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 5 1/2 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'” 5 1/2 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 “chuk’-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’-u 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, 3 1/2 feet high and 4 1/4 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 “kub-kub,” in which the family hides many of its choice possessions. During abundant camote[15] gathering, however, I have seen the kub-kub 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 3 1/2 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’-u.
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-pik’, 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-tin-fu-yang’,” is an anito child; it is the offspring of an anito.[16] 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-tin-fu-yang’,” and is at once placed in an olla[17] 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:
1. Mang-i-lot’
2. Cho-kas’
3. Kom-ling’
4. Mang-i-lot’
5 A. Kom-ling’
5 B. Ta-kay’-yeng
5 C. Teng-ab’
5 D. Ka-weng’
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-ling’ (5 a) was given the name of his paternal grandfather (3). Ta-kay’-yeng (5 B) bears the name of his maternal great-grandfather. Teng-ab’ (5 C) and Ka-weng’ (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 “sig-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 “sis-sis’-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: “Sis-sis’-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 fug-fug-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[18]. 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’-lag 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’-lag.
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’-lag, and it is common for two or three men to visit the same o’-lag 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’-lag is nightly filled with little girls whose moral training is had there.
Young men are boldly and pointedly invited to the o’-lag. 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’-lag 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’-lag, 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’-lag, because he fears that, if he does, his wife’s child will be prematurely born and die.
The o’-lag 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’-lag 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[19] that author is made to say (evidently speaking of the o’-lag):
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’-lag is as far from enforcing chastity as it well can be. The old women never frequent the o’-lag, 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[20] 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-tang’, 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, pish-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 “in-is’-fo cha’-la or in-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’-lid, is the most common, and it takes an especially strong hold on the babes in arms. This ku’-lid 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, fig-fig, 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’-ak, 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-ing’-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-kek’ or fin-to’-kel, 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’-kis, which wriggles and twists in the tooth. When one has an aching tooth extracted he looks at it and inquires where “fi’-kis” is.
They suffer little from colds, mo-tug’, and one rarely hears an Igorot cough.
Headache, called both sa-kit’ si o’-lo and pa-tug’ si o’-lo, rarely occurs except with fever.
Sore eyes, a condition known as in-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-fub-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 kin-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-kum’ is pounded and used as a poultice on ulcers and sores.
For toothache salt is mixed with a pounded herb named ot-o’-tek 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 “pin-teng'”; such spirits are not called away, but the person’s slayer is told by some pin-teng’, “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,[21] 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[22] 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-tu’,” 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-in’, 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, wa’-kis, 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.
PART 4
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-wan ad Sa-ka’-pa a-li-ka is-na ma-am’-mung is-na. Ay-ya-wan ad O-ki-ki a-li-ka is-na ma-am’-mung is-na. 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 3 1/2 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 “il-tib’,” 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 il-tib’ 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’-fug, 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’-lang, 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
Fig. 1. — Spring snare, Kok-o’-lang. (A, Kok-o’-lang; B, I-pit’ C,
Ting’-a; D, Chug-shi’; E,
Lo-fid’.)
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.[23] The kok-o’-lang 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’-lang is also employed successfully for such birds as run on the ground, especially those which run in paths. The si-sim’ 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-lib’, through the flock, and rarely fails to knock down a bird. The ka-lib’ is about 7 feet long, 2 1/2 inches in diameter at the base, and flattened and broadened to 14 or 15 inches in width at the outer end. What the ka-lib’ 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-yug’, 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’-fu, 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’-fu, 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’-ling,” 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’-ling, and one or more large fish, called “cha-lit.” The cha-lit 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 fing’-a, and a fourth is lis’-chug. 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 “pu-ug’,” 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-ning’.” 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.[24] 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-ku’.” 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.
Fig 2. — Parallel camote beds.
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