Chapter 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 the woman's camote stick, the su-wan'. If the plat is new the grass is burned before the scratching occurs, but if it is cultivated annually the surface seldom has any care save the shallow work of the su-wan'; in fact, the surface stones are seldom removed.
In the season of 1903, the first rains came April 5, and the first mountain sementera was scratched over for millet April 10, after five successive daily rains.
Fertilizing
Much care is taken in fertilizing the irrigated sementeras. The hog of a few pueblos in the Bontoc area, as in Bontoc and Samoki, is kept confined all its life in a walled, stone-paved sty dug in the earth (see Pl. LXXVII). Into this inclosure dry grasses and dead vines are continually placed to absorb and become rotted by the liquids. As the soil of the sementera is turned for the new rice crop these pigsties are cleaned out and the rich manure spread on the beds.
The manure is sometimes carried by women though generally by men, and the carriers in a string pass all day between the sementeras and the pueblo, each bearing his transportation basket on his shoulder containing about 100 pounds of as good fertilizer as agricultural man ever thought to employ.
The manure is gathered from the sties with the two hands and is dumped in the sementera in 10-pound piles about 5 feet apart after the soil has been turned and trod soft and even.
It is said that in some sections of Igorot land dry vegetable matter is burned so that ash may be had for fertilizing purposes.
I have seen women working long, dry grass under the soil in camote sementeras at the time the crop was being gathered (Pl. LXIV), but I believe fertilizers are seldom employed, except where rice is grown. Mountain-side sementeras are frequently abandoned after a few years' service, as they are supposed to be exhausted, whereas fertilization would restore them.
Seed planting
Pad-cho-kan' is the name of the sementera used as a rice seed bed. One or more small groups of sementeras in every pueblo is so protected from the cold rains and winds of November and December and is so exposed to the warm sun that it answers well the purposes of a primitive hotbed; consequently it becomes such, and anyone who asks permission of the owner may plant his seed there (see Pl. LXV).
The seed is planted in the beds after they have been thoroughly worked and softened, the soil usually being turned three times. The planting in Bontoc occurs the first part of November. November 15, 1902, the rice had burst its kernel and was above water in the Bontoc beds. The seed is not shelled before planting, but the full fruit heads, sin-lu'-wi, are laid, without covering, on the soft ooze, under 3 or 4 inches of water. They are laid in rows a few inches apart, and are so close together that by the time the young plants are 3 inches above the surface of the water the bed is a solid mass of green.
Bontoc pueblo has six varieties of rice. Neighboring pueblos have others; and it is probable that fifty, perhaps a hundred, varieties are grown by the different irrigating peoples of northern Luzon. In Bontoc, ti'-pa is a white beardless variety. Ga'-sang is white, and cha-yet'-it is claimed to be the same grain, except it is dark colored; it is the rice from which the fermented beverage, tapui, is made. Pu-i-a-pu'-i and tu'-peng are also white; tu'-peng is sowed in unirrigated mountain sementeras in the rainy season. Gu-mik'-i is a dark grain.
Camotes, or to-ki', are planted once in a long period in the sementeras surrounding the buildings in the pueblo. There is nothing to kill them, the ground has no other use, so they are practically perpetual.
The average size of all the eight varieties of Bontoc camotes is about 2 by 4 inches in diameter. Six of the varieties are white and two are red. The white ones are the following: Li-no'-ko, pa-to'-ki, ki'-nub fa-fay'-i, pi-i-nit', ki-weng', and tang-tang-lab'. The red ones are si'-sig and pit-ti'-kan.
To illustrate the many varieties which may exist in a small area I give the names of five other camotes grown in the pueblo of Balili, which is only about four hours from Bontoc. The Balili white camotes are bi-tak'-no, a-go-bang'-bang, and la-ung'-an and the red are gis-gis'-i and ta-mo'-lo.
Millet, called "sa'-fug," is sowed on the surface of the earth. The sowing is "broadcast," but in a limited way, as the fields are usually only a few rods square. The seed is generally sowed by women, who carry a small basket or dish of it in one hand and scatter the seed from between the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger of the free hand.
There are said to be four varieties of millet in Bontoc. Mo-di' and poy-ned' are light-colored seeds; pi-ting'-an is a darker seed -- the Igorot says "black;" and si-nang'-a is the fourth. I have never seen it but I am told it is white.
Maize, or pi'-ki, and beans, practically the only other seeds planted, are planted annually in "hills." The rows of "hills" are quite irregular. Maize, as is also millet, is planted immediately after the first abundant rains, occurring early in April.
The Bontoc man has three varieties of beans. One is called ka'-lap; the kernel is small, being only one-fifth of an inch long. Usually it is pale green in color, though a few are black; both have an exterior white germ. I'-tab is about one-third of an inch long. It is both gray and black in color, and has a long exterior white germ. The third variety is black with an exterior white germ. It is called ba-la'-tong, and is about one-fourth of an inch in length.
Transplanting
Transplanting is always the work of women, since they are recognized as quicker and more dexterous in most work with the hands than are the men.
The women pull up the young rice plants in the seed beds and tie them in bunches about 4 inches in diameter. They transport them by basket to the newly prepared sementera and dump them in the water so they will remain fresh.
As has been said, the manure fertilizer is placed about the sementera in piles. The women thoroughly spread this fertilizer with their hands and feet when they transplant (see Pl. LIX). When the soil is ready the transplanter grasps a handful of the plants, twists off 3 or 4 inches of the blades, leaving the plant about 6 inches long, and, while holding the plants in one hand, with the other she rapidly thrusts them one by one into the soft bed. They are placed in fairly regular rows, and are about 5 inches apart. The planter leans enthusiastically over her work, usually resting one elbow on her knee -- the left elbow, since most of the women are right-handed -- and she sets from forty to sixty plants per minute.
When the sementeras are planted they present a clean and beautiful appearance -- even the tips of the rice blades twisted off are invariably crowded into the muddy bed to assist in fattening the crop.
As many as a dozen women often work together in one sementera to hasten the planting. There are usually two or three little girls with their mothers, who while away the hours playing work. They stuff up the chinks of the stone walls with dirt and vegetable matter; they carry together the few camotes discovered in this last handling of the old camote bed; and they quite successfully and industriously play at transplanting rice, though such small girls are not obliged to work in the field.
Camotes are also transplanted. The women cut or pick off the "runners" from the perpetual vines in the sementeras near the dwellings. These they transplant in the unirrigated mountain sementeras after the crops of millet and maize have been gathered.
The irrigated sementeras are also planted to camotes by transplanting from these house beds. This transplanting lasts about six weeks in Bontoc, beginning near the middle of July.
Some little sugar cane is grown by the Igorot of the Bontoc area. It is claimed to grow up each year from the roots left at the preceding harvest. At times new patches of cane are started by transplanting shoots from the parent plants. It is said that in January the stalks are cut and set in a rich mud, and that in the season of Baliling, from about July 15 until early in September, the rooted shoots are transplanted to the new beds.
Cultivating
The chief cultivation given to Igorot crops is bestowed on rice, though all cultivated lands are remarkably free from weeds. The rice sementeras are carefully weeded, "suckers" are pulled out, and the beds are thinned generally, so that each plant will have all needful chance to develop fruit. This weeding and thinning is the work of women and half-grown children. Every day for nearly two months, or until the fruit heads appear, the cultivators are diligently at work in the sementeras. No tools or agricultural implements other than bare hands are used in this work.
The men keep constant watch of the sementera walls and the irrigating canals, repairing all, thus indirectly assisting the women in their cultivation by directing water to the growing crop and by conserving it when it is obtained.
Protecting
The rice begins to fruit early in April, at which time systematic effort to protect the new grain from birds, rats, monkeys, and wild hogs commences. This effort continues until the harvest is completed, practically for three months. Much of this labor is performed by water power, much by wind power, and about all the children and old people in a pueblo are busied from early dawn until twilight in the sementera as independent guards. Besides, throughout the long night men and women build fires among the sementeras and guard their crop from the wild hog. It is a critical time with the Igorot.
The most natural, simplest, and undoubtedly the most successful protection of the grain is the presence of a person on the terrace walls of the sementera, whether by day or night. Hundreds of fields are so guarded each day in Bontoc by old people and children, who frequently erect small screens of tall grass to shade and protect themselves from the sun.
The next simplest method is one followed by the boys. They employ a hollow section of carabao horn, cut off at both ends and about 8 inches in length; it is called "kong-ok'." This the boys beat when birds are near, producing an open, resonant sound which may readily be heard a mile.
The wind tosses about over the growing grain various "scarecrows." The pa-chek' is one of these. It consists of a single large dry leaf, or a bunch of small dry leaves, suspended by a cord from a heavy, coarse grass 6 or 8 feet high; the leaf, the sa-gi-kak', hangs 4 feet above the fruit heads. It swings about slightly in the breeze, and probably is some protection against the birds. I believe it the least effective of the various things devised by the Igorot to protect his rice from the multitudes of ti-lin' -- the small, brown ricebird[25] found broadly over the Archipelago.
The most picturesque of these wind-tossed bird scarers is the ki'-lao. The ki'-lao is a basket-work figure swung from a pole and is usually the shape and size of the distended wings of a large gull, though it is also made in other shapes, as that of man, the lizard, etc. The pole is about 20 feet high, and is stuck in the earth at such an angle that the swinging figure attached by a line at the top of the pole hangs well over the sementera and about 3 or 4 feet above the grain (see Pl. LXVII). The bird-like ki'-lao is hung by its middle, at what would be the neck of the bird, and it soars back and forth, up and down, in a remarkably lifelike way. There are often a dozen ki'-lao in a space 4 rods square, and they are certainly effectual, if they look as bird-like to ti-lin' as they do to man. When seen a short distance away they appear exactly like a flock of restless gulls turning and dipping in some harbor.
FIGURE 4
Fig. 4. -- Bird scarer in rice field.
The water-power bird scarers are ingenious. Across a shallow, running rapids in the river or canal a line, called "pi-chug'," is stretched, fastened at one end to a yielding pole, and at the other to a rigid pole. A bowed piece of wood about 15 inches long and 3 inches wide, called "pit-ug'," is suspended by a line at each end from the horizontal cord. This pit-ug' is suspended in the rapids, by which it is carried quickly downstream as far as the elasticity of the yielding pole and the pi-chug' will allow, then it snaps suddenly back upstream and is ready to be carried down and repeat the jerk on the relaxing pole. A system of cords passes high in the air from the jerking pole at the stream to other slender, jerked poles among the sementeras. From these poles a low jerking line runs over the sementeras, over which are stretched at right angles parallel cords within a few feet of the fruit heads. These parallel cords are also jerked, and their movement, together with that of the leaves depending from them, is sufficient to keep the birds away. One such machine may send its shock a quarter of a mile and trouble the birds over an area half an acre in extent.
Other Igorot, as those of the upper Abra River in Lepanto Province, employ this same jerking machine to produce a sharp, clicking sound in the sementera. The jerking cord repeatedly raises a series of hanging, vertical wooden fingers, which, on being released, fall against a stationary, horizontal bamboo tube, producing the sharp click. These clicking machines are set up on two supporting sticks a few feet above the grain every three or four yards about the sementeras.
There are many rodents, rats and mice, which destroy the growing grain during the night unless great care is taken to cheek them. The Igorot makes a small dead fall which he places in the path surrounding the sementera. I have seen as many as five of these traps on a single side of a sementera not more than 30 feet square. The trap has a closely woven, wooden dead fall, about 10 or 15 inches square; one end is set on the path and the other is supported in the air above it by a string. One end of this string is fastened to a tall stick planted in the earth, the lower end is tied to a short stick -- a part of the "spring" held rigid beneath the dead fall until the trigger is touched. The dead fall drops when the rat, in touching the trigger, releases the lower end of the cord. The animal springs the trigger either by nibbling a bait on it or by running against it, and is immediately killed, since the dead fall is weighted with stones.
Sementeras near some forested mountains in the Bontoc area are pestered with monkeys. Day and night people remain on guard against them in lonely, dangerous places -- just the kind of spot the head-hunter chooses wherein to surprise his enemy.
All border sementeras in every group of fields are subject to the night visits of wild hogs. In some areas commanding piles of earth for outlooks are left standing when the sementeras are constructed. In other places outlooks are erected for the purpose. Permanent shelters, some of them commodious stone structures, are often erected on these outlooks where a person remains on guard night and day (Pl. LXVIII), at night burning a fire to frighten the wild hogs away.
At this season of the year when practically all the people of the pueblo are in the sementeras. it is most interesting to watch the homecoming of the laborers at night. At early dusk they may be seen coming in over the trails leading from the sementeras to the pueblo in long processions. The boys and girls 5 or 6 years old or more, most of them entirely naked, come playing or dancing along -- the boys often marking time by beating a tin can or two sticks -- seemingly as full of life as when they started out in the morning. The younger children are toddling by the side of their father or mother, a small, dirty hand smothered in a large, labor-cracked one; or else are carried on their father's back or shoulder, or perhaps astride their mother's hip. The old men and women, almost always unsightly and ugly, who go to the sementera only to guard and not to toil, come slowly and feebly home, often picking their way with a staff. There is much laughing and coquetting among the young people. A boy dashes by with several girls in laughing pursuit, and it is not at all likely that he escapes them with all his belongings. Many of the younger married women carry babies; some carry on their heads baskets filled with weeds used as food for the pigs, and all have their small rump baskets filled with "greens" or snails or fish.
A man may carry on his shoulder a huge short log of wood cut in the mountains, the wood partially supported on the shoulder by his spear; or he perhaps carries a large bunch of dry grass to be thrown into the pigpen as bedding; or he comes swinging along empty handed save for his spear used as a staff. Most of the returning men and boys carry the empty topil, the small, square, covered basket in which rice for the noon meal is carried to the sementera; sometimes a boy carries a bunch of three or four, and he dangles them open from their strings as he dances along.
For an hour or more the procession continues -- one almost-naked figure following another -- all dirty, most of them doubtless tired, and yet seemingly happy and content with the finish of their day of toil. It is long after dark before the last straggler is in.
Harvesting
Rice harvesting in Bontoc is a delightful and picturesque sight to an American, and a most serious religious matter to the Igorot.
Though ceremonials having to do with agriculture have purposely been omitted from this chapter, yet, since one of the most striking and important features of the harvesting is the harvest ceremonial, it is thought best to introduce it here.
Sa-fo'-sab is the name of the ceremony. It is performed in a pathway adjoining each sementera before a single grain is gathered. In the path the owner of the field builds a tiny fire beside which he stands while the harvesters sit in silence. The owner says:
"So-mi-ka-ka' pa-ku' ta-mo i-sa'-mi sik'-a kin-po-num' nan a-lang',"
which, freely rendered, means, "Palay, when we carry you to the granary, increase greatly so that you will fill it."
As soon as the ceremonial is said the speaker harvests one handful of the grain, after which the laborers arise and begin the harvest.
In the trails leading past the sementera two tall stalks of runo are planted, and these, called "pud-i-pud'," warn all Igorot that they must not pass the sementera during the hours of the harvest. Nor will they ignore the warning, since if they do they are liable to forfeit a hog or other valuable possession to the owner of the grain.
I spent half a day trying to get close enough to a harvesting party to photograph it. All the harvesters were women, and they scolded our party long and severely while we were yet six or eight rods distant; my Igorot boys carrying the photographic outfit -- boys who had lived four months in my house -- laughingly but positively refused to follow me closer than three or four rods to the sementera. No photographs were obtained at that time. It was only after the matter was talked over by some of the men of the pueblo that photographs could be willingly obtained, and the force of the warning pud-i-pud' withdrawn for our party. Even during the time my Igorot boys were in the trail by a harvest party all other Igorot passed around the warning runo. The Igorot says he believes the harvest will be blasted even while being gathered should one pass along a pathway skirting any side of the sementera.
Several harvesters, from four to a dozen, labor together in each sementera. They begin at one side and pass across the plat, gathering all grain as they pass. Men and women work together, but women are recognized the better harvesters, since their hands are more nimble. Each fruited stalk is grasped shortly below the fruit head, and the upper section or joint of the stalk, together with the fruit head and topmost leaf, is pulled off. As most Bontoc Igorot are right-handed, the plucked grain is laid in the left hand, the fruit heads projecting beyond between the thumb and forefinger while the leaf attached to each fruit head lies outside and below the thumb. When the proper amount of grain is in hand (a bunch of stalks about an inch in diameter) the useless leaves, all arranged for one grasp of the right hand, are stripped off and dropped; the bunch of fruit heads, topping a 6-inch section of clean stalk or straw is handed to a person who may be called the binder. This person in all harvests I have seen was a woman. She binds all the grain three, four, or five persons can pluck; and when there is one binder for every three gatherers the binder finds some time also to gather.
The binder passes a small, prepared strip of bamboo twice around the palay stalks, holds one end between her teeth and draws the binding tight; then she twists the two ends together, and the bunch is secure. The bunch, the manojo of the Spaniard, the sin fing-e' of the Igorot, is then piled up on the binder's head until a load is made. Before each bunch is placed on the pile the fruitheads are spread out like an open fan. These piles are never completed until they are higher than the woman's arm can reach -- several of the last bunches being tossed in place, guided only by the tips of the fingers touching the butt of the straw. The women with their heads loaded high with ripened grain are striking figures -- and one wonders at the security of the loads.
When a load is made it is borne to the transportation baskets in some part of the harvested section of the sementera, where it is gently slid to the earth over the front of the head as the woman stoops forward. It is loaded into the basket at once unless there is a scarcity of binders in the field, in which case it awaits the completion of the harvest.
In all agricultural labors the Igorot is industrious, yet his humor, ever present with him, brings relief from continued toil. The harvest field is no exception, since there is much quiet gossip and jest during the labors.
In 1903 rice was first harvested May 2. The harvest continued one month, the crop of a sementera being gathered here and there as it ripened. The Igorot calls this first harvest month the "moon of the small harvest." During June the crop is ripened everywhere, and the harvest is on in earnest; the Igorot speaks of it as the "moon of the all harvest."
I had no view of the harvest of millet or maize; however, I have seen in the pueblo much of each grain of some previous harvest. The millet I am told, is harvested similarly to the rice, and the clean-stalked bunches are tied up in the same way -- only the bunches are four or five times larger.
The fruit head, or ears, of the maize is said to be plucked off the stalks in the fields as the American farmer gathers green corn or seed corn. It is stored still covered with its husks.
The camote harvest is continued fairly well throughout the year. Undoubtedly some camotes are dug every day in the year from the dry mountain-side sementeras, but the regular harvest occurs during November and December, during which time the camotes are gathered from the irrigated sementeras preparatory to turning the soil for the transplanting of new rice.
Women are the camote gatherers. I never saw men, nor even boys, gathering camotes. At no other time does the Igorot woman look so animal like as when she toils among the camote vines, standing with legs straight and feet spread, her body held horizontal, one hand grasping the middle of her short camote stick and the other in the soil picking out the unearthed camotes. She looks as though she never had stood erect and never would stand erect on two feet. Thus she toils day after day from early morning till dusk that she and her family may eat.
Storing
No palay is carried to the a-lang', the separate granary building, or to the dwelling for the purpose of being stored until the entire crop of the sementera is harvested. It may be carried part way, but there it halts until all the grain is ready to be carried home.
It is spread out on the ground or on a roof in the sun two or three days to dry before storing. When the grain is to be stored away an old man -- any man -- asks a blessing on it that it may make men, hogs, and chickens well, strong, and fat when they consume it. This ceremony is called "ka-fo'-kab," and the man who performs it is known by the title of "in-ka-fa'."
The Igorot granary, the a-lang', is a "hip-roofed" structure about 8 feet long, 5 wide, 4 feet high at the sides and 6 at the ridgepole. Its sides are built of heavy pine planks, which are inserted in grooved horizontal timbers, the planks being set up vertically. The floor is about a foot from the earth. The roof consists of a heavy, thick cover of long grass securely tied on a pole frame. It is seldom that a granary stands alone -- usually there are two or more together, and Bontoc has several groups of a dozen each, as shown in Pl. LXXII. When built together they are better protected from the rain storms. The roofs also are made so they extend close to the earth, thus almost entirely protecting the sides of the structure from the storms. All cracks are carefully filled with pieces of wood wedged and driven in. Even the door, consisting of two or three vertical planks set in grooved timbers, is laboriously wedged the same way. The building is rodent proof, and, because of its wide, projecting roof and the fact that it sets off the earth, it is practically moisture proof.
Most palay is stored in the granaries in the small bunches tied at harvest. The a-lang' is carefully closed again after each sementera crop has been put in. There are granaries in Bontoc which have not been opened, it is said, in eight or more years, except to receive additional crops of palay, and yet the grain is as perfectly preserved as when first stored. Some palay, especially that needed for consumption within a reasonable time, is stored in the upper part of the family dwelling.
Maize and millet are generally stored in the dwelling, in the second and third stories, since not enough of either is grown to fill an a-lang', it is said.
Camotes are sometimes stored in the granary after the harvest of the irrigated fields. Often they are put away in the kubkub, the two compartments at either end of the sleeping room on the ground floor of the dwelling. At other times one sees bushels of camotes put away on the earth under the broad bench extending the full length of the dwelling. In the poorer class of dwellings the camotes are frequently dumped in a corner.
Beans are dried and shelled before storing and are set away in a covered basket, usually in the upper part of the dwelling. Only one or two cargoes are grown by each family, so little space is needed for storage.
Since rice is the staple food and may be preserved almost indefinitely. the Igorot has developed a means and place to care for it. Maize and millet, while probably capable of as long preservation, are generally not grown in sufficient quantity to require more storage space than the upper part of the dwelling affords. The Igorot has not developed a way to preserve his camotes long after harvest; they are readily perishable, consequently no place has been differentiated as a storehouse.
Expense and profit
An irrigated sementera 60 by 100 feet, having 6,000 square feet of surface, is valued at two carabaos, or, in money, about 100 pesos. It produces an average annual crop of ten cargoes of palay, each worth 1 peso. Thus there is an annual gross profit of ten per cent on the value of the permanent investment.
It requires ten men one day to turn the soil and fertilize the plat. The wage paid in palay is equivalent to 5 cents per laborer, or 50 cents. Five women can transplant the rice in one day; cost, 25 cents. Cultivating and protecting the crop falls to the members of the family which owns the sementera, so the Igorot say; he claims never to have to pay for such labor. Twenty people can harvest the crop in a day; cost, 1 peso.
The total annual expense of maintaining the sementera as a productive property is, therefore, equivalent to 1.75 pesos. This leaves 8.25 pesos net profit when the annual expense is deducted from the annual gross profit. A net profit of 8.25 per cent is about equivalent to the profit made on the 10,000-acre Bonanza grain farms in the valley of the Red River of the North, and the 5,000-acre corn farm of Iowa.
Zooculture
The carabao, hog, chicken, and dog are the only animals domesticated by the Igorot of the Bontoc culture area.
Cattle are kept by Benguet Igorot throughout the extent of the province. Some towns, as Kabayan, have 300 or 400 head, but the Bontoc Igorot has not yet become a cattle raiser.
In Benguet, Lepanto, and Abra there are pueblos with half a hundred brood mares. Daklan, of Benguet, has such a bunch, and other pueblos have smaller herds.
In Bontoc Province between Bontoc pueblo and Lepanto Province a few mares have recently been brought in. Sagada and Titipan each have half a dozen. Near the east side of the Bontoc area there are a few bunches of horses reported among the Igorot, and in February, 1903, an American brought sixteen head from there into Bontoc. These horses are all descendants of previous domestic animals, and an addition of half a hundred is said to have been made to the number by horses abandoned by the insurgents about three years past. Some of the sixteen brought out in 1903 bore saddle marks and the brands common in the coastwise lands. These eastern horses are not used by the Igorot except for food, and no property right is recognized in them, though the Igorot brands them with a battle-ax brand. He exercises about as much protecting control over them as the Bontoc man does over the wild carabao.
Carabao
The people of Bontoc say that when Lumawig came to Bontoc they had no domestic carabaos -- that those they now have were originally purchased, before the Spaniards came, from the Tinguian of Abra Province.
There are in the neighborhood of 400 domestic carabaos owned in Bontoc and Samoki. Most of them run half wild in the mountains encircling the pueblos. Such as are in the mountains receive neither herding, attention in breeding, feed, nor salt from their owners. The young are dropped in February and March, and their owners mark them by slitting the ear, each person recognizing his own by the mark.
A herd of seventeen, consisting of animals belonging to five owners, ranges in the river bottom and among the sementeras close to Bontoc. These animals are more tame than those of the mountains, but receive little more attention, except that they are taught to perform a certain unique labor in preparing the sementeras for rice, as has been noted in the section on agriculture. This is the only use to which the Bontoc carabao is put as a power in industry. He is seldom sold outside the pueblo and is raised for consumption, chiefly on various ceremonial occasions.
Four men in Bontoc own fifty carabaos each. Three others have a herd of thirty in joint ownership. Others own five and six each, and again a single carabao may be the joint property of two and even six individuals. Carabaos are valued at from 40 to 70 pesos.
Hog
Bontoc has no record of the time or manner of first acquiring the hog, chicken, or dog. The people say they had all three when Lumawig came.
Sixty or 70 per cent of the pigs littered in Bontoc are marked lengthwise with alternate stripes of brick-red or yellowish hair, the other hair being black or white; the young of the wild hog is marked the same. All the pigs, both domestic and wild, outgrow this red or yellow marking at about the age of six months, and when they are a year old become fine-looking black hogs with white marking not unlike the Berkshire of the States. There is no chance to doubt that the Igorot domestic hog was the wild hog in the surrounding mountains a few generations ago.
The Bontoc hog is bred, born, and raised in a secure pen, yet wild blood is infused direct, since pigs are frequently purchased by Bontoc from surrounding pueblos, most of whose hogs run half wild and intermingle with the wild ones of the mountains. That the domestic hog in some places in northern Luzon does thus interbreed with the wild ones is a proved fact. In the Quiangan area I was shown a litter of half-breeds and was told that it was customary for the pueblo sows to breed to the wild boar of the mountains.
The Bontoc hog in many ways is a pampered pet. He is at all times kept in a pen and fed regularly three times each day with camote vines when in season, with camote parings, and small camotes available, and with green vegetal matter, including pusleys, gathered by the girls and women when there are no camote vines. All of his food is carefully washed and cooked before it is given to him.
The pigsty consists of a pit in the earth about 4 feet deep, 5 or 6 feet wide, and 8 or 12 feet long. It is entirely lined with bowlders, and the floor space consists of three sections of about equal size. One end is two or more feet deeper than the other, and it is into this lower space that the washings of the pen are stored in the rotted straw and weeds, and from which the manure for fertilizer is taken. The other end is covered over level with the outside earth with timbers, stones, and dirt; it is the pig's bed and is entered by a doorway in the stone wall. Most of these "beds" have a low, grass roof about 30 inches high over them. Underneath the roof is an opening in the earth where the people defecate. Connecting the "bed" section and the opposite lower section of the sty is an incline on which the stone "feed" troughs are located.
As soon as a pig is weaned he is kept in a separate pen, and one family may have in its charge three or four pens. The sows are kept mainly for breeding, and there are many several years old. The richest man in Bontoc owns about thirty hogs, and these are farmed out for feeding and breeding -- a common practice. When one is killed it is divided equally between the owner and the feeder. When a litter of pigs is produced the bunch is divided equally, the sow remaining the property of the owner and counting as one in the division. Throughout the Island of Luzon it is the practice to leave most male animals uncastrated. But in Bontoc the boar not intended for breeding is castrated.
Hogs are raised for ceremonial consumption. They are commonly bought and sold within the pueblo, and are not infrequently sold outside. A pig weighing 10 pounds is worth about 3 pesos, and a hog weighing 60 or 70 pounds is valued at about 12 pesos.
Chicken
The Bontoc domestic chickens were originally the wild fowl, found in all places in the Archipelago, although some of them have acquired varied colorings and markings, largely, probably, from black and white Spanish fowl, which are still found among them. The markings of the wild fowl, however, are the most common, and practically all small chickens are marked as are their wild kin. The wild fowl bears markings similar to those of the American black-breasted red game, though the fowls are smaller than the American game fowl. Each of the twelve wild cocks I have had in my hands had perfect five-pointed single combs, and the domestic cock of Bontoc also commonly has this perfect comb. I know of no people within the Bontoc area who now systematically domesticate the wild fowl, though this was found to be the custom of the Ibilao southeast of Dupax in the Province of Nueva Vizcaya. Those people catch the young wild fowl for domestication.
The Bontoc domestic fowl are not confined in a coop except at night, when they sleep in small cages placed on the ground in the dwelling houses. In the daytime they range about the pueblo feeding much in the pigpens, though they are fed a small amount of raw rice each morning. Their nests are in baskets secured under the eaves of the dwelling, and in those baskets the brooding hens hatch their chicks, from eight to twenty eggs being given a hen. The fowl is raised exclusively for ceremonial consumption, and is frequently sold in the pueblo for that purpose, being valued at from half a peso to a peso each. A wild fowl sells for half a peso.
In Banawi of the Quiangan area, south of Bontoc, one may find large capons, but Bontoc does not understand caponizing.
Dog
The dog of the Bontoc Igorot is usually of a solid color, black, white, or yellow, really "buckskin" color. Where he originated is not known. He has none of the marks of the Asiatic dog which has left its impress everywhere in the lowlands of the west coast of Luzon -- called in the Islands the "Chino" dog, and in the States the "Eskimo" dog. The Igorot dog is short-haired, sharp-eared, gaunt, and sinewy, with long legs and body. In height and length he ranges from a fair-sized fox terrier to a collie. I fail to see anything in him resembling the Australian dingo or the "yellow cur" of the States. The Ibilao have the same dog in two colors, the black and the "brindle" -- the brown and black striped. In fact, a dog of the same general characteristics occurs throughout northern Luzon. No matter what may be his origin, a dog so widely diffused and so characteristically molded and marked must have been on the island long enough to have acquired its typical features here. The dog receives little attention from his owners. Twice each day he is fed sparingly with cooked rice or camotes. Except in the case of the few hunting dogs, he does nothing to justify his existence. He lies about the dwelling most of the time, and is a surly, more or less evil-tempered cur to strangers, though when a pueblo flees to the mountains from its attacking enemies the dog escapes in a spiritless way with the women and children. He is bred mainly for ceremonial consumption.
In Benguet the Igorot eats his dog only after it has been reduced to skin and bones. I saw two in a house so poor that they did not raise their heads when I entered, and the man of the house said they would be kept twenty days longer before they would be reduced properly for eating. No such custom exists in Bontoc, but dogs are seldom fat when eaten. They are not often bought or sold outside the pueblo. A litter of pups is generally distributed about the town, and dogs are constantly bought and sold within the pueblo for ceremonial purposes. They are valued at from 2 to 4 pesos.
Clothing production
Man's clothing
Up to the age of 6 or 7 years the Igorot boys are as naked as when born. At that time they put on the suk'-lang, the basket-work hat worn on the back of the head, held in place by a cord attached at both sides and passing across the forehead and usually hidden by the front hair. The suk'-lang is made in nearly all pueblos in the Bontoc culture area. It does not extend uninterruptedly to the western border, however, since it is not worn at all in Agawa, and in some other pueblos near the Lepanto border, as Fidelisan and Genugan, it has a rival in the headband. The beaten-bark headband, called "a-pong'-ot," and the headband of cloth are worn by short-haired men, while the long-haired man invariably wears the hat. The suk'-lang varies in shape from the fez-like ti-no-od' of Bontoc and Samoki, through various hemispherical forms, to the low, flat hats developing eastward and perfected in the last mountains west of the Rio Grande de Cagayan. Barlig makes and wears a carved wooden hat, either hemispherical or slightly oval. It goes in trade to Ambawan.
The men of the Bontoc area also have a basket-work, conical rain hat. It is waterproof, being covered with beeswax. It is called "seg-fi'," and is worn only when it rains, at which time the suk'-lang is often not removed.
About the age of 10 the boys frequently affect a girdle. These girdles are of four varieties. The one most common in Bontoc and Samoki is the song-kit-an', made of braided bark-fiber strings, some six to twelve in number and about 12 feet long. They are doubled, and so make the girdle about 6 feet in length. The strings are the twisted inner bark of the same plants that play a large role in the manufacture of the woman's skirt. This girdle is usually worn twice around the body, though it is also employed as an apron, passing only once around the body and hanging down over the genitals (see Pl. XXI). Another girdle worn much in Tukukan, Kanyu, and Tulubin is called the "i-kit'." It is made of six to twelve braided strings of bejuco (see Pl. LXXX). It is constructed to fit the waist, has loops at both ends, passes once around the body, and fastens by a cord passing from one loop to the other. Both the sang-ki-tan' and the i-kit' are made by the women. A third class of girdles is made by the men. It is called ka'-kot, and is worn and attached quite as is the i-kit'. It is a twisted rope of bejuco, often an inch in diameter, and is much worn in Mayinit. A fourth girdle, called "ka'-ching," is a chain, frequently a dog chain of iron purchased on the coast, oftener a chain manufactured by the men, and consisting of large, open links of commercial brass wire about one-sixth of an inch in diameter.
At about the age of puberty, say at 15, it is usual for the boy to possess a breechcloth, or wa'-nis. However, the cloth is worn by a large per cent of men in Bontoc and Samoki, not as a breechcloth but tucked under the girdle and hanging in front simply as an apron. Within the Bontoc area fully 50 per cent of the men wear the breechcloth simply as an apron.
There are several varieties of breechcloths in the area. The simplest of these is of flayed tree bark. It is made by women in Barlig, Tulubin, Titipan, Agawa, and other pueblos. It is made of white and reddish-brown bark, and sometimes the white ones are colored with red ocher. The white one is called "so'-put" and the red one "ti-nan'-ag." Some of the other breechcloths are woven of cotton thread by the women. Much of this cotton is claimed by the Igorot to be tree cotton which they gather, spin and weave, but much also comes in trade from the Ilokano at the coast. Some is purchased in the boll and some is purchased after it has been spun and colored. Many breechcloths are now bought ready made from the Ilokano.
Men generally carry a bag tucked under the girdle, and very often indeed these bags are worn in lieu of the breechcloth aprons -- the girdle and the bag apron being the only clothing (see Pl. CXXV and also Frontispiece, where, from left to right, figs. 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 wear simply a bag). One of the bags commonly worn is the fi-chong', the bladder of the hog; the other, cho'-kao, is a cloth bag some 8 inches wide and 15 inches long. These cloth bags are woven in most of the pueblos where the cotton breechcloth is made.
Old men now and then wear a blanket, pi'-tay, but the younger men never do. They say a blanket is for the women.
Some few of the principal men in many of the pueblos throughout the area have in late years acquired either the Army blue-woollen shirt, a cotton shirt, or a thin coat, and these they wear during the cold storms of January and February, and on special social occasions.
During the period of preparing the soil for transplanting palay the men frequently wear nothing at the middle except the girdle. In and out of the pueblo they work, carrying loads of manure from the hogpens to the fields, apparently as little concerned or noticed as though they wore their breechcloths.
All Igorot -- men, women, and children -- sleep without breechcloth, skirt, or jacket. If a woman owns a blanket she uses it as a covering when the nights are cold. All wear basket-work nightcaps, called "kut'-lao." They are made to fit closely on the head, and have a small opening at the top. They may be worn to keep the hair from snarling, though I was unable to get any reason from the Igorot for their use, save that they were worn by their ancestors.
Woman's clothing
From infancy to the age of 8 and very often 10 years the little girls are naked; not unfrequently one sees about the pueblo a girl of a dozen years entirely nude. However, practically all girls from about 5 years, and also all women, have blankets which are worn when it is cold, as almost invariably after sundown, though no pretense is made to cover their nakedness with them. During the day this pi'-tay, or blanket, is seldom worn except in the dance. I have never seen women or girls dance without it. The blankets of the girls are usually small and white with a blue stripe down each side and through the middle; they are called "kud-pas'." Those of the women are of four kinds -- the ti-na'-pi, the fa-yi-ong', the fan-che'-la, and the pi-nag-pa'-gan. In Barlig, Agawa, and Tulubin the flayed tree-bark blanket is worn; and in Kambulo, east of Barlig, woven bark-fiber blankets are made which sometimes come to Bontoc.
Before a girl puts on her lu-fid', or woven bark-fiber skirt, at about 8 or 10 years of age, she at times wears simply the narrow girdle, later worn to hold up the skirt. The skirt is both short and narrow. It usually extends from below the navel to near the knees. It opens on the side, and is frequently so scant and narrow that one leg is exposed as the person walks, the only part of the body covered on that side being under the girdle, or wa'-kis -- a woven band about 4 inches wide passing twice around the body (see Pl. XXIII). The women sometimes wear the braided-string bejuco belt, i-kit', worn by the men.
The lu-fid' and the wa'-kis are the extent of woman's ordinary clothing. For some months after the mother gives birth to a child she wears an extra wa'-kis wrapped tightly about her, over which the skirt is worn as usual. During the last few weeks of pregnancy the woman may leave off her skirt entirely, wearing simply her blanket over one shoulder and about her body. Women wear breechcloths during the three or four days of menstruation.
During the period when the water-soaked soil of the sementera is turned for transplanting palay the women engaged in such labor generally lay aside their skirts. Sometimes they retain a girdle and tuck an apron of camote leaves or of weeds under it before and behind. I have frequently come upon women entirely naked climbing up and down the steep, stone dikes of their sementeras while weeding them, and also at the clay pits where Samoki women get their earth for making pottery. In May, 1903, it rained hard every afternoon for two or three hours in Bontoc pueblo, and at such times the women out of doors uniformly removed their clothing. They worked in the fields and went from the fields to their dwellings nude, wearing on their heads while in the trail either their long, basket rain protector or a head covering of camote vines, under which reposed their skirts in an effort to keep them dry. Sometimes while passing our house en route from the field to the pueblo the women wore the girdle with the camote-vine apron, called pay-pay. Often no girdle was worn, but the women held a small bunch of leaves against the body in lieu of an attached apron. Sometimes, however, their hands were occupied with their burdens, and their nudity seemed not to trouble them in the least. The women remove their skirts, they say, because they usually possess only one at a time, and they prefer to go naked in the rain and while working in the wet sementeras rather than sit in a wet skirt when they reach home.
Few women in the Bontoc area wear jackets or waists. Those to the west, toward the Province of Lepanto, frequently wear short ones, open in front without fastening, and having quarter sleeves. Those women also wear somewhat longer skirts than do the Bontoc women.
In Agawa, and near-by pueblos to the west, and in Barlig and vicinity to the east, the women make and wear flayed-bark jackets and skirts. From Barlig bark jackets for women come in trade to Tulubin. They are not simply sheets of bark, but the bark is strengthened by a coarse reinforcement of a warp sewed or quilted.
Many of the women's skirts and girdles woven west of Bontoc pueblo are made also of the Ilokano cotton. The skirts and girdles of Bontoc pueblo and those found commonly eastward are entirely of Igorot production. Four varieties of plants yield the threads; the inner bark is gathered and then spun or twisted on the naked thigh under the palm of the hand (see Pl. LXXXIII).
All weaving in Igorot land is done by the woman with the simplest kind of loom, such as is scattered the world over among primitive people. It is well shown in Pl. LXXXIV, which is a photograph of a Lepanto Igorot loom.
Implement and utensil production
Introduction
It is only after one has brought together all the implements and utensils of an Igorot pueblo that he realizes the large part played in it by basket work. Were basketry and pottery cut from the list of his productions the Igorot's everyday labors would be performed with bare hands and crude sticks.
Where is the Igorot's "stone age"? There are stone hammers and stones used as anvils in the ironsmith's shop. There are stone troughs or bowls in most pigpens in which the animal's food is placed. Very rarely, as in the Quiangan area, one sees a large, flat stone supported a foot or two from the earth by other stones. It is used as a bench or table, but has no special purpose. There are whetstones for sharpening the steel spear and battle-ax; there is the stone of the "flint-and-steel" fire machine; and of course stones are employed as seats, in constructing terrace walls, in dams, and in the building of various inhabited structures, but that is all. There is no "stone age" -- no memory of it -- and, if the people were swept away to-day, to-morrow would reveal no trace of it. It is believed that the Igorot is to-day as much in the "stone age" as he ever has been in his present land. He had little use for stone weapons, implements, or utensils before he manufactured in iron.
Before he had iron he was essentially a user and maker of weapons, implements, utensils, and tools of wood. There are many vestiges of the wood age to-day; several show the use of wood for purposes usually thought of as solely within the sphere of stone and metal. Among these vestiges may be noted the bamboo knife used in circumcision; the sharp stick employed in the ceremonial killing of domestic hogs in Benguet; the bamboo instrument of ten or a dozen cutting blades used to shape and dress the hard, wooden spear shafts and battle-ax handles; the use of bamboo spearheads attached to hard-wood shafts; and the bamboo spikes stuck in trails to impale the enemy.
In addition to the above uses of wood for cutting flesh and working wood there follow, in this and subsequent chapters, enough data regarding the uses of wood to demonstrate that the wood age plays a large part in the life of a primitive people prior to the common use of metals. Without metals there was practically no occasion for the development of stone weapons and tools in a country with such woods as the bamboo; so in the Philippines we find an order of development different from that widespread in the temperate zones -- the "stone age" appears to be omitted.
Wooden implements and utensils
The kay-kay (Pl. LXI) is one of the most indispensable wooden tools in Igorot land. It is a hard-wood implement from 5 to 7 feet long, sharpened to a dull, flat edge at one end; this end is fire tempered to harden and bind the fibers, thus preventing splitting and excessive wear. The kay-kay is obtained in the mountains in the vicinity of most pueblos, so it is seldom bought or sold. It is the soil-turning stick, used by both men and women in turning the earth in all irrigated sementeras for rice and camotes. It is also employed in digging around and prying out rocks to be removed from sementeras or needed for walls. It is spade, plow, pickax, and crowbar. A small per cent of the kay-kay is shod with an iron point, rendering them more efficient, especially in breaking up new or sod ground.
The su-wan', the woman's camote stick, is about 2 feet long and an inch in diameter (Pl. LXXV). It is a heavy, compact wood, and is used by the woman until worn down 6 or 8 inches, when it usually becomes the property of a small girl for gathering wild plants for the family pigs. The su-wan' of the woman of Bontoc and Samoki comes, mostly in trade, from the mountains near Tulubin. It is employed in picking the earth loose in all unirrigated sementeras, as those for camotes, millet, beans, and maize. It is also used to pick over the earth in camote sementeras when the crop is gathered. Perhaps 1 per cent of these sticks is shod with an iron point. Such an instrument is of genuine service in the rough, stony mountain lands, but is not so serviceable as the unshod stick in the irrigated sementeras, because it cuts and bruises the vegetables.
The most common wooden vessel in the Bontoc area is the kak-wan', a vessel, or "pail" holding about six or eight quarts. In it the cooked food of the pigs is mixed and carried to the animals. Every household has two or more of them.
A few small, poorly made wooden dishes, called "chu'-yu," are found in each dwelling, from which the people eat broth of fish or other meats. All are of inferior workmanship and, in common with all things of wood made by the Igorot, are the product of the man's art. Both the knife and fire are used to hollow out these bowls.
A long-handled wooden dipper, called "ka-od'," is found in every dwelling. It belongs with the kak-wan', the pig-food pail.
Tug-on' is a large, long-handled spoon used exclusively as a drinking dipper for the fermented liquor called "sa-fu-eng'."
Fa'-nu is a wooden ladle employed in cooking foods.
A few very crude eating spoons, about the size of the dessert spoon of America, are found in most dwellings. They are usually without ornament, and are called "i-chus'."
Metal implements and utensils
The wa'-say is the only metal implement employed at all commonly in the area; it is found in each family. It consists of an iron, steel-bitted blade from an inch to an inch and a half in width and about 6 inches in length. It is attached to the short, wooden handle by a square haft inserted into the handle. Since the haft is square the implement may be instantly converted into either an "ax" with blade parallel to the handle or an "adz" with blade at right angle to the handle.
This is the tool used in felling and cutting up all trees, and in getting out and dressing all timbers and boards. It is the sole carpenter tool, unless the man by chance possess a bolo.
There are no metal agricultural implements in common use. As was noted earlier in the chapter, the soil-turning stick and the woman's camote stick are now and then shod with iron, but they are rare.
There are a few large, shallow Chinese iron boilers in the area, used especially for boiling sugar, evaporating salt in Mayinit, and for cooking carabao or large quantities of hog on ceremonial occasions. There are probably not more than two or three dozen such boilers in Bontoc pueblo, though they are becoming much more plentiful during the past three years -- since the Igorot has more money and goes more often to Candon on the coast, where he buys them.
Pottery
Most of the pottery consumed in the Bontoc area is the product of Samoki, the sister pueblo of Bontoc. Samoki pottery meets no competition down the river to the north until in the vicinity of Bitwagan, which makes and vends similar ware both up and down the river. To the south there is also competition, since Data makes and sells an excellent pot to Antedao, Fidelisan, Sagada, Titipan, and other near-by pueblos. It is probable, also, that Lias and Barlig, to the east, are supplied with pottery, and, if so, that their source is Bitwagan. But Bitwagan and Data pots are really not competitors with those of Samoki; they rather supply areas which the Samoki potters can not reach because of distance and the hostility of the people.
There are no traditions clustering around pottery making in Samoki. The potters say they taught themselves, and have always made earthenware.
To-day Samoki pottery is made of two clays -- one a reddish-brown mineral dug from pits several feet deep on the hillside, shown in Pl. LXXXII, and the other a bluish mineral gathered from a shallow basin situated on the hillside nearer the river than the pits, and in which a little water stands much of the year.
Formerly Samoki made pottery of only the brown clay, and she used cut grass intermixed for a temper, but she claims those earlier pots were too porous to glaze well. Consequently the experiment was made of adding the blue surface clay, in which there is a considerable amount of fresh and decaying vegetable matter -- probably sufficient to give temper, although the potters do not recognize it as such.
Samoki consists of eight ato, one of which is I-kang'-a. occupying the outer fringe of dwellings on the northwest side of the pueblo. It is claimed that all of the women of I-kang'-a, whether married or single, are potters. Even women who marry men of the I-kang'-a ato, and who come to that section of the pueblo to live, learn and follow the potter's art. A few married women in other ato also manufacture pottery. They seem to be married daughters of I-kang'-a ato.
A fine illustration of community industry is presented by the ato potters of Samoki. It could not be learned that there are any definite regulations, other than custom, demanding that all women of I-kang'-a manufacture pots, or any regulation which forces daughters of that ato to discontinue the art when they marry outside. But custom has fixed quite rigidly such a regulation, and though, as just stated, a few I-kang'-a women married into other ato of Samoki do manufacture pottery, yet no I-kang'-a women married into other pueblos carry on the art. It may be argued that a lack of suitable clay has thwarted manufacture in other pueblos, but clay is common in the mountains of the area, and the sources of the materials used in Samoki are readily accessible to at least the pueblo of Bontoc, where also there are many Samoki women living.
The clay pits lie north of Samoki, between a quarter and a half of a mile distant, and the potters go to them in the early morning while the earth is moist, and dig and bring home the clays. The woman gathers half a transportation basket of each of the clays, and while at the pits crudely works both together into balls 4 or 5 inches in diameter. In this form the clay is carried to the pueblo.
All the pottery is manufactured in the shade of the potter's dwelling, and the first process is a thorough mixing of the two clays. The balls of the crudely mixed material are put into a small, wooden trough, are slightly moistened, and then thoroughly worked with a wooden pestle, the potter crouching on her haunches or resting on her knees during the labors. She is shown in Pl. LXXXIX A. After the clay is mixed it is manipulated in small handfuls, between the thumb and fingers, in order that all stones and coarse pieces of vegetable matter may be removed. When the mortarful has thus been handled it is ready for making pots.
A mass of this clay, thoroughly mixed and plastic, is placed on a board on the earth before the kneeling or crouched potter. She pokes a hole in the top of this mass with thumbs and fingers, and quickly enlarges it. As soon as the opening is large enough to admit one hand it is dug out and enlarged by scraping with the ends of the fingers, and the clay so gathered is immediately built onto the upper rim of the mass. The inside is next further scraped and smoothed with the side of the forefinger. At this juncture a small mass of clay is rolled into a strip between the hands and placed on the upper edge of the shaping mass, completely encircling it. This roll is at once shaped by the hands into a crude, flaring rim. A few swift touches on the outer face of the crude pot removes protruding masses and roughly shapes the surface. The rim is moistened with water and smoothed inside and out by the hand and a short, round stick. This process is well illustrated in Pl. XC. The first stage of manufacture is completed and the vessel is set in the sun with the rim of an old broken pot for a supporting base.
In the course of a few hours the shaped and nearly completed rim of the pot becomes strong and set by the heat of the sun. However, the rough and irregular bowl has apparently retained relatively a larger amount of moisture and is in prime condition to be thinned, expanded, and given final form. The pot is now handled by the rim, which is sufficiently rigid for the purpose, and is turned about on its supporting base as is needed, or the base is turned about on the earth like a crude "potter's wheel." A smooth discoidal stone, some 4 or 5 inches in diameter, and a wooden paddle are the instruments used to shape the bowl. The paddle is first dipped in water and rubbed over one of the flattish surfaces of the stone slightly to moisten it, and is then beaten against the outer surface of the bowl, while the stone, tapped against the inner surface, prevents indenting or cracking, and, by offering a more or less nonresisting surface, assists in thinning and expanding the clay. After the upper part of the bowl has been thus completed the potter sits on her feet and haunches, with her knees thrust forward from her. Again and again she moistens her paddle and discoidal stone, and continues the spanking process until the entire bowl of the pot is shaped. It is then set in the sun to dry -- this time usually bottom side up.
After it has thoroughly dried, both the inner and outer surfaces are carefully and patiently smoothed and polished with a small stone, commonly a ribbon agate. During this process all pebbles found protruding from the surface are removed and the pits are filled with new clay thoroughly smoothed in place, and the thickness of the pot is made more uniform. The vessel is again placed on its supporting base in the sun, and kept turned and tilted until it has become well dried and set. Two and sometimes three days are required to bring a pot thus far toward completion, though during the same time there are several equally completed by each potter.
There remains yet the burning and glazing. Samoki burns her pots in the morning before sunrise. Immediately on the outskirts of the pueblo there is a large, gravelly place strewn with thin, black ash where for generations the potters coming and going have completed their primitive ware. Usually two or more firings occur each week, and several women combine and burn their pots together. On the earth small stones are laid upon which one tier of vessels is placed, each lying upon its side. Tier upon tier of pots is then placed above the first layer, each on its side and each supported by and supporting other pots. The heat is supplied by pine bark placed beneath and around the lower layer. The pile is entirely blanketed with dead grass tied in small bunches which has been gathered, prepared, and kept in the houses of the potters for the purpose. The grass retains its form long after the blaze and glow have ceased, and clings about the pile as a blanket, checking the wasteful radiation of heat and cutting out the drafts of air that would be disastrous to the heated clay. As this blanket of grass finally gives way here and there the attending potters replenish it with more bunches. The pile is fired about one hour; when sufficiently baked the pots are lifted from the fire by inserting in each a long pole. Each potter then takes a vessel at a time, places it red hot on its supporting base on the earth before her, and immediately proceeds, with much care and labor, to glaze the rim and inside of the bowl. The glaze is a resin obtained in trade from Barlig. It is applied to the vessel from the end of a glazing stick -- sometimes a pole 6 or 7 feet long, but usually about a yard in length. After the rim and inner surface of the bowl have been thoroughly glazed the potter begins on another vessel -- turning the last one over to one or two little girls, from 4 to 6 years of age, who find great happiness in smearing the outer surface of the now cooling and dull-brown pot with resin held in bunches in the hands. This outer glaze, applied by the young apprentices, who, in play, are learning an art of their future womanhood, is neither so thick nor so carefully laid as is the glaze of the rim and inner surface of the vessel. When the glazing is completed the pot is still too hot to be borne in the hands; however, the glaze has become rigid and hard.
Analyses made at the Bureau of Government Laboratories, Manila, show that the clays used in the Samoki pots contain the following mineral:
Analyses of Samoki pottery clays
Minerals. Brown pit clay Blue surface clay
Per cent PER CENT
Silica 54.46 60.99
Oxide of aluminum 16.77 17.71
Ferric oxide of iron 11.14 9.53
Oxide of calcium 0.53 0.59
Loss by ignition 16.81 10.65
Oxide of magnesium Trace Trace
Oxide of potassium Trace --
Oxide of sodium -- Trace
Carbon dioxide -- Trace
The botanist of the Bureau of Government Laboratories[26] says in the report of his analysis of the resin used to glaze these pots:
This gum is known as Almaciga (Sp.). It is produced by some species of the dipterocarpus or shorea -- which it is impossible to determine. ... It should not be confounded with the other common almaciga from the trees of the genus Agathis.
The Government analyst[27] who analyzed the clays and examined the finished and glazed pots says of the Samoki pot that about two-thirds of the organic matter in the clay is consumed in the baking or burning of the pot. The organic matter in the middle one-third of the wall of the pot is not consumed. The clay is a remarkably hard one and is difficult of ignition; this is the reason it makes good cooking vessels. He further says that the glaze is not a true glaze. It seems that the resin does nothing except lose its oils when applied to the red-hot pots, and there is left on the surface the unconsumed carbon.
Basket work
All basket work is done by the men. Much of the time when they are in the fawi or pabafunan, gossiping and smoking, they are busied making the ordinary and necessary utensils of the field and dwelling. The basket work is all crude, with the possible exception of some of the hats worn by the men.
As is brought forth later under the head of "Commerce," much basket work is done by only one or two communities, and from them passes in trade over a large area. Most of the basket work of the area is of bejuco or bamboo. There are two varieties of bamboo used in the area -- a'-nis and fi'-ka. A'-nis is found in the area and fi'-ka is brought in in trade from the southwest.
The most important piece of basket work is the ki-ma'-ta, the man's transportation basket, made of a'-nis bamboo; it is shown in Pl. CXX. It is made by many pueblos, and is found throughout the area. It consists of two baskets joined firmly to a light, wooden crossbar called "pa'-tang." The entire ki-ma'-ta weighs about 5 pounds, and with it the Igorot carries loads weighing as much as 100 pounds.
The man has another basket called "ko-chuk-kod'," which is used frequently by him, also sometimes by women, for carrying earth when building the sementeras. The ko-chuk-kod' is made in Bontoc and Samoki. It is not shown in any of the illustrations, but is quite similar to the tay-ya-an', or large transportation basket of the woman, yet is slimmer. It is also similar in shape and size to the woman's transportation basket in Benguet which is worn on the back supported by a headband.
The woman has two important a'-nis bamboo transportation baskets, which are constantly employed. One called "lu'-wa," the shallow lower basket shown in Pl. LXXV, is made only in Samoki; the other tay-ya-an', shown in Pl. XCIII, holds about three pecks. It is made only in Bontoc and Samoki.
Ag-ka-win' is the small rump basket almost invariably worn by women when working in the irrigated sementera. It is of fi'-ka bamboo, is made commonly in Bontoc and Samoki, and occasionally in Tulubin. The field toiler often carries her lunch to the field in the ag-ka-win', and when she returns the basket is usually filled with crustaceans and mollusks picked up in the wet sementera or gathered in the river, or with weeds or grasses to be cooked as "greens."
The woman's rain protector, a scoop-shaped affair about 4 feet long, called "tug-wi'," is said to be made only in Ambawan and Barlig. It consists of a double weave of coarse splints, between which is a waterproof layer of a large palm leaf. It is worn over the head, and is an excellent protection from the rain. It may well have been suggested to primitive man by the banana leaf, which I have repeatedly seen carried over the head and back by the Igorot in many sections of northern Luzon during the rains. I have also seen it used many times in Manila by Tagalog who were caught out in a storm without an umbrella. The rain protector is shown lying in front of the house in Pl. XXXVII.
Tak-o-chug' is the man's dirt scoop made of a'-nis bamboo. It resembles the tug-wi' in shape, but is only about 1 1/2 feet long. It is employed in handling earth, and conveying the dirt to the ko-chuk-kod', or dirt transportation basket.
A basket very similar to tak-o-chug', but called "sug-fi'," is employed by the woman in her housework in handling vegetables. It is shown in Pl. XCIV, containing camote parings.
The to'-pil is the man's "dinner pail." It is made of a'-nis bamboo, is a covered basket, and is constructed to contain from one and a half to three quarts of solid food. In it men and boys carry their lunch to the fields. All the pueblos make the to'-pil.
Another basket, called "sang'-i," is generally employed in carrying the man's food. It is used for long trips from home, although I have seen it used simply for carrying the field lunch. It is made of bejuco in Ambawan, Barlig, and Tulubin, and passes widely in the area through commerce. It is worn on the back, secured by bejuco straps passing in front of the shoulders.
Fang'-ao is the sang'-i with a waterproof bejuco covering. As it is worn on the back, the man appears to be wearing a cape made of hanging vegetable threads. This is the basket commonly known as the "head basket," but it is used for carrying food, blankets, anything, on the trail. It is made in Ambawan, Barlig, and Kanyu, and is found pretty well scattered throughout the area. It is shown, front and back view, in Pl. XCV.
Fa'-i si gang'-sa is an open-work bejuco basket, in shape very similar to the sang'-i, used to carry the gang'-sa, or metal drum. It is worn slung on the back as is the sang'-i.
A house basket holding about a peck, called "fa-lo'-ko," is made of a'-nis bamboo. It is used in various capacities, for vegetables and cereals, in and about the house. It is made in all the pueblos and is shown in Pl. XCIV. A few other household baskets are often found. Among these are the large, bottle-shaped locust basket, i-wus', a smaller basket, ko'-lug, of the same shape used to hold threshed rice, and the open-work spoon basket, so'-long, which usually hangs over the fireplace in each dwelling.
The large winnowing tray, lig-o', shown bottom up in Pl. XCIII, is made in Samoki and Kanyu of a'-nis bamboo. There are two sizes of winnowing trays, both of which are employed everywhere in the area.
Several small a'-nis bamboo eating trays, called "ki'-ug," are shown in Pl. XCIV. These food dishes are used on ceremonial occasions, and some of them can not be purchased. They are made in all pueblos.
Samoki alone is said to make the rice sieve, called "a-ka'-ug. It passes widely in the pueblo.
Aside from these various basket utensils and implements there are the three kinds of fish traps described in the section on fishing.
There are also three varieties of basket-work hats. The rain hat called "seg-fi'," is made in Bontoc, and may be in imitation of those worn nearer the western coast. This with the suk-lang, the pocket hat always worn by the men and boys, and the kut'-lao. or sleeping hat, worn by children and adults of both sexes, are described under the head of "Clothing."
Weapon production
Igorot weapons are few and relatively simple. The bow and arrow, used wherever the Negrito is in Luzon, is not known to the Igorot warrior of the Bontoc culture area. Small boys in Bontoc pueblo make for themselves tiny bows 1 1/2 or 2 feet long with which they snap light arrows a few feet. But the instrument is of the crudest, merely a toy, and is a thing of the day, being acquired from the culture of the Ilokano who live in the pueblo. The Igorot claim they never employed the bow and arrow, and, to-day at least, consider the question as to their ever using it as very foolish, since, they say, pointing to the child's toy, "It is nothing."
In 1665 -- 1668 Friar Casimiro Diaz wrote of the Igorot that they used arrows,[28] but it is believed his statement did not apply to the Bontoc man. Igorot-like people throughout northern Luzon commonly do not have this weapon, yet the large Tinguian group of Abra, west and north of Bontoc, and the Ibilao of southeastern Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, and adjacent Isabela employ the bow constantly.
The natural projectile weapon of the Negrito is the bow and arrow; that of the Malayan seems to be the blowgun -- at present, however, largely replaced by the spear, though in some southern islands, especially in Paragua, it has held its own.
Wooden weapons
Shields are universally made and used by the Igorot. They are made by the men of each pueblo, and are seldom bought or sold. They are cut from single pieces of wood, and are generally constructed of very light wood, though some are heavy. The hand grip is cut in the solid timber. is almost invariably made for the left hand, and will usually accommodate only three fingers -- the thumb and little finger remaining outside the grip and free to press forward the upper and lower ends of the shield, respectively, slanting it to glance a blow of a spear.
Within the present boundary of Bontoc Province there are three distinct patterns of wooden shields in use in three quite distinct culture areas. There is still another shield immediately beyond the western border of the province but which is believed to be produced also in the Bontoc area.
First, is the shield of the Bontoc culture area. It is usually about 3 feet long and 1 foot wide, is blackened with a greasy soot, though now and again one in original wood is seen. The upper part or "chief" of the shield is cut, leaving three points projecting several inches above the solid field; the lower end or "base" is cut, leaving two points. Across both ends of the shield is a strengthening lace of bejuco, passing through perforations from front to back. The front surface of the shield is most prominent over the deep-cut hand grip at the boss or "fess point," toward which a wing approaches on both the dexter and sinister sides of the front of the shield, being carved slightly on the field. This is the usual Bontoc shield, but some few have meaningless straight-line decorations cut in the field.
In the Tinglayan culture area, immediately north of Bontoc, the usual shield is very similar to the above, except that various sections of both the face and back of the shield are of natural wood or are colored dull red. The strengthening of bejuco lacings and the raised wings are also found.
Still farther north is the Kalinga shield -- a slim, gracefully formed shield, differing from the typical Bontoc weapon chiefly in its more graceful outline. It is of a uniform black color and has the bejuco lacings the same as the others.
The fourth variety, made at Bagnen, immediately across the Bontoc border, in Lepanto, and probably also made and certainly used near at hand in Bontoc, is quite similar to the Bontoc type but is smaller and cruder. It is uncolored, and on its front has crude drawings of snakes and frogs (or perhaps men) drawn with soot paint.
Banawi area, south of the Bontoc area. has a shield differing markedly from the others. It is longer, usually somewhat wider, and not cut at either end. The lower end is straight across at right angles to the sides; the upper end rises to a very obtuse angle at the middle. The front is usually much plainer than is that of the other shields mentioned.
Throughout the Bontoc area there is a spear with a bamboo blade, entirely a wooden weapon. The spear is employed in warfare, and is losing its place only as iron becomes plentiful enough and cheap enough to substitute for the bamboo blades or heads. Even in sections in which iron spears are relatively common the wooden spear is used much in warfare, since spears thrown at an enemy are frequently lost.
Sharp-pointed bamboo spikes are often stuck in the trails of war parties when they are returning from some foray in which they have been successful. These spikes are from about 6 inches in length, as among the people of the Bontoc area, to 3 or more feet, as among the Ibilao of southeastern Nueva Vizcaya. The latter people nightly place these long spikes, called "luk'-dun," in the trails leading to their dwellings. They are placed at a considerable angle, and would impale an intruder in the groin or upper thigh, inflicting a cruel and disabling wound. The shorter spikes either cut through the bottom of the foot or stab the instep or leg near the ankle. They are much dreaded, and, though crude, are very effective weapons.
Metal weapons
The metal spear blade or head is a product of Igorot workmanship. Baliwang, situated about six hours north of Bontoc, makes most of the metal spear blades used in the Bontoc area. Sapao, located about a day and a half to the south, makes excellent metal blades, but they seldom reach the Bontoc culture area, although blades of inferior production from Sapao are found in Ambawan, the southernmost pueblo of the area.
Baliwang has four smithies, in each of which two or three men labor, each man in a smithy performing a separate part of the work. One operates the bellows, another feeds the fire and does the heavy striking during the initial part of the work, and the other -- the real blade maker, the artist -- directs all the labor, and performs the finer and finishing parts of the blade production.
The smithies are about 12 feet square without side walls. They have a grass roof sloping to within 3 feet of the earth, enlarging the shaded area to near 20 feet square. Near one side of the room is the bellows, called "op-op'," consisting of two vertical, parallel wooden tubes about 5 feet long and 10 inches in diameter, standing side by side. Each tube has a piston or plunger, called "dot-dot';" the packing ring of the piston is of wood covered with chicken feathers, making it slightly flexible at the rim, so it fits snugly in the tube. The lower end of the bellows tubes rests in the earth, 4 inches above which a small bamboo tube leads the compressed air to the fireplace from each bellows tube. These small tubes, called "to-bong'," end near an opening through a brick at the back of the fire, and the air forced through them passes on through the brick to the burning charcoal. The outer end of the to-bong' is cut at an angle, and as the tubes end outside the opening in the brick, the air inbreathed by the bellows, as the plungers are raised, is drawn from back of the fireplace -- thus the fire is not disturbed.
The fuel is an inferior charcoal prepared by the Igorot from pine. This bellows is found throughout the Archipelago and is evidently a Malayan product. It is believed that it came to Bontoc with the Igorot from their earlier home and is not, as some say, a Chinese invention.[29] The Igorot manufacturer of metal pipes uses exactly the same kind of bellows, except that it is very much smaller, and so appears like a toy. It is poorly shown in Pl. CIX.
Much of the iron now employed in the manufacture of Igorot weapons is Chinese bar iron coming from China to the Islands at Candon, in Ilokos Sur. However, the people readily make weapons from any iron they may acquire, greatly preferring the scraps of broken Chinese cast-iron pots, vessels purchased primarily for making sugar. In his choice of cast iron the Igorot exhibits a practical knowledge of metallurgy, since cast iron makes better steel than wrought iron -- that is, as he has to work.
FIGURE 5
Ironsmith's stone hammer.
The anvils of the smithy, numbering four or five, are large rocks set solidly in the earth. The hammers are nearly all stone, though some of the workmen have a small iron hammer used in finishing the weapons.
There are several varieties of stone hammers. One weighing about 30 pounds is 16 inches long, 10 inches wide, and from 4 to 6 inches thick. An inch-deep groove is cut in both edges of the hammer, and into these grooves the short, double wooden handle is attached by a withe. Another hammer, similar to the above in shape and attachment, is about one-third its size and weight. There is a still smaller hammer lashed with leather bands to a single, straight wooden handle; and there is also a round hammer stone about 3 inches in diameter without handle or attachment, which hammer, together with the larger one last mentioned, is largely superseded in some of the smithies by the metal hammer.
The bellows operator sits squatting on a slight platform the height of the bellows, and constantly works the plungers up and down with rhythmic strokes.
Two men at first handle the hot iron -- one, the real blade maker, holds the white-hot metal with long-handled iron pinchers (purchased in Candon) and his helper wields the 30-pound hammer. He stands with legs well apart, grasps the heavy hammer with both hands, and swings it back and forth between his legs. The blow is struck at the downward, backward swing.
These smiths weld iron, and also temper it to make steel. The following detailed picture of a welding observed in a Baliwang smithy may be duplicated there any day. The two pieces of iron to be welded were separately heated a dull red. One was then laid on the other and both were cooled with water. Wet earth, gathered for the occasion at the side of the smithy, was then put over them; while still covered they were inserted again in the fire. When red-hot they were withdrawn, the little mound of earth covering the two pieces of iron being still in place but having been brought also to a red heat. A few light blows fell on the red mass, and it was again returned to the fire. Four times the iron was withdrawn and received a few blows with a light hammer wielded by the master smith. On being withdrawn the fifth time half a dozen blows were struck by the helper with the 30-pound hammer. Again the iron was heated, but when removed the sixth time the welding was evidently considered finished, as the shaping of the weapon was then begun. Weldings made by these smiths seem to be complete.
The tempering done by the Igorot is crude, and is such as may be seen in any country blacksmith shop in the States. The iron is heated and is tempered by cooling in a small wooden trough of water. There is great difference in the quality of the steel turned out by the Igorot, even by the same man, though some men are recognized as more skillful than others.
There are four styles of spear blades made by Baliwang. The one most common is called "fal-feg'." It is a simple, single-barbed blade, and ranges from 2 inches to 6 inches in length. This style of blade is the most used in warfare, and the smaller, lighter blades are considered better for this purpose than the heavier ones.
The fang'-kao, or barbless lance blade, is next common in use. It is not a war blade, but is used almost entirely in killing carabaos and hogs. There is one notable exception to this statement -- Ambawan has almost no other class of spear. These blades range from 4 to 12 or 14 inches in length.
The other two blades, si-na-la-wi'-tan and kay-yan', are relatively rare. The former is quite similar to the fal-feg', except that instead of the single pair of barbs there are other barbs -- say, from one to ten pairs. This spear is not considered at all serviceable as a hunting spear, and is not used in war as much as is the fal-feg'. It is prized highly as an anito scarer. When a man passes alone in the mountains anito are very prone to walk with him; however, if the traveler carries a si-na-la-wi'-tan, anito will not molest him, since they are afraid when they see the formidable array of barbs.
Kay-yan' is a gracefully formed blade not used in hunting, and employed less in war than is si-na-la-wi'-tan. Though the Igorot has almost nothing in his culture for purely aesthetic purposes, yet he ascribes no purpose for the kay-yan' -- he says it looks pretty; but I have seen it carried to war by war parties.
The pueblo of Sapao makes superior-looking steel weapons, though many Igorot claim the steel of the Baliwang spear is better than that from Sapao. In Quiangan I saw a fang'-kao, or lance-shaped blade made in Sapao, having six faces on each side. The five lines separating the faces ran from the tang to the point of the blade, and were as regular and perfect as though machine made. The best class of Sapao blades is readily distinguishable by its regular lines and the smooth and perfect surface finish.
All spearheads are fastened to the wooden shaft by a short haft or tang inserted in the wood. An iron ferrule or a braided bejuco ferrule is employed to strengthen the shaft where the tang is inserted. A conical iron ferrule or cap is also placed on the butt of the shaft. This ferrule is often used, as the spear is always stuck in the earth close at hand when the warrior works any distance from home; and as he passes along the steep mountain trails or carries heavy burdens he commonly uses the spear shaft as a staff.
The spear shafts are made by the owner of the weapon, it not being customary for anyone to produce them for sale. Some of them are rather attractively decorated with brass and copper studs, and a few have red and yellow bejuco ferrules near the blade. In some pueblos of the Bontoc area, as at Mayinit, spear shafts are worked down and eventually smoothed and finished by a flexible, bamboo knife-blade machine. It consists of about a dozen blades 8 or 10 inches in length, fastened together side by side with string. The blades lie one overlapping the other like the slats of an American window shutter. Each projecting blade is sharpened to a chisel edge. The machine is grasped in the hand, as shown in fig. 6, and is slid up and down the shaft with a slight twisting movement obtained by bending the wrist. The machine becomes a flexible, many-bladed plane.
Baliwang alone makes the genuine Bontoc battle-ax. It is a strong, serviceable blade of good temper, and is hafted to a short, strong, straight wooden handle which is strengthened by a ferrule of iron or braided bejuco. The ax has a slender point opposed to the bit or cutting edge of the blade. This point is often thrust in the earth and the upturned blade used as a stationary knife, on which the Igorot cuts meats and other substances by drawing them lengthwise along the sharp edge. The bit of the ax is at a small angle with the front and back edges of the blade, and is nearly a straight line. The axes are kept keen and sharp by whetstones collected and preserved solely for the purpose. Besao, near Sagada, quarries and barters a good grade of whetstone.
FIGURE 6
Bamboo spear-shaft dresser.
A slender, long-handled battle-ax now and then comes into the area in trade from the north. Balbelasan, of old Abra Province, but now in the northern part of extended Bontoc Province, is one of the pueblos which produce this beautiful ax. The blade is longer and very much slimmer than the Bontoc blade, but its marked distinguishing feature is the shape of the cutting edge. The blade is ground on two straight lines joined together by a short curved line, giving the edge the striking form of the beak of a rapacious bird. The slender, graceful handle, always fitted with a long iron ferrule, has a process on the under side near the middle. The handle is also usually fitted with a decorated metal ferrule at the tip and frequently is decorated for its full length with bands of brass or tin, or with sheets of either metal artistically incised.
The Balbelasan ax is not used by the pueblos making it, or at least by many of them, but finds its field of usefulness east and northeast of Bontoc pueblo as far as the foothills of the mountains west of the Rio Grande de Cagayan. I was told by the Kalinga of this latter region that the people in the mountain close to the Cagayan in the vicinity of Cabagan Nuevo, Isabela Province, also use this ax.
In the southern and western part of the Bontoc area the battle-ax shares place with the bolo, the sole hand weapon of the Igorot of adjoining Lepanto, Benguet, and Nueva Vizcaya Provinces.
The bolo within the Bontoc area comes from Sapao and from the Ilokano people of the west coast. The southern pueblo in the Bontoc area, Ambawan, uses the bolo of Sapao to the entire exclusion of the battle-ax. Tulubin, the next pueblo to Ambawan, and only an hour from it, uses almost solely the Baliwang battle-ax. Such pueblos as Titipan and Antedao, about three hours west of Bontoc, use both the ax and bolo, while the pueblos further west, as Agawa, Sagada, Balili, Alap, etc., use the bolo exclusively -- frequently an Ilokano weapon.
The Sapao bolo is, in appearance, superior to that of Ilokano manufacture. It is a broad blade swelling markedly toward the center, and is somewhat similar in shape to the barong of the Sulu Moro of the Sulu Archipelago. This weapon finds its chief field of use in the Quiangan and Banawi areas. In these districts the bolo is fitted with an open scabbard, and the bright blade presents a novel appearance lying exposed against the red scabbard. The Igorot manufacturer of the bolo does not make the scabbard, and most of the bolos used within the Bontoc area are sheathed in the closed wooden scabbard commonly found in Lepanto and Benguet.
Pipe production, and smoking
The Igorot of Bontoc area make pipes of wood, clay, and metal. All their pipes have small bores and bowls. In Benguet a wooden pipe is commonly made with a bowl an inch and a half in diameter; it has a large bore also. In Banawi I obtained a wooden pipe with a bowl 8 1/4 inches in circumference and 4 inches in height, but having a bore averaging only half an inch in diameter.
Nearly all pueblos make the pipes they use, but pipes of clay and metal are manufactured by the Igorot for Igorot trade. I never learned that wooden pipes are made by them for commercial purposes.
The wooden pipe of the area varies from simple tubular forms, exactly like a modern cigar holder, to those having bowls set at right angle to the stem. All wooden pipes are whittled by the men, and some of them are very graceful in form and have an excellent polish. They are made of at least three kinds of wood -- ga-sa'-tan, la-no'-ti, and gi-gat'. Most pipes -- wooden, clay, or metal -- have separable stems.
A few men in Agawa, a pueblo near the western border of the area, make beautiful clay pipes, called "ki-na-lo'-sab." The clay is carefully macerated between the fingers until it is soft and fine. It is then roughly shaped by the fingers, and afterwards, when partially hardened, is finished with a set of five light, wooden tools.
The finished bowls are in three different colors. When baked about nine hours the pipes come forth gray. Those coming out red have been burned about twelve hours, usually all night. The black ones are made by reburning the red bowls about half an hour in palay straw.
Two men in Sabangan and one each in Genugan and Takong -- all western pueblos -- manufacture metal "anito" pipes. To-day brass wire and the metal of cartridge shells are most commonly employed in making these pipes.
The process of manufacture is elaborate and very interesting. First a beeswax model is made the exact size and shape of the finished metal pipe. All beeswax, called "a-tid'," used in pipe making comes from Barlig through Kanu, and the illustration (Pl. CVIII) shows the form in which it passes in commerce in the area. A small amount of wax is softened by a fire until it can be flattened in the palm of the hand. It is then rolled around a stick the size of the bore in the bowl. The outside of the wax bowl is next designed as is shown in the illustration (Pl. CVIII). A careful examination of the illustration will show that the design represents the sitting figure of a man. He is resting his elbows on his knees and holding his lower jaw in his hands -- eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and fingers are all represented. This design is made in the wax with a small knife. The wax for the short stem piece is flattened and folded around a stick the size of the bore of the stem. The stem piece is then set into the bowl and the design which was started on the bowl is continued over the stem.
When the wax pipe is completed a projecting point of wax is attached to the base of the pipe, and the whole is imbedded in a clay jacket, the point of wax, however, projecting from the jacket. The clay used by the pipe maker is obtained in a pit at Pingad in the vicinity of Genugan. Around the wax point a clay funnel is built. The clay mold, called "bang-bang'-a," is thoroughly baked by a fire. In less than an hour the mold is hardened and brown, and the wax pipe within it has melted and the wax been poured out of the mold through the gate or opening left by the melting point of wax, leaving the mold empty.
A small Malayan bellows, called "op-op'," the exact duplicate in miniature of the double tubular bellows described in the preceding section on "metal weapons," furnishes the draught for a small charcoal fire. The funnel of the clay mold is filled with pieces of metal, and the entire thing is buried in the fired charcoal. In fifteen minutes the metal melts and runs down through the gate at the bottom of the funnel into the hollow, wax-lined mold. Since the entire mold is hot, the metal does not cool or harden promptly, and the pipe maker taps and jars the mold in order to make the metal penetrate and fill every part.
The mold is set aside to cool and is then broken away from the metal core. To-day the pipe maker possesses a file with which to smooth and clean the crude pipe. Formerly all that labor, and it is extensive, was performed with stones.
It requires two men to make the "anito" pipes -- tin-ak-ta'-go. One superintends all the work and performs the finest of it, and the second pumps the bellows and smooths and cleans the pipe after it is cast. The two men make four pipes per day, but the purchaser of an "anito" pipe puts days of toil on the metal, smoothing and perfecting it by cleaning and digging out the design until it becomes really a beautiful bit of primitive art.
When a pueblo wants a few tin-ak-ta'-go it sends for the manufacturer, and he comes to the pueblo with his helper and remains as long as necessary. Ay-o'-na, of Genugan, annually visits Titipan, Ankiling, Sagada, Bontoc, and Samoki. He usually furnishes all material, and receives a peseta for each pipe, but the pueblo furnishes the food. In this way a pipe maker is a journeyman about half the year.
Tukukan makes a smooth, cast-metal pipe, called "pin-e-po-yong'," and Baliwang makes tubular iron pipes at her smithies. They are hammered out and pounded and welded over a core. I have seen several of such excellent workmanship that the welded seam could not be detected on the surface.
In the western part of the area both men and women smoke, and some smoke almost constantly. Throughout the areas occupied by Christians children of 6 or 7 years smoke a great deal. I have repeatedly seen girls not over 6 years of age smoking rolls of tobacco, "cigars," a foot long and more than an inch in diameter, but in Bontoc area small children do not smoke. In most of the area women do not smoke at all, and boys seldom smoke until they reach maturity.
In Bontoc the tobacco leaf for smoking is rolled up and pinched off in small sections an inch or so in length. These pieces are then wrapped in a larger section of leaf. When finished for the pipe the tobacco resembles a short stub of a cigar. Only half a dozen whiffs are generally taken at a smoke, and the pipe with its tobacco is then tucked under the edge of the pocket hat. Four pipes in five as they are seen sticking from a man's hat show that the owners stopped smoking long before they exhausted their pipes.
Fire making
The oldest instrument for fire making used by the Bontoc Igorot is now seldom found. However, practically all boys of a dozen years know how to make and use it.
It is called "co-li'-li," and is a friction machine made of two pieces of dry bamboo. A 2-foot section of dead and dry bamboo is split lengthwise and in one piece a small area of the stringy tissue lining the tube is splintered and picked quite loose. Immediately over this, on the outside of the tube, a narrow groove is cut at right angles to it. This piece of bamboo becomes the stationary lower part of the fire machine. One edge of the other half of the original tube is sharpened like a chisel blade. This section is grasped in both hands, one at each end, and is at first slowly and heavily, afterwards more rapidly, drawn back and forth through the groove of the stationary bamboo, making a small conical pile of dry dust beneath the opening.
After a dozen strokes the sides of the groove and the edge of the friction piece burn brown, presently a smell of smoke is plain, and before three dozen strokes have been made smoke may be seen. Usually before one hundred strokes a larger volume of smoke tells that the dry dust constantly falling on the pile has grown more and more charred until finally a tiny friction-fired particle falls, carrying combustion to the already heated dust cone.
The machine is carefully raised, and, if the fire is permanently kindled, the pinch of smoldering dust is inserted in a wisp of dry grass or other easily inflammable material; in a minute or two flames burst forth, and the fire may be transferred where desired.
The pal-ting', the world-wide flint and steel-percussion fire machine, is found with all Bontoc men.
At Sagada there is a ledge of exposed and crumbling rock from which most of the men of the western part of the Bontoc culture area obtain their "flint." The "steel" is any piece of iron which may be had -- probably a part of the ferrule from the butt of a spear shaft is used more than is any other one kind of iron.
The pal-ting' is secured either in a very small basket or a leather roll which is fastened closed by a string. In this receptacle a small amount of dry tree cotton is also carried. The pal-ting' receptacle is carried about in the large bag hanging at the girdle.
Fire is made by a tiny percussion-heated particle of the stone as it flies away under the sharp, glancing blow of the "steel" and catches in the dry cotton held by the thumb nail on the upper surface of the stone.
If the fire maker wishes to light his pipe, he tucks the smoldering cotton lightly into his roll of tobacco; a few draws are sufficient to ignite the pipeful. If an out-of-door fire is desired the cotton is first used to ignite a dry bunch of grass. Should the fire be needed in the dwelling, the cotton is placed on charcoal. Blowing and care will produce a good, blazing wood fire in a few minutes.
To-day friction matches are known throughout the area, although probably not one person in one hundred has ever owned a box of matches.
The fire syringe, common west of Bontoc Province among the Tinguian, is not known in the Bontoc culture area.
Division of labor
Under this title must be grouped all forms of occupations which are considered necessary to the life of the pueblo.
Up to the age of 5 or 6 years Bontoc children do not work. As has been said in a previous chapter, during the months of April and May many little girls from 5 to 10 work and play together for long hours daily gathering a few varieties of wild plants close about the pueblo for food for the pigs. This labor is unnecessary as soon as the camote vines become large enough for gathering. During June and July these same girls gather the camote vines for pig food. About August this labor falls to the women.
Mention has also been made of the fact that during the latter half of April and May the boys and girls of all ages from 6 or 7 years to 13 or 14 guard the palay sementeras against the birds from earliest dawn till heavy twilight.
Little girls often help about the dwelling by paring camotes for the forthcoming meal.
At all times the elder children, both boys and girls, are baby tenders while their parents work.
Man is the sole hunter and warrior, and he alone fishes when traps or snares are employed.
Only men go to the mountains to cut and bring home firewood and lumber for building purposes; widowed women sometimes bring home dead fallen wood found along the trails. Only men construct the various private and public buildings. They alone build the stone dikes of the sementeras and construct the irrigating ditches and dams; they transport to the pueblo most of the harvested palay. They manufacture and vend basi, and prepare the salted meats. They make all weapons, and all implements and utensils for field and household labors. Contrary to a widespread custom among primitive people, as has been noted, the Igorot man constructs all basket work, whether hats, baskets, trays, or ornaments, and bindings of weapons and implements. Men are the workers of all metal and stone. They are the only cargadors, though in the Kiapa area of Benguet Province women sometimes go on the trails as paid burden bearers for Americans.
Only men are said to tattoo and circumcise. They determine the days of rest and of ceremony for the pueblo, and all pueblo ceremonies are in their hands; so also are the ceremonies of the ato -- only men are "priests," except for private household ceremonials.
Men constitute the "control element" of the pueblo. They are the legislative, executive, and judicial power for the pueblo and each ato; they are considered the wisdom of their people, and they alone, it is said, give public advice on important matters.
The woman is the only weaver of fabrics and the only spinner of the materials of which the fabrics are made. On the west coast the Ilokano men do a great deal of the spinning, but the Igorot man has not imitated them in the industry, though he has often seen them. Women are the sole potters of Samoki, and they alone transport and vend their wares to other pueblos. In the Mayinit salt industry only the woman tends the salt house, gathering the crude salt solution.
Only the women plant the rice seed, and they alone transplant the palay; they also care for the growing plants and harvest most of the crops. In the transplanting and harvesting of palay the woman is given credit for greater dexterity than the man; men harvest palay only when sufficient women can not be found. Women plant, care for, harvest, and transport to the pueblo all camotes, millet, maize, and beans.
The men and women together construct and repair irrigated sementeras, men usually digging the earth while the women transport it. Together they prepare the soil of irrigated sementeras, and carry manure to them from the pigpens. Men at times do the women's work in harvesting, and women sometimes assist the men to carry the harvest to the pueblo. Either threshes out and hulls the rice, though the woman does more than half this work. Both prepare foods for cooking, cook the meals, and serve them. Both bring water from the river for household uses, though the woman brings the greater part. Each tends the babe while the other works in the field. Both care for the chickens and pigs, even to cooking the food for the latter. Men and women catch fish by hand in the river, manufacture tapui, and in the salt industry both evaporate the salt solution and vend the salt.
In the treatment of the sick and the driving out of afflicting anito, men and women alike serve.
Little work is demanded of the old people, though the labors they perform are of great value to the pueblo, as the strong are thus given more time for a vigorous industrial life.
Great service is rendered the pueblo by the councils of the old men, and they are the "priests" of all ceremonials, except those of the household.
The old men do practically nothing at manual labor in the field. However, numbers of old men and women guard the palay sementeras from the birds, and they frequently tend their grandchildren about the pueblo. They also bring water from the river to the dwelling.
Old women seem generally busy. They prepare and cook foods, and they spin materials for women's skirts and girdles. The blind women share in these labors, even going to the river for water.
By labor of the group is meant the common effort of two or more people whose everyday possessions and accumulations are not in common, as they are in a family, to perform some definite labor which can be better done by such effort than by the separate labors of the several members of the group.
A pueblo war probably represents the largest necessary group-occupation, because at such time all available warriors unite in a concerted effort. Next to this, though possibly coming before it, is the group assembled for the erection of a dwelling. As has been noted, all dwellings are built by a group, and when a rich man's domicile is to be put up a great many people assemble -- the men to erect the dwelling, and the women to prepare and cook the food. A great deal of agricultural labor is performed by the group. New irrigation ditches are built by, or at the instance of, all those who will benefit by them. The dam built annually across the river at Bontoc pueblo is constructed by all, or at the instance of all, who benefit from the additional irrigation water. Wild carabaos are hunted by a group of men, and the domestic carabaos can be caught only when several men surround and attack them.
All interpueblo commerce is carried on by a group of people. Almost never does a person pass from one pueblo to another alone, and commerce is the chief thing which causes the interpueblo communication. These groups of traveling merchants consist of from two or three persons to a dozen or more -- as in the case of the Samoki pottery sellers.
Wages, and exchange of labor
The woman receives the same wage as the man. There are two reasons why she should. First, all labor is by the day, so the facts of sickness and maternity never keep the woman from her labor when she is expected and is depended on; and, second, she is as efficient in the labors she performs as is the man -- in some she is recognized as more efficient. She does as much work as a man, and does it as well or better. It is worth so much to have a certain work done in a particular time, and the Igorot pays the wage to whomever does the work. The growing boy or girl who performs the same labors as an adult receives an equal wage.
Not only do the people work by the day, but they are paid daily also. Every night the laborer goes to the dwelling of his employer and receives the wage; the wages of unmarried children are paid to their parents.
To all classes of laborers dinner and sometimes supper is supplied. For weeding and thinning the sementeras of young palay and for watching the fruiting palay to drive away the birds, the only wage is these two meals. But this labor is light, and frightening away the birds is usually the work of children or very old people who can not perform hard labors. In all classes of work for which only food is given, much time is left to the laborers in which the men may weave their basket work and the women spin the bark-fiber thread for skirts.
Five manojos of palay is the daily wage for all laborers except those mentioned in the last paragraph. This is the wage of the wood gatherer in the mountains, of the builder of granaries, sementeras, irrigating ditches, and dikes, and of those who prepare soils and who plant and harvest crops.
There is much exchange of labor between individuals, and even between large groups of people, such as members of an ato. Formerly exchange of labor was practiced slightly more than at present, but to-day, as has been noted, all dwellings are built by the unpaid labor of those who come for the accompanying feast and "good time," and because their own dwellings were or will be built by such labor. A great deal of agricultural labor is now paid for in kind; practically all the available labor in an ato turns out to help a member when a piece of work is urgent. However, it is not customary for poor people to exchange their labor, since they constantly need food for those dependent on them. When the poor man desires a wage for his toil he needs only to tell some rich person that he wishes to work for him -- both understand that a wage will be paid.
Distribution
By the term "distribution" is here meant the ordinary division of the productions of Bontoc area among the several classes of Igorot in the area -- in other words, what is each person's share of that which the area produces?
It must be said that distribution is very equitable. Wages are uniform. No man or set of men habitually spoils another's accumulations by exacting from him a tax or "rake off." There is no form of gambling or winning another's earnings. There are no slaves or others who labor without wages; children do not retain their own wages until they marry, but they inherit all their parents' possessions. There is almost no usury. There is no indigent class, and the rich men toil as industriously in the fields as do the poor -- though I must say I never knew a rich man to go as cargador on the trail.
Theft
Higher forms of society, even such society as the Christianized Filipinos of the coastal cities, produce and possess a considerable number of people who live and often raise families on personal property stolen and carried away from the lawful owners. Almost no thief in the Bontoc area escapes detection -- the society is too simple for him to escape -- and when he is apprehended he restores more than he took away. There is no opportunity for a thief class to develop, consequently there is no chance for theft to distort the usual equitable division of products.
Conquest
Conquest, or the act of gaining control and acquisition of another's property by force of arms, is not operative in the Bontoc area. Moro and perhaps other southern Malayan people frequently capture people by conquest whom they enslave, and they also bring back much valuable loot in the shape of metals and the much-prized large earthen jars.
Certain Igorot, as those of Asin, make forcible conquests on their neighbors and carry away persons for slavery. Asin made a raid westward into Suyak of Lepanto Province in 1900, and some American miners joined the expedition of natives to try to recover the captives. But Bontoc has no such conquests, and, since the people have long ago ceased migration, there is no conquest of territory. In their interpueblo warfare loot is seldom carried away. There is practically nothing in the form of movable and easily controlled valuable possessions, such as domestic cattle, horses, or carabaos, so the usual equilibrium of Bontoc property distribution has little to disturb it.
The primitive agriculturist is thought of in history as the victim of warlike neighbors who make predatory forays against him, repeatedly robbing him of his hard-earned accumulations. In Igorot land this is not the case. There are no savage or barbaric people, except the Negritos who are not agriculturists. Sometimes, however, some of the Igorot groups descend to the settlements of the Christians in the lowlands and in the night bring back a few carabaos and hogs. The Igorot of Quiangan are noted for such robberies made on the pueblos of Bagabag and Ibung to the south in central Nueva Vizcaya. Sometimes, also, one Igorot group speaks of another as Busol, or enemy, and says the Busol come to rob them in the night. I believe, however, from inquiries made, that relatively very small amounts of property pass from one Igorot group to another by robbery or conquest.
The Bontoc Igorot appears to be in a transition stage, not usually emphasized, between the communism of the savage or barbarian in which each person is said to have a share as long as necessities last, and the more advanced forms of society in which many classes are able to divert to their own advantage much which otherwise would not come to them. The Igorot is not a communist, neither in any sense does he get the monopolist's share. He is living a life of such natural production that he enjoys the fruits of his labors in a fairer way than do many of the men beneath him or above him in culture.
Consumption
Under this title will be considered simply the foods and beverages of the people. No attempt will be made to treat of consumption in its breadth as it appears to the economist.
Foods
There are few forms of animal life about the Igorot that he will not and does not eat. The exceptions are mainly insectivora, and such larger animals as the mythology of the Igorot says were once men -- as the monkey, serpent-eagle, crow, snake, etc. However, he is not wholly lacking in taste and preference in his foods. Of his common vegetable foods he frequently said he prefers, first, beans; second, rice; third, maize; fourth, camotes; fifth, millet.
Rice is the staple food, and most families have sufficient for subsistence during the year. When rice is needed for food bunches of the palay, as tied up at the harvest, are brought and laid in the small pocket of the wooden mortar where they are threshed out of the fruit head. One or two mortarsful is thus threshed and put aside on a winnowing tray. When sufficient has been obtained the grain is put again in the mortar and pounded to remove the pellicle. Usually only sufficient rice is threshed and cleaned for the consumption of one or two days. When the pellicle has been pounded loose the grain is winnowed on a large round tray by a series of dexterous movements, removing all chaff and dirt with scarcely the loss of a kernel of good rice.
The work of threshing, hulling, and winnowing usually falls to the women and girls, but is sometimes performed by the men when their women are preoccupied. At one time when an American wished two or three bushels of palay threshed, as horse food for the trail, three Bontoc men performed the work in the classic treadmill manner. They spread a mat on the earth, covered it with palay, and then tread, or rather "rubbed," out the kernels with their bare feet. They often scraped up the mass with their feet, bunching it and rubbing it in a way that strongly suggested hands.
Rice is cooked in water without salt. An earthern pot is half filled with the grain and is then filled to the brim with cold water. In about twenty minutes the rice is cooked, filling the vessel, and the water is all absorbed or evaporated. If there is no great haste, the rice sets ten or fifteen minutes longer while the kernels dry out somewhat. As the Igorot cooks rice, or, for that matter, as the native anywhere in the Islands cooks it, the grains are not mashed and mussed together, but each kernel remains whole and separate from the others.
Cooked rice, ma-kan', is almost always eaten with the fingers, being crowded into the mouth with the back of the thumb. In Bontoc, Samoki, Titipan, Mayinit, and Ganang salt is either sprinkled on the rice after it is dished out or is tasted from the finger tips during the eating. In some pueblos, as at Tulubin, almost no salt is eaten at any time. When rice alone is eaten at a meal a family of five adults eats about ten Bontoc manojo of rice per day.
Beans are cooked in the form of a thick soup, but without salt. Beans and rice, each cooked separately, are frequently eaten together; such a dish is called "sib-fan'." Salt is eaten with sib-fan' by those pueblos which commonly consume salt.
Maize is husked, silked, and then cooked on the cob. It is eaten from the cob, and no salt is used either in the cooking or eating.
Camotes are eaten raw a great deal about the pueblo, the sementera, and the trail. Before they are cooked they are pared and generally cut in pieces about 2 inches long; they are boiled without salt. They are eaten alone at many meals, but are relished best when eaten with rice. They are always eaten from the fingers.
One dish, called "ke-le'-ke," consists of camotes, pared and sliced, and cooked and eaten with rice. This is a ceremonial dish, and is always prepared at the lis-lis ceremony and at a-su-fal'-i-wis or sugar-making time.
Camotes are always prepared immediately before being cooked, as they blacken very quickly after paring.
Millet is stored in the harvest bunches, and must be threshed before it is eaten. After being threshed in the wooden mortar the winnowed seeds are again returned to the mortar and crushed. This crushed grain is cooked as is rice and without salt. It is eaten also with the hands -- "fingers" is too delicate a term.
Some other vegetable foods are also cooked and eaten by the Igorot. Among them is taro which, however, is seldom grown in the Bontoc area. Outside the area, both north and south, there are large sementeras of it cultivated for food. Several wild plants are also gathered, and the leaves cooked and eaten as the American eats "greens."
The Bontoc Igorot also has preferences among his regular flesh foods. The chicken is prized most; next he favors pork; third, fish; fourth, carabao; and fifth, dog. Chicken, pork (except wild hog), and dog are never eaten except ceremonially. Fish and carabao are eaten on ceremonial occasions, but are also eaten at other times -- merely as food.
The interesting ceremonial killing, dressing, and eating of chickens is presented elsewhere, in the sections on "Death" and "Ceremonials." It is unnecessary to repeat the information here, as the processes are everywhere the same, excepting that generally no part of the fowl, except the feathers, is unconsumed -- head, feet, intestines, everything, is devoured.
The hog is ceremonially killed by cutting its throat, not by "sticking," as is the American custom, but the neck is cut, half severing the head. At Ambuklao, on the Agno River in Benguet Province, I saw a hog ceremonially killed by having a round-pointed stick an inch in diameter pushed and twisted into it from the right side behind the foreleg, through and between the ribs, and into the heart. The animal bled internally, and, while it was being cut up by four men with much ceremony and show, the blood was scooped from the rib basin where it had gathered, and was mixed with the animal's brains. The intestines were then emptied by drawing between thumb and fingers, and the blood and brain mixture poured into them from the stomach as a funnel. A string of blood-and-brain sausages resulted, when the intestines were cooked. The mouth of the Bontoc hog is held or tied shut until the animal is dead. The Benguet hog could be heard for fifteen minutes at least a quarter of a mile.
After the Bontoc hog is killed it is singed, cut up, and all put in the large shallow iron boiler. When cooked it is cut into smaller pieces, which are passed around to those assembled at the ceremonial.
Fish are eaten both ceremonially and privately whenever they may be obtained. The small fish, the kacho, are in no way cleaned or dressed. Two or three times I saw them cooked and eaten ceremonially, and was told they are prepared the same way for private consumption. The fish, scarcely any over 2 inches in length, were strung on twisted green-grass strings about 6 inches in length. Several of these strings were tied together and placed in an olla of water. When cooked they were lifted out, the strings broken apart, and the fish stripped off into a wooden bowl. Salt was then liberally strewn over them. A large green leaf was brought as a plate for each person present, and the fish were divided again and again until each had an equal share. However, the old men present received double share, and were served before the others. At one time a man was present with a nursing babe in his arms, and he was given two leaves, or two shares, though no one expected the babe could eat its share. After the fish food was passed to each, the broth was also liberally salted and then poured into several wooden bowls. At one fish feast platters of cooked rice and squash were also brought and set among the people. Handful after handful of solid food followed its predecessor rapidly to the always-crammed mouth. The fish was eaten as one might eat sparingly of a delicacy, and the broth was drunk now and then between mouthfuls.
Two other fish are also eaten by the Igorot of the area, the liling, about 4 to 6 inches in length -- also cooked and eaten without dressing -- and the chalit, a large fish said to acquire the length of 4 feet.
Several small animals, crustaceans and mollusks, gathered in the river and picked up in the sementeras by the women, are cooked and eaten. All these are considered similar to fish and are eaten similarly. Among these is a bright-red crab called "agkama."[30] This is boiled and all eaten except part of the back shell and the hard "pinchers." A shrimp-like crustacean obtained in the irrigated sementeras is also boiled and eaten entire. A few mollusks are eaten after being cooked. One, called kitan, I have seen eaten many times; it is a snail-like animal, and after being boiled it is sucked into the mouth after the apex of the shell has been bitten or broken off. Two other animals said to be somewhat similar are called finga and lischug.
The carabao is killed by spearing and, though also eaten simply as food, it is seldom killed except on ceremonial occasions, such as marriages, funerals, the building of a dwelling, and peace and war feasts whether actual events at the time or feasts in commemoration.
The chief occasion for eating carabao merely as a food is when an animal is injured or ill at a time when no ceremonial event is at hand. The animal is then killed and eaten. All is eaten that can be masticated. The animal is neither skinned, singed, nor scraped. All is cut up and cooked together -- hide, hair, hoofs, intestines, and head, excepting the horns. Carabao is generally not salted in cooking, and the use of salt in eating the flesh depends on the individual eater.
Sometimes large pieces of raw carabao meat are laid on high racks near the dwelling and "dried" in the sun. There are several such racks in Bontoc, and one can know a long distance from them whether they hold "dried" meat. If one pueblo, in the area exceeds another in the strength and unpleasantness of its "dried" meat it is Mayinit, where on the occasion of a visit there a very small piece of meat jammed on a stick-like a "taffy stick" -- and joyfully sucked by a 2-year-old babe successfully bombarded and depopulated our camp.
Various meats, called "it-tag'," as carabao and pork, are "preserved" by salting down in large bejuco-bound gourds, called "fa'-lay," or in tightly covered ollas, called "tu-u'-nan." All pueblos in the area (except Ambawan, which has an unexplained taboo against eating carabao) thus store away meats, but Bitwagan, Sadanga, and Tukukan habitually salt large quantities in the fa'-lay. Meats are kept thus two or three years, though of course the odor is vile.
The dog ranks last in the list of regular flesh foods of the Bontoc man. In the Benguet area it ranks second, pork receiving the first place. The Ibilao does not eat dog -- his dog is a hunter and guard, giving alarm of the approaching enemy.
In Bontoc the dog is eaten only on ceremonial occasions. Funerals and marriages are probably more often celebrated by a dog feast than are any other of their ceremonials. The animal's mouth is held closed and his legs secured while he is killed by cutting the throat. Then his tail is cut off close to the body -- why, I could not learn, but I once saw it, and am told it always is so. The animal is singed in the fire and the crisped hair rubbed off with sticks and hands, after which it is cut up and boiled, and then further cut up and eaten as is the carabao meat.
Young babies are sometimes fed hard-boiled fresh eggs, but the Igorot otherwise does not eat "fresh" eggs, though he does eat large numbers of stale ones. He prefers to wait, as one of them said, "until there is something in the egg to eat." He invariably brings stale or developing eggs to the American until he is told to bring fresh ones. It is not alone the Igorot who has this peculiar preference -- the same condition exists widespread in the Archipelago.
Locusts, or cho'-chon, are gathered, cooked, and eaten by the Igorot, as by all other natives in the Islands. They are greatly relished, but may be had in Bontoc only irregularly -- perhaps once or twice for a week or ten days each year, or once in two years. They are cooked in boiling water and later dried, whereupon they become crisp and sweet. By some Igorot they are stored away, but I can not say whether they are kept in Bontoc any considerable time after cooking.
The locusts come in storms, literally like a pelting, large-flaked snowstorm, driving across the country for hours and even days at a time. All Igorot have large scoop nets for catching them and immense bottle-like baskets in which to put them and transport them home. The locust catcher runs along in the storm, and, whirling around in it with his large net, scoops in the victims. Many families sometimes wander a week or more catching locusts when they come to their vicinity, and cease only when miles from home. The cry of "enemy" will scarcely set an Igorot community astir sooner than will the cry of "cho'-chon." The locust is looked upon by them as a very manna from heaven. Pi-na-lat' is a food of cooked locusts pounded and mixed with uncooked rice. All is salted down in an olla and tightly covered over with a vegetable leaf or a piece of cloth. When it is eaten the mixture is cooked, though this cooking does not kill the strong odor of decay.
Other insect foods are also eaten. I once saw a number of men industriously robbing the large white "eggs" from an ant nest in a tree. The nest was built of leaves attached by a web. Into the bottom of this closed pocket the men poked a hole with a long stick, letting a pint or more of the white pupae run out on a winnowing tray on the earth. From this tray the furious ants were at length driven, and the eggs taken home for cooking.
Beverages
The Igorot drinks water much more than any other beverage. On the trail, though carrying loads while the American may walk empty handed, he drinks less than the American. He seldom drinks while eating, though he makes a beverage said to be drunk only at mealtime. After meals he usually drinks water copiously.
Ba-si is the Igorot name of the fermented beverage prepared from sugar cane. "Ba-si," under various names, is found widespread throughout the Islands. The Bontoc man makes his ba-si in December. He boils the expressed juice of the sugar cane about six hours, at which time he puts into it a handful of vegetable ferment obtained from a tree called "tub-fig'." This vegetable ferment is gathered from the tree as a flower or young fruit; it is dried and stored in the dwelling for future use. The brewed liquid is poured into a large olla, the flat-bottom variety called "fu-o-foy'" manufactured expressly for ba-si, and then is tightly covered over and set away in the granary. In five days the ferment has worked sufficiently, and the beverage may be drunk. It remains good about four months, for during the fifth or sixth month it turns very acid.
Ba-si is manufactured by the men alone. Tukukan and Titipan manufacture it to sell to other pueblos; it is sold for about half a peso per gallon. It is drunk quite a good deal during the year, though mostly on ceremonial occasions. Men frequently carry a small amount of it with them to the sementeras when they guard them against the wild hogs during the long nights. They say it helps to keep them warm. One glass of ba-si will intoxicate a person not accustomed to drink it, though the Igorot who uses it habitually may drink two or three glasses before intoxication. Usually a man drinks only a few swallows of it at a time, and I never saw an Igorot intoxicated except during some ceremony and then not more than a dozen in several months. Women never drink ba-si.
Ta-pu-i is a fermented drink made from rice, the cha-yet'-it variety, they say, grown in Bontoc pueblo. It is a very sweet and sticky rice when cooked. This beverage also is found practically everywhere in the Archipelago. Only a small amount of the cha-yet'-it is grown by Bontoc pueblo. To manufacture ta-pu-i the rice is cooked and then spread on a winnowing tray until it is cold. When cold a few ounces of a ferment called "fu-fud" are sprinkled over it and thoroughly stirred in; all is then put in an olla, which is tied over and set away. The ferment consists of cane sugar and dry raw rice pounded and pulverized together to a fine powder. This is then spread in the sun to dry and is later squeezed into small balls some 2 inches in diameter. This ferment will keep a year. When needed a ball is pulverized and sprinkled fine over the cooked rice. An olla of rice prepared for ta-pu-i will be found in one day half filled with the beverage.
Ta-pu-i will keep only about two months. It is never drunk by the women, though they do eat the sweet rice kernels from the jar, and they, as well as the men, manufacture it. It is claimed never to be manufactured in the Bontoc area for sale. A half glass of the beverage will intoxicate. At the end of a month the beverage is very intoxicating, and is then commonly weakened with water. Ta-pu-i is much preferred to ba-si.
The Bontoc man prepares another drink which is filthy, and, even they themselves say, vile smelling. It is called "sa-fu-eng'," is drunk at meals, and is prepared as follows: Cold water is first put in a jar, and into it are thrown cooked rice, cooked camotes, cooked locusts, and all sorts of cooked flesh and bones. The resulting liquid is drunk at the end of ten days, and is sour and vinegar-like. The preparation is perpetuated by adding more water and solid ingredients -- it does not matter much what they are.
The odor of sa-fu-eng' is the worst stench in Bontoc. I never closely investigated the beverage personally -- but I have no reason to doubt what the Igorot says of it; but if all is true, why is it not fatal?
Salt
Throughout the year the pueblo of Mayinit produces salt from a number of brackish hot springs occupying about an acre of ground at the north end of the pueblo.
Mayinit has a population of about 1,000 souls, probably half of whom are directly interested in salt production. It is probable that the pueblo owes its location to the salt springs, although adjoining it to the south is an arable valley now filled with rice sementeras, which may first have drawn the people.
The hot springs slowly raise their water to the surface, where it flows along in shallow streams. Over these streams, or rather sheets of sluggish water, the Igorot have built 152 salt houses, usually about 12 feet wide and from 12 to 25 feet long. The houses, well shown in Pl. CXV, are simply grass-covered roofs extending to the earth.
There is no ownership in the springs to-day -- just as there is no ownership in springs which furnish irrigating water -- one owns the water that passes into his salt house, but has no claim on that which passes through it and flows out below. So each person has ownership of all and only all the water he can use within his plant, and the people claim there are no disputes between owners of houses -- as they look at it, each owner of a salt house has an equal chance to gather salt.
The ground space of the salt house is closely paved with cobblestones from 4 to 6 inches in diameter. The water passes among the bases of these stones, and the salt is deposited in a thin crust over their surface. (See Pl. CXVI.)
These houses are inherited, and, as a consequence, several persons may ultimately have proprietary interest in one house. In such a case the ground space is divided, often resulting in many twig-separated patches, as is shown in fig. 7.
About once each month the salt is gathered. The women of the family work naked in the stream-filled house, washing the crust of salt from the stones into a large wooden trough, called "ko-long'-ko." Each stone is thoroughly washed and then replaced in the pavement. The saturated brine is preserved in a gourd until sufficient is gathered for evaporation.
FIGURE 7
Ground plan of Mayinit salt house.
Two or more families frequently join in evaporating their salt. The brine is boiled in the large, shallow iron boilers, and from half a day to a day is necessary to effect the evaporation. Evaporation is discontinued when the salt is reduced to a thick paste.
The evaporated salt is spread in a half-inch layer on a piece of banana leaf cut about 5 inches square. The leaf of paste is supported by two sticks on, but free from, a piece of curved broken pottery which is the baking pan. The salt thus prepared for baking is set near a fire in the dwelling where it is baked thirty or forty minutes. It is then ready for use at home or for commerce, and is preserved in the square, flat cakes called "luk'-sa."
Analyses have been made of Mayinit salt as prepared by the crude method of the Igorot. The showing is excellent when the processes are considered, the finished salt having 86.02 per cent of sodium chloride as against 90.68 per cent for Michigan common salt and 95.35 for Onondaga common salt.
Table of salt composition
Constituent elements Mayinit salt[31] Common fine --
Saturated brine Evaporated salt Baked salt Michigan salt[32] Onondaga salt.
PER CENT PER CENT PER CENT PER CENT PER CENT
Calcium sulphate 0.73 1.50 0.46 0.805 1.355
Sodium sulphate .92 6.28 10.03 -- --
Sodium chloride 7.95 72.19 86.02 90.682 95.353
Insoluble matter 2.14 .16 .45 -- --
Water 88.03 19.19 1.78 6.752 3.000
Undetermined .23 .68 .1.26 -- --
Calcium chloride -- -- -- .974 .155
Magnesium chloride -- -- -- .781 .136
Total 100 100 100 99.994 99.999
One house produces from six to thirty cakes of salt at each baking. A cake is valued at an equivalent of 5 cents, thus making an average salt house, producing, say, fifteen cakes per month, worth 9 pesos per year. Salt houses are seldom sold, but when they are they claim they sell for only 3 or 4 pesos.
Sugar
In October and November the Bontoc Igorot make sugar from cane. The stalks are gathered, cut in lengths of about 20 inches, tied in bundles a foot in diameter, and stored away until the time for expressing the juice.
The sugar-cane crusher, shown in Pl. CXVIII, consists of two sometimes of three, vertical, solid, hard-wood cylinders set securely to revolve in two horizontal timbers, which, in turn, are held in place by two uprights. One of the cylinders projects above the upper horizontal timber and has fitted over it, as a key, a long double-end sweep. This main cylinder conveys its power to the others by means of wooden cogs which are set firmly in the wood and play into sockets dug from the other cylinder. Boys commonly furnish the power used to crush the cane, and there is much song and sport during the hours of labor.
Two people, usually boys, sitting on both sides of the crusher, feed the cane back and forth. Three or four stalks are put through at a time, and they are run through thirty or forty times, or until they break into pieces of pulp not over three or four inches in length.
The juice runs down a slide into a jar set in the ground beneath the crusher.
The boiling is done in large shallow iron boilers over an open fire under a roof. I have known the Igorot to operate the crusher until midnight, and to boil down the juice throughout the night. Sugar-boiling time is known as a-su-fal'-i-wis.
A delicious brown cake sugar is made, which, in some parts of the area, is poured to cool and is preserved in bamboo tubes, in other parts it is cooked and preserved in flat cakes an inch in thickness.
There is not much sugar made in the area, and a large part of the product is purchased by the Ilokano. The Igorot cares very little for sweets; even the children frequently throw away candy after tasting it.
Meals and mealtime
The man of the family arises about 3.30 or 4 o'clock in the morning. He builds the fires and prepares to cook the family breakfast and the food for the pigs. A labor generally performed each morning is the paring of camotes. In about half an hour after the man arises the camotes and rice are put over to cook. The daughters come home from the olag, and the boys from their sleeping quarters shortly before breakfast. Breakfast, called "mang-an'," meaning simply "to eat," is taken by all members of the family together, usually between 5 and 6 o'clock. For this meal all the family, sitting on their haunches, gather around three or four wooden dishes filled with steaming hot food setting on the earth. They eat almost exclusively from their hands, and seldom drink anything at breakfast, but they usually drink water after the meal.
The members of the family who are to work away from the dwelling leave about 7 or 7.30 o'clock -- but earlier, if there is a rush of work. If the times are busy in the fields, the laborers carry their dinner with them; if not, all members assemble at the dwelling and eat their dinner together about 1 o'clock. This midday meal is often a cold meal, even when partaken in the house.
Field laborers return home about 6.30, at which time it is too dark to work longer, but during the rush seasons of transplanting and harvesting palay the Igorot generally works until 7 or 7.30 during moonlight nights. All members of the family assemble for supper, and this meal is always a warm one. It is generally cooked by the man, unless there is a boy or girl in the family large enough to do it, and who is not at work in the fields. It is usually eaten about 7 or 7.30 o'clock, on the earth floor, as is the breakfast. A light is used, a bright, smoking blaze of the pitch pine. It burns on a flat stone kept ready in every house -- it is certainly the first and crudest house lamp, being removed in development only one infinitesimal step from the Stationary fire. This light is also sometimes employed at breakfast time, if the morning meal is earlier than the sun.
Usually by 8 o'clock the husband and wife retire for the night, and the children leave home immediately after supper.
Transportation
The human is the only beast of burden in the Bontoc area. Elsewhere in northern Luzon the Christianized people employ horses, cattle, and carabaos as pack animals. Along the coastwise roads cattle and carabaos haul two-wheel carts, and in the unirrigated lowland rice tracts these same animals drag sleds surmounted by large basket-work receptacles for the palay. The Igorot has doubtless seen all of these methods of animal transportation, but the conditions of his home are such that he can not employ them.
He has no roads for wheels; neither carabaos, cattle, nor horses could go among his irrigated sementeras; and he has relatively few loads of produce coming in and going out of his pueblo. Such loads as he has can be transported by himself with greater safety and speed than by quadrupeds; and so, since he almost never moves his place of abode, he has little need of animal transportation.
To an extent the river is employed to transport boards, timbers, and firewood to both Bontoc and Samoki during the high water of the rainy season. Probably one-fourth of the firewood is borne by the river a part of its journey to the pueblos. But there is no effort at comprehensive water transportation; there are no boats or rafts, and the wood which does float down the river journeys in single pieces.
The characteristic of Bontoc transportation is that the men invariably carry all their heavy loads on their shoulders, and the women as uniformly transport theirs on their heads.
In Benguet all people carry on their backs, as also do the women of the Quiangan area.
In all heavy transportation the Bontoc men carry the spear, using the handle as a staff, or now and then as a support for the load; the women frequently carry a stick for a staff. Man's common transportation vehicle is the ki-ma'-ta, and in it he carries palay, camotes, and manure. He swings along at a pace faster than the walk, carrying from 75 to 100 pounds. He carries all firewood from the mountains, directly on his bare shoulders. Large timbers for dwellings are borne by two or more men directly on the shoulders; and timbers are now, season of 1903, coming in for a schoolhouse carried by as many as twenty-four men. Crosspieces, as yokes, are bound to the timbers with bark lashings, and two or four men shoulder each yoke.
Rocks built into dams and dikes are carried directly on the bare shoulders. Earth, carried to or from the building sementeras, in the trails, or about the dwellings, is put first in the tak-o-chug', the basket-work scoop, holding about 30 or 40 pounds of earth, and this is carried by wooden handles lashed to both sides and is dumped into a transportation basket, called "ko-chuk-kod'." This is invariably hoisted to the shoulder when ready for transportation. When men carry water the fang'-a or olla is placed directly on the shoulder as are the rocks.
When the man is to be away from home over night he usually carries his food and blanket, if he has one, in the waterproof fang'-ao slung on his back and supported by a bejuco strap passing over each shoulder and under the arm. This is the so-called "head basket," and, as a matter of fact, is carried on war expeditions by those pueblos that use it, though it is also employed in more peaceful occupations. As a cargador the man carries his burdens on the shoulder in three ways -- either double, the cargo on a pole between two men; or singly, with the cargo divided and tied to both ends of the pole; or singly, with the cargo laid directly on the shoulder.
Women carry as large burdens as do the men. They have two commonly employed transportation baskets, neither of which have I seen a man even so much as pick up. These are the shallow, pan-shaped lu'-wa and the deeper, larger tay-ya-an'. In these two baskets, and also at times in the man's ki-ma'-ta, the women carry the same things as are borne by the men. Not infrequently the woman uses her two baskets together at the same time -- the tay-ya-an' setting in the lu'-wa, as is shown in Pls. CXIX and CXXI. When she carries the ki-ma'-ta she places the middle of the connecting pole, the pal-tang on her head, with one basket before her and the other behind. At all times the woman wears on her head beneath her burden a small grass ring 5 or 6 inches in diameter, called a "ki'-kan." Its chief function is that of a cushion, though when her burden is a fang'-a of water the ki'-kan becomes also a base -- without which the round-bottomed olla could not be balanced on her head without the support of her hands.
The woman's rain protector is often brought home from the camote gardens bottom up on the woman's head full of camote vines as food for the pigs, or with long, dry grass for their bedding. And, as has been noted, all day long during April and May, when there were no camote vines, women and little girls were going about bearing their small scoop-shaped sug-fi' gathering wild vegetation for the hogs.
Almost all of the water used in Bontoc is carried from the river to the pueblo, a distance ranging from a quarter to half a mile. The women and girls of a dozen years or more probably transport three-fourths of the water used about the house. It is carried in 4 to 6 gallon ollas borne on the head of the woman or shoulder of the man. Women totally blind, and many others nearly blind, are seen alone at the river getting water.
About half the women and many of the men who go to the river daily for water carry babes. Children from 1 to 4 years old are frequently carried to and from the sementeras by their parents, and at all times of the day men, women, and children carry babes about the pueblo. They are commonly carried on the back, sitting in a blanket which is slung over one shoulder, passing under the other, and tied across the breast. Frequently the babe is shifted forward, sitting astride the hip. At times, though rarely, it is carried in front of the person. A frequent sight is that of a woman with a babe in the blanket on her back and an older child astride her hip supported by her encircling arm.
When one sees a woman returning from the river to the pueblo at sundown a child on her back and a 6-gallon jar of water on her head, and knows that she toiled ten or twelve hours that day in the field with her back bent and her eyes on the earth like a quadruped, and yet finds her strong and joyful, he believes in the future of the mountain people of Luzon if they are guided wisely -- they have the strength and courage to toil and the elasticity of mind and spirit necessary for development.
Commerce
The Bontoc Igorot has a keen instinct for a bargain, but his importance as a comerciante has been small, since his wants are few and the state of feud is such that he can not go far from home.
His bargain instinct is shown constantly. The American stranger is charged from two to ten times the regular price for things he wishes to buy. Early in April of the last two years the price of palay for the American has, on a plea of scarcity, advanced 20 per cent, although it has been proved that there is at all times enough palay in the pueblo for three years' consumption.
Rather than spoil a possible high price of a product, outside pueblos have left articles overnight with Bontoc friends to be sold to the American next day at his own price, and when those pueblos came again to vend similar wares the high prices were maintained.
Barter
Most commerce is carried on by barter. Within a pueblo naturally having neither stores nor a legalized currency people trade among themselves, but the word "barter" as here used means the systematic exchange of the products of one community for those of another.
To note the articles produced for commerce by two or three pueblos will give a fair illustration of the importance which interpueblo commerce carried on entirely by barter has assumed among the Igorot. of the Bontoc culture group, though the comerciante rarely remains from home more than one night at a time.
The luwa, the woman's shallow transportation basket, is made by the pueblo of Samoki only, and it is employed by fifteen or eighteen other pueblos. Samoki also makes the akaug, or rice sieve, which is used commonly in the vicinity. Bontoc and Samoki alone make the woman's deeper transportation basket, the tayyaan, and it is used quite as extensively as is the luwa.
The sleeping hat is made only by Bontoc and Samoki; it goes extensively in commerce. The large winnowing tray employed universally by the Igorot is said to be made nowhere in the vicinity except in Samoki and Kamyu. Bontoc and Samoki alone make the man's dirt scoop, the takochug, and it is invariably employed by all men laboring in the sementeras.
Neither Bontoc nor Samoki is within the zone of bejuco, from which a considerable part of their basket work is made, and, as a consequence, the raw material is bartered for from pueblos one or two days distant. Barlig furnishes most of the bejuco. Every manojo of Bontoc and Samoki palay is tied up at harvest time with a strip of one variety of bamboo called "fika" made by the pueblos from sections of bamboo brought in bundles from a day's journey westward to barter during April and May. The rain hat of the Bontoc man is coated with beeswax coming in trade from Barlig, as does also the clear and pure resin used by the women of Samoki in glazing their pots.
Towns to the east of Bontoc, such as Tukukan, Sakasakan, and Tinglayan, grow tobacco which passes westward in trade from town to town nearly, if not quite, through the Province of Lepanto. It doubles its value for about every day of its journey, or at each trading.
Samoki pottery and the salt of Mayinit offer as good illustrations as there are of the Igorot barter. A dozen loads of earthenware, from sixty to seventy-five pots, leave Samoki at one time destined for a single pueblo (see Pl. CXXIII). The Samoki pot is made for a definite trade. Titipan uses many of a certain kind for her commercial basi and the potters say that they make pots somewhat different for about all the two dozen pueblos supplied by them. The potter has learned the art of catering to the trade. There is not only a variety of forms made but the capacity of the fangas ranges from about one quart to ten and twelve gallons, and each variety is made to satisfy a particular and known demand. Samoki ware seldom passes as far east as Sakasakan, only four or five hours distant, because similar ware is made in Bituagan, which supplies not only Sakasakan but the pueblos farther up the river.
There are supposed to be between 280 and 290 families dwelling in Bontoc, and, at a conservative estimate, each family has eight fangas. Each dwelling of a widow has several, so it is a fair estimate to say there are 300 dwellings in the pueblo, having a total of 2,400 fangas. Samoki has about 1,200 fangas in daily use. The estimated population of the several towns that use Samoki pots is 24,000.
There is about one pot per individual in daily use in Bontoc and Samoki, and this estimate is probably fair for the other pueblos. So about 24,000 Samoki pots are daily in use, and this number is maintained by the potters. Igorot claim the average life of a fanga of Samoki is one year or less, so the pueblo must sell at least 24,000 pots per annum. At the average price of 5 centavos about the equivalent of 1,200 pesos come to the pueblo annually from this art, or about 40 pesos for each of the thirty potters, whether or not she works at her art. A few years ago, during a severe state of feud, Samoki pots increased in value about thirty-fold; it is said that the potters purchased carabao for ten large ollas each. To-day the large ollas are worth about 2 pesos, and carabaos are valued at from 40 to 70 pesos.
Mayinit salt passes in barter to about as many pueblos as do the Samoki pots, but while the pots go westward to the border of the Bontoc culture area the salt passes far beyond the eastern border, being bartered from pueblo to pueblo. It does not go far north of Mayinit, or go at all regularly far west, because those pueblos within access of the China Sea coast buy salt evaporated from sea water by the Ilokano of Candon. In April at two different times twelve loads of Candon salt passed eastward through Bontoc on the shoulders of Tukukan men, but during the rainy season and the busy planting and harvesting months Mayinit salt supplies a large demand.
In Bontoc and Samoki there are about one hundred and fifty gold earrings which came from the gold-producing country about Suyak, Lepanto Province. Carabaos are almost invariably traded for these. Sometimes one carabao, sometimes two, and again three are bartered for one gold earring. During the months of March and April the pueblo of Balili traded three of these earrings to Bontoc men for carabaos, and this particular form of barter has been carried on for generations.
Balili, Alap, Sadanga, Takong, Sagada, Titipan and other pueblos between Bontoc pueblo and Lepanto Province to the west weave breechcloths and skirts which are brought by their makers and disposed of to Bontoc and adjacent pueblos. Agawa, Genugan, and Takong bring in clay and metal pipes of their manufacture. Much of these productions is bartered directly for palay. If money is paid for the articles it is invariably turned into palay, because this is the greatest constant need of manufacturing Igorot pueblos.
Sale
The Spaniard left his impress on the Igorot of Bontoc pueblo in no realm probably more surely than in that of the appreciation of the value of money.
The sale instinct, and not the barter instinct, is foremost now in Bontoc and Samoki when an American is a party to a bargain, and this is true in all pueblos on the main trail to Lepanto and the west coast. But one has little difficulty in bartering for Igorot productions if he has things the people want -- such as brass wire, cloth for the woman's skirt, the man's breechcloth, a shirt, or coat. In many pueblos the people try to buy for money the articles the American brings in for barter, although it is true that barter will often get from them many things which money can not buy. To the northeast and south of Bontoc barter will purchase practically anything.
The conditions of peace among the pueblos since the arrival of the Americans and the money which is now everywhere within the area have been the important factors in helping to develop interpueblo commerce from barter to sale.
Most of the clothing worn in the pueblos of Lepanto Province is made from cotton purchased for money at the coast. With few exceptions the breechcloths and blankets worn by Bontoc and Samoki are purchased for money, though it is not very many years since the bark breechcloth made in Titipan and Barlig was worn, and in Tulubin, only two hours distant, Barlig blankets and breechcloths of whole bark are worn to-day.
One week in April a Bontoc Igorot traded a carabao to an Ilokano of Lepanto Province for a copper ganza, the customary way of purchasing ganzas, and the following week another Bontoc man sold a carabao for money to another Lepanto Ilokano.
The Baliwang battle-ax and spear are now more generally sold for money than is any other production made or disposed of within the Bontoc area. They are said to-day to be seldom bartered for.
Medium of exchange
That a people with such incipient social and political institutions as has the Bontoc Igorot should have developed a "money" is remarkable. The North American Indian with his strong tendency and adaptability to political organization had no such money. Nothing of the kind has been presented as belonging to the Australian of ultrasocial development, and I am not aware that anything equal has been produced by other similar primitive peoples. However, it seems not improbable that allied tribes (say, of Malayan stock) which have solved the problem of subsistence in a like way have a similar currency, although I find no mention of it among four score of writers whose observations on similar tribes of Borneo have come to hand, and nothing similar has yet been found in the Philippines.
The Bontoc Igorot has a "medium of exchange" which gives a "measure of exchange value" for articles bought and sold, and which has a "standard of value." In other words he has "good money" probably the best money that could have been devised by him for his society. It is his staple product -- palay, the unthreshed rice.
Palay is at all times good money, and it is the thing commonly employed in exchange. It answers every purpose of a suitable medium of exchange. It is always in demand, since it is the staple food. It is kept eight or ten years without deterioration. Except when used to purchase clothing, it is seldom heavier or more difficult to transport than is the object for which it is exchanged. It is of very stable value, so much so that as a purchaser of Igorot labor and products its value is constant; and it can not be counterfeited.
Aside from this universal medium of exchange the characteristic production of each community, in a minor way, answers for the community the needs of a medium of exchange.
Samoki buys many things with her pots, such as tobacco and salt from Mayinit; cloth from Igorot comerciantes, breechcloth and basi from the Igorot producers; chickens, pigs, palay, and camotes from neighboring pueblos. Mayinit uses her salt in much the same way, only probably to a less extent. Salt is not consumed by all the people.
To-day, as formerly, the live pig and hog and pieces of pork and carabao meat are used a great deal in barter. As far back as the pueblo memory extends pigs have been used to purchase a particularly good breechcloth called "balakes," made in Balangao, three days east of Bontoc.
In all sales the medium of exchange is entirely in coin. Paper will not be received by the Igorot. The peso (the Spanish and Mexican silver dollar) passes in the area at the rate of two to one with American money. There is also the silver half peso, the peseta or one-fifth peso, and the half peseta. The latter two are not plentiful. The only other coin is the copper "sipen."
No centavos (cents) reach the districts of Lepanto and Bontoc from Manila, and for years the Igorot of the copper region of Suyak and Mankayan, Lepanto, have manufactured a counterfeit copper coin called "sipen." All the half-dozen copper coins current in the active commercial districts of the Islands are here counterfeited, and the "sipen" passes at the high rate of 80 per peso; it is common and indispensable. A crude die is made in clay, and has to be made anew for each "sipen" coined. The counterfeit passes throughout the area, but in Tinglayan, just beyond its eastern border, it is not known. Within two days farther east small coins are unknown, the peso being the only money value in common knowledge.
Measure of exchange value
The Igorot has as clear a conception of the relative value of two things bartered as has the civilized man when he buys or sells for money. The value of all things, from a 5-cent block of Mayinit salt to a P70 carabao, is measured in palay. To-day, as formerly, every bargain between two Igorot is made on the basis of the palay value of the articles bought or sold. This is so even though the payment is in money.
Standard of value
The standard of value of the palay currency is the sin fing-e' -- the Spanish "manojo," or handful -- a small bunch of palay tied up immediately below the fruit heads. It is about one foot long, half head and half straw. The value of such a standard is not entirely uniform, and yet there is a great uniformity in the size of the sin fing-e', and all values are satisfactorily taken from it.
Palay currency
An elaborate palay currency has been evolved from the standard, of which the following are the denominations:
Denomination Number of handfuls
Sin fing-e' 1
Sin i'-ting 5
Chu'-wa i'-ting 10
To-lo' i'-ting 15
I'-pat i'-ting 20
Pu'-ak or gu'-tad 25
Sin fu tek' 50
Sin fu-tek' pu'-ak 75
Chu'-wa fu-tek' 100
To-lo' fu-tek' 150
I'-pat fu-tek' 200
Li-ma' fu-tek' 250
I-nim' fu-tek' 300
Pi-to' fu-tek' 350
Wa-lo' fu-tek' 400
Si-am' fu-tek' 450
Sim-po'-o fu-tek' 500
Sin-o'-po 1,000
Trade routes
Commerce passes quite commonly within the Bontoc culture area from one pueblo to the next, and even to the second and third pueblos if they are friends; but the general direction is along the main river (the Chico), southwest and northeast, since here the people cling. This being the case, those living to the south and north of this line have much less commerce than those along the river route. For instance, practically no people now pass through Ambawan, southeast of Bontoc. It is the last pueblo in the area along the old Spanish calzada between the culture areas of Bontoc and Quiangan to the south. No people live farther southward along the route for nearly a day, and the first pueblos met are enemies of Ambawan, fearful and feared. The only commerce between the two culture areas over this route passes when a detachment of native Constabulary soldiers makes the journey. Naturally the area traversed by a comerciante is limited by the existing feuds. The trader will not go among enemies without escort.
Besides the general trade route up and down the river, there is one between Bontoc and Barlig to the east via Kanyu and Tulubin. At Barlig the trail splits, one branch running farther eastward through Lias and Balangao and the other going southward through the Cambulo area -- a large valley of people said to be similar in culture to those of Quiangan.
Another route from Bontoc leaves the main trail at Titipan and joins the pueblos of Tunnolang, Fidelisan, and Agawa in a general southwest direction. From Agawa the trail crosses the mountains, keeping its general southwest course. It turns westward at the Rio Balasian, which it follows to Ankiling on the Rio del Abra. The route is then along the main road to Candon on the coast via Salcedo.
Mayinit, the salt-producing pueblo, has her outlet on the main trail via Bontoc, but she also passes eastward to the main trail at Sakasakan, going through Baliwang, the battle-ax pueblo. She has no outlet to the north.
Trade languages and traders
Since the commerce is to-day nearly all interpueblo, the common language of the Igorot is used almost exclusively in trade. While the Spaniards were occupying the country, Chinamen -- the "Chino" of the Islands -- passed up from the coast as far as Bontoc, and even farther; the Ilokano also came. They brought much of the iron now in the country, and also came with brass wire, cloth, cotton, gangsas, and salt. These two classes of traders took out, in the main, the money and carabaos of the Igorot, and the Spaniard's coffee, cocoa, and money. To-day no comerciante from the coast dares venture farther inland than Sagada. Of the tradesmen the Chinese did not apparently affect the trade language at all, since the Chino commonly employs the Ilokano language. The Spanish gave the words of salutation, as "Buenos dias" (good day) and "a Dios" (adieu); he also gave some of the names of coins. The peso, the silver dollar, is commonly called "peho." However, the medio peso is known as "thalepi," from the Ilokano "salepi." The peseta is called "peseta;" and the media peseta is known as "dies ay seis" (ten and six), or, simply, "seis" -- it is from the Spanish, meaning sixteen quartos.
The Ilokano language was the more readily adopted, since it is of Malayan origin, and is heard west of the Igorot with increasing frequency until its home is reached on the coast. Among the Ilokano words common in the language of commerce are the following:
Ma'-no, how much; a-sin', salt; ba'-ag, breechcloth; bu-ya'-ang, black; con-di'-man, red; fan-cha'-la, blanket, white, with end stripes; pas-li-o', Chinese bar iron from which axes, spears, and bolos are made; ba-rot', brass wire; pi-nag-pa'-gan, a woman's blanket of distinctive design.
An Americanism used commonly in commercial transactions in the area, and also widely in northern Luzon, is "no got." It is an expression here to stay, and its simplicity as a vocalization has had much to do with its adoption.
Stages of commerce
The commerce of the Igorot illustrates what seems to be the first distinctively commercial activity. Preceding it is the stage of barter between people who casually meet and who trade carried possessions on the whim of the moment. If we wish to dignify this kind of barter, it may properly be called "Fortuitous Commerce."
The next stage, one of the two illustrated by the Igorot of the Bontoc culture area, is that in which commodities are produced before a widespread or urgent demand exists for them in the minds of those who eventually become consumers through commerce. Such commodities result largely from a local demand and a local supply of raw materials. Gradually they spread over a widening area, carried by their producers whose home demand is, for the time, supplied, and who desire some commodity to be obtained among another people. Such venders never or rarely go alone to exchange their goods, which, also, are seldom produced by simply one person, but by a number of individuals or a considerable group. The motive prompting this commerce is the desire on the part of the trader to obtain the commodity for which he goes. In order to obtain it in honor, he attempts to thrust his own productions on the others by carrying his commodities among them. Commerce in this stage may be called "Irregular Intrusive Commerce." It also has its birth and development in barter.
A higher stage of commerce, an immediate outgrowth of the preceding, is that in which the producer anticipates a known demand for his commodity, and at irregular times carries his stock to the consumers. This commerce may be called "Irregular Invited Commerce." It is in this stage that a medium of exchange is likely to develop. This class of commerce is also in full operation in Bontoc to-day.
A higher form is that in which the producer keeps a supply of his commodity on hand. and periodically displays it repeatedly in a known place -- a "market." This stage also may be developed simply through barter, as is seen among certain pueblo Indians of southwestern United States, but the Bontoc man has not begun to dream of a "market" for satisfying his material wants. Such commerce may be called "Periodic Free Commerce." It is widespread in the Philippines, displaying both barter and sale. In many places in the Archipelago to-day, especially in Mindanao, periodic commerce is carried on regularly on neutral territory. Market places are selected where products are put down by one party which then retires temporarily, and are taken up by the other party which comes and leaves its own productions in exchange.
Growing out of these monthly, semimonthly, weekly, biweekly, and triweekly markets, as one sees them in the Philippines, is a still higher form of commerce carried on very largely by sale, but not entirely so. It may be called "Continual Free Commerce."
Property right
The idea of property right among the Igorot is clear. The recognition of property right is universal, and is seldom disputed, notwithstanding the fact that the right of ownership rests simply in the memory of the people -- the only property mark being the ear slit of the half-wild carabao.
The majority of property disputes which have come to light since the Americans have been in Bontoc probably would not have occurred nor would the occasion for them have existed in a society of Igorot control. It is claimed in Bontoc that the Spaniard there settled most disputes which came to him in favor of the party who would pay the most money. In this way, it is said, the rich became the richer at the expense of the poor. This condition is suggested by recent RECLAMOS made by poor people. Again, since the American heard the RECLAMOS of all classes of people, the poor who, according to Igorot custom, forfeited sementeras to those richer as a penalty for stealing palay, have come to dispute the ownership of certain real property.
Personal property of individual
Most articles of personal property are individual. Such property consists of clothing, ornaments, implements, and utensils of out-of-door labor, the weapons of warfare, and such chickens, dogs, hogs, carabaos, food stuffs, and money as the person may have at the time of marriage or may inherit later.
Four of the richest men of Bontoc own fifty carabaos each, and one of them owns thirty hogs. Two other men and a woman, all called equally rich, own ten head of carabaos each. Others have fewer, while two of the ten richest men in the pueblo, have no carabaos. Some of these men have eight granaries, holding from two to three hundred cargoes each, now full of palay. Carabaos are at present valued in Bontoc at about 50 pesos, and hogs average about 8 pesos. All rich people own one or more gold earrings valued at from one to two carabaos each.
The so-called richest man in Bontoc, Lak-ay'-eng, has the following visible personal property:
Articles Value in peso
Fifty carabaos, at 50 pesos each 2,500
Thirty hogs, at 8 pesos each 240
Eight full granaries, with 250 1-peso cargoes 2,000
Eight earrings, at 75 pesos each 600
Coin from sale of palay, hogs, etc. 1,000
Total 6,340
The above figures are estimates; it is impossible to make them exact, but they were obtained with much care and are believed to be sufficiently accurate to be of value.
Personal property of group
All household implements and utensils and all money, food stuffs, chickens, dogs, hogs, and carabaos accumulated by a married couple are the joint property of the two.
Such personal property as hogs and carabaos are frequently owned by individuals of different families. It is common for three or four persons to buy a carabao, and even ten have become joint owners of one animal through purchase. Through inheritance two or more people become joint owners of single carabao, and of small herds which they prefer to own in common, pending such an increase that the herd may be divided equally without slaughtering an animal. Until recent years two, three, and even four or five men jointly owned one battle-ax.
As the Igorot acquires more money, or, as the articles desired become relatively cheaper, personal property of the group (outside the family group) is giving way to personal property of the individual. The extinction of this kind of property is logical and is approaching.
Real property of individual
The individual owns dwelling houses, granaries, camote lands about the dwellings and in the mountains, millet and maize lands. in the mountains, irrigated rice lands, and mountain lands with forests. In fact, the individual may own all forms of real property known to the people.
It is largely by the possession or nonpossession of real property that a man is considered rich or poor. This fact is due to the more apparent and tangible form of real than personal property. The ten richest people in Bontoc, nine men and a woman, own, it is said, in round numbers one hundred sementeras each. The average value of a sementera is 10 pesos for every cargo of palay it produces annually. A sementera producing 10 cargoes is rated a very good one, and yet there are those yielding 20, 25, 30, and even 40 cargoes.
It is practically impossible to get the truth concerning the value of the personal or real property of the Igorot in Bontoc, because they are not yet sure the American will not presently tax them unjustly, as they say the Spaniard did. But the following figures are believed to be true in every particular. Mang-i-lot', an old man whose ten children are all dead, and who says his property is no longer of value because he has no children with whom to leave it, is believed to have spoken truthfully when he said he has the following sementeras in the five following geographic areas surrounding the pueblo:
Geographic area Number of sementeras Number of cargoes produced
Magkang 6 15
Kogchog 3 5
Felas 1 8
Toyub 1 5
Samuiyu 2 10
Total 13 43
These sementeras produce the low average of 3 1/3 cargoes. The average value of Mang-i-lot's' sementeras, then, is 33 1/3 pesos -- which is thought to be a conservative estimate of the value of the Bontoc sementera. Mang-i-lot' is rated among the lesser rich men. He is relatively, as the American says, "well-to-do." However, when a man possesses twenty sementeras he is considered rich.
The richest man in Bontoc, with one hundred sementeras, has in them, say, 3,330 pesos worth of real property in addition to his 6,340 pesos of personal property.
It is claimed that each household owns its dwelling and at least two sementeras and one granary, though a man with no more property than this is a poor man and some one in his family must work much of the time for wages, because two average sementeras will not furnish all the rice needed by a family for food.
A dwelling house is valued at about 60 pesos, which is less than it usually costs to build, and a granary is valued at about 10 or 15 pesos. It is constructed with great care, is valueless unless rodent proof, and costs much more than its avowed valuation.
Title to all buildings, building lands in the pueblo, and irrigated rice lands is recognized for at least two generations, though unoccupied during that time. They say the right to such unoccupied property would be recognized perpetually if there were heirs. At least it is true that there are now acres of unused lands, once palay sementeras, which have not been cultivated for two generations because water can not be run to them, and the property right of the grandsons of the men who last cultivated them is recognized. However, if one leaves vacant any unirrigated agricultural mountain lands -- used for millet, maize, or beans -- another person may claim and plant them in one year's time, and no one disputes his title.
Real property of group
All real property accumulated by a man and woman in marriage is their joint property as long as both live and remain in union.
No form of real property, except forests, can be the joint property of other individuals than man and wife. Forests are most commonly the property of a considerable group of people -- the descendants of a single ancestral owner. The lands as well as the trees are owned, and the sale of trees carries no right to the land on which they grow. It is impossible even to estimate the value of any one's forest property, but it is true that persons are recognized as rich or poor in forests.
Public property
Public lands and forests extend in an irregular strip around most pueblos. There is no public forest, or even public lands, between Bontoc and Samoki, but Bontoc has access to the forests lying beyond her sister pueblo. Neither is there public forest, or any forest, between Bontoc and Tukukan, and Bontoc and Titipan, though there are public lands. In all other directions from Bontoc public forests surround the outlying private forests. They are usually from three to six hours distant. From them any man gathers what he pleases, but until the American came to Bontoc the Igorot seldom went that far for wood or lumber, as it was unsafe. Now, however, the individual will doubtless claim these lands, unless hindered by the Government. In this manner real property was first accumulated -- a man claimed public lands and forests which he cared for and dared to appropriate and use. There have been few irrigated sementeras built on new water supplies in two generations by people of Bontoc pueblo. The "era of public lands" for Bontoc has practically passed; there is no more undiscovered water. However, three new sementeras were built this year on an island in the river near the pueblo, and are now (May, 1903) full of splendid palay, but they can not be considered permanent property, as an excessively rainy season will make them unfit for cultivation.
Sale of property
Personal property commonly passes by transfer for value received from one party to another. Such a thing as transfer of real property from one Igorot to another for legal currency is unknown; the transfer is by barter. The transfer of personal property was considered in the preceding section on commerce.
Real property is seldom transferred for value received except at the death of the owner or a member of the family; at such times it is common, and occurs from the necessity of quantities of food for the burial feasts and the urgent need of blankets and other clothing for the interment.
Again, camote lands about the dwellings are disposed of to those who may want to build a dwelling. Dwellings are also disposed of if the original occupant is to vacate and some other person desires to possess the buildings.
Death may destroy one's personal property, such as hogs and carabaos, but almost never does an Igorot "lose his property," if it is real. Only a protracted family sickness or a series of deaths requiring the killing of great numbers of chickens, hogs, and carabaos, and the purchase of many things necessary for interment can lose to a person real property of any considerable value.
There is no formality to a "sale" of property, nor are witnesses employed. It is common knowledge within the ato when a sale is on, and the old men shortly know of and talk about the transaction -- thenceforth it is on record and will stand.
Rent, loan, and lease of property
Until recent years, long after the Spaniards came, it was customary to loan money and other forms of personal property without interest or other charge. This generous custom still prevails among most of the people, but some rich men now charge an interest on money loaned for one or more years. Actual cases show the rate to be about 6 or 7 per cent. The custom of loaning for interest was gained from contact with the Lepanto Igorot, who received it from the Ilokano.
It is claimed that dwellings and granaries are never rented.
Irrigated rice lands are commonly leased. Such method of cultivation is resorted to by the rich who have more sementeras than they can superintend. The lessee receives one-half of the palay harvested, and his share is delivered to him. The lessor furnishes all seed, fertilizers, and labor. He delivers the lessee's share of the harvest and retains the other half himself, together with the entire camote crop -- which is invariably grown immediately after the palay harvest.
Unirrigated mountain camote lands are rented outright; the rent is usually paid in pigs. A sementera that produces a yield of 10 cargoes of camotes, valued at about six pesos, is worth a 2-peso pig as annual rental. In larger sementeras a proportional rental is charged -- a rental of about 33 1/3 per cent. All rents are paid after the crops are harvested.
Inheritance and bequest
As regards property the statement that all men are born equal is as false in Igorot land as in the United States. The economic status of the present generation and the preceding one was practically determined for each man before he was born. It is fair to make the statement that the rich of the present generation had rich grandparents and the poor had poor grandparents, although it is true that a large property is now and then lost sight of in its division among numerous children.
Children before their marriage receive little permanent property during the lives of their parents, and they retain none which they may accumulate themselves. A mother sometimes gives her daughter the hair dress of white and agate beads, called "apong;" also she may give a mature daughter her peculiar and rare girdle, called "akosan." Either parent may give a child a gold earring; I know of but one such case. This custom of not allowing an unmarried child to possess permanent property is so rigid that, I am told, an unmarried son or daughter seldom receives carabaos or sementeras until the death of the parents, no matter how old the child may be.
At the time of marriage parents give their children considerable property, if they have it, giving even one-half the sementeras they possess. If parents are no longer able to cultivate their lands when their children marry, they usually give them all they have, and their wants are faithfully met by the children.
The conditions presented above are practically the only ones in which the property owner controls the disposition of his possessions which pass in gift to kin.
The laws of inheritance and bequest are as firmly fixed as are the customs of giving and not giving during life.
Since all the property of a husband and wife is individual, except that accumulated by the joint efforts of the two during union, the property of each is divided on death. The survivor of a matrimonial union receives no share of the individual property of the deceased if there are kin. It goes first to the children or grandchildren. If there are none and a parent survives, it goes to the parent. If there are neither children, grandchildren, nor parents it goes to brothers and sisters or their children. If there are none of these relatives the property goes to the uncles and aunts or cousins. This seems to be the extent of the kinship recognized by the Igorot. If there are no relatives the property passes to the survivor of the union. If there is no survivor the property passes to that friend who takes up the responsibilities of the funeral and accompanying ceremonies. The law of inheritance, then, is as follows: First, lineal descendants; second, ascendants; third, lateral descendants; fourth, surviving spouse; fifth, self-appointed executor who was a personal friend of the deceased.
Primogeniture is recognized, and the oldest living child, whether male or female, inherits slightly more than any of the others. For instance, if there were three or four or five sementeras per child, the eldest would receive one more than the others.
This law of primogeniture holds at all times, but if there are three boys and one girl the girl is given about the same advantage over the others, it is said, as though she were the eldest. If there are three girls and only one boy, no consideration is taken of sex. When there are only two children the eldest receives the largest or best sementera, but he must also take the smallest or poorest one.
It is said that division of the property of the deceased occurs during the days of the funeral ceremonies. This was done on the third day of the ceremonies at the funeral of old Som-kad', mentioned in the section on "Death and Burial?" The laws are rigid, and all that is necessary to be done is for the lawful inheritors to decide which particular property becomes the possession of each. This is neither so difficult nor so conducive of friction as might seem, since the property is very undiversified.
Tribute, tax, and "rake off"
There is no true systematic tribute, tax, or "rake off" among the Bontoc Igorot, nor am I aware that such occurs at all commonly sporadically. However, tribute, tax, and "rake off" are all found in pure Malayan culture in the Archipelago, as among the Moros of the southern islands.
Tribute may be paid more or less regularly by one group of people to a stronger, or to one in a position to harass and annoy -- for the protection of the stronger, or in acknowledgment of submission, or to avoid harassment or annoyance. Nothing of the sort exists in Bontoc. The nearest approach to it is the exchange of property, as carabaos or hogs, between two pueblos at the time a peace is made between them -- at which time the one sueing for peace makes by far the larger payment, the other payment being mere form. This transaction, as it occurs in Bontoc, is a recognition of submission and of inferiority, and is, as well, a guarantee of a certain amount of protection. However, such payments are not made at all regularly and do not stand as true tributes, though in time they might grow to be such.
Nothing in the nature of a tax for the purpose of supporting a government exists in Bontoc. The nearest approach to it is in a practice which grew up in Spanish time but is of Igorot origin. When to-day cargadors are required by Americans, as when Government supplies must be brought in, the members of each cargador's ato furnish him food for the journey, though the cargador personally receives and keeps the wage for the trip. The furnishing of food seems to spring from the feeling that the man who goes on the journey is the public servant of those who remain -- he is doing an unpleasant duty for his ato fellows. If this were carried one step further, if the rice were raised and paid for carrying on some regular function of the Igorot pueblo, it would be a true tax. It may be true, and probably is, in pure Igorot society that if men were sent by an ato on some mission for that ato they would receive support while gone. This would readily develop into a true tax if those public duties were to be performed continually, or even frequently with regularity.
"Rake off," or, as it is known in the Orient, "squeeze," is so common that every one -- Malay, Chino, Japanese, European, and American -- expects his money to be "squeezed" if it passes through another's hands or another is instrumental in making a bargain for him. In much of the Igorot territory surrounding the Bontoc area "rake off" occurs -- it follows the advent of the "headman." It is one of the direct causes why, in Igorot society, the headman is almost always a rich man. During the hunting stage of human development no "rich man" can come up, as is illustrated by the primitive hunter folk of North America. As soon, however, as there are productions which may be traded in, there is a chance for one man to take advantage of his fellows and accumulate a part of their productions -- this opportunity occurs among primitive agricultural people. The Bontoc area, however, has no "headman," no "rich man," and, consequently, no "rake off."