The Bontoc Igorot Part 4

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

The Bontoc woman has a "medium," or mesorhine, nose, as is shown by the above figures. Four of the twenty-nine women have the "narrow"

leptorhine nose with nasal index below 70; seven have platyrhine or the "broad" nose with index greater than 85; while seventeen have the "medium" or mesorhine nose with nasal index between 70 and 85. The broadest nose has an index of 97.56, and the narrowest an index of 58.53.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Child

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pathology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART 3

General Social Life

The pueblo

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ato

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

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

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

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

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

The generations of descendants of men who did distinct things are kept carefully in memory; and from the list of descendants of the builders of some of the newer a'-to it seems probable that Cha-kong'

was the last one built. One of the builders was Sal-lu-yud'; he had a son named Tam-bul', and Tam-bul' was the father of a man in Bontoc now some twenty-five years old. It is probable that Cha-kong' was built about 1830 -- in the neighborhood of seventy-five years ago. The plat of the pueblo seems to strengthen the impression that Cha-kong'

is the newest a'-to, since it appears to have been built in territory previously used for rice granaries; it is all but surrounded by such ground now.

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

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