial consumption. They are commonly bought and sold within the pueblo, and are not infrequently sold outside. A pig weighing 10 pounds is worth about 3 pesos, and a hog weighing 60 or 70 pounds is valued at about 12 pesos.

Chicken

The Bontoc domestic chickens were originally the wild fowl, found in all places in the Archipelago, although some of them have acquired varied colorings and markings, largely, probably, from black and white Spanish fowl, which are still found among them. The markings of the wild fowl, however, are the most common, and practically all small chickens are marked as are their wild kin. The wild fowl bears markings similar to those of the American black-breasted red game, though the fowls are smaller than the American game fowl. Each of the twelve wild cocks I have had in my hands had perfect five-pointed single combs, and the domestic cock of Bontoc also commonly has this perfect comb. I know of no people within the Bontoc area who now systematically domesticate the wild fowl, though this was found to be the custom of the Ibilao southeast of Dupax in the Province of Nueva Vizcaya. Those people catch the young wild fowl for domestication.

The Bontoc domestic fowl are not confined in a coop except at night, when they sleep in small cages placed on the ground in the dwelling houses. In the daytime they range about the pueblo feeding much in the pigpens, though they are fed a small amount of raw rice each morning. Their nests are in baskets secured under the eaves of the dwelling, and in those baskets the brooding hens hatch their chicks, from eight to twenty eggs being given a hen. The fowl is raised exclusively for ceremonial consumption, and is frequently sold in the pueblo for that purpose, being valued at from half a peso to a peso each. A wild fowl sells for half a peso.

In Banawi of the Quiangan area, south of Bontoc, one may find large capons, but Bontoc does not understand caponizing.

Dog

The dog of the Bontoc Igorot is usually of a solid color, black, white, or yellow, really “buckskin” color. Where he originated is not known. He has none of the marks of the Asiatic dog which has left its impress everywhere in the lowlands of the west coast of Luzon—called in the Islands the “Chino” dog, and in the States the “Eskimo” dog. The Igorot dog is short-haired, sharp-eared, gaunt, and sinewy, with long legs and body. In height and length he ranges from a fair-sized fox terrier to a collie. I fail to see anything in him resembling the Australian dingo or the “yellow cur” of the States. The Ibilao have the same dog in two colors, the black and the “brindle”—the brown and black striped. In fact, a dog of the same general characteristics occurs throughout northern Luzon. No matter what may be his origin, a dog so widely diffused and so characteristically molded and marked must have been on the island long enough to have acquired its typical features here. The dog receives little attention from his owners. Twice each day he is fed sparingly with cooked rice or camotes. Except in the case of the few hunting dogs, he does nothing to justify his existence. He lies about the dwelling most of the time, and is a surly, more or less evil-tempered cur to strangers, though when a pueblo flees to the mountains from its attacking enemies the dog escapes in a spiritless way with the women and children. He is bred mainly for ceremonial consumption.

In Benguet the Igorot eats his dog only after it has been reduced to skin and bones. I saw two in a house so poor that they did not raise their heads when I entered, and the man of the house said they would be kept twenty days longer before they would be reduced properly for eating. No such custom exists in Bontoc, but dogs are seldom fat when eaten. They are not often bought or sold outside the pueblo. A litter of pups is generally distributed about the town, and dogs are constantly bought and sold within the pueblo for ceremonial purposes. They are valued at from 2 to 4 pesos.

Clothing production

Man’s clothing

Up to the age of 6 or 7 years the Igorot boys are as naked as when born. At that time they put on the suk′-lâng, the basket-work hat worn on the back of the head, held in place by a cord attached at both sides and passing across the forehead and usually hidden by the front hair. The suk′-lâng is made in nearly all pueblos in the Bontoc culture area. It does not extend uninterruptedly to the western border, however, since it is not worn at all in Agawa, and in some other pueblos near the Lepanto border, as Fidelisan and Genugan, it has a rival in the headband. The beaten-bark headband, called “a-pong′-ot,” and the headband of cloth are worn by short-haired men, while the long-haired man invariably wears the hat. The suk′-lâng varies in shape from the fez-like ti-no-od′ of Bontoc and Samoki, through various hemispherical forms, to the low, flat hats developing eastward and perfected in the last mountains west of the Rio Grande de Cagayan. Barlig makes and wears a carved wooden hat, either hemispherical or slightly oval. It goes in trade to Ambawan.

The men of the Bontoc area also have a basket-work, conical rain hat. It is waterproof, being covered with beeswax. It is called “sĕg-fi′,” and is worn only when it rains, at which time the suk′-lâng is often not removed.

About the age of 10 the boys frequently affect a girdle. These girdles are of four varieties. The one most common in Bontoc and Samoki is the song-kit-an′, made of braided bark-fiber strings, some six to twelve in number and about 12 feet long. They are doubled, and so make the girdle about 6 feet in length. The strings are the twisted inner bark of the same plants that play a large rôle in the manufacture of the woman’s skirt. This girdle is usually worn twice around the body, though it is also employed as an apron, passing only once around the body and hanging down over the genitals (see [Pl. XXI]). Another girdle worn much in Tukukan, Kanyu, and Tulubin is called the “i-kĭt′.” It is made of six to twelve braided strings of bejuco (see [Pl. LXXX]). It is constructed to fit the waist, has loops at both ends, passes once around the body, and fastens by a cord passing from one loop to the other. Both the sang-ki-tan′ and the i-kĭt′ are made by the women. A third class of girdles is made by the men. It is called ka′-kot, and is worn and attached quite as is the i-kĭt′. It is a twisted rope of bejuco, often an inch in diameter, and is much worn in Mayinit. A fourth girdle, called “ka′-chĭng,” is a chain, frequently a dog chain of iron purchased on the coast, oftener a chain manufactured by the men, and consisting of large, open links of commercial brass wire about one-sixth of an inch in diameter.

At about the age of puberty, say at 15, it is usual for the boy to possess a breechcloth, or wa′-nĭs. However, the cloth is worn by a large per cent of men in Bontoc and Samoki, not as a breechcloth but tucked under the girdle and hanging in front simply as an apron. Within the Bontoc area fully 50 per cent of the men wear the breechcloth simply as an apron.

There are several varieties of breechcloths in the area. The simplest of these is of flayed tree bark. It is made by women in Barlig, Tulubin, Titipan, Agawa, and other pueblos. It is made of white and reddish-brown bark, and sometimes the white ones are colored with red ocher. The white one is called “so′-put” and the red one “ti-nan′-ag.” Some of the other breechcloths are woven of cotton thread by the women. Much of this cotton is claimed by the Igorot to be tree cotton which they gather, spin and weave, but much also comes in trade from the Ilokano at the coast. Some is purchased in the boll and some is purchased after it has been spun and colored. Many breechcloths are now bought ready made from the Ilokano.

Men generally carry a bag tucked under the girdle, and very often indeed these bags are worn in lieu of the breechcloth aprons—the girdle and the bag apron being the only clothing (see [Pl. CXXV] and also [Frontispiece], where, from left to right, figs. 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 wear simply a bag). One of the bags commonly worn is the fi-chong′, the bladder of the hog; the other, cho′-kao, is a cloth bag some 8 inches wide and 15 inches long. These cloth bags are woven in most of the pueblos where the cotton breechcloth is made.

Old men now and then wear a blanket, pi′-tay, but the younger men never do. They say a blanket is for the women.

Some few of the principal men in many of the pueblos throughout the area have in late years acquired either the Army blue-woollen shirt, a cotton shirt, or a thin coat, and these they wear during the cold storms of January and February, and on special social occasions.

During the period of preparing the soil for transplanting palay the men frequently wear nothing at the middle except the girdle. In and out of the pueblo they work, carrying loads of manure from the hogpens to the fields, apparently as little concerned or noticed as though they wore their breechcloths.

All Igorot—men, women, and children—sleep without breechcloth, skirt, or jacket. If a woman owns a blanket she uses it as a covering when the nights are cold. All wear basket-work nightcaps, called “kut′-lao.” They are made to fit closely on the head, and have a small opening at the top. They may be worn to keep the hair from snarling, though I was unable to get any reason from the Igorot for their use, save that they were worn by their ancestors.

Woman’s clothing

From infancy to the age of 8 and very often 10 years the little girls are naked; not unfrequently one sees about the pueblo a girl of a dozen years entirely nude. However, practically all girls from about 5 years, and also all women, have blankets which are worn when it is cold, as almost invariably after sundown, though no pretense is made to cover their nakedness with them. During the day this pi′-tay, or blanket, is seldom worn except in the dance. I have never seen women or girls dance without it. The blankets of the girls are usually small and white with a blue stripe down each side and through the middle; they are called “kûd-pas′.” Those of the women are of four kinds—the tĭ-na′-pi, the fa-yĭ-ong′, the fan-che′-la, and the pi-nag-pa′-gan. In Barlig, Agawa, and Tulubin the flayed tree-bark blanket is worn; and in Kambulo, east of Barlig, woven bark-fiber blankets are made which sometimes come to Bontoc.

Before a girl puts on her lu-fĭd′, or woven bark-fiber skirt, at about 8 or 10 years of age, she at times wears simply the narrow girdle, later worn to hold up the skirt. The skirt is both short and narrow. It usually extends from below the navel to near the knees. It opens on the side, and is frequently so scant and narrow that one leg is exposed as the person walks, the only part of the body covered on that side being under the girdle, or wa′-kĭs—a woven band about 4 inches wide passing twice around the body (see [Pl. XXIII]). The women sometimes wear the braided-string bejuco belt, i-kĭt′, worn by the men.

The lu-fĭd′ and the wa′-kĭs are the extent of woman’s ordinary clothing. For some months after the mother gives birth to a child she wears an extra wa′-kĭs wrapped tightly about her, over which the skirt is worn as usual. During the last few weeks of pregnancy the woman may leave off her skirt entirely, wearing simply her blanket over one shoulder and about her body. Women wear breechcloths during the three or four days of menstruation.

During the period when the water-soaked soil of the sementera is turned for transplanting palay the women engaged in such labor generally lay aside their skirts. Sometimes they retain a girdle and tuck an apron of camote leaves or of weeds under it before and behind. I have frequently come upon women entirely naked climbing up and down the steep, stone dikes of their sementeras while weeding them, and also at the clay pits where Samoki women get their earth for making pottery. In May, 1903, it rained hard every afternoon for two or three hours in Bontoc pueblo, and at such times the women out of doors uniformly removed their clothing. They worked in the fields and went from the fields to their dwellings nude, wearing on their heads while in the trail either their long, basket rain protector or a head covering of camote vines, under which reposed their skirts in an effort to keep them dry. Sometimes while passing our house en route from the field to the pueblo the women wore the girdle with the camote-vine apron, called pay-pay. Often no girdle was worn, but the women held a small bunch of leaves against the body in lieu of an attached apron. Sometimes, however, their hands were occupied with their burdens, and their nudity seemed not to trouble them in the least. The women remove their skirts, they say, because they usually possess only one at a time, and they prefer to go naked in the rain and while working in the wet sementeras rather than sit in a wet skirt when they reach home.

Few women in the Bontoc area wear jackets or waists. Those to the west, toward the Province of Lepanto, frequently wear short ones, open in front without fastening, and having quarter sleeves. Those women also wear somewhat longer skirts than do the Bontoc women.

In Agawa, and near-by pueblos to the west, and in Barlig and vicinity to the east, the women make and wear flayed-bark jackets and skirts. From Barlig bark jackets for women come in trade to Tulubin. They are not simply sheets of bark, but the bark is strengthened by a coarse reinforcement of a warp sewed or quilted.

Many of the women’s skirts and girdles woven west of Bontoc pueblo are made also of the Ilokano cotton. The skirts and girdles of Bontoc pueblo and those found commonly eastward are entirely of Igorot production. Four varieties of plants yield the threads; the inner bark is gathered and then spun or twisted on the naked thigh under the palm of the hand (see [Pl. LXXXIII]).

All weaving in Igorot land is done by the woman with the simplest kind of loom, such as is scattered the world over among primitive people. It is well shown in [Pl. LXXXIV], which is a photograph of a Lepanto Igorot loom.

Implement and utensil production

Introduction

It is only after one has brought together all the implements and utensils of an Igorot pueblo that he realizes the large part played in it by basket work. Were basketry and pottery cut from the list of his productions the Igorot’s everyday labors would be performed with bare hands and crude sticks.

Where is the Igorot’s “stone age”? There are stone hammers and stones used as anvils in the ironsmith’s shop. There are stone troughs or bowls in most pigpens in which the animal’s food is placed. Very rarely, as in the Quiangan area, one sees a large, flat stone supported a foot or two from the earth by other stones. It is used as a bench or table, but has no special purpose. There are whetstones for sharpening the steel spear and battle-ax; there is the stone of the “flint-and-steel” fire machine; and of course stones are employed as seats, in constructing terrace walls, in dams, and in the building of various inhabited structures, but that is all. There is no “stone age”—no memory of it—and, if the people were swept away to-day, to-morrow would reveal no trace of it. It is believed that the Igorot is to-day as much in the “stone age” as he ever has been in his present land. He had little use for stone weapons, implements, or utensils before he manufactured in iron.

Before he had iron he was essentially a user and maker of weapons, implements, utensils, and tools of wood. There are many vestiges of the wood age to-day; several show the use of wood for purposes usually thought of as solely within the sphere of stone and metal. Among these vestiges may be noted the bamboo knife used in circumcision; the sharp stick employed in the ceremonial killing of domestic hogs in Benguet; the bamboo instrument of ten or a dozen cutting blades used to shape and dress the hard, wooden spear shafts and battle-ax handles; the use of bamboo spearheads attached to hard-wood shafts; and the bamboo spikes stuck in trails to impale the enemy.

In addition to the above uses of wood for cutting flesh and working wood there follow, in this and subsequent chapters, enough data regarding the uses of wood to demonstrate that the wood age plays a large part in the life of a primitive people prior to the common use of metals. Without metals there was practically no occasion for the development of stone weapons and tools in a country with such woods as the bamboo; so in the Philippines we find an order of development different from that widespread in the temperate zones—the “stone age” appears to be omitted.

Wooden implements and utensils

The kay-kay ([Pl. LXI]) is one of the most indispensable wooden tools in Igorot land. It is a hard-wood implement from 5 to 7 feet long, sharpened to a dull, flat edge at one end; this end is fire tempered to harden and bind the fibers, thus preventing splitting and excessive wear. The kay-kay is obtained in the mountains in the vicinity of most pueblos, so it is seldom bought or sold. It is the soil-turning stick, used by both men and women in turning the earth in all irrigated sementeras for rice and camotes. It is also employed in digging around and prying out rocks to be removed from sementeras or needed for walls. It is spade, plow, pickax, and crowbar. A small per cent of the kay-kay is shod with an iron point, rendering them more efficient, especially in breaking up new or sod ground.

The su-wan′, the woman’s camote stick, is about 2 feet long and an inch in diameter ([Pl. LXXV]). It is a heavy, compact wood, and is used by the woman until worn down 6 or 8 inches, when it usually becomes the property of a small girl for gathering wild plants for the family pigs. The su-wan′ of the woman of Bontoc and Samoki comes, mostly in trade, from the mountains near Tulubin. It is employed in picking the earth loose in all unirrigated sementeras, as those for camotes, millet, beans, and maize. It is also used to pick over the earth in camote sementeras when the crop is gathered. Perhaps 1 per cent of these sticks is shod with an iron point. Such an instrument is of genuine service in the rough, stony mountain lands, but is not so serviceable as the unshod stick in the irrigated sementeras, because it cuts and bruises the vegetables.

The most common wooden vessel in the Bontoc area is the kak-wan′, a vessel, or “pail” holding about six or eight quarts. In it the cooked food of the pigs is mixed and carried to the animals. Every household has two or more of them.

A few small, poorly made wooden dishes, called “chu′-yu,” are found in each dwelling, from which the people eat broth of fish or other meats. All are of inferior workmanship and, in common with all things of wood made by the Igorot, are the product of the man’s art. Both the knife and fire are used to hollow out these bowls.

A long-handled wooden dipper, called “ka-od′,” is found in every dwelling. It belongs with the kak-wan′, the pig-food pail.

Tûg-on′ is a large, long-handled spoon used exclusively as a drinking dipper for the fermented liquor called “sa-fu-ĕng′.”

Fa′-nu is a wooden ladle employed in cooking foods.

A few very crude eating spoons, about the size of the dessert spoon of America, are found in most dwellings. They are usually without ornament, and are called “i-chûs′.”

Metal implements and utensils

The wa′-say is the only metal implement employed at all commonly in the area; it is found in each family. It consists of an iron, steel-bitted blade from an inch to an inch and a half in width and about 6 inches in length. It is attached to the short, wooden handle by a square haft inserted into the handle. Since the haft is square the implement may be instantly converted into either an “ax” with blade parallel to the handle or an “adz” with blade at right angle to the handle.

This is the tool used in felling and cutting up all trees, and in getting out and dressing all timbers and boards. It is the sole carpenter tool, unless the man by chance possess a bolo.

There are no metal agricultural implements in common use. As was noted earlier in the chapter, the soil-turning stick and the woman’s camote stick are now and then shod with iron, but they are rare.

There are a few large, shallow Chinese iron boilers in the area, used especially for boiling sugar, evaporating salt in Mayinit, and for cooking carabao or large quantities of hog on ceremonial occasions. There are probably not more than two or three dozen such boilers in Bontoc pueblo, though they are becoming much more plentiful during the past three years—since the Igorot has more money and goes more often to Candon on the coast, where he buys them.

Pottery

Most of the pottery consumed in the Bontoc area is the product of Samoki, the sister pueblo of Bontoc. Samoki pottery meets no competition down the river to the north until in the vicinity of Bitwagan, which makes and vends similar ware both up and down the river. To the south there is also competition, since Data makes and sells an excellent pot to Antedao, Fidelisan, Sagada, Titipan, and other near-by pueblos. It is probable, also, that Lias and Barlig, to the east, are supplied with pottery, and, if so, that their source is Bitwagan. But Bitwagan and Data pots are really not competitors with those of Samoki; they rather supply areas which the Samoki potters can not reach because of distance and the hostility of the people.

There are no traditions clustering around pottery making in Samoki. The potters say they taught themselves, and have always made earthenware.

To-day Samoki pottery is made of two clays—one a reddish-brown mineral dug from pits several feet deep on the hillside, shown in [Pl. LXXXII], and the other a bluish mineral gathered from a shallow basin situated on the hillside nearer the river than the pits, and in which a little water stands much of the year.

Formerly Samoki made pottery of only the brown clay, and she used cut grass intermixed for a temper, but she claims those earlier pots were too porous to glaze well. Consequently the experiment was made of adding the blue surface clay, in which there is a considerable amount of fresh and decaying vegetable matter—probably sufficient to give temper, although the potters do not recognize it as such.

Samoki consists of eight ato, one of which is I-kang′-a. occupying the outer fringe of dwellings on the northwest side of the pueblo. It is claimed that all of the women of I-kang′-a, whether married or single, are potters. Even women who marry men of the I-kang′-a ato, and who come to that section of the pueblo to live, learn and follow the potter’s art. A few married women in other ato also manufacture pottery. They seem to be married daughters of I-kang′-a ato.

A fine illustration of community industry is presented by the ato potters of Samoki. It could not be learned that there are any definite regulations, other than custom, demanding that all women of I-kang′-a manufacture pots, or any regulation which forces daughters of that ato to discontinue the art when they marry outside. But custom has fixed quite rigidly such a regulation, and though, as just stated, a few I-kang′-a women married into other ato of Samoki do manufacture pottery, yet no I-kang′-a women married into other pueblos carry on the art. It may be argued that a lack of suitable clay has thwarted manufacture in other pueblos, but clay is common in the mountains of the area, and the sources of the materials used in Samoki are readily accessible to at least the pueblo of Bontoc, where also there are many Samoki women living.

The clay pits lie north of Samoki, between a quarter and a half of a mile distant, and the potters go to them in the early morning while the earth is moist, and dig and bring home the clays. The woman gathers half a transportation basket of each of the clays, and while at the pits crudely works both together into balls 4 or 5 inches in diameter. In this form the clay is carried to the pueblo.

All the pottery is manufactured in the shade of the potter’s dwelling, and the first process is a thorough mixing of the two clays. The balls of the crudely mixed material are put into a small, wooden trough, are slightly moistened, and then thoroughly worked with a wooden pestle, the potter crouching on her haunches or resting on her knees during the labors. She is shown in [Pl. LXXXIX] a. After the clay is mixed it is manipulated in small handfuls, between the thumb and fingers, in order that all stones and coarse pieces of vegetable matter may be removed. When the mortarful has thus been handled it is ready for making pots.

A mass of this clay, thoroughly mixed and plastic, is placed on a board on the earth before the kneeling or crouched potter. She pokes a hole in the top of this mass with thumbs and fingers, and quickly enlarges it. As soon as the opening is large enough to admit one hand it is dug out and enlarged by scraping with the ends of the fingers, and the clay so gathered is immediately built onto the upper rim of the mass. The inside is next further scraped and smoothed with the side of the forefinger. At this juncture a small mass of clay is rolled into a strip between the hands and placed on the upper edge of the shaping mass, completely encircling it. This roll is at once shaped by the hands into a crude, flaring rim. A few swift touches on the outer face of the crude pot removes protruding masses and roughly shapes the surface. The rim is moistened with water and smoothed inside and out by the hand and a short, round stick. This process is well illustrated in [Pl. XC]. The first stage of manufacture is completed and the vessel is set in the sun with the rim of an old broken pot for a supporting base.

In the course of a few hours the shaped and nearly completed rim of the pot becomes strong and set by the heat of the sun. However, the rough and irregular bowl has apparently retained relatively a larger amount of moisture and is in prime condition to be thinned, expanded, and given final form. The pot is now handled by the rim, which is sufficiently rigid for the purpose, and is turned about on its supporting base as is needed, or the base is turned about on the earth like a crude “potter’s wheel.” A smooth discoidal stone, some 4 or 5 inches in diameter, and a wooden paddle are the instruments used to shape the bowl. The paddle is first dipped in water and rubbed over one of the flattish surfaces of the stone slightly to moisten it, and is then beaten against the outer surface of the bowl, while the stone, tapped against the inner surface, prevents indenting or cracking, and, by offering a more or less nonresisting surface, assists in thinning and expanding the clay. After the upper part of the bowl has been thus completed the potter sits on her feet and haunches, with her knees thrust forward from her. Again and again she moistens her paddle and discoidal stone, and continues the spanking process until the entire bowl of the pot is shaped. It is then set in the sun to dry—this time usually bottom side up.

After it has thoroughly dried, both the inner and outer surfaces are carefully and patiently smoothed and polished with a small stone, commonly a ribbon agate. During this process all pebbles found protruding from the surface are removed and the pits are filled with new clay thoroughly smoothed in place, and the thickness of the pot is made more uniform. The vessel is again placed on its supporting base in the sun, and kept turned and tilted until it has become well dried and set. Two and sometimes three days are required to bring a pot thus far toward completion, though during the same time there are several equally completed by each potter.

There remains yet the burning and glazing. Samoki burns her pots in the morning before sunrise. Immediately on the outskirts of the pueblo there is a large, gravelly place strewn with thin, black ash where for generations the potters coming and going have completed their primitive ware. Usually two or more firings occur each week, and several women combine and burn their pots together. On the earth small stones are laid upon which one tier of vessels is placed, each lying upon its side. Tier upon tier of pots is then placed above the first layer, each on its side and each supported by and supporting other pots. The heat is supplied by pine bark placed beneath and around the lower layer. The pile is entirely blanketed with dead grass tied in small bunches which has been gathered, prepared, and kept in the houses of the potters for the purpose. The grass retains its form long after the blaze and glow have ceased, and clings about the pile as a blanket, checking the wasteful radiation of heat and cutting out the drafts of air that would be disastrous to the heated clay. As this blanket of grass finally gives way here and there the attending potters replenish it with more bunches. The pile is fired about one hour; when sufficiently baked the pots are lifted from the fire by inserting in each a long pole. Each potter then takes a vessel at a time, places it red hot on its supporting base on the earth before her, and immediately proceeds, with much care and labor, to glaze the rim and inside of the bowl. The glaze is a resin obtained in trade from Barlig. It is applied to the vessel from the end of a glazing stick—sometimes a pole 6 or 7 feet long, but usually about a yard in length. After the rim and inner surface of the bowl have been thoroughly glazed the potter begins on another vessel—turning the last one over to one or two little girls, from 4 to 6 years of age, who find great happiness in smearing the outer surface of the now cooling and dull-brown pot with resin held in bunches in the hands. This outer glaze, applied by the young apprentices, who, in play, are learning an art of their future womanhood, is neither so thick nor so carefully laid as is the glaze of the rim and inner surface of the vessel. When the glazing is completed the pot is still too hot to be borne in the hands; however, the glaze has become rigid and hard.

Analyses made at the Bureau of Government Laboratories, Manila, show that the clays used in the Samoki pots contain the following mineral:

Analyses of Samoki pottery clays
Minerals.Brown pit clayBlue surface clay
Per centPer cent
Silica54.4660.99
Oxide of aluminum16.7717.71
Ferric oxide of iron11.149.53
Oxide of calcium0.530.59
Loss by ignition16.8110.65
Oxide of magnesiumTraceTrace
Oxide of potassiumTrace—
Oxide of sodium—Trace
Carbon dioxide—Trace

The botanist of the Bureau of Government Laboratories[4] says in the report of his analysis of the resin used to glaze these pots:

This gum is known as Almaciga (Sp.). It is produced by some species of the dipterocarpus or shorea—which it is impossible to determine. … It should not be confounded with the other common almaciga from the trees of the genus Agathis.

The Government analyst[5] who analyzed the clays and examined the finished and glazed pots says of the Samoki pot that about two-thirds of the organic matter in the clay is consumed in the baking or burning of the pot. The organic matter in the middle one-third of the wall of the pot is not consumed. The clay is a remarkably hard one and is difficult of ignition; this is the reason it makes good cooking vessels. He further says that the glaze is not a true glaze. It seems that the resin does nothing except lose its oils when applied to the red-hot pots, and there is left on the surface the unconsumed carbon.

Basket work

All basket work is done by the men. Much of the time when they are in the fawi or pabafunan, gossiping and smoking, they are busied making the ordinary and necessary utensils of the field and dwelling. The basket work is all crude, with the possible exception of some of the hats worn by the men.

As is brought forth later under the head of “Commerce,” much basket work is done by only one or two communities, and from them passes in trade over a large area. Most of the basket work of the area is of bejuco or bamboo. There are two varieties of bamboo used in the area—a′-nĭs and fi′-ka. A′-nĭs is found in the area and fi′-ka is brought in in trade from the southwest.

The most important piece of basket work is the ki-ma′-ta, the man’s transportation basket, made of a′-nĭs bamboo; it is shown in [Pl. CXX]. It is made by many pueblos, and is found throughout the area. It consists of two baskets joined firmly to a light, wooden crossbar called “pa′-tang.” The entire ki-ma′-ta weighs about 5 pounds, and with it the Igorot carries loads weighing as much as 100 pounds.

The man has another basket called “ko-chuk-kod′,” which is used frequently by him, also sometimes by women, for carrying earth when building the sementeras. The ko-chuk-kod′ is made in Bontoc and Samoki. It is not shown in any of the illustrations, but is quite similar to the tay-ya-an′, or large transportation basket of the woman, yet is slimmer. It is also similar in shape and size to the woman’s transportation basket in Benguet which is worn on the back supported by a headband.

The woman has two important a′-nĭs bamboo transportation baskets, which are constantly employed. One called “lu′-wa,” the shallow lower basket shown in [Pl. LXXV], is made only in Samoki; the other tay-ya-an′, shown in [Pl. XCIII], holds about three pecks. It is made only in Bontoc and Samoki.

Ag-ka-win′ is the small rump basket almost invariably worn by women when working in the irrigated sementera. It is of fi′-ka bamboo, is made commonly in Bontoc and Samoki, and occasionally in Tulubin. The field toiler often carries her lunch to the field in the ag-ka-win′, and when she returns the basket is usually filled with crustaceans and mollusks picked up in the wet sementera or gathered in the river, or with weeds or grasses to be cooked as “greens.”

The woman’s rain protector, a scoop-shaped affair about 4 feet long, called “tûg-wi′,” is said to be made only in Ambawan and Barlig. It consists of a double weave of coarse splints, between which is a waterproof layer of a large palm leaf. It is worn over the head, and is an excellent protection from the rain. It may well have been suggested to primitive man by the banana leaf, which I have repeatedly seen carried over the head and back by the Igorot in many sections of northern Luzon during the rains. I have also seen it used many times in Manila by Tagalog who were caught out in a storm without an umbrella. The rain protector is shown lying in front of the house in [Pl. XXXVII].

Tak-o-chûg′ is the man’s dirt scoop made of a′-nĭs bamboo. It resembles the tûg-wi′ in shape, but is only about 1½ feet long. It is employed in handling earth, and conveying the dirt to the ko-chuk-kod′, or dirt transportation basket.

A basket very similar to tak-o-chûg′, but called “sûg-fi′,” is employed by the woman in her housework in handling vegetables. It is shown in [Pl. XCIV], containing camote parings.

The to′-pĭl is the man’s “dinner pail.” It is made of a′-nĭs bamboo, is a covered basket, and is constructed to contain from one and a half to three quarts of solid food. In it men and boys carry their lunch to the fields. All the pueblos make the to′-pĭl.

Another basket, called “sang′-i,” is generally employed in carrying the man’s food. It is used for long trips from home, although I have seen it used simply for carrying the field lunch. It is made of bejuco in Ambawan, Barlig, and Tulubin, and passes widely in the area through commerce. It is worn on the back, secured by bejuco straps passing in front of the shoulders.

Fang′-ao is the sang′-i with a waterproof bejuco covering. As it is worn on the back, the man appears to be wearing a cape made of hanging vegetable threads. This is the basket commonly known as the “head basket,” but it is used for carrying food, blankets, anything, on the trail. It is made in Ambawan, Barlig, and Kanyu, and is found pretty well scattered throughout the area. It is shown, front and back view, in [Pl. XCV].

Fa′-i si gang′-sa is an open-work bejuco basket, in shape very similar to the sang′-i, used to carry the gang′-sa, or metal drum. It is worn slung on the back as is the sang′-i.

A house basket holding about a peck, called “fa-lo′-ko,” is made of a′-nĭs bamboo. It is used in various capacities, for vegetables and cereals, in and about the house. It is made in all the pueblos and is shown in [Pl. XCIV]. A few other household baskets are often found. Among these are the large, bottle-shaped locust basket, i-wûs′, a smaller basket, ko′-lug, of the same shape used to hold threshed rice, and the open-work spoon basket, so′-long, which usually hangs over the fireplace in each dwelling.

The large winnowing tray, lĭg-o′, shown bottom up in [Pl. XCIII], is made in Samoki and Kanyu of a′-nĭs bamboo. There are two sizes of winnowing trays, both of which are employed everywhere in the area.

Several small a′-nĭs bamboo eating trays, called “ki′-ûg,” are shown in [Pl. XCIV]. These food dishes are used on ceremonial occasions, and some of them can not be purchased. They are made in all pueblos.

Samoki alone is said to make the rice sieve, called “a-ka′-ûg. It passes widely in the pueblo.

Aside from these various basket utensils and implements there are the three kinds of fish traps described in the section on fishing.

There are also three varieties of basket-work hats. The rain hat called “sĕg-fi′,” is made in Bontoc, and may be in imitation of those worn nearer the western coast. This with the suk-lâng, the pocket hat always worn by the men and boys, and the kut′-lao, or sleeping hat, worn by children and adults of both sexes, are described under the head of “Clothing.”

Weapon production

Igorot weapons are few and relatively simple. The bow and arrow, used wherever the Negrito is in Luzon, is not known to the Igorot warrior of the Bontoc culture area. Small boys in Bontoc pueblo make for themselves tiny bows 1½ or 2 feet long with which they snap light arrows a few feet. But the instrument is of the crudest, merely a toy, and is a thing of the day, being acquired from the culture of the Ilokano who live in the pueblo. The Igorot claim they never employed the bow and arrow, and, to-day at least, consider the question as to their ever using it as very foolish, since, they say, pointing to the child’s toy, “It is nothing.”

In 1665–1668 Friar Casimiro Diaz wrote of the Igorot that they used arrows,[6] but it is believed his statement did not apply to the Bontoc man. Igorot-like people throughout northern Luzon commonly do not have this weapon, yet the large Tinguian group of Abra, west and north of Bontoc, and the Ibilao of southeastern Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, and adjacent Isabela employ the bow constantly.

The natural projectile weapon of the Negrito is the bow and arrow; that of the Malayan seems to be the blowgun—at present, however, largely replaced by the spear, though in some southern islands, especially in Paragua, it has held its own.

Wooden weapons

Shields are universally made and used by the Igorot. They are made by the men of each pueblo, and are seldom bought or sold. They are cut from single pieces of wood, and are generally constructed of very light wood, though some are heavy. The hand grip is cut in the solid timber, is almost invariably made for the left hand, and will usually accommodate only three fingers—the thumb and little finger remaining outside the grip and free to press forward the upper and lower ends of the shield, respectively, slanting it to glance a blow of a spear.

Within the present boundary of Bontoc Province there are three distinct patterns of wooden shields in use in three quite distinct culture areas. There is still another shield immediately beyond the western border of the province but which is believed to be produced also in the Bontoc area.

First, is the shield of the Bontoc culture area. It is usually about 3 feet long and 1 foot wide, is blackened with a greasy soot, though now and again one in original wood is seen. The upper part or “chief” of the shield is cut, leaving three points projecting several inches above the solid field; the lower end or “base” is cut, leaving two points. Across both ends of the shield is a strengthening lace of bejuco, passing through perforations from front to back. The front surface of the shield is most prominent over the deep-cut hand grip at the boss or “fess point,” toward which a wing approaches on both the dexter and sinister sides of the front of the shield, being carved slightly on the field. This is the usual Bontoc shield, but some few have meaningless straight-line decorations cut in the field.

In the Tinglayan culture area, immediately north of Bontoc, the usual shield is very similar to the above, except that various sections of both the face and back of the shield are of natural wood or are colored dull red. The strengthening of bejuco lacings and the raised wings are also found.

Still farther north is the Kalinga shield—a slim, gracefully formed shield, differing from the typical Bontoc weapon chiefly in its more graceful outline. It is of a uniform black color and has the bejuco lacings the same as the others.

The fourth variety, made at Bagnen, immediately across the Bontoc border, in Lepanto, and probably also made and certainly used near at hand in Bontoc, is quite similar to the Bontoc type but is smaller and cruder. It is uncolored, and on its front has crude drawings of snakes and frogs (or perhaps men) drawn with soot paint.

Banawi area, south of the Bontoc area, has a shield differing markedly from the others. It is longer, usually somewhat wider, and not cut at either end. The lower end is straight across at right angles to the sides; the upper end rises to a very obtuse angle at the middle. The front is usually much plainer than is that of the other shields mentioned.

Throughout the Bontoc area there is a spear with a bamboo blade, entirely a wooden weapon. The spear is employed in warfare, and is losing its place only as iron becomes plentiful enough and cheap enough to substitute for the bamboo blades or heads. Even in sections in which iron spears are relatively common the wooden spear is used much in warfare, since spears thrown at an enemy are frequently lost.

Sharp-pointed bamboo spikes are often stuck in the trails of war parties when they are returning from some foray in which they have been successful. These spikes are from about 6 inches in length, as among the people of the Bontoc area, to 3 or more feet, as among the Ibilao of southeastern Nueva Vizcaya. The latter people nightly place these long spikes, called “luk′-dun,” in the trails leading to their dwellings. They are placed at a considerable angle, and would impale an intruder in the groin or upper thigh, inflicting a cruel and disabling wound. The shorter spikes either cut through the bottom of the foot or stab the instep or leg near the ankle. They are much dreaded, and, though crude, are very effective weapons.

Metal weapons

The metal spear blade or head is a product of Igorot workmanship. Baliwang, situated about six hours north of Bontoc, makes most of the metal spear blades used in the Bontoc area. Sapao, located about a day and a half to the south, makes excellent metal blades, but they seldom reach the Bontoc culture area, although blades of inferior production from Sapao are found in Ambawan, the southernmost pueblo of the area.

Baliwang has four smithies, in each of which two or three men labor, each man in a smithy performing a separate part of the work. One operates the bellows, another feeds the fire and does the heavy striking during the initial part of the work, and the other—the real blade maker, the artist—directs all the labor, and performs the finer and finishing parts of the blade production.

The smithies are about 12 feet square without side walls. They have a grass roof sloping to within 3 feet of the earth, enlarging the shaded area to near 20 feet square. Near one side of the room is the bellows, called “op-op′,” consisting of two vertical, parallel wooden tubes about 5 feet long and 10 inches in diameter, standing side by side. Each tube has a piston or plunger, called “dot-dot′;” the packing ring of the piston is of wood covered with chicken feathers, making it slightly flexible at the rim, so it fits snugly in the tube. The lower end of the bellows tubes rests in the earth, 4 inches above which a small bamboo tube leads the compressed air to the fireplace from each bellows tube. These small tubes, called “to-bong′,” end near an opening through a brick at the back of the fire, and the air forced through them passes on through the brick to the burning charcoal. The outer end of the to-bong′ is cut at an angle, and as the tubes end outside the opening in the brick, the air inbreathed by the bellows, as the plungers are raised, is drawn from back of the fireplace—thus the fire is not disturbed.

The fuel is an inferior charcoal prepared by the Igorot from pine. This bellows is found throughout the Archipelago and is evidently a Malayan product. It is believed that it came to Bontoc with the Igorot from their earlier home and is not, as some say, a Chinese invention.[7] The Igorot manufacturer of metal pipes uses exactly the same kind of bellows, except that it is very much smaller, and so appears like a toy. It is poorly shown in [Pl. CIX].

Much of the iron now employed in the manufacture of Igorot weapons is Chinese bar iron coming from China to the Islands at Candon, in Ilokos Sur. However, the people readily make weapons from any iron they may acquire, greatly preferring the scraps of broken Chinese cast-iron pots, vessels purchased primarily for making sugar. In his choice of cast iron the Igorot exhibits a practical knowledge of metallurgy, since cast iron makes better steel than wrought iron—that is, as he has to work.

Figure 5.

Ironsmith’s stone hammer.

The anvils of the smithy, numbering four or five, are large rocks set solidly in the earth. The hammers are nearly all stone, though some of the workmen have a small iron hammer used in finishing the weapons.

There are several varieties of stone hammers. One weighing about 30 pounds is 16 inches long, 10 inches wide, and from 4 to 6 inches thick. An inch-deep groove is cut in both edges of the hammer, and into these grooves the short, double wooden handle is attached by a withe. Another hammer, similar to the above in shape and attachment, is about one-third its size and weight. There is a still smaller hammer lashed with leather bands to a single, straight wooden handle; and there is also a round hammer stone about 3 inches in diameter without handle or attachment, which hammer, together with the larger one last mentioned, is largely superseded in some of the smithies by the metal hammer.

The bellows operator sits squatting on a slight platform the height of the bellows, and constantly works the plungers up and down with rhythmic strokes.

Two men at first handle the hot iron—one, the real blade maker, holds the white-hot metal with long-handled iron pinchers (purchased in Candon) and his helper wields the 30-pound hammer. He stands with legs well apart, grasps the heavy hammer with both hands, and swings it back and forth between his legs. The blow is struck at the downward, backward swing.

These smiths weld iron, and also temper it to make steel. The following detailed picture of a welding observed in a Baliwang smithy may be duplicated there any day. The two pieces of iron to be welded were separately heated a dull red. One was then laid on the other and both were cooled with water. Wet earth, gathered for the occasion at the side of the smithy, was then put over them; while still covered they were inserted again in the fire. When red-hot they were withdrawn, the little mound of earth covering the two pieces of iron being still in place but having been brought also to a red heat. A few light blows fell on the red mass, and it was again returned to the fire. Four times the iron was withdrawn and received a few blows with a light hammer wielded by the master smith. On being withdrawn the fifth time half a dozen blows were struck by the helper with the 30-pound hammer. Again the iron was heated, but when removed the sixth time the welding was evidently considered finished, as the shaping of the weapon was then begun. Weldings made by these smiths seem to be complete.

The tempering done by the Igorot is crude, and is such as may be seen in any country blacksmith shop in the States. The iron is heated and is tempered by cooling in a small wooden trough of water. There is great difference in the quality of the steel turned out by the Igorot, even by the same man, though some men are recognized as more skillful than others.

There are four styles of spear blades made by Baliwang. The one most common is called “fal-fĕg′.” It is a simple, single-barbed blade, and ranges from 2 inches to 6 inches in length. This style of blade is the most used in warfare, and the smaller, lighter blades are considered better for this purpose than the heavier ones.

The fang′-kao, or barbless lance blade, is next common in use. It is not a war blade, but is used almost entirely in killing carabaos and hogs. There is one notable exception to this statement—Ambawan has almost no other class of spear. These blades range from 4 to 12 or 14 inches in length.

The other two blades, si-na-la-wi′-tan and kay-yan′, are relatively rare. The former is quite similar to the fal-fĕg′, except that instead of the single pair of barbs there are other barbs—say, from one to ten pairs. This spear is not considered at all serviceable as a hunting spear, and is not used in war as much as is the fal-fĕg′. It is prized highly as an anito scarer. When a man passes alone in the mountains anito are very prone to walk with him; however, if the traveler carries a si-na-la-wi′-tan, anito will not molest him, since they are afraid when they see the formidable array of barbs.

Kay-yan′ is a gracefully formed blade not used in hunting, and employed less in war than is si-na-la-wi′-tan. Though the Igorot has almost nothing in his culture for purely aesthetic purposes, yet he ascribes no purpose for the kay-yan′—he says it looks pretty; but I have seen it carried to war by war parties.

The pueblo of Sapao makes superior-looking steel weapons, though many Igorot claim the steel of the Baliwang spear is better than that from Sapao. In Quiangan I saw a fang′-kao, or lance-shaped blade made in Sapao, having six faces on each side. The five lines separating the faces ran from the tang to the point of the blade, and were as regular and perfect as though machine made. The best class of Sapao blades is readily distinguishable by its regular lines and the smooth and perfect surface finish.

All spearheads are fastened to the wooden shaft by a short haft or tang inserted in the wood. An iron ferrule or a braided bejuco ferrule is employed to strengthen the shaft where the tang is inserted. A conical iron ferrule or cap is also placed on the butt of the shaft. This ferrule is often used, as the spear is always stuck in the earth close at hand when the warrior works any distance from home; and as he passes along the steep mountain trails or carries heavy burdens he commonly uses the spear shaft as a staff.

The spear shafts are made by the owner of the weapon, it not being customary for anyone to produce them for sale. Some of them are rather attractively decorated with brass and copper studs, and a few have red and yellow bejuco ferrules near the blade. In some pueblos of the Bontoc area, as at Mayinit, spear shafts are worked down and eventually smoothed and finished by a flexible, bamboo knife-blade machine. It consists of about a dozen blades 8 or 10 inches in length, fastened together side by side with string. The blades lie one overlapping the other like the slats of an American window shutter. Each projecting blade is sharpened to a chisel edge. The machine is grasped in the hand, as shown in [fig. 6], and is slid up and down the shaft with a slight twisting movement obtained by bending the wrist. The machine becomes a flexible, many-bladed plane.

Baliwang alone makes the genuine Bontoc battle-ax. It is a strong, serviceable blade of good temper, and is hafted to a short, strong, straight wooden handle which is strengthened by a ferrule of iron or braided bejuco. The ax has a slender point opposed to the bit or cutting edge of the blade. This point is often thrust in the earth and the upturned blade used as a stationary knife, on which the Igorot cuts meats and other substances by drawing them lengthwise along the sharp edge. The bit of the ax is at a small angle with the front and back edges of the blade, and is nearly a straight line. The axes are kept keen and sharp by whetstones collected and preserved solely for the purpose. Besao, near Sagada, quarries and barters a good grade of whetstone.

Figure 6.

Bamboo spear-shaft dresser.

A slender, long-handled battle-ax now and then comes into the area in trade from the north. Balbelasan, of old Abra Province, but now in the northern part of extended Bontoc Province, is one of the pueblos which produce this beautiful ax. The blade is longer and very much slimmer than the Bontoc blade, but its marked distinguishing feature is the shape of the cutting edge. The blade is ground on two straight lines joined together by a short curved line, giving the edge the striking form of the beak of a rapacious bird. The slender, graceful handle, always fitted with a long iron ferrule, has a process on the under side near the middle. The handle is also usually fitted with a decorated metal ferrule at the tip and frequently is decorated for its full length with bands of brass or tin, or with sheets of either metal artistically incised.

The Balbelasan ax is not used by the pueblos making it, or at least by many of them, but finds its field of usefulness east and northeast of Bontoc pueblo as far as the foothills of the mountains west of the Rio Grande de Cagayan. I was told by the Kalinga of this latter region that the people in the mountain close to the Cagayan in the vicinity of Cabagan Nuevo, Isabela Province, also use this ax.

In the southern and western part of the Bontoc area the battle-ax shares place with the bolo, the sole hand weapon of the Igorot of adjoining Lepanto, Benguet, and Nueva Vizcaya Provinces.

The bolo within the Bontoc area comes from Sapao and from the Ilokano people of the west coast. The southern pueblo in the Bontoc area, Ambawan, uses the bolo of Sapao to the entire exclusion of the battle-ax. Tulubin, the next pueblo to Ambawan, and only an hour from it, uses almost solely the Baliwang battle-ax. Such pueblos as Titipan and Antedao, about three hours west of Bontoc, use both the ax and bolo, while the pueblos further west, as Agawa, Sagada, Balili, Alap, etc., use the bolo exclusively—frequently an Ilokano weapon.

The Sapao bolo is, in appearance, superior to that of Ilokano manufacture. It is a broad blade swelling markedly toward the center, and is somewhat similar in shape to the barong of the Sulu Moro of the Sulu Archipelago. This weapon finds its chief field of use in the Quiangan and Banawi areas. In these districts the bolo is fitted with an open scabbard, and the bright blade presents a novel appearance lying exposed against the red scabbard. The Igorot manufacturer of the bolo does not make the scabbard, and most of the bolos used within the Bontoc area are sheathed in the closed wooden scabbard commonly found in Lepanto and Benguet.

Pipe production, and smoking

The Igorot of Bontoc area make pipes of wood, clay, and metal. All their pipes have small bores and bowls. In Benguet a wooden pipe is commonly made with a bowl an inch and a half in diameter; it has a large bore also. In Banawi I obtained a wooden pipe with a bowl 8¼ inches in circumference and 4 inches in height, but having a bore averaging only half an inch in diameter.

Nearly all pueblos make the pipes they use, but pipes of clay and metal are manufactured by the Igorot for Igorot trade. I never learned that wooden pipes are made by them for commercial purposes.

The wooden pipe of the area varies from simple tubular forms, exactly like a modern cigar holder, to those having bowls set at right angle to the stem. All wooden pipes are whittled by the men, and some of them are very graceful in form and have an excellent polish. They are made of at least three kinds of wood—ga-sa′-tan, la-no′-ti, and gi-gat′. Most pipes—wooden, clay, or metal—have separable stems.

A few men in Agawa, a pueblo near the western border of the area, make beautiful clay pipes, called “ki-na-lo′-sab.” The clay is carefully macerated between the fingers until it is soft and fine. It is then roughly shaped by the fingers, and afterwards, when partially hardened, is finished with a set of five light, wooden tools.

The finished bowls are in three different colors. When baked about nine hours the pipes come forth gray. Those coming out red have been burned about twelve hours, usually all night. The black ones are made by reburning the red bowls about half an hour in palay straw.

Two men in Sabangan and one each in Genugan and Takong—all western pueblos—manufacture metal “anito” pipes. To-day brass wire and the metal of cartridge shells are most commonly employed in making these pipes.

The process of manufacture is elaborate and very interesting. First a beeswax model is made the exact size and shape of the finished metal pipe. All beeswax, called “a-tĭd′,” used in pipe making comes from Barlig through Kanu, and the illustration ([Pl. CVIII]) shows the form in which it passes in commerce in the area. A small amount of wax is softened by a fire until it can be flattened in the palm of the hand. It is then rolled around a stick the size of the bore in the bowl. The outside of the wax bowl is next designed as is shown in the illustration ([Pl. CVIII]). A careful examination of the illustration will show that the design represents the sitting figure of a man. He is resting his elbows on his knees and holding his lower jaw in his hands—eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and fingers are all represented. This design is made in the wax with a small knife. The wax for the short stem piece is flattened and folded around a stick the size of the bore of the stem. The stem piece is then set into the bowl and the design which was started on the bowl is continued over the stem.

When the wax pipe is completed a projecting point of wax is attached to the base of the pipe, and the whole is imbedded in a clay jacket, the point of wax, however, projecting from the jacket. The clay used by the pipe maker is obtained in a pit at Pingad in the vicinity of Genugan. Around the wax point a clay funnel is built. The clay mold, called “bang-bang′-a,” is thoroughly baked by a fire. In less than an hour the mold is hardened and brown, and the wax pipe within it has melted and the wax been poured out of the mold through the gate or opening left by the melting point of wax, leaving the mold empty.

A small Malayan bellows, called “op-op′,” the exact duplicate in miniature of the double tubular bellows described in the preceding section on “metal weapons,” furnishes the draught for a small charcoal fire. The funnel of the clay mold is filled with pieces of metal, and the entire thing is buried in the fired charcoal. In fifteen minutes the metal melts and runs down through the gate at the bottom of the funnel into the hollow, wax-lined mold. Since the entire mold is hot, the metal does not cool or harden promptly, and the pipe maker taps and jars the mold in order to make the metal penetrate and fill every part.

The mold is set aside to cool and is then broken away from the metal core. To-day the pipe maker possesses a file with which to smooth and clean the crude pipe. Formerly all that labor, and it is extensive, was performed with stones.

It requires two men to make the “anito” pipes—tĭn-ak-ta′-go. One superintends all the work and performs the finest of it, and the second pumps the bellows and smooths and cleans the pipe after it is cast. The two men make four pipes per day, but the purchaser of an “anito” pipe puts days of toil on the metal, smoothing and perfecting it by cleaning and digging out the design until it becomes really a beautiful bit of primitive art.

When a pueblo wants a few tĭn-ak-ta′-go it sends for the manufacturer, and he comes to the pueblo with his helper and remains as long as necessary. Ay-o′-na, of Genugan, annually visits Titipan, Ankiling, Sagada, Bontoc, and Samoki. He usually furnishes all material, and receives a peseta for each pipe, but the pueblo furnishes the food. In this way a pipe maker is a journeyman about half the year.

Tukukan makes a smooth, cast-metal pipe, called “pĭn-e-po-yong′,” and Baliwang makes tubular iron pipes at her smithies. They are hammered out and pounded and welded over a core. I have seen several of such excellent workmanship that the welded seam could not be detected on the surface.

In the western part of the area both men and women smoke, and some smoke almost constantly. Throughout the areas occupied by Christians children of 6 or 7 years smoke a great deal. I have repeatedly seen girls not over 6 years of age smoking rolls of tobacco, “cigars,” a foot long and more than an inch in diameter, but in Bontoc area small children do not smoke. In most of the area women do not smoke at all, and boys seldom smoke until they reach maturity.

In Bontoc the tobacco leaf for smoking is rolled up and pinched off in small sections an inch or so in length. These pieces are then wrapped in a larger section of leaf. When finished for the pipe the tobacco resembles a short stub of a cigar. Only half a dozen whiffs are generally taken at a smoke, and the pipe with its tobacco is then tucked under the edge of the pocket hat. Four pipes in five as they are seen sticking from a man’s hat show that the owners stopped smoking long before they exhausted their pipes.

Fire making

The oldest instrument for fire making used by the Bontoc Igorot is now seldom found. However, practically all boys of a dozen years know how to make and use it.

It is called “co-li′-li,” and is a friction machine made of two pieces of dry bamboo. A 2-foot section of dead and dry bamboo is split lengthwise and in one piece a small area of the stringy tissue lining the tube is splintered and picked quite loose. Immediately over this, on the outside of the tube, a narrow groove is cut at right angles to it. This piece of bamboo becomes the stationary lower part of the fire machine. One edge of the other half of the original tube is sharpened like a chisel blade. This section is grasped in both hands, one at each end, and is at first slowly and heavily, afterwards more rapidly, drawn back and forth through the groove of the stationary bamboo, making a small conical pile of dry dust beneath the opening.

After a dozen strokes the sides of the groove and the edge of the friction piece burn brown, presently a smell of smoke is plain, and before three dozen strokes have been made smoke may be seen. Usually before one hundred strokes a larger volume of smoke tells that the dry dust constantly falling on the pile has grown more and more charred until finally a tiny friction-fired particle falls, carrying combustion to the already heated dust cone.

The machine is carefully raised, and, if the fire is permanently kindled, the pinch of smoldering dust is inserted in a wisp of dry grass or other easily inflammable material; in a minute or two flames burst forth, and the fire may be transferred where desired.

The pal-tĭng′, the world-wide flint and steel-percussion fire machine, is found with all Bontoc men.

At Sagada there is a ledge of exposed and crumbling rock from which most of the men of the western part of the Bontoc culture area obtain their “flint.” The “steel” is any piece of iron which may be had—probably a part of the ferrule from the butt of a spear shaft is used more than is any other one kind of iron.

The pal-tĭng′ is secured either in a very small basket or a leather roll which is fastened closed by a string. In this receptacle a small amount of dry tree cotton is also carried. The pal-tĭng′ receptacle is carried about in the large bag hanging at the girdle.

Fire is made by a tiny percussion-heated particle of the stone as it flies away under the sharp, glancing blow of the “steel” and catches in the dry cotton held by the thumb nail on the upper surface of the stone.

If the fire maker wishes to light his pipe, he tucks the smoldering cotton lightly into his roll of tobacco; a few draws are sufficient to ignite the pipeful. If an out-of-door fire is desired the cotton is first used to ignite a dry bunch of grass. Should the fire be needed in the dwelling, the cotton is placed on charcoal. Blowing and care will produce a good, blazing wood fire in a few minutes.

To-day friction matches are known throughout the area, although probably not one person in one hundred has ever owned a box of matches.

The fire syringe, common west of Bontoc Province among the Tinguian, is not known in the Bontoc culture area.

Division of labor

Under this title must be grouped all forms of occupations which are considered necessary to the life of the pueblo.

Up to the age of 5 or 6 years Bontoc children do not work. As has been said in a previous chapter, during the months of April and May many little girls from 5 to 10 work and play together for long hours daily gathering a few varieties of wild plants close about the pueblo for food for the pigs. This labor is unnecessary as soon as the camote vines become large enough for gathering. During June and July these same girls gather the camote vines for pig food. About August this labor falls to the women.

Mention has also been made of the fact that during the latter half of April and May the boys and girls of all ages from 6 or 7 years to 13 or 14 guard the palay sementeras against the birds from earliest dawn till heavy twilight.

Little girls often help about the dwelling by paring camotes for the forthcoming meal.

At all times the elder children, both boys and girls, are baby tenders while their parents work.

Man is the sole hunter and warrior, and he alone fishes when traps or snares are employed.

Only men go to the mountains to cut and bring home firewood and lumber for building purposes; widowed women sometimes bring home dead fallen wood found along the trails. Only men construct the various private and public buildings. They alone build the stone dikes of the sementeras and construct the irrigating ditches and dams; they transport to the pueblo most of the harvested palay. They manufacture and vend basi, and prepare the salted meats. They make all weapons, and all implements and utensils for field and household labors. Contrary to a widespread custom among primitive people, as has been noted, the Igorot man constructs all basket work, whether hats, baskets, trays, or ornaments, and bindings of weapons and implements. Men are the workers of all metal and stone. They are the only cargadors, though in the Kiapa area of Benguet Province women sometimes go on the trails as paid burden bearers for Americans.

Only men are said to tattoo and circumcise. They determine the days of rest and of ceremony for the pueblo, and all pueblo ceremonies are in their hands; so also are the ceremonies of the ato—only men are “priests,” except for private household ceremonials.

Men constitute the “control element” of the pueblo. They are the legislative, executive, and judicial power for the pueblo and each ato; they are considered the wisdom of their people, and they alone, it is said, give public advice on important matters.

The woman is the only weaver of fabrics and the only spinner of the materials of which the fabrics are made. On the west coast the Ilokano men do a great deal of the spinning, but the Igorot man has not imitated them in the industry, though he has often seen them. Women are the sole potters of Samoki, and they alone transport and vend their wares to other pueblos. In the Mayinit salt industry only the woman tends the salt house, gathering the crude salt solution.

Only the women plant the rice seed, and they alone transplant the palay; they also care for the growing plants and harvest most of the crops. In the transplanting and harvesting of palay the woman is given credit for greater dexterity than the man; men harvest palay only when sufficient women can not be found. Women plant, care for, harvest, and transport to the pueblo all camotes, millet, maize, and beans.

The men and women together construct and repair irrigated sementeras, men usually digging the earth while the women transport it. Together they prepare the soil of irrigated sementeras, and carry manure to them from the pigpens. Men at times do the women’s work in harvesting, and women sometimes assist the men to carry the harvest to the pueblo. Either threshes out and hulls the rice, though the woman does more than half this work. Both prepare foods for cooking, cook the meals, and serve them. Both bring water from the river for household uses, though the woman brings the greater part. Each tends the babe while the other works in the field. Both care for the chickens and pigs, even to cooking the food for the latter. Men and women catch fish by hand in the river, manufacture tapui, and in the salt industry both evaporate the salt solution and vend the salt.

In the treatment of the sick and the driving out of afflicting anito, men and women alike serve.

Little work is demanded of the old people, though the labors they perform are of great value to the pueblo, as the strong are thus given more time for a vigorous industrial life.

Great service is rendered the pueblo by the councils of the old men, and they are the “priests” of all ceremonials, except those of the household.

The old men do practically nothing at manual labor in the field. However, numbers of old men and women guard the palay sementeras from the birds, and they frequently tend their grandchildren about the pueblo. They also bring water from the river to the dwelling.

Old women seem generally busy. They prepare and cook foods, and they spin materials for women’s skirts and girdles. The blind women share in these labors, even going to the river for water.

By labor of the group is meant the common effort of two or more people whose everyday possessions and accumulations are not in common, as they are in a family, to perform some definite labor which can be better done by such effort than by the separate labors of the several members of the group.

A pueblo war probably represents the largest necessary group-occupation, because at such time all available warriors unite in a concerted effort. Next to this, though possibly coming before it, is the group assembled for the erection of a dwelling. As has been noted, all dwellings are built by a group, and when a rich man’s domicile is to be put up a great many people assemble—the men to erect the dwelling, and the women to prepare and cook the food. A great deal of agricultural labor is performed by the group. New irrigation ditches are built by, or at the instance of, all those who will benefit by them. The dam built annually across the river at Bontoc pueblo is constructed by all, or at the instance of all, who benefit from the additional irrigation water. Wild carabaos are hunted by a group of men, and the domestic carabaos can be caught only when several men surround and attack them.

All interpueblo commerce is carried on by a group of people. Almost never does a person pass from one pueblo to another alone, and commerce is the chief thing which causes the interpueblo communication. These groups of traveling merchants consist of from two or three persons to a dozen or more—as in the case of the Samoki pottery sellers.

Wages, and exchange of labor

The woman receives the same wage as the man. There are two reasons why she should. First, all labor is by the day, so the facts of sickness and maternity never keep the woman from her labor when she is expected and is depended on; and, second, she is as efficient in the labors she performs as is the man—in some she is recognized as more efficient. She does as much work as a man, and does it as well or better. It is worth so much to have a certain work done in a particular time, and the Igorot pays the wage to whomever does the work. The growing boy or girl who performs the same labors as an adult receives an equal wage.

Not only do the people work by the day, but they are paid daily also. Every night the laborer goes to the dwelling of his employer and receives the wage; the wages of unmarried children are paid to their parents.

To all classes of laborers dinner and sometimes supper is supplied. For weeding and thinning the sementeras of young palay and for watching the fruiting palay to drive away the birds, the only wage is these two meals. But this labor is light, and frightening away the birds is usually the work of children or very old people who can not perform hard labors. In all classes of work for which only food is given, much time is left to the laborers in which the men may weave their basket work and the women spin the bark-fiber thread for skirts.

Five manojos of palay is the daily wage for all laborers except those mentioned in the last paragraph. This is the wage of the wood gatherer in the mountains, of the builder of granaries, sementeras, irrigating ditches, and dikes, and of those who prepare soils and who plant and harvest crops.

There is much exchange of labor between individuals, and even between large groups of people, such as members of an ato. Formerly exchange of labor was practiced slightly more than at present, but to-day, as has been noted, all dwellings are built by the unpaid labor of those who come for the accompanying feast and “good time,” and because their own dwellings were or will be built by such labor. A great deal of agricultural labor is now paid for in kind; practically all the available labor in an ato turns out to help a member when a piece of work is urgent. However, it is not customary for poor people to exchange their labor, since they constantly need food for those dependent on them. When the poor man desires a wage for his toil he needs only to tell some rich person that he wishes to work for him—both understand that a wage will be paid.

Distribution

By the term “distribution” is here meant the ordinary division of the productions of Bontoc area among the several classes of Igorot in the area—in other words, what is each person’s share of that which the area produces?

It must be said that distribution is very equitable. Wages are uniform. No man or set of men habitually spoils another’s accumulations by exacting from him a tax or “rake off.” There is no form of gambling or winning another’s earnings. There are no slaves or others who labor without wages; children do not retain their own wages until they marry, but they inherit all their parents’ possessions. There is almost no usury. There is no indigent class, and the rich men toil as industriously in the fields as do the poor—though I must say I never knew a rich man to go as cargador on the trail.

Theft

Higher forms of society, even such society as the Christianized Filipinos of the coastal cities, produce and possess a considerable number of people who live and often raise families on personal property stolen and carried away from the lawful owners. Almost no thief in the Bontoc area escapes detection—the society is too simple for him to escape—and when he is apprehended he restores more than he took away. There is no opportunity for a thief class to develop, consequently there is no chance for theft to distort the usual equitable division of products.

Conquest

Conquest, or the act of gaining control and acquisition of another’s property by force of arms, is not operative in the Bontoc area. Moro and perhaps other southern Malayan people frequently capture people by conquest whom they enslave, and they also bring back much valuable loot in the shape of metals and the much-prized large earthen jars.

Certain Igorot, as those of Asin, make forcible conquests on their neighbors and carry away persons for slavery. Asin made a raid westward into Suyak of Lepanto Province in 1900, and some American miners joined the expedition of natives to try to recover the captives. But Bontoc has no such conquests, and, since the people have long ago ceased migration, there is no conquest of territory. In their interpueblo warfare loot is seldom carried away. There is practically nothing in the form of movable and easily controlled valuable possessions, such as domestic cattle, horses, or carabaos, so the usual equilibrium of Bontoc property distribution has little to disturb it.

The primitive agriculturist is thought of in history as the victim of warlike neighbors who make predatory forays against him, repeatedly robbing him of his hard-earned accumulations. In Igorot land this is not the case. There are no savage or barbaric people, except the Negritos who are not agriculturists. Sometimes, however, some of the Igorot groups descend to the settlements of the Christians in the lowlands and in the night bring back a few carabaos and hogs. The Igorot of Quiangan are noted for such robberies made on the pueblos of Bagabag and Ibung to the south in central Nueva Vizcaya. Sometimes, also, one Igorot group speaks of another as Busol, or enemy, and says the Busol come to rob them in the night. I believe, however, from inquiries made, that relatively very small amounts of property pass from one Igorot group to another by robbery or conquest.

The Bontoc Igorot appears to be in a transition stage, not usually emphasized, between the communism of the savage or barbarian in which each person is said to have a share as long as necessities last, and the more advanced forms of society in which many classes are able to divert to their own advantage much which otherwise would not come to them. The Igorot is not a communist, neither in any sense does he get the monopolist’s share. He is living a life of such natural production that he enjoys the fruits of his labors in a fairer way than do many of the men beneath him or above him in culture.

Consumption

Under this title will be considered simply the foods and beverages of the people. No attempt will be made to treat of consumption in its breadth as it appears to the economist.

Foods

There are few forms of animal life about the Igorot that he will not and does not eat. The exceptions are mainly insectivora, and such larger animals as the mythology of the Igorot says were once men—as the monkey, serpent-eagle, crow, snake, etc. However, he is not wholly lacking in taste and preference in his foods. Of his common vegetable foods he frequently said he prefers, first, beans; second, rice; third, maize; fourth, camotes; fifth, millet.

Rice is the staple food, and most families have sufficient for subsistence during the year. When rice is needed for food bunches of the palay, as tied up at the harvest, are brought and laid in the small pocket of the wooden mortar where they are threshed out of the fruit head. One or two mortarsful is thus threshed and put aside on a winnowing tray. When sufficient has been obtained the grain is put again in the mortar and pounded to remove the pellicle. Usually only sufficient rice is threshed and cleaned for the consumption of one or two days. When the pellicle has been pounded loose the grain is winnowed on a large round tray by a series of dexterous movements, removing all chaff and dirt with scarcely the loss of a kernel of good rice.

The work of threshing, hulling, and winnowing usually falls to the women and girls, but is sometimes performed by the men when their women are preoccupied. At one time when an American wished two or three bushels of palay threshed, as horse food for the trail, three Bontoc men performed the work in the classic treadmill manner. They spread a mat on the earth, covered it with palay, and then tread, or rather “rubbed,” out the kernels with their bare feet. They often scraped up the mass with their feet, bunching it and rubbing it in a way that strongly suggested hands.

Rice is cooked in water without salt. An earthern pot is half filled with the grain and is then filled to the brim with cold water. In about twenty minutes the rice is cooked, filling the vessel, and the water is all absorbed or evaporated. If there is no great haste, the rice sets ten or fifteen minutes longer while the kernels dry out somewhat. As the Igorot cooks rice, or, for that matter, as the native anywhere in the Islands cooks it, the grains are not mashed and mussed together, but each kernel remains whole and separate from the others.

Cooked rice, ma-kan′, is almost always eaten with the fingers, being crowded into the mouth with the back of the thumb. In Bontoc, Samoki, Titipan, Mayinit, and Ganang salt is either sprinkled on the rice after it is dished out or is tasted from the finger tips during the eating. In some pueblos, as at Tulubin, almost no salt is eaten at any time. When rice alone is eaten at a meal a family of five adults eats about ten Bontoc manojo of rice per day.

Beans are cooked in the form of a thick soup, but without salt. Beans and rice, each cooked separately, are frequently eaten together; such a dish is called “sĭb-fan′.” Salt is eaten with sĭb-fan′ by those pueblos which commonly consume salt.

Maize is husked, silked, and then cooked on the cob. It is eaten from the cob, and no salt is used either in the cooking or eating.

Camotes are eaten raw a great deal about the pueblo, the sementera, and the trail. Before they are cooked they are pared and generally cut in pieces about 2 inches long; they are boiled without salt. They are eaten alone at many meals, but are relished best when eaten with rice. They are always eaten from the fingers.

One dish, called “ke-le′-ke,” consists of camotes, pared and sliced, and cooked and eaten with rice. This is a ceremonial dish, and is always prepared at the lis-lis ceremony and at a-su-fal′-i-wis or sugar-making time.

Camotes are always prepared immediately before being cooked, as they blacken very quickly after paring.

Millet is stored in the harvest bunches, and must be threshed before it is eaten. After being threshed in the wooden mortar the winnowed seeds are again returned to the mortar and crushed. This crushed grain is cooked as is rice and without salt. It is eaten also with the hands—“fingers” is too delicate a term.

Some other vegetable foods are also cooked and eaten by the Igorot. Among them is taro which, however, is seldom grown in the Bontoc area. Outside the area, both north and south, there are large sementeras of it cultivated for food. Several wild plants are also gathered, and the leaves cooked and eaten as the American eats “greens.”

The Bontoc Igorot also has preferences among his regular flesh foods. The chicken is prized most; next he favors pork; third, fish; fourth, carabao; and fifth, dog. Chicken, pork (except wild hog), and dog are never eaten except ceremonially. Fish and carabao are eaten on ceremonial occasions, but are also eaten at other times—merely as food.

The interesting ceremonial killing, dressing, and eating of chickens is presented elsewhere, in the sections on “Death” and “Ceremonials.” It is unnecessary to repeat the information here, as the processes are everywhere the same, excepting that generally no part of the fowl, except the feathers, is unconsumed—head, feet, intestines, everything, is devoured.

The hog is ceremonially killed by cutting its throat, not by “sticking,” as is the American custom, but the neck is cut, half severing the head. At Ambuklao, on the Agno River in Benguet Province, I saw a hog ceremonially killed by having a round-pointed stick an inch in diameter pushed and twisted into it from the right side behind the foreleg, through and between the ribs, and into the heart. The animal bled internally, and, while it was being cut up by four men with much ceremony and show, the blood was scooped from the rib basin where it had gathered, and was mixed with the animal’s brains. The intestines were then emptied by drawing between thumb and fingers, and the blood and brain mixture poured into them from the stomach as a funnel. A string of blood-and-brain sausages resulted, when the intestines were cooked. The mouth of the Bontoc hog is held or tied shut until the animal is dead. The Benguet hog could be heard for fifteen minutes at least a quarter of a mile.

After the Bontoc hog is killed it is singed, cut up, and all put in the large shallow iron boiler. When cooked it is cut into smaller pieces, which are passed around to those assembled at the ceremonial.

Fish are eaten both ceremonially and privately whenever they may be obtained. The small fish, the kacho, are in no way cleaned or dressed. Two or three times I saw them cooked and eaten ceremonially, and was told they are prepared the same way for private consumption. The fish, scarcely any over 2 inches in length, were strung on twisted green-grass strings about 6 inches in length. Several of these strings were tied together and placed in an olla of water. When cooked they were lifted out, the strings broken apart, and the fish stripped off into a wooden bowl. Salt was then liberally strewn over them. A large green leaf was brought as a plate for each person present, and the fish were divided again and again until each had an equal share. However, the old men present received double share, and were served before the others. At one time a man was present with a nursing babe in his arms, and he was given two leaves, or two shares, though no one expected the babe could eat its share. After the fish food was passed to each, the broth was also liberally salted and then poured into several wooden bowls. At one fish feast platters of cooked rice and squash were also brought and set among the people. Handful after handful of solid food followed its predecessor rapidly to the always-crammed mouth. The fish was eaten as one might eat sparingly of a delicacy, and the broth was drunk now and then between mouthfuls.

Two other fish are also eaten by the Igorot of the area, the liling, about 4 to 6 inches in length—also cooked and eaten without dressing—and the chalit, a large fish said to acquire the length of 4 feet.

Several small animals, crustaceans and mollusks, gathered in the river and picked up in the sementeras by the women, are cooked and eaten. All these are considered similar to fish and are eaten similarly. Among these is a bright-red crab called “agkama.”[8] This is boiled and all eaten except part of the back shell and the hard “pinchers.” A shrimp-like crustacean obtained in the irrigated sementeras is also boiled and eaten entire. A few mollusks are eaten after being cooked. One, called kitan, I have seen eaten many times; it is a snail-like animal, and after being boiled it is sucked into the mouth after the apex of the shell has been bitten or broken off. Two other animals said to be somewhat similar are called finga and lischug.

The carabao is killed by spearing and, though also eaten simply as food, it is seldom killed except on ceremonial occasions, such as marriages, funerals, the building of a dwelling, and peace and war feasts whether actual events at the time or feasts in commemoration.

The chief occasion for eating carabao merely as a food is when an animal is injured or ill at a time when no ceremonial event is at hand. The animal is then killed and eaten. All is eaten that can be masticated. The animal is neither skinned, singed, nor scraped. All is cut up and cooked together—hide, hair, hoofs, intestines, and head, excepting the horns. Carabao is generally not salted in cooking, and the use of salt in eating the flesh depends on the individual eater.

Sometimes large pieces of raw carabao meat are laid on high racks near the dwelling and “dried” in the sun. There are several such racks in Bontoc, and one can know a long distance from them whether they hold “dried” meat. If one pueblo, in the area exceeds another in the strength and unpleasantness of its “dried” meat it is Mayinit, where on the occasion of a visit there a very small piece of meat jammed on a stick-like a “taffy stick”—and joyfully sucked by a 2-year-old babe successfully bombarded and depopulated our camp.

Various meats, called “ĭt-tag′,” as carabao and pork, are “preserved” by salting down in large bejuco-bound gourds, called “fa′-lay,” or in tightly covered ollas, called “tu-u′-nan.” All pueblos in the area (except Ambawan, which has an unexplained taboo against eating carabao) thus store away meats, but Bitwagan, Sadanga, and Tukukan habitually salt large quantities in the fa′-lay. Meats are kept thus two or three years, though of course the odor is vile.

The dog ranks last in the list of regular flesh foods of the Bontoc man. In the Benguet area it ranks second, pork receiving the first place. The Ibilao does not eat dog—his dog is a hunter and guard, giving alarm of the approaching enemy.

In Bontoc the dog is eaten only on ceremonial occasions. Funerals and marriages are probably more often celebrated by a dog feast than are any other of their ceremonials. The animal’s mouth is held closed and his legs secured while he is killed by cutting the throat. Then his tail is cut off close to the body—why, I could not learn, but I once saw it, and am told it always is so. The animal is singed in the fire and the crisped hair rubbed off with sticks and hands, after which it is cut up and boiled, and then further cut up and eaten as is the carabao meat.

Young babies are sometimes fed hard-boiled fresh eggs, but the Igorot otherwise does not eat “fresh” eggs, though he does eat large numbers of stale ones. He prefers to wait, as one of them said, “until there is something in the egg to eat.” He invariably brings stale or developing eggs to the American until he is told to bring fresh ones. It is not alone the Igorot who has this peculiar preference—the same condition exists widespread in the Archipelago.

Locusts, or cho′-chon, are gathered, cooked, and eaten by the Igorot, as by all other natives in the Islands. They are greatly relished, but may be had in Bontoc only irregularly—perhaps once or twice for a week or ten days each year, or once in two years. They are cooked in boiling water and later dried, whereupon they become crisp and sweet. By some Igorot they are stored away, but I can not say whether they are kept in Bontoc any considerable time after cooking.

The locusts come in storms, literally like a pelting, large-flaked snowstorm, driving across the country for hours and even days at a time. All Igorot have large scoop nets for catching them and immense bottle-like baskets in which to put them and transport them home. The locust catcher runs along in the storm, and, whirling around in it with his large net, scoops in the victims. Many families sometimes wander a week or more catching locusts when they come to their vicinity, and cease only when miles from home. The cry of “enemy” will scarcely set an Igorot community astir sooner than will the cry of “cho′-chon.” The locust is looked upon by them as a very manna from heaven. Pi-na-lat′ is a food of cooked locusts pounded and mixed with uncooked rice. All is salted down in an olla and tightly covered over with a vegetable leaf or a piece of cloth. When it is eaten the mixture is cooked, though this cooking does not kill the strong odor of decay.

Other insect foods are also eaten. I once saw a number of men industriously robbing the large white “eggs” from an ant nest in a tree. The nest was built of leaves attached by a web. Into the bottom of this closed pocket the men poked a hole with a long stick, letting a pint or more of the white pupae run out on a winnowing tray on the earth. From this tray the furious ants were at length driven, and the eggs taken home for cooking.

Beverages

The Igorot drinks water much more than any other beverage. On the trail, though carrying loads while the American may walk empty handed, he drinks less than the American. He seldom drinks while eating, though he makes a beverage said to be drunk only at mealtime. After meals he usually drinks water copiously.

Bá-si is the Igorot name of the fermented beverage prepared from sugar cane. “Bá-si,” under various names, is found widespread throughout the Islands. The Bontoc man makes his bá-si in December. He boils the expressed juice of the sugar cane about six hours, at which time he puts into it a handful of vegetable ferment obtained from a tree called “tub-fĭg′.” This vegetable ferment is gathered from the tree as a flower or young fruit; it is dried and stored in the dwelling for future use. The brewed liquid is poured into a large olla, the flat-bottom variety called “fu-o-foy′” manufactured expressly for bá-si, and then is tightly covered over and set away in the granary. In five days the ferment has worked sufficiently, and the beverage may be drunk. It remains good about four months, for during the fifth or sixth month it turns very acid.

Bá-si is manufactured by the men alone. Tukukan and Titipan manufacture it to sell to other pueblos; it is sold for about half a peso per gallon. It is drunk quite a good deal during the year, though mostly on ceremonial occasions. Men frequently carry a small amount of it with them to the sementeras when they guard them against the wild hogs during the long nights. They say it helps to keep them warm. One glass of bá-si will intoxicate a person not accustomed to drink it, though the Igorot who uses it habitually may drink two or three glasses before intoxication. Usually a man drinks only a few swallows of it at a time, and I never saw an Igorot intoxicated except during some ceremony and then not more than a dozen in several months. Women never drink bá-si.

Ta-pú-i is a fermented drink made from rice, the cha-yĕt′-ĭt variety, they say, grown in Bontoc pueblo. It is a very sweet and sticky rice when cooked. This beverage also is found practically everywhere in the Archipelago. Only a small amount of the cha-yĕt′-ĭt is grown by Bontoc pueblo. To manufacture ta-pú-i the rice is cooked and then spread on a winnowing tray until it is cold. When cold a few ounces of a ferment called “fu-fud” are sprinkled over it and thoroughly stirred in; all is then put in an olla, which is tied over and set away. The ferment consists of cane sugar and dry raw rice pounded and pulverized together to a fine powder. This is then spread in the sun to dry and is later squeezed into small balls some 2 inches in diameter. This ferment will keep a year. When needed a ball is pulverized and sprinkled fine over the cooked rice. An olla of rice prepared for ta-pú-i will be found in one day half filled with the beverage.

Ta-pú-i will keep only about two months. It is never drunk by the women, though they do eat the sweet rice kernels from the jar, and they, as well as the men, manufacture it. It is claimed never to be manufactured in the Bontoc area for sale. A half glass of the beverage will intoxicate. At the end of a month the beverage is very intoxicating, and is then commonly weakened with water. Ta-pú-i is much preferred to bá-si.

The Bontoc man prepares another drink which is filthy, and, even they themselves say, vile smelling. It is called “sa-fu-ĕng′,” is drunk at meals, and is prepared as follows: Cold water is first put in a jar, and into it are thrown cooked rice, cooked camotes, cooked locusts, and all sorts of cooked flesh and bones. The resulting liquid is drunk at the end of ten days, and is sour and vinegar-like. The preparation is perpetuated by adding more water and solid ingredients—it does not matter much what they are.

The odor of sa-fu-ĕng′ is the worst stench in Bontoc. I never closely investigated the beverage personally—but I have no reason to doubt what the Igorot says of it; but if all is true, why is it not fatal?

Salt

Throughout the year the pueblo of Mayinit produces salt from a number of brackish hot springs occupying about an acre of ground at the north end of the pueblo.

Mayinit has a population of about 1,000 souls, probably half of whom are directly interested in salt production. It is probable that the pueblo owes its location to the salt springs, although adjoining it to the south is an arable valley now filled with rice sementeras, which may first have drawn the people.

The hot springs slowly raise their water to the surface, where it flows along in shallow streams. Over these streams, or rather sheets of sluggish water, the Igorot have built 152 salt houses, usually about 12 feet wide and from 12 to 25 feet long. The houses, well shown in [Pl. CXV], are simply grass-covered roofs extending to the earth.

There is no ownership in the springs to-day—just as there is no ownership in springs which furnish irrigating water—one owns the water that passes into his salt house, but has no claim on that which passes through it and flows out below. So each person has ownership of all and only all the water he can use within his plant, and the people claim there are no disputes between owners of houses—as they look at it, each owner of a salt house has an equal chance to gather salt.

The ground space of the salt house is closely paved with cobblestones from 4 to 6 inches in diameter. The water passes among the bases of these stones, and the salt is deposited in a thin crust over their surface. (See [Pl. CXVI].)

These houses are inherited, and, as a consequence, several persons may ultimately have proprietary interest in one house. In such a case the ground space is divided, often resulting in many twig-separated patches, as is shown in [fig. 7].

About once each month the salt is gathered. The women of the family work naked in the stream-filled house, washing the crust of salt from the stones into a large wooden trough, called “ko-long′-ko.” Each stone is thoroughly washed and then replaced in the pavement. The saturated brine is preserved in a gourd until sufficient is gathered for evaporation.

Figure 7.

Ground plan of Mayinit salt house.

Two or more families frequently join in evaporating their salt. The brine is boiled in the large, shallow iron boilers, and from half a day to a day is necessary to effect the evaporation. Evaporation is discontinued when the salt is reduced to a thick paste.

The evaporated salt is spread in a half-inch layer on a piece of banana leaf cut about 5 inches square. The leaf of paste is supported by two sticks on, but free from, a piece of curved broken pottery which is the baking pan. The salt thus prepared for baking is set near a fire in the dwelling where it is baked thirty or forty minutes. It is then ready for use at home or for commerce, and is preserved in the square, flat cakes called “luk′-sa.”

Analyses have been made of Mayinit salt as prepared by the crude method of the Igorot. The showing is excellent when the processes are considered, the finished salt having 86.02 per cent of sodium chloride as against 90.68 per cent for Michigan common salt and 95.35 for Onondaga common salt.

Table of salt composition
Constituent elementsMayinit salt[9]Common fine—
Saturated brineEvaporated saltBaked saltMichigan salt[10]Onondaga salt.
Per centPer centPer centPer centPer cent
Calcium sulphate0.731.500.460.8051.355
Sodium sulphate.926.2810.03——
Sodium chloride7.9572.1986.0290.68295.353
Insoluble matter2.14.16.45——
Water88.0319.191.786.7523.000
Undetermined.23.68.1.26——
Calcium chloride———.974.155
Magnesium chloride———.781.136
Total10010010099.99499.999

One house produces from six to thirty cakes of salt at each baking. A cake is valued at an equivalent of 5 cents, thus making an average salt house, producing, say, fifteen cakes per month, worth 9 pesos per year. Salt houses are seldom sold, but when they are they claim they sell for only 3 or 4 pesos.

Sugar

In October and November the Bontoc Igorot make sugar from cane. The stalks are gathered, cut in lengths of about 20 inches, tied in bundles a foot in diameter, and stored away until the time for expressing the juice.

The sugar-cane crusher, shown in [Pl. CXVIII], consists of two sometimes of three, vertical, solid, hard-wood cylinders set securely to revolve in two horizontal timbers, which, in turn, are held in place by two uprights. One of the cylinders projects above the upper horizontal timber and has fitted over it, as a key, a long double-end sweep. This main cylinder conveys its power to the others by means of wooden cogs which are set firmly in the wood and play into sockets dug from the other cylinder. Boys commonly furnish the power used to crush the cane, and there is much song and sport during the hours of labor.

Two people, usually boys, sitting on both sides of the crusher, feed the cane back and forth. Three or four stalks are put through at a time, and they are run through thirty or forty times, or until they break into pieces of pulp not over three or four inches in length.

The juice runs down a slide into a jar set in the ground beneath the crusher.

The boiling is done in large shallow iron boilers over an open fire under a roof. I have known the Igorot to operate the crusher until midnight, and to boil down the juice throughout the night. Sugar-boiling time is known as a-su-fal′-i-wis.

A delicious brown cake sugar is made, which, in some parts of the area, is poured to cool and is preserved in bamboo tubes, in other parts it is cooked and preserved in flat cakes an inch in thickness.

There is not much sugar made in the area, and a large part of the product is purchased by the Ilokano. The Igorot cares very little for sweets; even the children frequently throw away candy after tasting it.

Meals and mealtime

The man of the family arises about 3.30 or 4 o’clock in the morning. He builds the fires and prepares to cook the family breakfast and the food for the pigs. A labor generally performed each morning is the paring of camotes. In about half an hour after the man arises the camotes and rice are put over to cook. The daughters come home from the olag, and the boys from their sleeping quarters shortly before breakfast. Breakfast, called “mang-an′,” meaning simply “to eat,” is taken by all members of the family together, usually between 5 and 6 o’clock. For this meal all the family, sitting on their haunches, gather around three or four wooden dishes filled with steaming hot food setting on the earth. They eat almost exclusively from their hands, and seldom drink anything at breakfast, but they usually drink water after the meal.

The members of the family who are to work away from the dwelling leave about 7 or 7.30 o’clock—but earlier, if there is a rush of work. If the times are busy in the fields, the laborers carry their dinner with them; if not, all members assemble at the dwelling and eat their dinner together about 1 o’clock. This midday meal is often a cold meal, even when partaken in the house.

Field laborers return home about 6.30, at which time it is too dark to work longer, but during the rush seasons of transplanting and harvesting palay the Igorot generally works until 7 or 7.30 during moonlight nights. All members of the family assemble for supper, and this meal is always a warm one. It is generally cooked by the man, unless there is a boy or girl in the family large enough to do it, and who is not at work in the fields. It is usually eaten about 7 or 7.30 o’clock, on the earth floor, as is the breakfast. A light is used, a bright, smoking blaze of the pitch pine. It burns on a flat stone kept ready in every house—it is certainly the first and crudest house lamp, being removed in development only one infinitesimal step from the Stationary fire. This light is also sometimes employed at breakfast time, if the morning meal is earlier than the sun.

Usually by 8 o’clock the husband and wife retire for the night, and the children leave home immediately after supper.

Transportation