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 whenmilesfrom 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, lettinga pintor 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.
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 whileeating, though he makes a beverage said to be drunk only at mealtime. After meals he usually drinks water copiously.
Bá-si is the Igorot name of the fermented beverage prepared from sugar cane. “Bá-si,” under various names, is found widespread throughout the Islands. The Bontoc man makes his bá-si in December. He boils the expressed juice of the sugar cane about six hours, at which time he puts into it a handful of vegetable ferment obtained from a tree called “tub-fĭg′.” This vegetable ferment is gathered from the tree as a flower or young fruit; it is dried and stored in the dwelling for future use. The brewed liquid is poured into a large olla, the flat-bottom variety called “fu-o-foy′” manufactured expressly for bá-si, and then is tightly covered over and set away in the granary. In five days the ferment has worked sufficiently, and the beverage may be drunk. It remains good about four months, for during the fifth or sixth month it turns very acid.
Bá-si is manufactured by the men alone. Tukukan and Titipan manufacture it to sell to other pueblos; it is sold for abouthalf a peso per gallon. It is drunk quite a good deal during the year, though mostly on ceremonial occasions. Men frequently carry a small amount of it with them to the sementeras when they guard them against the wild hogs during the long nights. They say it helps to keep them warm. One glass of bá-si will intoxicate a person not accustomed to drink it, though the Igorot who uses it habitually may drink two or three glasses before intoxication. Usually a man drinks only a few swallows of it at a time, and I never saw an Igorot intoxicated except during some ceremony and then not more than a dozen in several months. Women never drink bá-si.
Ta-pú-i is a fermented drink made from rice, the cha-yĕt′-ĭt variety, they say, grown in Bontoc pueblo. It is a very sweet and sticky rice when cooked. This beverage also is found practically everywhere in the Archipelago. Only a small amount of the cha-yĕt′-ĭt is grown by Bontoc pueblo. To manufacture ta-pú-i the rice is cooked and then spread on a winnowing tray until it is cold. When colda few ouncesof 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 some2 inchesin diameter. This ferment will keep a year. When needed a ball is pulverized and sprinkled fine over the cooked rice. An olla of rice prepared for ta-pú-i will be found in one day half filled with the beverage.
Ta-pú-i will keep only about two months. It is never drunk by the women, though they do eat the sweet rice kernels from the jar, and they, as well as the men, manufacture it. It is claimed never to bemanufactured in the Bontoc area for sale. A half glass of the beverage will intoxicate. At the end of a month the beverage is very intoxicating, and is then commonly weakened with water. Ta-pú-i is much preferred to bá-si.
The Bontoc man prepares another drink which is filthy, and, even they themselves say, vile smelling. It is called “sa-fu-ĕng′,” is drunk at meals, and is prepared as follows: Cold water is first put in a jar, and into it are thrown cooked rice, cooked camotes, cooked locusts, and all sorts of cooked flesh and bones. The resulting liquid is drunk at the end of ten days, and is sour and vinegar-like. The preparation is perpetuated by adding more water and solid ingredients—it does not matter much what they are.
The odor of sa-fu-ĕng′ is the worst stench in Bontoc. I never closely investigated the beverage personally—but I have no reason to doubt what the Igorot says of it; but if all is true, why is it not fatal?
Throughout the year the pueblo of Mayinit produces salt from a number of brackish hot springs occupying aboutan acreof 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 about12 feetwide and from12 to 25 feetlong. The houses, well shown inPl. 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 from4 to 6 inchesin diameter. The water passes among the bases of these stones, and the salt is deposited in a thin crust over their surface. (SeePl. CXVI.)
These houses are inherited, and, as a consequence, several persons mayultimately 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 infig. 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.Ground plan of Mayinit salt house.
Ground plan of Mayinit salt house.
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 ina half-inchlayer on a piece of banana leaf cut about5 inchessquare. 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.
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.
In October and November the Bontoc Igorot make sugar from cane. The stalks are gathered, cut in lengths of about20 inches, tied in bundlesa footin diameter, and stored away until the time for expressing the juice.
The sugar-cane crusher, shown inPl. 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 overthree or four inchesin 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 cakesan inchin 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.
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, beingremoved 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.
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 from75 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 bareshoulders. Earth, carried to or from the building sementeras, in the trails, or about the dwellings, is put first in the tak-o-chûg′, the basket-work scoop, holding about30 or 40 poundsof 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 inPls. CXIXandCXXI. 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 ring5 or 6 inchesin 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 sûg-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 froma 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 in4 to 6 gallonollas 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 a6-gallonjar 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.
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.
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 (seePl. 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 aboutone 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.
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.
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 “sipĕn.”
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 “sipĕn.” All the half-dozen copper coins current in the active commercial districts of the Islands are here counterfeited, and the “sipĕn” 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 “sipĕn” 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.
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 saltto a ₱70 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.
The standard of value of the palay currency is the sĭn fĭng-e′—the Spanish “manojo,” or handful—a small bunch of palay tied up immediately below the fruit heads. It is aboutone footlong, 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 sĭn fĭng-e′, and all values are satisfactorily taken from it.
An elaborate palay currency has been evolved from the standard, of which the following are the denominations:
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 livefarther 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.
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 días” (good day) and “á 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 increasingfrequency 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.
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” forsatisfying 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.”
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 recentreclamosmade by poor people. Again, since the American heard thereclamosof 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.
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′-ĕng, has the following visible personal property:
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.
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.
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:
These sementeras produce the low average of 3⅓ cargoes. The average value of Mang-i-lot’s′ sementeras, then, is 33⅓ 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 nowacresof unused lands, once palay sementeras, which have not been cultivated for two generations because water cannot 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.
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 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.
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 transferis 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.
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 33⅓ per cent. All rents are paid after the crops are harvested.