Igorot people

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lumawig, the Supreme Being The Igorot has personified the forces of nature. The personification has become a single person, and to-day this person is one god, Lu-ma′-wĭg. Over all, and eternal, so far as the Igorot understands, is Lu-ma′-wĭg—Lu-ma′-wĭg, who had a part in the beginning of all things; who came as a man to help the survivors and perpetuators of Bontoc; who later came as a man to teach the people whom he had befriended, and who still lives to care for them. Lu-ma′-wĭg is the greatest of spirits, dwelling above in chayya, the sky. ”

“ The Igorots have both priests and priestesses, and they perform many public and private ceremonies, both for the benefit of the great deities and for the countless minor spirits which inhabit the sacred mountains, cliffs, groves, trees, and bushes that are scattered throughout the Igorot country. Sacrifices of pigs or chickens are made at every ceremony. The ceremonies of the common people are more or less of a private nature, but those of the aristocracy and of wealthy men are nearly always public and general. ”

“ Here both men and women are busy early and late cultivating the rice, sweet potatoes, and small vegetables on which they live. The men are head-hunters and ardent warriors, [98] each village demanding a head in payment for any taken by a hostile village.
Watching over the Igorot, controlling the winds and the rains, and providing good crops and health for the people, is the Great Spirit, Lumawig, who lives in the sky. He is believed to have created the Igorot and even to have lived among them on the earth. ”

“ Lu-ma′-wĭg left them, going above as a bird flies. Soon the child was born, the water subsided in Bontoc pueblo, and Fa-tang′-a with his sister and her babe returned to the pueblo. Children came to the household rapidly and in great numbers. Generation followed generation, and the people increased wonderfully.
After a time Lu-ma′-wĭg decided to come to help and teach the Igorot. He first stopped on Ka-lo-wi′-tan Mountain, and from there looked over the young women of Sabangan, searching for a desirable wife, but he was not pleased with the girls of Sabangan because they had short hair. ”

“ From long continuance in the practice of head-hunting, many beliefs and superstitions arise to foster it, until in the minds of the people these beliefs are greater factors in its perpetuation than the original one of the debt of life. The possession of a head, with the accompanying honor, feasts, and good omens, seems in many cases to be of first importance rather than the avenging of a life.
The custom of head taking came with the Igorot to Luzon, a custom of their ancestors in some earlier home. The people of Bontoc, however, say that their god, Lumawig, taught them to go to war. ”

“ Three or four days’ journey to the south and east of the Tinguian live the Igorot; but so difficult are the trails over the mountains and through the swift rivers that there is little intercourse between the two tribes, consequently each believes the other a people to be feared. Salt, weapons, and jars are sometimes exchanged, but the customs and beliefs are not similar. Each group leads its own life and is governed by its own spirits. ”

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

“ On the southwest this cuts off the short-haired Lepanto Igorot, whose culture seems to be more allied to that of Benguet than Bontoc.
The men of the Bontoc area know none of the peoples by whom they are surrounded by the names history gives or the peoples designate themselves, with the exception of the Lepanto Igorot, the Ĭt-nĕg′, and the Ilokano of the west coast. They do not know the “Tinguian” of Abra on their north and northwest by that name; they call them “Ĭt-nĕg′.” Farther north are the people called by the Spaniards “Nabayuganes,” “Aripas,” and “Ipugaos;” ”

“ There seems at all times to be the greatest freedom and friendliness among the young people. I have seen both a young man carrying a young woman lying horizontally along his shoulders, and a young woman carrying a young man astride her back. However, practically all courtship is carried on in the o′-lâg.
The courtship of the Igorot is closely defined when it is said that marriage never takes place prior to sexual intimacy, and rarely prior to pregnancy. There is one exception. This is when a rich and influential man marries a girl against her desires, but through the urgings of her parents. ”

“ I select as examples the people of Bontoc and the adjoining Quiangan district in northern Nueva Vizcaya Province, both of whom are commonly known as Igorot. It must be noted that the people of both areas are practically unmodified by modern culture and both are constant head-hunters. With scarcely one exception Bontoc pueblos are single clusters of buildings; in Banawi pueblo of the Quiangan area there are eleven separate groups of dwellings, each group situated on a prominence which may be easily protected by the inhabitants against an enemy below them ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. Page 124
Wooden weapons Shields are universally made and used by the Igorot. ”

“ When the men age, a few gray hairs appear, and some old men have heads of uniform iron-gray color. I have never seen a white-haired Igorot. A few of the old men have their hair thinning on the crown, but a tendency to baldness is by no means the rule.
Bontoc pueblo is no exception to the rule that every pueblo in the Philippines has a few people with curly or wavy hair. I doubt whether to-day an entire tribe of perfectly straight-haired primitive Malayan people exists in the Archipelago. Fu-nĭt is a curly-haired Bontoc man of about 45 years of age. ”

“ In Banawi, in the Quiangan culture area, a district having no public buildings, one can scarcely find a trace of skin eruption.
There are two adult people in Samoki pueblo who are insane; one of them at least is supposed to be affected by Lumawig, the Igorot god, and is said, when he hallooes, as he does at times, to be calling to Lumawig. Bontoc pueblo has a young woman and a girl of five or six years of age who are imbecile. Those four people are practically incapacitated from earning a living, and are cared for by their immediate relatives. ”

“ There is no such institution in Bontoc Igorot society. The purpose of the o′-lâg is as far from enforcing chastity as it well can be. The old women never frequent the o′-lâg, and the lesson the girls learn there is the necessity for maternity, not the “industries of their sex”—which children of very primitive people acquire quite as a young fowl learns to scratch and get its food.
Marriage The ethics of the group forbid certain unions in marriage. A man may not marry his mother, his stepmother, or a sister of either. He may not marry his daughter, stepdaughter, or adopted daughter. ”

“ The Igorot does not say that the entire spirit world, except his relatives, is against him, and he does not blame the spirits for the evils they inflict on him—it is the way things are—but he acts as though all are his enemies, and he often entreats them to visit their destruction on other pueblos. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The immediate surroundings of every Igorot group is the home of the a-ni′-to of departed members of the group, though they do not usually live in the pueblo itself. Their dwellings, sementeras, pigs, chickens, and carabaos—in fact, all the possessions the living had—are scattered about in spirit form, in the neighboring mountains. There the great hosts of the a-ni′-to live, and there they reproduce, in spirit form, the life of the living. They construct and live in dwellings, build and cultivate sementeras, marry, and even bear children ”

“ 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. Page 113
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.” ”

“ In the pueblo, the sementeras, and the mountains one knows he is always surrounded by a-ni′-to. They are ever ready to trip one up, to push him off the high stone sementera dikes Page 198or to visit him with disease. When one walks alone in the mountain trail he is often aware that an a-ni′-to walks close beside him; he feels his hair creeping on his scalp, he says, and thus he knows of the a-ni′-to’s presence. The Igorot has a particular kind of spear, the sinalawitan, having two or more pairs of barbs, of which the a-ni′-to is afraid ”

“ The pĭn-tĕng′ is responsible for the death of every person who loses his head. He puts murder in the minds of all men who are to be successful in taking heads. He also sees the outrages of warfare, and visits vengeance on those who kill babes and small children.
In his relations with the unseen spirit world the Igorot has certain visible, material friends that assist him by warnings of good and evil. When a chicken is killed its gall is examined, and, if found to be dark colored, all is well; if it is light, he is warned of some pending evil in spirit form. ”

“ Chapter IX Mental Life The Igorot does not know many things in common with enlightened men, and yet one constantly marvels at his practical knowledge. Tylor says primitive man has “rude, shrewd sense.” The Igorot has more—he has practical wisdom. ”

“ In the realm of religion and spirit belief the surface has scarcely been scratched. The only Igorot who became Christians were the wives of some of the Christian natives who came in with the Spaniard, mainly as soldiers. There are now eight or ten such women, wives of the resident Ilokanos of Bontoc pueblo, but those whose husbands left the pueblo have reverted to Igorot faith. ”

“ Very misleading statements have sometimes been made in regard to the Igorot—customs from different groups have been jumbled together in one description until a man has been pictured who can not be found anywhere. ”

“ Thus the political life of the Igorot, although exceedingly weak on the side of federation or agreement between the independent towns, is centuries of development ahead of the almost institutionless communities of the Ilongot.
The Ilongot appears to be usually a monogamist and the wife is purchased, or at least a dowry called “piyat” is paid in weapons, utensils, liquor, wire, etc. Her position is not at all that of a bought piece of property, but, like the woman in Malayan society generally, she is the companion and almost the equal in influence and independence of the man. ”