IrN -. il..:;: W i....I. iii. N U~ I /. li 111111IMM M i M TIM Mill Ill 77 CIA Oman.3 bag THILL 1i411 1,'- II R 1 &s L. \ P1LATE I:4,' eJ :; rW4 (O tws i:> lot l O" t* O" 0 o l li D uck,. z n WOOL~r tb~~ f~~VW^ j~~l~000- 11; pa fl-+ ^ 6~, GS: ~ 4 - m;;t 00w "9S ) Copyright, 1930, by R. F. BARTON First Printing ERRATA Page 12, line 17, for "preserved" read "reserved." Page 36, line 15, for "sobbing" read "soobing." Page 62, line, for "back" read "backs." Patge 83, line (last), for "doman" read "domain.". a linefage 88,, for "must have been" read "ight have ben" /l1 riHts of tSranslti;on, reprodZucti and a1k tztion reservedfor a/ countries. ia TO FREDERICK STARR b ACKNOYILEDGMENTS Among others to whom I owe thanks for assistance in the preparation of this book are Miss Beatrice Heiman for the preparation of the index, Mr. Jan Janowsky for his work in preparing the map, and Dennistons for the use of photographs. R. F. BARTON New York June, 1930 I CONTENTS Page 1. A BURNING HousE II HIGH TRAILS IN HEADHUNTERDOM 21 III. THE EXALTATION OF CUSTOM 6o IV. MY BROTHER'S GODS 120 V. THE HALF WAY SUN 154 VI. LosT SOULSTUFF 203 VII. CASES IN COURT 232 VIII. EPILOGUE 291 APPENDICES 299 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 INDEX 311 ILL US TRA TINS Plates marked by a star were not photographed by the author. Some of them are published through the courtesy of Dennistons, Inc., Manila. As to some others, it is not known to whom credit should be given. PLATE I In the region of our enemies of Alimit. Frontispiece PLATE II Facing Tagudin. PLATE III (a) The national diversion, for which Americans are trying to substitute baseball. (b) United they stand, though singly they would fall PLATE IV Court in front of men's clubon the Bontok border. PLATE V Bontok children grabbing for tossed matches. page 2 3 3 6 7 PLATE VI Bontok girls harvesting rice. PLATE VII The Bontok tattoo. 12 13 Illustrations PLATE VIII Facing page The Ifugao tattoo; the following designs may be distinguished: dancing man, dog, shield, eagle, centipede, scorpion, thunderbolt, star. 28 PLATE IX Ifugao girls. 29 PLATE X Two of the wards of a Bontok town. 32 PLATE XI Negrits, pigmy blacks, not related racially to Filipinos or mountain pagans forest dwellers. 33 PLATE XII "Descending through terracing far grander than any I had yet seen".. I Distances are so great that villages, aside from being hidden by trees, are hard to find. Some terraces are sixty feet high. A little to the right of the middle, three men are standing on the sixth wall up from the river. 36 PLATE XIII (a) Benaue Government House. 40 (b) ooth-filing in another Philippine tribe Lower teeth blackened. 41 PLATE XIV Some of the frst pupils. The third from the left is in the legislature now. 41 Illustrations PLATE XV Facing page Playing at war with reed tips and shields. 44 PLATE XVI Laying the last stone of the new school building. 45 PLATE XVII A portion of the home region-looking toward the river. In the scope of the picture are three large villages, hidden by trees. 6o PLATE XVIII The Benaue school, at the lower left. 61 PLATE XIX Ifugao belles. 64 PLATE XX Baby tenders gather on large boulders when the evening becomes chilly. 65 PLATE XXI "The acme of primitive agriculture." Every stalk in these freshly planted rice fields will receive individual attention until harvest. 72 PLATE XXII The Nagakaran Region. 73 PLATE XXIII Was-Made-Afraid and his wife at their elevation to Kadangyang rank. 76 Illustrations PLATE XXIV Facing page Ginnid becoming a Kadangyang. He is being addressed (from behind) by one of his wife's kinsmen. 77 PLATE XXV At the home of a Kadangyang. The villagers use the lounging bench, insignzum of his rank, as much as he. Chickens are called into the basket-like coops at night, and hung high under the eaves 92 PLATE XXVI Cicada, some years before her marriage, helping village youths make rice flour for a ceremonial idleness. She is the girl directly behind the mortar. 93 PLATE XXVII (a) Cicada's mother inciting her soul to vengeance. 96 (b) The female father and other kin relieve the mother. 96 PLATE XXVlII Three Benaue men; thought bad by my Kiangan friends because aliens who mispronounce words, wear g-strings of a different pattern, trim their hair another way, and make backbaskets of deerskin instead of rattan. 97 PLATE XXIX Priests at a harvest ceremony. Note the rat fenders on the house posts. 10 PLATE XXX Was-Made-Lonesome costumed as the Full-Fledged Cock at his headfeast. 10 l o5 Illustrations PLATE XXXI Facing page Dancing at the Big Apos canyao. io8 PLATE XXXII Ifugao soldiers who posed themselves before me requesting a picture they could hand down to their posterity. The tallest was, for years, my cook. lo9 PLATE XXXIII Part of a himong procession. 124 PLATE XXXIV Scramble over a water buffalo. A double-edged knife is best because the other scramblers give it room! 125 PLATE XXXV The reward of a double-edged knife. 128 PLATE XXXVI Poison. 129 PLATE XXXVII Some hipag and the basket in which they are kept. 136 PLATE XXXVIII Benders-in-the-Dance performing a ceremony to cure a wound got in a scramble. 137 PLATE XXXIX Routine ceremony against enemies. The priest is reading the omen of the bile-sac. 140 Illustraio ns PLATE XL Facing page (a) He may not trim his locks until he has avenged a kinsman's death. 141 *(b) A woman's head. 141 PLATE XLI (a) A war party. 156 (b) A banyan tree at which heads were left by folk of Place-Set-with-Ethics-Locks until "entered." 156 PLATE XLII (a) Putting the head on the banana stalk, 157 (b) Addressing the head, 157 PLATE XLIII Dancing during headfeast. A religious ceremony is being performed at the left. i6o PLATE XLIV Recitation of the myths. The very young priest on the right has several great-grandchildren classificatory system-although no children by our reckoning of relationship. i68 PLATE XLV The cockfight dance. 168 PLATE XLVI "Fledgling yields.. Full-Fledged Cock stands over him in triumph. 169 Illuistrations PLATE XLVII Facing page Eating at a headtakers' ditak. Find the table knves 172 PLATE XLVIII Poured-Out, of Baay, and the heads that adorned his house. 173 PLATE XLIX Women transplanting rice. 188 PLATE L The folk of a village assemble before setting out for the third day's ceremonies. 189 PLATE LI A procession, resembling from a distance a "gigantic, gaycolored centipede, rolling and twisting." 192 PLATE LII The procession halts for the leader to shout an invocation. The legs of the body may be seen just beyond the woman, who is shouting to the soul. 193 PLATE LIII On the Hill. 200 PLATE LIV (a) A procession. 201 (b) Moon God, drinking the pig's blood. 201 Illustrations PLATE LV Facing page A sentinel, waiting for souls of the enemy. 204 PLATE LVI Women on guard while the men eat 205 PLATE LVII The folk were very apathetic at the ceremonies for Brass The sacrifice to the War Gods was not much bigger than Sun God's spear. 220 PLATE LVIII (a) A procession halts at the body. 221 (b) Breaking an egg at the sepulchre. 221 PLATE LIX Lieutenant Governor Jeff D. Gallman and the president who arrested Wild Raspberry. 224 PLATE LX Pagan Basketry. 1, i, headbaskets; 2, 2, small backbaskets for carrying lunch; 3, backbasket for sweet potatoes; 4, handbaskets; j, net with which grasshoppers in flight are captured; 6, hopper into which grasshoppers on bushes are shaken; 7, 7', 7", baskets in which grasshoppers are kept alive; 8, basket for table ware; 9, 9', 9", 9 ", baskets for threshed rice 225 PLATE LXI A group of Kalingas Clothing and ornamentation are as diverse as ethnic origin 232 Illustrations PLATE LXII Facing page A far-fetched ethnic element. The ancestors of these girls were pirates deported from the southern islands and dumped into Kalinga by the Spaniards. They have not yet amalgamated with the rest of the tribe. 233 PLATE LXIII One form of Kalinga house. 236 PLATE LXIV "I travelled slowly through it all." 237 PLATE LXV "Mountains that yield frugally at a cost of much sweat." 252 t:e An, '1%~~~~~~ I A BURNING HiOUSE In these days a priitive culture is a burning house. -Frederick Starr I. S the supervising teacher of Place-to-Get-Salt district, situated near the middle of Luzon, the largest island of the Philippine group, I had for eighteen months been riding the rounds of the outlying country schools. More and more often, I had been gazing toward the mountains that rose abruptly to the north. Their blue coolness tantalized throughout the season when the plains surrounding Place-to-Get-Salt were shimmering and dusty. And in the rainy season their distant solidity beckoned invitingly as I tried to travel the plains, transformed now to a swamp of sloughs, rice-fields and nearly impassable roads. One day in the foothills I saw some mountaineers who had come down for a trading trip. I liked them, and that very night, applied for a transfer to Mountain Province, then being organized to include most of the wild tribes of Northern Luzon. The new province was almost a half larger than Connecticut, situated in the center of the northern third of the island. I The Half-Way Sun The transfer was quickly sanctioned, and soon I stood newlanded on the little bit of coast that belonged to Mountain Province with eyes avid for every detail of the strange ness that greeted. An enormous lot of freight was strewn over the beach, for Americans had begun to extend government over wild tribes that had resisted Spanish colonization, to establish schools and missions, and to try to stop headhunting. A typhoon had wobbled in from the China Sea and had engendered a contest between mountain trails and landslides in which the latter had been largely victorious. Transportation was just getting under way again. Government officials and missions were clamoring for building materials, canned and bottled goods, supplies for making reports, and the like. Fogg, transportation contractor, was hustling more than is good for a white man in the tropics. But he kept thinking of the greatness of the American Express Company, and would say, "There must be money in Transportation!" an idea always before himhis flag. There came a troupe of about thirty sober-looking little men, their hair falling almost to their shoulders, coats of all kinds and degrees of disintegration, and no pants. They wore g-strings so narrow as to comply ill with even that region's unexacting conventionalities. Fogg led the little men to a pile of corrugated iron rof2 I. *' ': *;::;: I1. ~ " PILAtE III (a ) The national diversion, for which AmIericans are trying to substitute baseball. (b) l'nited they stand, though singly they would fall. A Burning House ing, each sheet of which weighed twnty-seven and a half ppunds. "Medio peso a sheet, and they're all just alike, hombres," he said. A quarter of a dollar, our money, for carrying a sheet of iron to Cervantes, forty-two miles away Some took two, some three, some four sheets. Since they had also to carry rice, a cooking pot, and a blanket, I estir mated that several were setting out with a burden nearly equal to their own weight. And their way led over a range of mountains among the steepest in the world, with frequent rocky fords! But when Fogg loaded others at a flat rate with my baggage, they groaned and protested tears fully at burdens of forty pounds. In Tagudin, a town of lowland Filipinos about two miles from the beach, I found quite a gathering of politicians which is to say, in the Philippines, the upper classat a cantina kept by a venerable and handsome Spaniard. They assembled there every day, but when a boat arrived with ice from Manila, came early and stayed late. The beer was not cold yet. "The beer will go down when its temperature does," the Spaniard remarked with a touch of cynicism. I asked him from what part of Spain he came. The Half-Way Sun "I am not from Spain, sir I am from the Balearic Islands-to serve you." "Oh! Didn't Julius Cesar recruit some of his auxiliaries there " "Indeed he did!" The old gentleman's eyes shone. "And was not Cmsar always victorious I He was the first general to sense the worth of artillery, and my people were his artillerists." The presidente was there, waiting like the rest for the beer to cool. He sent police to find a horse to carry me to Cervantes, which was to be my station. But they came back after some hours, reporting that all horses not engaged in carrying cargo were dead of glanders. I fretted about trying myself to find one, but concluded that the police were right, and that it would be easier to walk the forty odd miles than to find a horse. The Spaniard insisted that I lunch with him. Eagerly and joyously he talked of his country and its national weapon, the sling shot, and the feats he had performed with it. Also he told of a time when he and another boy, both raged, were caught cominig out of a great almond orchard, their pockets ad caps full, by the owner, Don Enrique. "You didn't take half enough! Go back and get some more," the do had ordered 4 A Burning House But the boys had thrown themselves at his feet. "No Sefor-we are thieves!" "Por Dios, you are not!" had thundered the don. "No Balearico is a thief. It might have been better to have told me you were going to take some of our almonds, but the fault is mine-I ought to have invited you. I am not looking out for my people as I ought!" And soon after that Don Enrique had called the two boys and some other poor folk and had set them making nougat of honey and almonds and sugar. Conscription had brought my host to the Philippines and-"Here I am, selling that very candy-the best there is!" He gave me a tin box of it and a bottle of beer "to sustain the journey" and assured me that in Kushkushnon, where Fogg had directed my cradores to wait me, I would have "uzn cmarin de palacio." And I departed revising my concepts of Spaniards. But I was not to reach the palace of a shed that night. The trail had been resurveyed and was being rebuilt at places. Getting lost and caught in a cold rain, I came, about nightfall, to a small village of Filipinos They gave me to eat of rice, boiled eggs, tro root and crude, home-made sugar, melting in a coconut cup. Immediately I had eaten, my bed was spread for me; a mat of rattan laid on the slats 5 The Half-ay Sun of the bamboo foor; two long, hard pillows placed at right angles to each other (one of them to lie against); and a cotton blanket about three hundredths of an inch thick, which, perhaps, kept out the coarsest of the cold. The young ladies of the family betook themselves meekly to a tiny closet-like room, and were padlocked In by their father. At the time I unduly concerned myself that such precautions should be taken against me. Later I learned them to be a measure taken nightly by better class families in some regions against philandering youths. The rest of the family bound their heads with handkerchiefs, tied the windows and doors shut, and soon were snoring a few feet away. The wind whistled cold through the floor slats, pigs rocked the dwelling by scratching against the house piles, ponies squealed and fought underneath, rats scampered through the roof thatch and came down to nibble tentatively at my ears, deer screamed in the forest, mosquitoes whined all too long before making up their minds to settle, strange food combinations brewed a gastritis, and that night is one that even memory cannot gloss over. I spent it alternating vows never again to become separated from my bagage with wonder that the dormant ones could stay so against such odds. Years later I was to meet an even more astounding ex6 PI ATE TIV VI PLATE V A4 Burning House ample of depth of slumber. An old woman of the Ifgao * tribe came limping to my house to sell vegetables. "Why! Was-Made-a-Grasshopper, have you had an accident?" "Yes. The rats-may they die!-ate my foot while I was asleep." I could hardly believe, but she held the member up for inspection, and, sure enough, there was an area in the heel larger than a dollar, gawed to the depth of about an eighth of an inch! 2. Next mornin I found the cargadores waiting at the "palace of a shed," We attacked the mountains zestfully, but the only unburdened member of the party was soon shamefully calling on the others to wait for him and was not sorry when, about four o'clock, a steady downpour made it necessary to stop at another shed. It was already occupied by a "Turco," as, in the Philippines, pedlars of jewelry are assumed to be. When a goodly string of cargadores came up a little later, he ordered them, abusively, to stay out in the rain and cold, saying that the shed belonged to those who got into it first. I objected that the shed * I-u-ga-o, by derivation, hill (or mountain) people." The Half- iay Sun belonged to as many as could get into itespecially when the weather was bad. He acceded amiably, and proved interesting, but hardly attractive. He was the product of an ancestry case-hardened in persecution. "It is very hard, gentlemen, when they call me 'Turco.' That accursed Turcos! They come with soldiers when I am a little boy and carry two mine sisters away, ten year and twelve year. I suppose now mine sisters, Mohammedarns, and lose their soul. When I grow up, my father say better get away, get anywhere, just so got no turcos. So is bad for me when they call me 'Turco.' "The Aericans, gentlemen, is true they can marry anything? They marry with Jews and Mohammedans? We can't do that must believe in Christ!" He then grew confidential about his amours. His am bition was to marry a wealthy mnestza possessed of many lands. His strategy of courtship was to "(ompromise" the girl to get her into his power. Regretfully he admitted that, having "compromised" her, he seemed not to want her afterwards! He set me thinking that the converse of "As a man soweth so will he also reap" is more demonstrably true, and might be more so ially useful to remember. The shed, although large, could scarce hold all the 8 A Burnizng House cargadores that came. One had to envy the ease with which they went to sleep, and the variety that could answer as bedding, rows of boxes of uneven dimensions, two parallel poles, the bare ground. They slept under the thinnest of blankets, while I shivered under two heavy ones. The whole body surface of these mountain peoples is as callous to cold as our hands and face. But there must be fuel to supply the increased heat radiation. The mountain man eats two or three times as much as a white man has room for. After two or three hours' steady climbing next morning, we reached the top of the range and could see, in the valley beneath, the town of Cervantes on a plateau between two confluent rivers. Soon we met some of the cargadores who had carried corrugated iron there at twenty-five cents a sheet and were not returning. I gave one a cigar and asked for a light, having used all my matches. He produced what looked like a pop-gun, made of hardwood, but with the barrel not drilled all the way through. In the end of its air-tight ramrod was a little concavity into which hepressed a bit of lint. Inserting the ramrod slightly, he struck it sharply with the ball of his fist and then withdrew it. There was a spark in the lint which he transferred to a larger dab The Half-Way Sun of lint. From that he lit his own cigar and passed it around to several of us. A device of this sort compels wonder. Surely no savage knows that compression of a gas generates heat. What sort of accident could have given the primitive inventor the cue The fire piston is found in Burma and at various places in Malaysia. In the Philippines it is used only by two widely separated tribes. The blow-gun is found distributed throughout this area, too. Could some accident in connection with that have given the cue? What a supermind among savages must he have been who observed and applied the principle! Cervantes is a town of lowland Filipinos. I was put in charge of an Igorot-the word means "mountain people"industrial school located about a mile frm town at the point of the plateau, where the rivers joined. The pupils were drawn from some twenty Igorot towns, a few of them a hard day's journey away. The school was commodious and provided an excellent fare; the dormitory supplied blankets and not the scant pieces of cloth an Igorot has at home, if indeed so fortunate; coats and trousers were issued and reglarly washed. (And yet, the boys could not feel decently dressed unless they wore an unwashed g-string underneath the trousers!) All these luxuries free-f they 10 A Burning House would come and learn new forms of labor. Attendance had to be forced. The Igorot is more conservative than a Chinaman and a great deal less adaptable. The school's altitude was fifteen hundred feet; Igorots prefer to live from one to three thousand feet higher than that. There was little level land around the school, but these mountaineers feel at home with none e cept what they themselves have made. The boys felt sore need of their accustomed amours with the chubby females of their villages. They longed for the men's club, its pitch fires, and the old men droning bits of the history of headhunting days. And so they would steal away some night, defying the orden of the government. I used to go on hikes that sometimes lasted a week, visiting the village elders and trying to bring them to accept the views of the government in regard to the younger generation. I was received as a nuisance and met a thousand excuses and evasions. Borrowing from their religious ceremonial a tactic of turning aside evil spirits, they tried to direct my attention elsewhere. "Go to such and such a town," they would say, naming their most hated enemies. "The children there badly need education." could sound only a deep wish that the government would in all tings leave em alone. Reluctantly, I would The Half-Way Sun usually have to appeal to Governor Reed who, just as reluctantly, would send police to bring the deserters back. I lived at the school, and for the sake of my table, kept some chickens. Prowling dogs from the town (a Filipino never kills a pup, but lets it grow up to a hungry death-inlife existence) used to scavenge and fight around the school nightly. One Saturday night, hearing a chicken squawk, I shot a do for which I was a bit sorry when I saw she was supporting a family-and pitched the carcass down the hundred-fifty foot steep to the river bed. Shortly after having returned to my quarters, I heard a hubbub that called to mind a visit to the Chicago Wheat Pit. Going to ascertain the reason, I found that the boys had retrieved the dog and were engaged in a free-for-all scramble over the carcass. The larger boys took the prized portions, the stomach and intestines. One boy screamed a demand that the external genitalia be saved for two covillagers of his who were sick, so the parts were preserved. Little Water Spider, the smallest boy, was allowed the tail, and some of his companions nearly as small, the paws Each boy roasted his portion individually at a fire out in the open, and the boy who had bespoken the reservation roasted that also. After eating and dancing, some of the boys went into the dormitory to give the sick their portion. These patients had been needing several moments to make up their minds 12 PL ATE VI Bontok girls harvesting rice.-~ w PIATE VII i lThe Bontok tattoo. %Ou A Burning House to swallow the civilized medicine with which I had been dosing them, but they unhesitatingly chewed and swallowed that now offered. TThe rationale is understandable, and is typical of primitive reasoning. It begins with a safe premise, and then, by inferences grounded in magic, keeps getting further and further from reality. These organs, reasons the Igorot, are theyreans of producing new life. Therefore they are full of vitality. What the sick man needs is more vitality. Let him eat these organs and he will have it within him. The school ration consisted of beef twice a week, salmon or sardines other days, and rice and vegetables every day. Thinking to popularize the school yet, I told the boys, next morning, that dog would be added to the menus, and that they might, if they liked, construct an ato or court similar to that adjoiing the men's club in their own villages, I pointed out that there was ample supply of dogs: that there was lacking only a nice homey place in which to scramble, cook, and dance. The abandon with which they worked to supply the lack impelled me to a new trend of thought and attitude toward primitive peoples. They brought flat stones weighing frequently over a hundred pounds up the cliff from the river bed, half a mile away. The patients, lured by a labor that savored of home life-or cured by the treatment of the night beforeoined 13 The Half-Way Sun the work parties. Other boys searched out still heavier post-like stones, three, four, even five feet long, of phallic significance in their culture, the largest of which they transported fully three miles. Meanwhile others were excavating a circle about eighteen feet wide to a depth of a foot, right in front of my quarters. They paved the area and made a rim about it of the choicer flat stones set upright to function as a chair back. The phallic stones were set at intervals outside the rim. Monday was blue as ever, and the sick list was lengthy. It was requested that the ato be dedicated that night, but although suspecting that permission would entail a miraculous recovery of the sick, I refused. That week proved the best in the history of the institution, there being no desertions and a recovery of all the ailing. To dinner next Saturday, I invited friends from town: Rowley, a geologist, and Grovf, a veterinary. When darkness fell, the boys interned themseives in the dormitory and bated their voices to a whisper o as not to frighten away any dogs. Finally one of their lookouts stole to where we white men were talking and reported a dog. I bagged him and, shortly, another. Dancing, to the rhythm of pans and cups (beaten in lieu of gs), continued till midnight. The dogs were scrambled over, and sme of the elder boys who knew a little of the 14 A Burning House religion were prevailed upon to utter the proper prayers. There were no sick, but some of the boys must have considered they needed a prophylactic or tonic. A highly enjoyable time was had by all except Grovf. Grovf did not carry his liquor well. He developed a crying jag and-Americanlike-a deep pity for the heathen, attended by a strong uplift urge. Oh, the poor heathen devils. They don't know an better-the awful pity of it they should be so low (Sob, sob!) They. they gotta be taught better. It isn't right for 'er to be so low!... It isn't right for 'er to be so ignorant (His sobbing turned to soobing) It isn't right to let 'em even if they wanto,.(Soob, soob, soo!)" Rowley and I tried to mitigate his grief by rationalizing the practice: if the earth's population should ever increase to an extent that should make food shortag inevitable, we told him, the Igorot's utilization of this unusual source might prove the very thing to pull him through to survival. But Grovf only "soobed" the more. Captain Cook, the famous explorer, commends the flesh of the South Sea dog as being nothing to despise, as being, in fact, "next to our English lamb." I had a choice cut of dog reserved for myself and properly cooked-so far as one can judge who ventures to pioneer. I concluded that Philippine dog was not South Sea dog. 15 The Ha/f- Way Sun While one ought to be broadminded as to tastes, he can hardly forgive the Igorot's preferred method of killing the dog (or chicken). The animal is starved for a day or so, then given all the cooked rice it can eat. After a wait of three or four hours, it is slowly beaten to death or near death with a stick. The ante-mortem pounding is believed to make the flesh tender and bring out the flavor. The stomach and intestines with the partially digested rice are said to be a rare delicacy. 4 -At the Industrial School were four or five Filipino teachers. One of these, Maria, an attenuated, gangling, spinsterlike girl from Tagudin, was the "academic" teacher. She would hold an "object" before her class (in our school, owing to its "industrial" nature, it was thought best to use tools as "objects") and would ask one of the group itching and sweating in their unwonted clothes, "What is diss?" "Dot is a rrrip-saw." She would give the boy the object and ask, "What hab you" "You hab de rrrip-saw," he would probably answer "No-ah! do not hab de rrrip-saw You hab de rrripsaw! Now, what hab you?" A Burning House "You hab de rrrip-saw," would come the answer again. Then Maria's voice would rise to higher and higher pitches in the effort, without using the local dialect to explain, to teach our pronouns of the first and second persons. Such was the approved method, and it was a strict rule of the Bureau of Education that teachers must not use the vernacular in the classroom. To the spirit of this rule Maria wuld religiously adhere, and she would never give up a struggle till she attained at least nominal victory. But she could not repress quick phrases of curse words in her native tongue, interpolations of her opinions of a numbskull's intellect. I reminded her that only English was allowed in the classroom and offered to teach her substitutes in our language. But none relieved her like those she had learned from her mother, and in view of the fact that she had to abide by the Bureau's rule, I did not insist. After a struggle with a dull pupil, Maria would allow herself a period of recuperation. She would engage one of the bright ones in some such conversation as this. "Can you ply, Tree-Pern?" 'No, I cannot ply." "Yes, you cannot ply. Who can ply" "De bird can ply." "Why you cannot ply?" "Becoss I hab, no wings."1 The Half-Way Sun "Yes, you hab no wings. Therreforrre you cannot ply." "Now," she would ask of another, "why Tree-Pern cannot ply?" "Tree-Pern cannot ply becoss Tree-Pern hab no wings." Then there was another pronoun to teach. Maria lacked some qualities desirable in a teacher, perhaps, but she was persistent and fully earned her ten dollars a month. On my return from the Besao trip, she came to me with a very serious face. I feared she was going to resign and that I would have to take the class a few days till I could get another teacher. "Sir," she said, "I wish to take permission to go to my town. I will return in four days." "What is your reason, Maria "? "Yes, because my husband is bery sick." Relieved that the absence was to be for so short a time, I took the classes and, trampling on Bureau rules, used my smattering of the vernacular and straightened out the troublesome pronouns for all time except as to deserters not present. Maria rode a horse to Tagudin, forty miles away, and returned on schedule time. "How did you find your husband, Maria?" I asked. "0 sir, it died! It could only say, 'thank you, Maria,' 18 A Burning House when I arrived... we buried it yesterday." And she began to cry. "Well, that is very sad." "0 yes, sir-but if it did not die soon after I am arrived, I would be tardy to return!" she answered, between sobs. 5, Everyone, I suppose, has heard that it is impossible to eat a quail a day for a month. There is an unkillable tradition that men who have chanced money to assert that ability have always lost. Perhaps therein lies a similarity of canine flesh to quail- am sure there is no other. At all events, the addition of do to a menu that already surpassed what their homes offered failed to reconcile my pupils to a scholastic life. Desertions and sick list rose to par again I, too, was discontented and for an additional reason. A culture that was a figurative burning house, was to me, not much more sufferable than the literal reality. The Spaniards had christianized a little among these Igorots and had worked them in mines and coffee plantations a great deal. And now under the intensive operations of our own government, this same folk had to bear the brunt of the enforced trail-building and carrying of supplies from the 19 The Half-Way Sun coast to the more remote provinces. The effect had been to make them furtive, evasive, mean, spiritless. One could not blame them, neither could he like them. Hearing that a teacher in the Sub-province of Ifugao was dissatisfied because some of the folk there had speared him -partly because he lived in a region they did not like, but principally thinking to get a head-I informed the Bureau of Education of my desire to swap jobs. The transfer was approved. About a year later, the Cervantes Industrial School was discontinued. 20 II HIGH TRAILS IN HEADHUNLRTERD 0OM Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one. "The Task"-Cowper. I. Wl ITH an American who was going to Bontok, a / Mr. House, I left Cervantes for my new station For a good share of the route our way led by an old Spanish trail along the very summit of a mountain range and marked the boundary between tropic and temperate zone vegetations: on th east were tall, straight, sweet-smelling pines and short grass; on the west, trees with great, gnarled buttresses, tangled vines, tree-ferns, climbing bamboo, begonias, ill-smelling watery-stemmed herbs and a matted undergrowth through which one would be able to pass only by hewing literally every inch of his way-all dripping from the fog with which the winds fro the China Sea spray that side of the range throughout the night and sometirmes all day long. There was no transitionzone-just a line! The pine forests would have disappeared long ago had they not been assiduously preserved and cared 21 The Half-Way Sun for by the Igorots, who, in this respect, have proven quite civilized. Far eastward, in a parallel range, looking over an extinct volcanic cone one could see Mount Datu, the second mountain of lzon its base covered by straw-colored rano reeds, with here and there dark patches that were clearings or rice fields. Its top was densely forested, and its sides were streaked white by foamy torrents and waterfalls or red where great landslides had carried all before them. A few villages could be discerned on its slopes. Near one of them, Mancayan, are rich deposits of copper and thin veins of gold. The Igorots of the vicinity mine the gold, but no American has been able to make it pay. The Igorots re-....... nounce women while working a vein, since otherwise, they say, the vein would quickly peter out. White men were holding copper claims. Until they could "get capital interested," they were living principally on future expectations and the, sweet potatoes and cabbage raised by their native wives. Occasionally they would work for the Province at bossing construction gangs. They had the success in enduring each other that white men usually have in the tropics or arctic zone. In this respect they ranked but a few degrees above missionaries, who are at the foot of the list. Their taste in renaming Igorot wives seems to have been their 22 Hgh Trails In Headtunlerdom sole point of harmony, nearly all of them choosing the name 'Maggie." In their region it became a common noun in the Igorot language, a naggie indicating an Igorot woman kept by an American. On the second day, dropping a little from an elevation of about 650o feet, we looked out on a broad valley, every foot of which is terraced It is surpassingly beautiful, but theterracing of Ifugaoland is on a much grander scale. Here the retaining walls are seldom over fifteen feet high. One notices that they are almost perpendicular. The hill man begrudges every inch of slant, since it diminishes by so much the cultivable area at the top. Often the width of the field is less than the height of the wall. On mountain sides and on hillocks in the valleys are great limestone masses that erosion has left bare. Their purer portions have been dissolved away by rain so that what is left stands in fantastic towers, barbicans, and battlements. But as we passed through the valley a heavy drizzle set in, and fog and cloud softened extravagant reality, making it plausible. We came soon to the large town of Sagada A sight the more unpleasant because we were the cause of it turned us from the beauty all around. We had to change cargadores and were to see how the new ones were obtained. Men were summoned by police to the presidcnria They protested at The Half-Way Sun carrying, saying they had work of their own to do-which may or may not have been a fact. A few words from the Filipino secretary of the township, and the Igorot chief of police brought his club down on the heads of the principal objectors and terminated their argumentativeness. "Por fucrza, Seior, por fuerza!" said the FilP pino, and looked to me for a commendation I could not give. We expected to reach Bontok that night. The rain grew heavier. The trail was deep with mud at places-dangerous. There was danger that our ponies, struggling, would flounder off the side of the trail, in which case, several seconds might be required to reach the earth again. So it had happened to a bishop. He and his pony had dropped sixty feet. Neither was hurt much, having landed in more mud. Even so the bishop was positive that only a divine interposition had saved him-and those who saw where he fell could offer no better explanation. Taking no chances on Providence, House and I would dismount and squdge through the mud, riding only where tile trail was firm. At about four o'clock we reached a stream ordinarily small but now swollen. A Bontok man named Ghost was there, his long hair tucked into a diminutive rattan skull cap of a style that proclaimed its wearer a married man. He told us that he had been exhibited in 24 High Trails In Headhunterdom America and had liked the experience. He grinned and displayed two gold crowns set, I am sure, on sound teeth. Ghost helped us across the stream, but my horse and I came so near being carried into the cascade below that I registered an oath, the subsequent keeping of which has probably saved my life many ties, that I would never again stay on horseback when crossing a swollen stream. We toiled over a mountain and, descending again, came to a stream somewhat larger than the first and more swollen. It was very narrow. A bridge pier in the middle, twenty feet high, once useful but now bereft of anything to hold up, testified what the stream was capable of. We were thoroughly soaked it was half dark, getting cold, and still raining. In such a situation the human mind turns to fireplaces, food, dry clothes. Only two miles away these things awaited us along with the society of compatriots, reading matter, and light. Across that short distance they beckoned powerfully. "Shall we try it. It doesn't look very big." said House. An uprooted tree floated past! It startles me yet when I think how near we came to trying to ford that current. Our cargadores, the unfortunates obtained par fuera came up in about half an hour. House found a place under a jutting rock that was big enough for a man except that 25 The Half-Way Sun if he sat down his feet would stick out into the storm. I had a cot and bedding, but my raincoat would not cover them, and leaked besides. The cargadores found other rocks to cower under. Toward midnight the stars came out, the rain ceased and it grew exceedingly cold. Soaked blankets formed excellent conductors, and soon I was shivering painfully. Be thinking me of my little servant boy, Blacksnake, I reasoned that he must have been thoroughly washed because, Bontok fashion, he had taken off his g-sting and traveled nude through all that rain. I called him to share my cot. He brought a gratifying addition of heat, but also a formidable personal odor. I went to sleep for a time, but awakening and finding the odor more oppressive than ever, I roused Blacksnake and dismissed him. I did not feel so very inhumane, because I had made an honest attempt to get used to him. It must have been a personal oddity of his, since the Malay racial odor is usually fainter than that of most races. The night's experience, like a small boy's licking, "felt better when it was over." Early in the morning we discovered, upstream, what fog and darkness had hidden the night before, a platform running across the stream on a cable. Leaving our horses to be forded later, we were in Bontok for breakfast. 26 THigh Trails In Headkunterdom 2. From this, its capital, let us survey the provincial government and its subjects. The pagan tribes were, at that time, governed by the Philippine Commission, whose members were appointed by the President of the United States. The Commission was the upper legislative branch for the whole archipelago, and six of the members held executive portfolios as well. One of these, the Secretary of the Interior, was vested with executive control over the wild tribes. There were three provincial executives, the governor, the provincial engineer, and the secretary-treasurer. They also comprised a provincial board having, subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, extensive powers as to local laws. Each member, too, had justice-of-the-peace powers. In each of the seven sub-provinces there was a lieutenantgovernor, who, in addition to the executive function implied by the title, had limited legislative powers and also full justice-court jurisdiction. The law provided for an appeal, but the people did not know this and so, in effect, decisions were final. The three functions traditionally separate in American government were thus, in the subprovinces, centered in one man. This un-Americanism was 27 The Half-Way Sun based on the conviction that the local government of the pagans was a one-man job. No doubt this was correct, but it happened, of course, that unfit men were sometimes appointed to it. However, two prizes were drawn, Jeff 1D. Galiman and Walter H. Hale, and were assigned to Ifugao and Kalinga, respectively, where they would do the most good. Both governed by tribal law as much as possible. I lived for many years under the government of Gallman and his successor, Captain 0. A. Tomlinson, it was the best government I ever lived under. The Bureau of Education was confronted with the task of teaching soething of value to a people who had lived in the region for thousands of years and who offered strong evidence of making the best of it already. Geography, history and English could hardly do much to better them even when supplemented by such industrial training as we were able to give. Stunts were performed, such as building with pupils' labor a stone schoolhouse and government building, thereby teaching some three score youths the stone-cutters trade. But none of these young men ever built a stone house for himself or a neighbor, although the environment offered plenty of stone. Well, the American people were bent on educating, just as the Spaniards were always bent on christianizing 28 PLATE VIII The Ifugao tattoo; the following designs may be distinguished; dancing man, dog, shield, eagle, centipede, scorpion, thunderbolt, star. PiLATE IX Ifugao girls. H gih Trails In HeadhunLerdom 3 -The pagan tribes are all of the Malay race; polytheists, animists, and ancestor worshippers; headhunters now or in recent times, the family is in all the principal social unit. Clothing and ornamentation differ, but the males all wear a g-string, and the females a loin cloth wrapped around the hips. Like the rest of the Malays, and like the Japanese, all the tribesmen are born with a triangular or irregular patch of bluish skin at the base of the sacrum that is usually evanescent after a few months or years, but occasionally persists in adults.* All eat dog except the Ifugaos, the Apayaos, and a portion of the Kalinas. No tribe has even remotely approached tribal organization or government. Strange to say, the languages fall into groups along with those of their lowland brethren. Thus, pagan Ifugao, Bontok, and Kankanai (Benguet and Lepanto Igorot) range * The fugitive sacral spot has a considerable literature. It was first observed by Baelz among the Japanese and thought characteristic. They did not like that much. It has a rather wide distribution. I found it among the Maya (See the appendix of my "In Indian Mexico"). Adachi (Japanese) was wonderfully delighted to find it among Germans. I believe it would be only among Alpines, who are surely Mongolian broadheads. Of course the Japanese have "Indonesian" in their make-u and your North Luzon pagans are "Indonesian" both physically and culturally.-Frederick Starr. 29 The Half- ay Sun themselves with Christian Ilokano; while pagan Nabaloi (Benguet Igorot) and Kalinga group themselves with Christian Pangasinan. The difference between languages of the same group is comparable to that between Spanish and Italian; while languages of different groups compare about as Spanish and French. Monogamy is the general rule, but in all the tribes there are wealthy individuals who practice polygamy or concubinage. Children of the rich are married at an early age, always with an ante-nuptial agreement as to what property each family will allot its member. Sometimes there are tentative engagements before one child is born. Negotiations are always opened by the boy's family Commoners marry by trial in the girls' dormitory. Pagan social cohesion is interesting in that it shows a coincidence with, possibly an effect of, climate and soil. The habitat of the Igorots, most of the Bontoks and part of the Kalingas, lies between well-defined mountain ranges. The soil is usually poor, rainfall is capricious, and the streams are likely to dry up. The mountains are covered with pines and short grass. The folk can go considerable distances to their fields without much danger of being ambushed. They dwell in rather large towns. There is no town government, but the towns are divided into wards each governed to a great extent by a council. Headhunting ex30 Hjg'h Trails In Headhunterdom peditions are large and sometimes preceded by a declaration of war. They may be carried on by only a few wards of a town, but the whole town repels an attack on any of its wards. The Ifugaos, among whom I was to be stationed, and part of the Kalingas live on the eastern side of the primary range, where the rainfall is more dependable and the soil better. The mountains are heavily forested or covered with a tall thick growth of cane-like reeds called runo. Headhunting expeditions in these regions are nearly always by small parties who attack from ambush. Consequently folk find it necessary to live close to their fields in scattered hamlets. Yet the population is dense. Cohesion, except to the family group, is very weak. There is no council of elders. In Luzon outside of Mountain Province are 67,000 other pagans, some of whom are pymy blacks. The total population of the Philippine Islands is between ten and eleven millions, of whom about one-tenth are pagans or Mohammedans.* * The boundaries of the sub-provinces of Mountain Province correspond pretty closely with the ethnic and cultural boundaries See Appendix II for a tabulation of the tribes, their numbers, and characteristics. 31 The Half-Way Sun 4. Late on the second day out of Bontok, I arrived in Ifugaoland. Descending through terracing far grander than any I had yet seen, I received at Benaue, then the subprovincial capital, a cordial welcome from LieutenantGovernor Gallman. There were guests at the government house: Dr. Stirkins, a collector for a Chicago museum, and Mr. Henry Reeder, a Mancayan miner who had been sent over to boss trail construction. Excessive zeal and lack of discrimination had nearly proven Mr. Reeder's undoing. He had begun applying to the uncivilized Ifugaos the methods that he had found efficacious with the Lepanto Igorots. But the Ifugaos had come to Gallman threatening to truss the white man to a pole and carry him out of the country unless he were otherwise removed. They said if he wanted to speed up a laborer fifty yards away, he would start in kicking another conveniently at his elbow until X"the soul almost left the body." Gallman was arranging a transfer back to Lepanto. One of the charms of those days in the Philippines was in the diversity of type encountered in our countrymen. The homeland once had it, and might still have if we did not insist on melting and remolding the human strains that come to us and in rearing our young to a fixed type. We 32 Two of the wards of a Bontok town. Negrits, pigmy blacks, not related racially to Filipinos or mountain pagans; forest dwellers. High Trails In Headhkunerdom are easier to manage so; doubtless we are stronger in war we are also more likely to get into war. Gallman was a Southerner of the class and type that had officered the Confederate States. Dynamic and volatile, he had run away from home while yet in the graimar school, but he had so educated himself "by ear," by reading, and by experience that he was always being asked of what university he was a graduate. Stimkins was little different, I suspect, from the fellow who had left a frat house about fifteen years before. Henry Reeder had come from across the Atlantic at a tender age, but long years in the sagebrush country had given him a manner of speech that is now well nigh extinct. When the drowsiness that follows a heartily partaken dinner began to lay hold on his gests, Gallman gave one of his houseboys an indicating glance. The boy fetched a jar from which Gallman poured rice wine, a brew tasting a little like Japanese sak, but much better. "There's not an unkindness in it," he said, "because of the loving care of the people of these parts in making it yes sir, because of their loving care!" "It is also a religious rite," added Henry Reeder. "Pra'ar and rice wine, they goes together in this hill country, an' rice wine, in a manner of speakin' is pra'ar. Whlch, although in the follies of my youth, my soul never honed 33 The Half-Way Sun whatever for the transcendental, I am now a very pious man and prays on every occasion possible." "Speaking of liquor," said Stimkins, "I once heard a piano player in a dance hall say, 'They are no bad.'" "But some is better than others," jibed Gallman. "Confess that you find this rice wine better than specimens pickled in alcohol." "Pers'nally, I takes my snake juice without the reptiles," remarked Henry Reeder. At both these remarks Stimkins winced. He had sent a report some months previously to his museum of his having been caught in a five days typhoon, of having been deserted by his cargadores and left on a high mountain top, where he had almost perished of cold and starvation. The museum had given the news to the Chicago papers. In the Philippines of those days, nothing would so expose to ridicule as writing to home papers about hardshipsI The Manila papers had copied the Chicago item, and one of them had commented: Dr. Stimkins starve there on the top of that mountains Bless you, nonot as long as Dr. Stimkins had his baggage and its specimens preserved in alcohol! The talk turned on our fellow man. "Which, them Mancayan Igorots cain't see that thirty 34 High Trails In Headhunterdom cents a day ain't wages for a white man," said Henry Reeder. "If they finds a quartz lead, they cmnyaos a dog and objures women complete, drinks only rice wine, and eats only rice and bab1ui [pig], until they gets enough ahead to keep 'em awhile. If they makes thirty cents a day, they thinks they're doin' fine. An' they thinks the only reason us whites don't mine for gold is that we cain't leave women alone." Stimkins wished to irritate Gallman, and began comparing the Bontoks and the Ifugaos to the disadvantage of the latter-a method sure to succeed. I gathered in the discussion that followed that the two peoples were dissimilar much as were the Romans and Greeks, the Bontoks having a superior political organization, and the Ifugaos a higher development in arts, mythology and religion. When one of my countrymen thought it time for another drink, he would raise his filled glass and cry "Amin," the Ifugao word for "all." The rest would respond, "Amen," and all would drain their classes at one swig. This vogue captured the entire province. It was a thoroughly American and eficient way of getting results The Ifugao practice was the opposite-to n ke as many drinks out of the sup ply as possible, Ad not to take another until the effect of the last was dying ot Rice wine is mbde by sprinkling a certain yeast (ob35 The Half-Way Sun tained from the roots of a plant and cultured in rice-flour cakes with many prayers) over partially cooked rice. A variety of red rice makes the best wine and is, therefore, a highly religious variety. When the malt begins to drip, it is put into jars where it continues fermenting and producing its precious liquid until the alcoholic content approaches fourteen per cent, the theoretical maximum of fermentation and just about right. I think it was at what Henry Reeder called "sixth drink time," that Stimkins began to sing, "When you and I were young, Maggie." Gallman thereupon began watching Henry expectantly. Soon that grizzled derelict threw his arms on the table, buried his face, and his great chest began to labor as he sobbed, "That's my Magie... oh, my Maggie.. which it is my darlin' Magie".. no sobbing this, like Grovf's, but sobs from a breaking heart. It was now or never with me if I wanted to go to bed on my own steam, so I excused myself Stimkins kept Henry weeping far into the nightI know for I awoke and heard it still going on. I think they practiced this diversion every night. 5 -Next morning I turned southward o the last lap of my journey. Rounding a sharp curve of the trail I surprised 36 "Descending through terracing far grander than any I had yet seen. High Trails In Headhanterdom a young Ifugao woman bathing in pur/s natur1b1S s in a little stream. She stood up, confused, and clapped her hand over her mouth. I was to have the same experience many times, later. The pagan when embarrassed always covers the mouth; the reason, I think, harks back to tooth-filing Many Philippine tribes even now file their teeth to triangles. The operation is performed with an old file, and the seeker for this form of beauty has to be kept from changing his mind by four men besides the operator. It is an easy practice to drop. He who drops it is likely to do two things: he will blacken his teeth, either as a substitute or to render them less conspicuous; and still uneasy at not having followed the vogue, he will cover his mouth when meeting people, especially strangers. And when toothblackening is dropped, there is the same reason again for covering the mouth. All these pagan tribes either file or blacken the teeth or present vestiges of a time when they did. In some parts of Ifugao the incisa edge is merely filed level; in some parts the teeth are blackened. In Benguet, till recently, better class women wore a gold shield in front of their teeth at feasts and special occasions. * I am not quite satisfied that there is a necessary relation between covering the mouth and tooth-filing. To cover the mouth in a mo~ ment of surprise (or unbalance) is very common, and often occurs among peoples who do not file the teeth; for example, the Otomi and other Mexican Indians.-Frederick Starr. 37 The Half-Way Sun I was halted again by a swollen river, and had to wait about eighteen hours for it to run down. Next morning, I took my shoes off and, helped by cargadores, forded it, the water being more than waist deep and the current swift. Bruised feet and torn toes reminded me for several days that the white man had better leave his shoes on when fording mountain streams. After going a few miles further, I had a view of PlaceSet-with-Ethics-Locks which was to be my home for the next eight years. It was on the slope of a mountain that stood on the farther side of the rice fields of the Kiangan region, a wide valley in whose fringes were several little villages almost hidden under coffee bushes, banana plants, coconut and areca palms. Arriving, I sent for Red Ant and rented his nearly new lowland-Filipinotype housefive rooms and a kitchenfor $7.5o a month. The house was raised about eight feet above ground on piles, the roof was thatch, the floor and walls of beautiful hardwood, and the ceilings of bamboo matting. I employed the cook and houseboy left by my predecessor and was glad to be at home. 6. For a while I had to teach classes, but was soon allowed to get another native teacher and devote most of my time 38 High Trails In Headhunferdom to getting out lumber and burning lime for a school building. I would spend weeks in the forest with large gangs of Ifugao laborers. Next year an American miner from Mancayan, an expert stone-cutter, was sent over. An industriomilitary school in which youths enlisted, receivced pay, and were under military discipline, was organized. By their labor, construction of a large and handsome school building was undertaken. Along with official duties, I attacked the Ifugao language. It is happily free of the grotesque phonetics found in American Indian tongues, and is an easy language to acquire if one can dismiss the grammatical conceptions of his own. It belongs to a linguistic family that has more members, probably, than any other and which reaches from the mainland of Asia to Easter Island and from Hawaii to Madagascar, not including Australia and parts of New Guinea. It is a highly inflected language, employing inflection in a way quite different from the usage of the Indo-Germanic languages, wasting no effort on gender and case, and but little on person, number, tense or mode. They who charge Malay languages with a poverty of abstractions probably judge from the fact that the folk are not given to abstract thinking. But the languages, judging from Ifugao, a humble member of the family, have infinite capabilities waiting to be used. 39 The Half-Way Sun The Ifugaos overwork the preterite infix in. Instead of babai, woman, they often say, binabai, "womaned" or "was-made-a-woman." Perhaps I was wrong in thinking that there was a deeper sense of "happened-by-an-incidentof-fate-to-be-a-woman"; they might, I suppose, go so far and be biologically correct. They use the infix a great deal in names, and changed mine from "Balton," as they pronounced it, to "Binalton," %as-Made-Balton An Ifugao has but one name, but it is changed if he become seriously ill in order to conceal him from the demons or ancestral spirits believed to be producing the disease. We may see certain cultural and psychic implications in the language. Remarkably few words that apply to persons distinguish as to sex. This fact corresponds to sex equality in the cultura relegation of sex to approximately its biologic field. There are three words in the place of our "we": dita [dual], "you and I"; ditako [ inclusive ], "you and your party and I and my party"; and dakami [exclusive], "I and my party but not yours." I found the last two pronouns hard to learn to use until I associated them with the "we-all" and the "we-uns of certain regions of our south. It seemed though I do not know whether it be correct Cracker usage-that "we-all" ought to be an inelusive form and 'we-uns," an exclusive. At any rate the 40 iPIATE XIII (a) Benauie Government House. (b) Tooth-filing in another Philippine tribe. Iower teeth blackened. s:;:~~::: Y -I-:" :i:::::,g, -.:1 ia-i I-g E -i:::: -:::': P LilB JB t~ X a~-~ C Some of the first pupils. The third from the left is in the legislature now. High Trails In HeadhAnterdom fancy helped me in the Ifugao, and there is the same need in both regions for the two forms: factions that may not wish to be included in the samte "we". There is a multiplicity of words for things that we group together. From the time it is laid in the seedbed until the leavings from the family meal are gathered up, rice in its various stages of growth, harvesting, garnering, threshing and cooking is given about twenty names. The home-grown cotton has four before it is spun into thread. Each kind of donmestic animal has several to designate its various periods of growth and reproductive life. There is more than either verbosity or definiteness in this there is objective-mindedness and, I think, a tendency to see differences rather tian likenesses-an averseness to generalization. In the first two thousand roots of a list that I compiled, building on which the Ifugao makes probably fifteen or twenty thousand words, only thirty-five named states of mind. Aggressiveness, stubbornness, and resentment were denoted in varying shade by four each; selfishness, pleasure, and fear by three each; love without a sex element and love with a sex element by two each. Among the rest were found roots denoting acquiescence to avoid a quarrel, taciturnity, loquacity, meddlesomeness, and the like. More than two thirds denoted mental states of social rather than individual concern, and were such as must be observed 41 The Half-Way Sun objectively rather than subjectively. The Ifugao does not apply in his subjective world the discrimination with which he views rice. He has no separate words for emotion, thought, volition, consciousness, but lumps them all together as nemner. To a white man, necmem seems the most overworked word in the language Painful moods he calls Ihaia He is not sufficiently introspective to analyze or classify his pain as worry, discontent, frustrated ambition or repressed instinct. Still less is he able to make a prognosis of its duration, try to control it, or philosophize it away. Without perspective or self-analysis, he only feels that his self has become a raw and aching thing that he must get rid of. In a mood of that sort he is dangerous. While building the school, I had a large gang of Ifugaos working out their ten-days poll tax at burning lime high on the slopes of Center Mountain. One day a laborer applied to Was-MadeLonesome, the foreman, for permission to go home. This was denied him. Two days later he ran amok, killed three men and stabbed Was-Made-Lonesome. The other laborers said that h had complained for some days past of being in a state of higa. The building was being erected by youths learning the stone-cutters' and carpenters' trades. They applied frequently for furloughs that could not be granted without 42 Hit Trais In Head.unterdom interrupting construction to some extent. After the occurrence at the limekiln, I was uneasy when a pupil would apply for a furlough on the ground of suffering from z /ga. I would lend him a few centavos, give him a half-holiday, and tell him to spend both in the village. After that, if he still complained of 1iga, I would give him the furlough. The boys soon learned that /iaga was a furlough-gainer and began overworking it. I then used to have the "first sergeant" investigate to find out whether the /iqa was genuine-he got to taking bribes And so it went -a defense devsed to offset an attack on the furlough privilege, circumvention of the defense by the boys, a new defensive, and so on. Gradually, being quite susceptible to the military spirit, the youngsters learned that they could not be like soldiers unless they had "disciplina," and there was less danger from higa. Ifugao groups are kindly and cooperative in a protective and economic wav. But the culture prescribes all relations and reactions impersonally, and if the prescription happens to run counter to the individual's nature, no one notices and sympathizes. And so, an Ifugaos life is a lonely one-the more lonely, perhaps, because of the very infallibility of the ties that unite him to his group. Neither understanding his own mind and reactions, nor understood, 43 The Half-Way Sun no more does he try to understand his neighbor. Ask about the temperament, problems or personal qualities of another, and the most that you will evoke is that he is stingy or that he is a fearless headhunter or that he is striving to become a kadalngang. But it is more likely that you will be answered by an impatient "tawan!"-an exclamation disclaiming any knowledge and still more any interest in the subject. 7, After the school building was finished, I was ordered to establish and supervise other schools in the sub-province. This work necessitated my travelling from one to two hundred miles a month by pony or on foot, and was much to my taste. Returning from a eek's trip, one time, I found myself held up a few miles from home by a flood in the river. I undertook to swim it, but, in the shallow water on the other side, was thrown against a boulder with such force that I was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. I managed to cling to the boulder till some Ifugaos came from a field near by and helped me ashore. Next time the river balked me, I stayed overnight in the village on its banks. Travelling with me that time was Uprooted Tree, the presidente of a neighboring district. 44 Playing at war with reed tips and shields. Laying the last stone of the new school building. High Trails In Headiunferdom We went to the house ofa kadangyang* where my cool prepared food. Our host was going to leave his house t( us-I could never get the Ifugaos to show me a lesser cour tesy —bu t felt cmpunctions at dispossessing him "Where would you slee) if I were'not along?" I aske: Uprooted T'ree. "Why not sleep in the dormitory for the unmarriedi? he sugested. "That is where I would go." I borrowed a bed and pillow from the kadangyang thi bed was a wide board about fivt lonf g and tle pillov was a block of wood to put under the head of the bed. "Here-you!" said the kadangyang to a loitering boy "Go to the house of Bride's Ornanment and tell the girls th' the white apo and our apo Uprooted Tree will sleep therI and are not to be refused admlission." Notwithstanding the kadangyang's recommendation, thn girls dcemurred at admitting so strane a being as a whitn man, but Uprooted Tree soon taleI them into it. TherI were present Bride's Ornament, a widow and the owner of the house, two small girls, two boys about eigIt year old, a young woman and her lover, another young woma: Three native words are not talicized because they are ust e repeatedly: kadangyang, "rich ana"; apo, literally "ancestor but also a term of repect signifyng "lord," or naster"; and rmo ka'lun, to be eplained later, a word our language might wll adop inasmuch as our progressive cities are borroWing the function it or anrd more 45 The Half-Way Sun No-Waistline, who had no lover, and yet a third, WasMade-Radiant, whose demeanor and mere buds of breasts indicated that she was probably still a maid. "Where are your betels?" said Uprooted Tree-for that is the stereotyped salutation. "K;ao! Have the Ligaue folk betels?" bantered NoWaistline. "The rats got them all, this year!" "You are only fooling," returned Uprooted Tree. "It is a fact! We get betels only when some generous and handsome young fellow gives us some." "Well then, what about a betel leaf " "How could there be betel leaves when there are so many grasshoppers? But I have heard that Was-MadeRadiant keeps a full lime-box so as to make herself attractive to the men." And so it went as it always does when Ifugaos meeteach tried to conserve his own supply of the three ingredients of betel-chewing and to inveigle other folk out of theirs. Finally, quids were made up, and all settled themselves about the open fire in the cooking place. "What brought the apo to our sleeping-place, Uprooted Tree?" "Taian! That's his lookout." "Our Was-Mde-Raadiant can find no lover here in the 46 High Trails In Headhunferdom village who is acceptable to her. This apo, did fate, perf haps-" "Kao! He's as big as a horse," ejaculated Was-MadeRadiant, angrily. "Even so-you might later on prize hims" "His eyes are like a cat's," said one of the small boys. "Say rather that he is like maize," commented the other. "Do you not see the silks?' "Red Rice!" chirped one of the little girls. "Keep quiet, you children," ordered Uprooted Tree. "This apo knows our speech. He will be angry." "Oh no I am not angry," said I. "Although my body is a little different, my feelings [nemnem] are gentle-just like the Ifugaos'!" Ifugaos called the Spaniards "mraize" because they wore beards that suggested the silks of corn. They often call Americans "red rice" because of our tanned faces and hands. My eyes are blue, but any eyes except dark brown seem to the Ifugaos to resemble cats' eyes "He speaks truly," said Uprooted Tree. "His feelings are the same as urs. Is he not human? And- "he turned toward Was-Made-Radiant, "the apos all have big salaries." "He would be good at spading rice fields," said the 47 The iHalf-Way Sun widow, see how long his arms are. Probably he doesn't know how, but he could learn." The widow brought out raw cotton in a wide flat basket, and set the boys to tearing the seeds out of it and the little girls to fluffing it on small bows, while she and the larger girls spun it with spindle-whorls. The youth played his lover's harp-a bamboo Jew's-harp through which words are chanted in a pOetic language. There came a tapping at the door and a voice from outside, "Open ye Open ye!" "It is Deer, from Banao," sneered No-Xaistline. She raised her voice, "No. We will not open. Go back to Banao, When I say 'I will not!' that means you'd better look for a different girl." The swain outside began playing his lover's harp. He was chanting: Give ear and harken, you Mary's (Buvran). you damsels, you pretty ones! This body of mine has come to your assembling place, your slumbering place, your comfort-taking place, seeking acquaintance and to attain harmony with you Mary's, you darrsels, you pretty ones. Perchance the bodies of you Mary's, you damsels, you pretty ones, would like solace, sympathy, or-possibly endearment? 48 High Trails In Hcadhlunterdom But if your bodies do not respond, if they reject this body of mine, or if they palaver or antagonize, then this my body will not come a second time or a third to this your assembling place, your slumbering place, your comfort-taking place' Now, had No-Waistline been minded mt temporize or to coquette, she would have answered through her lover's harp in some such phrases as these Give ear and harken to my words, you player of the part of William (Guminid), you player of the part of a fine young man: your body has come to this, our slumbering place, our comfort-taking place, and our bodies have passed the lover's harp around the circle [to take the sense of the meeting. Go hence and quit this slumbering place of ours, this comfort-taking place of ours. For our bodies do not desire or respond, because your body is in harmony with the bodies of other Mary's, other damsels, other pretty ones who:may become enrtagecd at the bodies of these Mary's here Our bodies are not harmonious to your body as are theirs. But the disdainful one did not even listen to him. Instead, she expressed herself to us inside as being quite displeased 49 The Half-Way Sun that such an oaf should presume to offer himself He was lazy, came of poor stock-of a family that had no fields and never had any. To be sure, she confessed, she had no estate herself, but her eldest brother had, and one of her grandfathers had been a kadangyang. That fellow outside -e had applied for enlistment in the constabulary and been turned down. Besides he was very black. "Uprooted Tree, my apo!" came the voice from outside. Uprooted Tree did not answer. "Uprooted Tree, my apo, I know that you are in thereopen the door for me!" "Do you think I own this sleeping house?" returned Uprooted Tree "It depends on what the girls say." Uprooted Tree's attitude was correct. The large girls rule the roost, and a man would be very folish who would try to infringe upon their prerogative. They often refuse a suitor entrance and match their wits against his on the lover's harp for a while, intending fro the first to admit him after they have displayed a seemly amount of modesty and indifference, but if, as in the present instance, the "no" was meant, the youth had just as well give up and go away Deer played his last trump. "May we not even chew betels togetherS." he pleaded. "I have nuts and leaves for all, if soebody inside has lime." His appeal evoked no answer; so he went away. 50 Hih Trails In Headhunterdom Uprooted Tree drew a lover's harp from his hip-bag and hunmmed through it an improvisation to No-Waistline that evoked titters from all and cries of 'Ah kao! This one here!" Gradually and unostentatiously he crowded her away from the center of the room and isolated her in a corner. One of the small boys was telling about his bird snares he thought somebody was robbing them; if he could find out who it was, he would assess an indemnity. Uprooted Tree was mumbling his sentiments privately to No-Waistline who was continually giggling, "Ah kao-this fellow here! Come and listen to him, you folks." But no one went. I was tired, spread my bed with blankets, and partially disrobed. When they saw how white a white man's untanned skin is, there were exclamations of astonishment. "What makes your skin so white?" asked No-Waistline "Is it not well to have a white skin?" I inquired. "Yes-but not so white as that. Are you all that way?" "TawanP" I answered, delighted to have a chance to turn against them their own vexing disclaimer of interest. "It is because the Aeikanos' town is so high that it reaches into the skyworld where everything is white," conjectured the widow. "What makes you think we live in the skyworld?" I asked. 51 The Half-Way Sun ("Because you know how to manufacture money and make guns and be apos," she answered. "I say it is because they have no blood in their veins, said WasiMade-Radiant, spitefully. "Well, I will tell you the e reason," said Uprooted Tree. "The apo in Benaue told me. It is true that their mountains are so high as almost to pierce the skyworld and that the gods have taught them many things. When I was a policeman in Benaue I noticed that Meikanos passing through, and some of the teniences stationed there, would take ktabul'eha to their rooms in the daytime. So I asked Apo Gallman about such a strange way of doing which seems shameless to us. He said the i2ei'kanos beget their children in the daytime and that is the reason they are white. That is a fact the apo himself told me. No doubt teI gods whom they have as neighbors told them that." hlis hypothesis was greeted with exclamations of astonishment not unringled with admiration It seemed a reasonIale explanation of our color to minds that had unfolded in an environment so keenly sensitive to magic influences as the Ifugao's. The word kalbuc/eha that Uprooted Tree used originated in Benaue. Before the coming of the whites, conmiercial sexual acts were unknown and the Ifugaos had no word for prostitute. But when mnney was brought in, a word soo had to be invented, A stable, kab/eleha ) Higi Trais In Headhulerdom (from Spanish, cabal/erza)) served frequently as a place of assignation, and the heterai who frequented it were als named from it. Uprooted Tree and No-Waistline began anew to tease the inexperienced Was-Made-Radiant warning her not to fight a kind fate that had sent an apo to end her aloofness toward men. She struck back venomously, not at them, but at me, The pile of cotton the widow had allotted as the evening's task was finished, and the folk began to go to bed Was-Made-Radiant took her sleeping-board as far as she could from the quarter I occupied and made her bed by placing the pillow under one end. Then she took the beads out of her hair, deftly substituted for her loin-cloth the thin piece of imported red cloth that by day served as a girdle so that she might use the loin-cloth, a thicker homewoven fabric, for a blanket, and, hurling a hateful look in my direction, went to bed. The girl who had a lover lay down alongside him on his sleeping-board. No-Waistline's retirement took more time. She had an odorous armpit. She talked rapidly as she rubbed it with aromatic leaves. There were other girls in the village she named them; seemingly she had taken a census of such armpits-who were worse afflicted than she: they had two instead of one. She also was acquainted with the village The Half-Way Sun armpits' various degrees of odorous intensity, and discussed the treatments she kew: soap-bush, soap-clay, ad the perfumes the lowland merchants were selling in Kiangan. Young women in that country are quite cleanly in respect to their bodies, ad as sensitive about halitosis and b.o, as anywhere, I suspect. I invite the attention of American concerns specializing along these lines to this challenge to their enterprise, and hope they may need some advertising engineering. As a reference I offer the American Bible Society, for whom I translated two books of the Bible. My rates for secular work are higher, however, than to workers in the Vineyard. Uprooted Tree renewed his courtship of No-Waistline. The girl was quite obviously repelling it with more vehemence than sincerity. I heard mention of half a peso for Uprooted Tree had a salary-nd also mention of Uprooted Tree's wife. The former weighed more strongly in the balance than the absent wife. And Uprooted Tree was a handsome fellow, gifted with a persuading tongue. Soon he reached over with his foot and put out the light that is to say, he scooped ashes deep over the gleaming brands. ater the boy arose, raked the ashes off the coals, blewsa faggot to a blaze, and with it singed his bed and the floor all around. 54 High Trails in Headhzunlrdom "'What!" said I, "are there biting insects here?" "Aren't there though? Just wait till they work their way up through those blankets of yours"' 8. In that little village were five or six other dormitories. Some of the pagan tribes build a special structure for the unmarried, but in Ifugaoland, the widowed lend their houses to the purpose and empty hoses are used. Fro the age of three or four, children sleep in a dormitory together -may go to any dormitory they please so long as they avoid their kin of the opposite sex. For there is a most rigid brother-sister avoidance. Kin forbidden to marry may not even stand near each other. Once the foreman of my limekiln wanted to make a report. I was talking to his female cousin. He asked her to go away from me so that he might approach me and speak about an urgent matter. he lover's harp may not be played in a kinswoman's presence; the sleeping board nust be called a "level"; the dormitory must not be mentioned at all; an egg must be referred to as a 'soft stone" or "rock of the chickens"; a woman's beauty, clothes or lover must not be mentioned, nor anything however remotely connected with sex. The taboos bind throughout life, but 55 The Half-Way Sun adults, by a laborious circumlocution, may speak of forbidden things if necessary. If his home village be small and he has female kin living there, a boy must go to another village to sleep. Children who will inherit much wealith are married when quite young-sometimes tentatively engaged while one is yet in itero ---partly to ally two families immediately, but principally to forestall "bad" marriage later on. A considerable part of the childhood of the two spouses is spent in the home of the parents of one and then of the other, but they sleep in the dormitory. Ifugao elders, despite-or probably because of-their practical spirit in arranging marriages, and notwithstanding the lesson of many examples, seem never to have learned that marriages of girls to younger boys are almost certain to end disastrously. The girls fall in love with men at adolescence and will not wait for the child-husbands to grow up. The comumoners and younger sons without expectations have the best of it so far as romance goes. Courtship is carried on principally in the dormitory. If of any length it is accompanied by relations that we are accustomed to consider marital. If the girl becomes preinant, the boy is only too glad to marry her-unless his station be far above hers or he be married already. A prudent girl will shun such, of course; nor will she receive attentions from more 56 High Trails In Headhuinfrdom than one lover at a time for fear she will never bear a child. Children, unless married, are sexually free. And yet, although no influence hinders, they are almost never precocious in their sex life. Girls are reserved and modest and youths have quite strong inhibitions to break down before they begin courtship: they are ignorant of its technique and obsessed by a sense of their awkwardness in the role of lover The culture tolerates but little variation in ways of doing things, atd the youth fears ridicule and loss of face. It seemed to me, too that the very freedom in which children are reared left intact natural inhibitions that artificial prescription of conduct breaks down in some other societies. Place-Set-with-Ethics-Locks and two or three other villages were under Spanish influence for a few decades; about the only result was a trifling change in sex-attitudes. The women have an exaggerated-from the standpoint of Ifugao culture-sense of modesty; a girl usually has to be raped when she takes a new lover. There is a strong aversion to taking a foreign lover, either Filipino or American. The folk say that the Spaniards gave all their mistresses something in their food or wine that rendered them sterile then and forever after; and of course they judge all foreigners from their experience with the first that came. 57 The Half- W y Sun Nothing so shocks Ifugaos as the idea of contraception They know no such measures and do not care to learn of them. Women are rather unfecund, and the rate of infant mortality is high. For our failure to observe brother-sister avoidance we white folk and the lowland Filipinos are reproached and despised by the fugaos. "Are your people like the lowlanders-do they sleep in the same house with their sisters?" I was asked. "Our houses are very big; they often have as many roons as all the houses of one of your villages," I answered. "Nakayany! Is it so, indeed? But are they as big as a large village?" "Sometimes." "If they are as big as a large village and if brothers and sisters sleep at opposite ends of them, it is perhaps not so bad. But the way the Piscao ["fish-eaters," i.e. lowlanders] do is a custom that stinks." I saw only one conception at such an immaturity as seemed to entail bad results to mother and child. By the time a girl has passed puberty, she has almost matured. As a race, the fugaos are physically at least the equal of the Japanese. Commoners begin marital relations without any formality, but four separate ceremonies, as well as gifts to the woman's kin, are required to complete the marriage. 58 High Trails In Headhzntzerdom The couple may live together for many years before the man is able to gather the requisites for becoming entirely married to his wife. Marital fidelity is higher than in most parts of America or, I suspect, any Christian country. But divorce is quick, easy, and frequent. There are at least twenty-two distinct justifications, ranging all the way from bad omens at the harvest feasts of the first year of the union to our own well-known, depressing acquaintance, Incompatibility. An Ifugao marriage can be declared to have been permanent only when one of the spouses has gone to the Abode of Souls. A divorced couple do not remarry each other. Il THE EXALTATION OF CUSTOM Consuetudo pro lege servatur.-A Law Maxim. I. TriHE Ifugaos are the largest pagan tribe under our flag. Numbering 130,000, they rank seventh in population among the peoples of the Philippines. Their habitat, although but a slight percentage of the land is, or can be, cultivated, is one of the world's thickly populated regions. To make level, irrigable fields for planting lowland rice, they have constructed prodigious works of terracing that climb the slopes to a height sometimes of five thosand feet. Strung end to end, these terraces would reach nearly half-way around the world.* Here is the highest development of mountain agriculture, and of all primitive agriculture. The only tools used in this terracing and in building irrigation canals have been a wooden spade and a wooden stake-sometimes shod with iron. The terrace wall is built firstpreferably of hard stones brought from the bed of * First calculated by Prof. H. Otley Beyer. My own calculation, independently made, is almost identical with his. Both are probably underestimates. 6o A portion of the hore -rgionlooking toward the river. In the sope of the picture are three large villages, hidden bv trees. The Benaue school, at the lower left. The Exaltation of Custom a stream. Whatever earth is available at the spot is shoveled against the wall. Then possibly at points a mile or so distant, tons of clay are cast into a ditch carrying water to the site. They are deposited as silt and, after the clay, top soil is deposited in like manner. A rice crop is hand-raised: transplanted by hand, cared for by hand, harvested by hand Time and again, while it is growing, the women go over the fields and pluck off the dead or sickly blades, pull out the weeds, gather the scum that forms on the surface of the standing water, and reduce the suckers in each stool to a number that the fertility of each particular ield is known to support. All this vegetation is thrust beneath the water into the soil, And before the field is planted again, the top soil is gathered and heaped into mounds about two feet high so that it may mellow and sweeten and so that partially decayed vegetation may be oxidized. All this work, under a flaming tropical sun that not only beats directly on the worker but is reflected back to him from the flooded field, is arduous. It can best be done by groups, and the Ifugaos cooperate to do now the fields of one and later, another; they lighten its drudgery by working and singing together. If you should be passing through a terraced area during the growing season, you would see groups of six to fifteen women going over the fields, wear61 The Half-Way Sun ing thick home-woven bodices to protect their baek their bodies bent and their hands gliding rapidly around the bases of the dark green rice stools. You would hear one of each group chanting a few lines of an epic and answered by a strong surging chorus of her companions. You would hear fainter surges of chorus from more distant groups; those from high on yonder trident mountain would be audible only when carried to you by a capricious zephyr. And if you were to pass through later, when harvest was on, you would see larger groups of both sexes, rapidly beheading the rice stalks and tying the cream-colored tops into bundles. You would notice that there tended to be a grouping according to age. You would hear the same epics being chanted and the same choruses surging as from an organ. A wine jar standing on the rice field dike-a jar that might possibly delight a connoisseur of ancient Chinese pottery-would explain the thickness of some of the voices. Not very often would the younger group be chanting epics; more frequently a boy or girl would be improvising-bantering the other sex, probablyyet both sexes would join loyally in the confirming chorus, "You Mary-Mary's, you Mary-girls, eh! It's true; it's a fact-indeed it is, eh?" or "You Williamon am ll's, you illie-boys, eh! It's true; it's a fact; indeed it is, eh?" Or you might hear quips and 62 The Exaltation of Custom speeches hurled from one to another, inspired by the affability that dwells in the genial rice wine. What a contrast betwen these spirited, usually well-fed Ifugaos and the much-cargadored, labor-forced, half-christianized folk of Lepanto! The Ifugaos had lived in absolute anarchy until the coming of the Americans. And yet it must not be thought that they therefore lived in turmoil and disorder. As a matter of fact within their social units there was far less crime and greater safety of life and property than in our own. Why have turmoil and disorder become so connoted with anarchy (without government) and lawlessness (without law) as to supplant the denotations and original meanings of the words!2 Simply because we of western nations attempt to secure the social welfare by means of government and laws-and make the human mistake of thinking our way the only one. But Asia follows a different plan. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Asian peoples, either entirely as the Ifugaosor almost entirely-as the Chinese-regulate the social group by means of Custom. Even though a custom be harsh, obedience is easy because public opinion, obJectively, and selfesteem, subjectively, impel to it. Government is either absent or very loose because the custom serves so well that there is little or no need for anything more. But the custom 63 The Half-Way Sun has to remain constant, else turmoil and confusion esult from indefinition. And weak in, or entirely lacking Government and Law, there is the greater reason for maintaining Custom. Hence, Asia's reluctance to change. Hence, the chaos when she does change. Of course we Western folk are bound by Custom, too, but not to the same degree. We have long been almost entirely free of it in the material phase of culture. And we have a custom of letting dynamic determined minorities secure almost any legislation they want-legislation that many of us do not obey. Besides, Law is objective and tends to induce a subjective rebellion; rebels against Law are likely to rebel against Custom. Which will you have: Order, Complacency, Definitenessor Change (which may or may not be Progress). Orientals seem to prefer the former; occidentals, the latter. Alas! does not a choice always involve gains and losses. In America, where to keep figures fro soaring to incomrehensibility the laws ought to be reckoned in pounds or hundredweights rather than by number, there may be surprise that Custom, an Custousto alone can take the place of laws, government and courts. A typical controversy-a composite of incidents that I encountered over and over during my years in Ifugaoland 64 PLATE XIX —:::::::::_:::::::::~::;:::::::: _:::::: I I -, -i:::i:..::::::~i::~iii:-:-:~~B -::~~-i: r~-1:ii:i 4:: Ifugao belles. / I lYS^Di" :: ~~~~~~~~~~;::0:::C^ B a b y t d g o rl h nm Baby tnesgteonlrebudrwhntevningbeoescilly The Exaltation of Custom -will show how this may be, and how albeit at great expense of time and words-justice and socia discipline are attained. We shall make the dispute unusually heated and difficult of settlement, Its setting in time shall antedate any foreign influence. Ifugao conservatism is such that I am sure we may place it as far back as five hundred years ago and find Custom the same as when the Americans came. Pitch Pine and Eagle were each of an upper middleclass family. But Pitch Pine was the eldest child, and had, according to the rule of primogeniture, been allotted a good bit of property at his marriage, while Eagle, being a youngest child, had received almost nothing. Pitch Pine, too, was a substantial respectable man; Eagl e of doubtful reputation. The two lived there in the Kiangan "home region," in different villages, about a mile apart, with rice fields intervening. Two years previously, Eagle had become involved in a domestic triangle. His chances of getting out of it unpunished would have been considerably better in our own society. He had had to pay a heavy indemnity to the husband, all of which he had raised from his brothers and l ) The Half-Way Sun sisters except two "bamboo-size" pigs-two pigs, that is, of girth equal to that of a large bamboo. These he had borrowed from Pitch Pine. At a moderate rate of interest, he now owes four pigs of breeding size or two hogs. The fine had been a lesson to Eagle. He had married Strand-of-Beads and been further disciplined. He had surprised his family by displaying almost the gumption that his situation called for. Industry he had not learned, but on two occasions he had headed a party that took slaves to the lowlands, where he bought pigs with which he had nearly repaid his brothers and sisters. He obtained the slaves from Nagakaran, a region friendly at that time. (But a quarter of a century ago, Nagakaran and Kiangan were at bitter feud, the result of the same sort of slave-trading relations and it was the Nagakaran people who speared my predecessor at Kiangan, Mr. Wooden). Wealthy Nagakaran men acquired by purchase or sometimes by kidnapping from enemies. A man heavily fined, involved in debt, or starving, would sometimes sell one of his children. This is not so heartless or unpaternal as it sounds, for Philippine slavery, until modified by foreign influence was a much more merciful institution than western nation chattel slavery. Slaves were rarely 66 The Exaltation of Gustom worked hard or mistreated, A boy stood a chance of being adopted and a girl of becoming a rich man's mistress.* The Nagakaran slavers were unfortunately situated. To get to the lowland market they would have had to pass through Kiangan. But they preferred instead to pay middlemen a handsome commission. The trouble was that some of their neighbors owed debts in Kiangan or at least the Kiangan folk claimed so. If a slaver tried to pass through, one or more slaves might be seized in satisfaction of the neighbor's debt. If the debt did not amount to the slave's value, "change" would be made with pigs or death-blankets The slaver would be given also the customary debt collector's fee, wished well, and told to collect from his neighbor. The humiliation of being sold a debt involuntarily and the complications that would surely arise *Compare the attitude of the Ifugao parent with that of the farmer as revealed in the following conversation, in 1928, in glorious California: "How's your peach crop this year, Mr. S 2"' "Prettiest peaches ye ever see! Cain't sell 'e. Might get rid of half I don't know yet. Present prices don't hardly pay to pick 'em, even if ye can sell." "That's sure tough!", "Yes. I telling the wife the only thing I can see for this country's another war. She taken on some over that because we got two boys that'd have to go, sure. But it's the only thing'11 bring prices up. I sure wish we'd get into it with some country. I cain't meet my intereSt t 67 The Half-Way Sun with the neighbor made dealing with a middleman preferable. Eagle's party did not run such risks, for the way to the lowlands led through no inhabited region. There was quite enough risk, though, of being ambushed and robbed, and of losing one's head besides, to keep down competition in the business and to render fees large. Eagle's trips to the lowlands had distinguished him and somewhat turned his head. Pitch Pine had a serious purpose in life. He aspired to 'the envied rank of kadangyan s who of the Malay race does not? You find yangban away up in Korea, the northermost limit of Malay migration, indicating there as the various cognates do throughout Malaysia, a rich man, a headman, almost a noble. Kadagyang blood was necessary to the rank, but who so poor as to be unable to rake up a kadangyang ancestor in a land where family trees are known clear back to Ancestor Gold and his sister who survived the Creat Floods Wealth was the real essential. For only through a series of pretentious festivals lasting several days and accompanied by many sacrifices and ceremonials could one attain the rank. Pitch Pine, singlepurposed was therefore greedy for wealth-wealth that he would lavish in splendid feasts at which the commoners, too nearly vegetarian in their daily lives, would gorge themselves on the flesh of sacrifices and acclaim his greatness. 68 Tie Exnaltation of Custom How unlike his analogues in our own society who get in order to use to get more! Pitch Pine's son is about to marry, and Pitch Pine intends to gain prestige by the munificence of his gifts to the bride's family He gives Eagle ample notice that he wants payment of the debt by "field-weeding time." He irritates by demanding six pigs instead of the four that are really owed, advancing various reasons for the higher rate of interest: the debt was incurred a little more than two years ago; had he kept the pigs, the natural rate of increase would have been many times the interest demanided; one pig was larger than "bamboo size." He rationalizes at length. And he says that Eagle, frightened at the danger from the offended spouse, promised to add a pig to the customary interest. Eagle remembers no such promise. Furthermore, he is not of a submissive nature. "What I remember," he says, "is that the other pig was below 'bamboo size.' As for the debt's having run a little more than two years, that is nothing to the time your family has been owing mine a chicken! Have you forgotten that your grandfather borrowed a pig from my Grandfather Crocodile and repaid it with nine hens instead of ten, saying that he would bring the other in a few days and never did? Well, my family, although not so petty as to make a fuss over a chicken or 69 The H7ialf- Way Sun the size of a pig has not forgotten. And, if we are speaking of the fertility of animals, just think how many chickens we might have had from the increase of that hen! Three pigs would more than repay the debt, but, as befits a coregionist, I am willing to go so far as that for the sake of harmony and good will in the home region." Pitch Pine finally leaves, offering to accept five pigs. Eagle tells his father and eldest brother-now the "center," or head, of the family. They reiterate circumstantially the transaction out of which the other family has owed theirs a chicken ever since Grandfather Crocodile went headhunting into the Alimit region. From time to time Pitch Pine comes to argue for a settlement. Eagle tries to evade him but cannot always do so. Seeing his creditor coming, one morning, he feigns illness. If Pitch Pine bespeaks him when ill, he breaks a tabooa kind of primitive moratorium-and forfeits the whole debt. Pitch Pine does not fall into the trap. Late in the afternoon, unable to endure longer his wife's sarcastic comments about the absence of firewood, Eagle goes into the forest and carries back a bundle of faggots Pitch Pine simultaneously appears to inquire about his debtor's health, but refrains from sarcasm until vexed at finding that he has wasted a good deal of talk. "Surely," he says, "a matter of two pigs is a mere trifle 70 Tlhe Exaltation of Custom to a young warrior in whom the soul-stuff is so strong that he needs make no sarifices in order to recover by evening from a paralyzing illness of the morning." "It must, indeed, seem strange to you!" retorts Eagle. "But, you see, none of my ancestors ever sold as taken in war a head from the family sepulchre!" The rich bronze of Pitch Pine's skin turns to a sickly yellow at the revival of this ancient scandal. Slandr, surely, it must have been; for it is unthinkable that an Ifugao ever did such a thing. Ihe story has survived that one of Pitch Pine's great-grandfathers becane so involved that he had either to sell a child into slavery or perpetrate a fraud and a sacrilege by selling into another region, as having been cut from the neck of an enemy, a skull from the family sepulchre; and that he chose the latter course, thus contravening Custom, which would have had the child sold. Pitch Pine turns without a word. His changing color, twitching muscles and glaring eyes produce a sinking sensation that Eagle tries to conceal from himself by an assumption of arrogance that contrasts ill with the other's soul-riving act of self-control. On the morrow, Ctimber-of-the-Steeps, a wealthy man not related to either, a veteran of many headhunting expeditions, comes, saying that he is sent by Pitch Pine as 71 The Half-Way Sun monkalun in the cases pending. He emphasizes "cases." For Pitch Pine has added a charge of insult-among Malays the ost frequent and a rather serious tort-for which he demands an additional five hogs, and yet another as the fee of the monkalun. Eagle scouts the demands and tries to turn the conversation to the unpaid hen. "This is not a conversation about poultry and its rate of increase," remarks Climber-of-the-Steeps, curtly. "You accused one of his ancestors, did you not, of selling a head from the family sepulchre? What should you demand of a man who asserted that of one of your forebears? Would it not be gold ornaments and buffaloes-or shouldn't you care. I am going to see your father and eldest brother so that they mnay realize your situation. For, unless eleven pigs are forthcoming immediately, almost anything may happen." Eagle knows that his case will appear the more doubtful in the eyes of his father and eldest brother because he has not told them of this latest incident. Going with the monkalun, he invents, on the way, an excuse and a defense. "This brash young man has got into another serious scrape, Python," says the monkalun, addressing the ither. "I'm afraid it may involve 11l of you. He has insulted Pitch Pine by throwing in his face that vile story about his ancestors having sold a head from the family sepulchre." 72 Theh acrne ot priniinvee agricu I t' E~r? ri rirrefeil irtd rice heldles will receive In teute Evr iak tin thheFeshl inividualatento unti havst PLATE XXII The Exaltation of Custom "He insulted me first!" lies Eagle. "And I have been so wretched from it that I couldn't come to tell you. Besides, I wanted you to sleep last night, for surely you will not sleep again till he has paid us for what he said. And this morning I had to take care of the baby while Strandof-Beads went to bring camotes from our clearing-for he and she must eat, though I cannot!" "What did he say?" screams the old man. "Pitch Pine says-and I believe him," says the monkalun, "that last night he surprised this young man bringing home wood after having feigned illness to avoid being bespoken about the debt. He naturally remarked on the rapid recovery and the want of any need to quibble about a pig or two when the soul-stuff was so strong-" "That is not what he said," interrupts Eagle. "He said I must love pigs so much because of being akin to them!" The father and eldest brother exchange furtive glances of disgust. They know that, had Pitch Pine insulted Eagle so, he would have come hotfoot to tell them. But family loyalty forbids their letting their skepticism be noted. "Then Pitch Pine started it," says the eldest brother, "and whatever the boy said was invited. Probably true, too, else why the talk of four generations? Pitch Pine shall pay us!" "Well, well! Let's confer and get at the truth," replies 73 The Half-Way Sun the monkalun. He analyzes the characters of the two principals, lauding Pitch Pine as upright, generous and tremendously popular with his kin even of the remotest degree. He emphasizes this last point significantly. For, though there is not much danger that one of these controversies will lead to actual conflict, the sobering possibility lurks in the background. His analysis of Eagle, on the other hand, is most unflattering, yet plausibly supported by facts. He mentions matters that have not contributed to the unity of Eagle's family and doubts whether it can command the backing of any except the nearest kin. He uses a monkalun's privilege of being plain-spoken, almost contemptuous. Resentment of his remarks would render him no longer a go-between but an ally of the other family. And he would carry public opinion with him. "Even if Pitch Pine's story were true," declares Python, "his demands are unparalleled. Five hogs for an insultS He is not kadangyang; nor are we-although we are of kadangyang blood and would have been kadangyang except that my father, alas, was the youngest child. The utmost that would be paid between kadangyangs would be three hogs; usually it would be two; and between middle-class folk it would be one. For a propertyless youth burdened with debts, a mere matter of four spear heads or an iron pot would be sufficient acknowledgment of wrong-that 74 The Exaltation of Custom is," he adds hastily, "assuming the boy was wrong, which I do not believe. The whole region knows that Pitch Pine is so greedy as to rejoice in any insult capable of yielding him five pigs." The monkalun knows that Python's statement of the custom is correct, but he magnifies the insult and claims an extraordinary indemnity to be proper. Finally he asks what Eagle's family will offer. "What will we offer?" rejoins the eldest brother. "Nothing for the insult, of course. Insult erases insult. We offer four pigs, which is what the boy really owes. And Pitch Pine sent you-he shall pay your fee." Getting nothing better, the monkalun goes away with the dour advice to them to consider more seriously lest there should arise great trouble. On the morrow Eagle takes a supply of betel quids and goes to visit his cousins, wife's folk, and sisters' husbands to seek their backing. He calls to mind ancient grudges against Pitch Pine's family and points out how uncustomary have been all Pitch Pine's demands. Pitch Pine is making similar visits. Once the two pass each other-mute and with darkened countenances. They are on a basis of theoretical enmity (corresponding somewhat to drohende Kriegsgefahr) since the sending of the monkalun. They may not chew each other's betels, eat each 75 The Half-Way Sun other's foods, exchange words, or even stand near each other. How wise is the Custom! For, if they spoke, they would dispute; if they disputed, they would probably fight -and lances are deadly. Each has scoured his, to the end that its glint may send a shiver through the other in just such a chance meeting. And tne glint does! Pitch Pine, being of more substantial status and reputation, and a man of wealth able to repay an obligation, is the more successful in his visits. Of course there are those of Eagle's kin to whom his swashbuckling nature appeals, who promise to back him to any extreme. But there are others-among them first cousins, even-who dubiously remind him of past errors. Having given Pitch Pine a few days "cooling time" (this is a legal phrase even among ourselves), the monkalun goes to confer with him. He has meanwhile obtained accurate and reliable data, not only from Python but from old men to whom he has been referred, about the hen that was never paid. He dwells at length on that fowl and gives a lesson in compound interest, demonstrating with fingers, toes, and little sticks that, deducting all demands, Pitch Pine's family still owes Eagle's a number of pigs. Old claims have not, indeed, the force of recent, but the Custom has never evolved a statute of limitations. Pitch Pine's kindred assemble to learn developments and 76 PLATE XXIII Was-Made-Afraid and his wife at their elevation to Kadangyang rank. PLATE XXIV The Exaltation of Custom are regaled with betels and draughts of rice wine. A giddy young fellow, distantly related, a dandy, fond of dancing, remarks that Eagle's eldest brother has a gong of unusually mellow resonance and of inherent magical power as well. He suggests collecting the indemnity by seizing the gong, which is easily worth twenty hogs. He is sharply rebuked by the monkalun and several bystanders. The monkalun reminds Pitch Pine that Eagle may be a foolish young man but is also a dangerous one. Insinuatingly he pictures the calamity not only to Pitch Pine's own family but to the whole region if so valuable and promising a center as Pitch Pine should be cut off over a matter of two or three pigs. And yet that contingency is far from being improbable, since there is no way of telling what a fool may do. He touches on the exorbitance of five pigs from a poverty-stricken youth and on the need of harmony in the home region and a united front against the enemies of Alimit and Lamot. As a result he leaves with an offer to settle on the basis of four pigs for the debt, one for the insult, and one as monkalun's fee. And-oh, yes!-the cancellation of that irritating chicken debt of no merit. This, Pitch Pine says, is his "ultimate." The monkalun then sends word to Eagle's eldest brother that he has good news. Arriving he surveys the gathering 77 The Half-Way Sun of kindred with histrionic contempt. "From the number of Pitch Pine's kin assembled at his house, one would think that he was celebrating the feast for elevation to the kadangyang rank," he begins. "His distant kin and relatives by marriage seem as eager in his cause as his own brothers. What a command he has over their loyalty! They are minded to trifle no longer." Eagle's mother and sisters are alarmed, but the men know the wiles of monkaluns and how they always magnify to either side the strength of the other. "Because of my great regard for Crocodile, your grandfather-there was a man!-I labored long with Pitch Pine to persuade him to abate his demands. He has done sofar beyond reasonable expectation." Then he states the "ultimate." "And I would advise immediate acceptance," he concludes, "before Pitch Pine withdraws his proposal. His kin feel it to be disgracefully lenient." "It really seems fair," said Deficiency, father of one of Eagle's brothers-in-law. I don't want my son killed because of the pig-headedness of his in-laws. Better accept and let good-will prevail again in the home region." Schooled though that folk is in maintaining a naughtrevealing countenance, even as the Japanese are, the members of Eagle's family have difficulty in concealing satisfaction at the reduced demands. Yet they are reluctant to 78 The Exaltation of Custom give up anything that has served them so well as that long-lived hen debt. "Is not this a shameless people even to suggest that I mention that hen to Pitch Pine?" storms the monkalun. "What cravens! Why did you let the claim sleep all these years? Did you fear to press it yourselves?" Though Eagle's relatives are silenced on that point, the eldest brother clings to the stand that insult cancels insult; that they will pay four pigs and for speedy settlement add one as monkalun's fee. The shadows lengthen, and, despite all coaxing, the monkalun can get nothing better. "Pitch Pine's proposal is more than fair," he says in parting. "I should insult his party did I ask him to lower it, and I had rather not do that. They are many and in a mood to act as one man. Unless I thought reflection would bring out more sense than is apparent in your family council, I would declare a truce and withdraw from the case. I shall come once more. Look to it that you then declare your stand in no more than ten words. Never have I seen a people so obstinate. Perhaps it would be as well that Pitch Pine and his kin rid the home region of such stiffnecked ones." Yet he is certain, and the members of Eagle's family are more than half persuaded already, that, when he comes again, they will yield. And so it would have been except 79 The Half-Way Sun that through no fault of Pitch Pine's-from a western point of view-a new and truly serious turn is given the case. The handsome youth who had the idea about the gong is gifted with the tongue of a Suggesting Deity. In the dormitory of the unmarried, that night, he persuades Pitch Pine's son that it would be a laudable exploit to prove his mettle by seizing the gong for his father, even promising that he himself will assist. But, when the morrow comes, he has taken sober second thought and is nowhere to be found. Eagle's family have been neglecting the fields because of the controversy, but now, confident of an amicable settlement, all are trying to catch up with the work. Pitch Pine's son, unable to find the instigator of his improper scheme, sets out alone. Arriving at the eldest brother's house, he finds there only the eight-year-old daughter, minding the baby. He runs up the ladder, grabs the precious gong, drops his blanket as an identification, leaps from the house and is off, leaving the girl screaming and sobbing. His leaving the blanketit might have been his hip-bag, his knife, pipe, or any other article that could serve to identify him-gives the act a status not of theft but of a seizure that would be justified in some instances but is not in this one. 80 The Exaltation of Custom The neighbors rush up and call Eagle's kin and there is a pretty hubbub. Pitiful is the grief of Python. He keeps repeating the story of the gong-as he has told it over and over to the children he has held on his knees: how it came into the family from a great-grandfather ever so many great's removed who went with his brothers far, far into the Fabulous Upstream Region; how they found there one of the blacksmith demigods and for his haughtiness walled him up in his cave, rejecting his lesser offerings for liberty until, finally, he named the magic gong! And how its resonance comes not from mere bronze and silver, but is the voice of a household god that dwells in it and who is well disposed toward the family, making the rice grow and keeping away sickness and witchcraft and sorcery. Still more affecting is the wailing of Eagle's mother. For the jawbone from which the gong is suspended was that of the man who killed her father. She had sent her lover Python along with her kin on the expedition of vengeance to the Alimit region. It was he who had taken the head. That was the reason that he had been able to marry a richer girl than himself. And surely the soul-stuff was strong in that jawbone. Has she not borne seven children, and five of them livings Three sons and two daughters, and all unblemished. All so robust and sensible and industrious -except the last, and he can only involve the rest in diffi81 The Half-Way Sun culties! Three sons and two daughters, and it ought to have been the other way about; for better a lazy garrulous woman than a lazy broilsome man. And if her sons and sons-in-law are going to let Pitch Pine keep the precious heirloom-why, they lack the resolution of their father. The villagers are angry, too. For the beneficence of the gong has extended beyond the owner's household even unto theirs. They feel that they are, in a way, joint owners. They have borrowed it frequently, and have loved to dance to its tones. Besides, negotiations were in process, and the case was so nearly settled amicably. Seizure before a monkalun had withdrawn from a case-what an outrage against right custom! Python holds a mumbled conversation with his eldest son. Eagle suspects that it relates to ceremonials preliminary to a very grave purpose. His brothers shun him, his sisters avert their glances and his mother wails that the gods erred grievously in the qualities they gave him. Here comes the monkalun with three of his kin. You can see that they have heard the news. "Is this the way you collect a debt, Climber-of-theSteeps." shrieks Python. "By having them run away with the inheritance from our grandfathers?" "They walked on my head," answers the monkalun. "Oh, such people! Would you have lances thrown here in 82 The Exaltation of Custom our home region? Behold the result of your stubbornness. Yes, I will get your gong. You will pay me one pig. Then if you do not settle your debt, I shall withdraw. I shall impose a truce of half a month. After that, if your eagerness holds up, why-fight it out! Never did I see folk who value pigs and chickens so highly. To what trouble you have put me!" "You shall have the pig for getting our gong back, Climber-of-the-Steeps," says the eldest brother. "But they must pay us five pigs. They have insulted us, and who knows how they may have angered the god that dwells in the gong!" O Eve, eternal, unchangeable, and in all lands the same! Eagle's mother speaks the final word and definitely disposes of the case. "We have talked enough about pigs, and we are going to stop it," she cries. "We are going to get our gong back and pay what we owe. Are we truly akin to pigs, as Eagle declares Pitch Pine said, that we have such affection for them' Are there only pigs? Are there not rice fields-now, alas, grown up in weeds because we can only talk, talk, talk about pigs?" And she turns glaring eyes on Eagle. The monkalun goes immediately to Pitch Pine. Artfully he first terrifies him by demanding that he not only give up the gong but pay an indemnity of four pigs for having so 83 The Half-Way Sun shamefully walked on the head of the monkalun in the case. "It was the act of a boy, the seizure," pleads Pitch Pine. "And if it was an insult, what about his words to me?" "Enough, this talk of insults. You have returned insult for insult and have walked on my head, besides. Give me the gong. I will return it and will immediately secure five pigs from them. Two are for me, three are for you. Then it is finished. I will trifle no longer with this silly case. Give up the gong, or I shall come for it with them!" Knowing Eagle's headhunting record and many adherents, and well aware that the whole region condemns his son's improper seizure, Pitch Pine is appalled by the threat. He makes a last effort. "But he really owes me five pigs." "Your grandfather owed them a hen! I have spoken my 'ultimate.' Do you want me to come and take the gong?" Pitch Pine does not. Nor do the villagers want anything of the sort. The affair was interesting at first-news in a land without newspapers. A great pity to have it settled too soon, but it has gone far enough. Pitch Pine heeds advice. The monkalun takes the gong to his house and sends word that it awaits the delivery of five pigs. Eagle has only two, but borrows the rest from his people. Delivering them, 84 The Exaltation of Custom he receives the gong back that very afternoon. It greatly comforts his mother that the gong does not have to pass a single night in strange surroundings. The family suggests to Eagle that he had better be arranging to take more slaves to the lowlands. Perhaps he is oversensitive in feeling from the way they said it that they would not greatly care if something happened to him on the journey. And so it ends. Pitch Pine, after about three months' litigation, is punished for his greed by receiving one pig fewer than his due. He has had to postpone his son's marriage, though that fact does not greatly matter, since the relations of the young people have been essentially marital for some time. It is much more serious that he has lost face because of his son's breach of custom-procedure. And he will never live down having given up the gong on the very day on which it was seized! For that he will be twitted till his dying hour. Eagle's attitude has cost him one pig more than an amiable disposition to follow Custom would have cost. Worse, he is in bad grace with his family, and everybody knows it. There is danger that, withholding their support, they will let him suffer injustice in another dispute. He must walk carefully. Both have been disciplined. But both have found relief from the monotony of primitive life, as has the whole 85 The Half-Way Sun region. Because of the excitement at home, no headhunting expeditions have set forth-and so even alien regions have benefited! The monkalun has not been so tricky as his brethren of the Law are reputed to be, but as they always do, he has come out of the case better than either of the litigants. Eagle and Pitch Pine bear each other bitterness for a time. Could they but pierce the veil of the future, they would see each attain the coveted rank-kadangyang. They would see, too, another monkalun, sent this time by Eagle to Pitch Pine and on a mission of quite a different sort. The six-months' son whose little body Eagle clasps now almost painfully to his breast as he ponders the perils of his forthcoming slave-selling trip-for him this monkalun will seek in marriage a daughter soon to be born to Pitch Pine. They would see the marriage settlement arranged without the usual amount of bickering; for somehow, out of the controversy, has developed a mutual respect. And the children of their children will rejoice them and draw them still nearer together. It is true that Eagle will go once too often on a slaveselling expedition, but he will be beautifully avenged. Pitch Pine's son, he that seized the gong will be the "Sinew" of expedition of vengeance. And then Eagle's shade will be recalled from its imprisonment in the 86 The Exaltation of Custom sky-world and will be sent to the abode of souls, content. His lot might easily have been worse if he had lived now and in this civilization of ours. An automobile, some sort of machinery, or a woman with a pistol... and (not that it matters to you or to me-but it would to him!) who will avenge? For our culture looks on these as almost natural deaths. No!-you and I can hardly spare him pity. 3. Or, Eagle's lot might have been worse even in that culture. I remember the case of Galangi, a man from another district who was living there in the home region, and who used to sell me wood. Galangi's left hand was a mere stump -the fingers missing and the thumb grown coalescent with the palm. Years ago, he told me, back in his native home region, a rich man had sent a monkalun one day to accuse him of hog-stealing and to demand an indemnity. Galangi indignantly denied the theft and challenged his accuser to a trial by the iron. The rich man demurred awhile and then accepted. On the appointed day the parties assembled at the house of the monkalun, who was to act as umpire. While each principal's family priests were sacrificing and invoking the 87 The Half-Way Sun Gods of Justice, the monkalun busied himself heating a war knife. A representative of each side stood by to watch the operation. "Hotter," said Galangi's kinsman. "My brother is innocent; he does not fear the iron!" The priest made it hotter. Then Galangi submitted himself to be held by two of the rich man's kin. "Witness, Sun and Moon, that I am innocent; that I did not steal their pigs or death blankets or rice or chickens or anything whatever," shouted Galangi, full of confidence. For he believed that the gods would arrest the iron as it descended, so that all the priest's strength could not force it down on his hand. He trusted his gods! The glowing knife was lowering slowly-when it got near his hand, the gods would jerk it back. But no, it touched the hand, it seemed to bend round the hand and grip it. Had spears rained from heaven, Galangi could not have been more astonished. He saw the smoke and heard a hissing. Then he struggled while the kin of the rich man held him mercilessly. When they had finished, the rich man submitted himself. And the priest was unable to force the iron down on the rich man's palm, though he tried and tried: he would get it close, and then it would fly back! "If you were innocent, why did not the Gods of Justice 88 The Exaltation of Custom protect you-why did they not hold the knife from your palm?" I asked him. "That is what some, even of my own people, were always asking, and that is why I left them and came here where I am all alone. The Gods of Justice would rather do justice than injustice, but they can be bought just as other gods can be bought. The rich man sacrificed many fat hogs and chickens to them. My people are wrong in thinking the Gods of Justice cannot be bought. They could have held back the iron, but they had accepted the rich man's pigs and chickens and rice wine." "Perhaps it was the monkalun who was bought," I suggested. "Oh, the monkalun was bought-it is easy to buy a man -but the gods had to be bought, too, else the monkalun could not have forced the iron down." "It may be that it is all a story and that there are no Gods of Justice." "Possibly you have none in your country, but we have them here in Pugao [Ifugaoland]. Our ancestors have always known them." "Some of your kin may have eaten forbidden foods or broken continence," I said. "Perhaps they did-at any rate, I was burned, though innocent-and some of my kin thought me guilty!" 89 The Half-Way Sun 4 -Galangi surely must have been innocent, else he would have chosen the less cruel hot water ordeal. In this, both accuser and accused plunge their hands into a pot of boiling water and pick out a stone. After a day or two, the umpire inspects the hands and pronounces guilt on him whose hand happens to be in the worse state. There are numerous parallels to the Ifugao practice in the following "Doom concerning hot iron and water," quoted from the laws of King Athelstane, who ascended the English throne in 924. And concerning the ordeal we enjoin by the command of God and the archbishop and all the bishops: that no man come within the church after the fire is borne in with which the ordeal shall be heated except the mass-priest and him who shall go thereto; and let there be measured nine feet from the stake to the mark by the man's feet who goes thereto. But if it be water, let it be heated till it low to boiling. And be the kettle of iron or of brass, of lead or of clay. And if it be a single accusation, let the hand dive after the stone up to the wrist; and if it be threefold, up to the elbow. And when the ordeal is ready, then let two men go in of either side; and be they agreed that it is so 90 The Exaltation of Custom hot as before we have stated. And let go an equal number of men of either side and stand on both sides of the ordeal, along the church; and let these all be fasting and abstinent from their wives on that night;... and let no man mend the fire any longer when the hallowing is begun; but let the iron lie upon the hot embers till the last collect; after that let it be laid upon the "staple"; and let there be no other speaking within, except that all pray earnestly to Almighty God that he make manifest what is soothest. And let him go thereto; and let his hand be enveloped [bandaged] and let it be postponed till after the third day whether it be foul or clean within the envelope.-Library of Original Sources, Vol IV; p 2,37. In the hot water ordeal of the Ifugaos, the umpire had less opportunity to be dishonest than in the trial by iron. Chance largely determined whose hand would be worse infected on the day of inspection, and the umpire might not too arrantly favor one against the other in the face of facts that spoke for themselves, lest the outraged party and his kin slay him for his partiality. A poor man had a chance; the hot water ordeal was more popular than the other. Only simple fools like Galangi, who trusted the gods implicitly, ever challenged a rich man to the trial by iron. 91 The Half-Way Sun Of late years, ordeals have fallen into almost complete disuse, except that the trial by wrestling is still-very frequently used to settle disputed boundaries between fields. Champions wrestle along the division line, and every fall marks a point in the new boundary. Sometimes the fall is from the upper terrace ten or fifteen feet into the mud and water of the lower. These trials are ceremonially conducted, largely attended, and partake of the nature of a mediaeval tournament. There is a popular feeling here in America that our own courts give a poor man rather a poor show for justice. Ifugao custom seems more just than our law in this: where offenses are punishable by indemnity (fine)-and nearly all are-a middle-class culprit has to pay only half or twothirds as much as a rich man, and a poor man only half as much as one of the middle class. In Ifugao society, too, a poor man need not see his case battened into naught against technicality and delay or for lack of money; though I do not know how far we can approve the short-cut by which he secures justice. There were, at Kiangan, Continuous Resonance, a brash young kadangyang and Was-Made-a-Plume, a poverty-stricken unfortunate whose skin had turned white, rough, and scaly -from psoriasis, I think. For some reason, ill feeling existed between the two, and in a chance encounter, the rich 92 PLATE XXV c Cicada, some years before her marriage, helping village youths make rice flour for a ceremonial idleness. She is the girl directly behind the mortar. The Exaltation of Custom man, associating the poor man's disease and the fact that wealthy lowlanders dress in white, remarked: "Well, I see that, although you have no fields, gongs, nor jewelry, you have become a kadangyang, since you wear a white coat!" This was an insult as punishable in Ifugao custom as theft or adultery. Was-Made-a-Plume controlled himself and calmly informed Continuous Resonance that for the insult he fined him his large and valuable field in Dayukong; that he would send a monkalun to attend to the transfer-not at all to discuss anything; that should there be any arguing or delay, he would kill Continuous Resonance. "I know full well that if it comes to such a pass," he continued, "your folk will kill me-albeit I hope to take one or two of them along. Really, I don't care whether you give me the field or not. What is life to me-unable to get a woman, poverty-stricken, and shunned by everybody? In all truth, I had as lief have an occasion for an amok as have the field. So suit yourself." Was-Made-a-Plume got the field-the other's family knew him to be a resolute man. Then he was able to obtain a wife by whom he has had two or three children; so life isn't so bad for him now. And people are very respectful. Within the home region, robbery and arson are unknown; The Half-Way Sun theft and other property crimes, rare. During eight years in Ifugaoland, there was but one murder having robbery as the motive. The victim was a lowlander, and the murderer an Ifugao who, left an orphan, had been reared by a Spanish missionary. Controversies sometimes become heated, but almost never lead to actual conflict. As in our courts, settlement may require a long time, but that is not entirely a disadvantage since, in the monotonous life of that people, a valuable by-product of controversy is diversion. Considering all things fairly, we must conclude that the Ifugao has as practicable an administration of justice as do most peoples. Certainly, his way is usually more agreeable to him than ours is to us. How strangely the same elements reappear in diverse cultures, with what variant motives are they used, what different proportions they assume in the pattern! Not without a degree of satisfaction, I see progressive communities in my own land adopting the institution of the monkalun. Profoundly significant among the Ifugaos, it holds a most humble, possibly a precarious place among us, borrowed because time, to us, is valuable and because controversy has no function as diversion. Called "conciliation courts," American monkaluns in Cleveland, Des Moines, and Minneapolis are disposing of cases in fewer minutes than their 94 The Exaltation of Custom Ifugao confreres require in weeks or months.* And again, I see my people coming to the sexual freedom of the pagans of Northern Luzon and trial marriage well on the way to establishment as an American institution. Except for the Ifugao's hunger for children, it would not be feasible for him; except for contraceptive technique, it would not be possible for us. Fixity of population contributed to its success there; while the fact that we have become a migratory, almost a nomadic people, has helped it among us through removing our folk from the restraint of ancient mores. 5. Assume two ships anchored in some out-of-the-way port, and an offense committed by a sailor from one against a sailor from the other. The crew of the latter is likely to hold the shipmates of the offender guilty as a group and to act as a group to avenge their shipmate's injury. Likewise the other crew will rally collectively in defense. (These human-nature facts have contributed greatly to the annals of out-of-the-way ports!) The primitive tendency is to blame collectively, retaliate collectively, and defend collectively. The better to act collectively, each group will * See the essay, Making Justice Less Expensive, by H. H. Sawyer, in THE AMERICAN MERCURY, July 1928, p. 204. 95 The Half-Way Sun strive hard for unity and freedom from internal dissension. We see these tendencies emphasized in nations at war and in smaller groups within nations, as in rum wars, disputes between Labor and Capital, class struggles, and the like. Substitute for the out-of-the-way port an isolated home region in the mountains, and for the ships' crews, many family groups; let a custom have been built up through no one knows how many centuries, and you have a picture, in broad lines, of Ifugao society. The blood tie, very strong, and relationship by marriage, of the nature of an alliance, hold individuals to a family group-a group that is different for every individual except for brothers and sisters not yet married. A third tie, propinquity, is weak, but highly important because it builds a group on a basis other than kinship. Friendship is not a tie. In our sense of the word it does not exist. Persons between whom there is no tie may become chummy, but that, the Ifugao's nearest approach to friendship, carries no such implications of loyalty, mutual admonition and assistance as our word connotes. Indeed, acts we consider merely friendly are likely to be pretty generally looked on by the self-respecting in the Orient as intrusive, even meddlesome. The Japanese had great difficulty to understand the relief we rushed to them following the Tokyo earthquake. They suspected it a ruse that cov96 PLATE XXVII (a) Cicada's mother inciting her soul to vengeance. ale father and other kin relieve the mother. jOF (b) The fern PIATE XXVIII Three Benaue men; thought bad by my Kiangan friends because aliens who mispronounce words, wear g-strings of a different pattern, trim their hair another way, and make backbaskets of deerskin instead of rattan. The Exaltation of Custom ered a design to spy on their fortifications and sound prohibited waters. Though genuinely friendly to an alien, an Ifugao will stand mute while a remote kinsman tricks or cheats him. The blood tie is the only one involved, and it carries the obligation not to interfere against a kinsman's advantage. The powerful Filipino confers no favors except of hospitality upon those not connected to him by family relationship including peonage and, in these latter days when politics looms large in his life, henchmanship. If he makes an exception, it is with expectation of a quid pro quo. 6. The ties that bind one to his family and his family to him grow weaker as they disperse and include a greater and greater number of individuals. Unmodified by the personal factor, they would, I think, conform to the laws of radiant energy in being of strength [intensity] proportionate to the inverse square of the distance. But the personal factor introduces the leaven of individualism, and lifts or depresses the weaker ties from their norm. If an individual seeks the support of a remote kinsman in a controversy, the kinsman is going to take into consideration the applicant's personal qualities, power, amiability, wealth and record 97 The Half-Way Sun for reciprocating assistance. But these considerations weigh little or not at all when the tie is strong, as between near kin. Suppose an Ifugao's brother to become arrayed in controversy with his father, or the more painful instance of a controversy between his brother and his own son? To whom belongs his adherences These speculations are useless because the situations could not occur. For procedure is collective: by and between families. A family cannot proceed against itself (except to punish treason). Kinsfolk sometimes hate each other as elsewhere. But the doctrine of long-sufferance toward one's kin is instilled from babyhood up. Family unity is the sole rampart, the very citadel of social coherence, and is cherished accordingly. There ought not to be controversy between distant kin, the reprehensibility diminishing, and the likelihood increasing, with the attenuation of the blood tie. If cousins dispute, a man owing allegiance to both will probably evade a divided duty by becoming a strong advocate of peace. Less often he will go with the kinsman from whom he hopes most in the way of favor returned. An Ifugao acted on by opposing ties is like a body of matter impelled by contrary forces, and the direction he will move is like a problem in the resultant of forces. The merits of the case are a minor consideration-not entirely negligible, but factors to be 98 The Exaltation of Custom verbosely and ingeniously rationalized after the fashion of bankers justifying fifteen or twenty per cent. An Ifugao is allotted his share of his parents' property when he marries. The custom-law guards against family submergence, which would result from dividing the property so that no child would have more than an insignificant parcel, by allotting the eldest child far more than the rest. If there be only a little property, he receives all of it. But he is almost as much custodian as owner. He must lend or give to his brothers and sisters whenever they fall into straits. He is the family "center." A remarkable-and at the same time very natural, I think-feature of Ifugao society is the equality of woman with man. She inherits equally; she has an equal voice in family affairs; if she be the eldest child, she is the family "center"-often a very good one. In controversies engaging her family, she is perhaps less in the foreground than her brother, but speaks as effectively. 7 -Marriage is a mere alliance, and as little dependable as an alliance between nations. If a controversy between near kinsmen from their respective families arises, the spouses may try for peace, but, if the affair becomes bitter, each will adhere to his own family, and the marriage will dis99 6 The Half-Way Sun solve. If distant kinsmen be at controversy, the spouses may temporie and evade a stand, and bring the matrid monial barksafely through. But if they want an excuse for a divorce, such an occasion offers it. While the marriage lasts, each spouse is considered a member of the family of the other, functions as such, and is often able to command, in time of need, the aid of the other's brothers, possibly sisters' husbands, and even cousins. This is especially probable if the marriage has been blessed with children. Nothing else so strengthens the alliance. An instance will show. In the next house but one to mine there in the village, lived a youth, Soft Stone. Although of poor stock and from a remote region, he was married to a girl of rather uppish family. He had been able to hawk above his station because of the fact that at the time of his marriage he was working as a stonecutter (having learned that trade through working on the school building) and earning forty cents a day. But the demand for his trade had ceased, and he would work '4t nothing else. This couple had a baby boy. Next door to them livyd Persimmon, a soldier in the Philippine Constabulary, and his wife, Cicada (or, as we might translate, Seveiteen-Year-Locust). The two were incompatible. I remmber the names because of their suggestion of the d i7 t traits of the individuals and of the 100 The Exaltation of Custom sources of the domestic friction. A situation already bad was complicated further by the fact that Cicada's mother, from whom the girl inherited her signal characteristic, was a third member of the household. One day Persimmon suggested a divorce. For once, Cicada agreed with him-too quickly, indeed. Then she lapsed into silence and thought-both unusual. Between her vocal cords and her mind there seems to have existed the same relation as between the whistle and the engine of a traditional Mississippi tug-boat: when either worked it required all the steam, and the other had to quit. Viewing her thus silent, and contemplating her curves, almost none of which were concealed by clothing, Persimmon found her as irresistibly attractive to the eye as she was usually irritating to the ear. He repented of his suggestion-that was his first mistake. Cicada was thinking about alimony. (It has often been observed that primitive folk take most heartily to the doubtful importations civilization brings.) A new company commander had been allowing alimony to divorcees of soldiers. Cicada went straightway to the C.O., who, over Persimmon's protest that he still wanted her, granted a divorce with alimony until such time as she should again become a bride-which, she declared, would be never! Persimmon took her at her word, and the prospect 101 The Half-Way Sun appalled him. A second mistake, perhaps, although he might be presumed to know better than anybody else of what her malice was capable. And he could hardly be optimistic, since she was his fourth wife to turn out disappointingly. Persimmon's comrades in arms noted a change in him immediately after the next pay day and later testified they had had an inkling of tragic possibilities. He would whet his mess kit knife for hours at a time. When they asked him why he was so preoccupied thus, he answered, "Oh, some day we'll kill a fat hog for the company, and I'll be the one to cut it up." He presented the characteristic symptoms of a Malay generating that form of brainstorm that has enriched our language with the word "amok." One night Persimmon went to his former home and called on Cicada and her mother. He sat down in the doorway and talked for a few moments with disarming friendliness. Then he called to Soft Stone in the next house, inviting him over. "Soft Stone," he said, "when are you going to pay me that three pesos and a half you borrowed for a monthmore than a year agog" "Oh!" said Soft Stone, "I know that I have been a little slow, but after next harvest I will go to the lowlands to work for the government on bridges, and then I'll repay you." 102 The Exaltation of Custom Quicker than a snake strikes, Persimmon stabbed the youth deeply in the abdomen. Before Cicada could jump out of the back door, only six feet away, he had caught her and stabbed her twice through the left breast. He turned to murder his mother-in-law, but she had escaped. Possibly he had been looking forward too fondly to that denouement and could not brook his disappointment. At any rate, he did a most un-Ifugao-like thing: he attempted suicide, stabbing himself deep into the liver several times. Himself he could not kill-though he made an honest effort-and was the only one of the three to survive. It was the only instance of suicidal attempt I heard of during my years in Ifugaoland. Thus Persimmon. He did not suspect Soft Stone of alienating his wife's affections-it was simply that he loved life less than he hated the parasitism of women. And, while punishing that, he thought well to punish also the parasitism of "I'll-pay-you-pretty-soon." Soft Stone's wife had been christianized. She called the missionary, who, while I was bandaging the wounds inflicted on her husband, baptized him and made him a christian-a thing about which poor Soft Stone had no say, since he was unconscious during the whole process. Indeed the padre finished just in time. Soft Stone was buried in holy ground next day. 103 The Half-Way Sun Cicada died two days later. Her body was set under the eaves of her house, a knife in one hand, a spear in the other. Just as her mother and female kin had begun to shout incitations to her soul not to let death interrupt her harrying of Persimmon, there arrived a delegation from Palao, six miles away. The foremost member, a woman, went directly to the grief-stricken mother and began cuffing her, saying, "Curse you, Sister-in-law! This is what comes of your meddling. You egged them to it!" I asked a bystander why the woman from Palao acted so. "Because she is Cicada's father," was the answer. Further questioning elicited the fact that she was the eldest sister of Cicada's deceased father and was the "center" of his family group. However much she blamed the sister-in-law for the tragedy, she soon allied herself with her in the incitations to Cicada's soul. Ifugaos reckon relationship by generations. All terms except those for "father" and "mother" (and a few that are rarely used) are common in gender. An individual is sibling (brother or sister) to all his kin of the same generation, child (son or daughter) of all his kin of the preceding generation, grandchild of all generations before that. He is father or mother to the generation succeeding his own and grandparent to all that follow. How little important is sex even in the distinction made as to parents is shown by the 104 rw ~ E-4 0-^ P-4Y Priests at a harvest ceremony. Note the rat fenders on the house posts. PLATE XXX Was-Made-Lonesome costumed as the Full-Fledged Cock at his headfeast. The Exaltation of Custom fact that the father's sisters are usually called "mothers," but at his death, the eldest sibling, whether male or female, steps into his place and becomes known as the "father." If it be desired to be specific in the case of a term common in regard to sex, the words "male" or "female" are appended, as "male grandparent." And now comes the illustrativeness for which I have inserted this bit of' the history of my home village. Although we have seen Soft Stone given respectable Christian burial, we are not through with him. Soft Stone's wife had also a female father, who had taken her to rear after the death of her parents-shall we say, "of 'the first instance?" This female father was the wife of the American-appointed "president" of Kurug, a region a good half-day's hike distant. She and her husband were a devoted couple and always did what in her opinion was right. When they heard of the stabbing of her son-inlaw, they came immediately, only to find him buried already and in an outlandish manner. Great was the wrath of the female father and consequently of her husband, who, I suppose, was a father of the third instance. "Soft Stone," they said, "is not of our blood, and it would not matter to us if they used him for hog feed except that he has a child by our daughter. That quite changes 105 The Half-Way Sun the matter. He is going to be buried according to good custom and with all the correct vengeance ceremonies, that his son, a member of our family, be not disgraced forever and we shamed along with him." They had a great controversy with Rome over the question, but Rome was not strong with our local Caesar. They went to the Holy ground, dug up Soft Stone's body, and gave it a new funeral, conducted jointly with Cicada's and according to good custom. For this propriety, the soul of Soft Stone, not knowing that it became a christian, may thank the baby that united him to a determined female father-in-law! 8. The tie of propinquity, a weak one, is of two kinds: positive, which allies a man with his fellows in proportion to their nearness; and negative, which intensifies the accursedness of his own or his neighbor's enemies in proportion to their remoteness. Distance weakens even the strong tie of kinship. Bulung, one of the leaders of a large expedition of Nagakaran folk who descended in a raid on Kiangan region just before the Americans came, was distantly related to several of the Kiangan centers, among them, Red Ant, whose house I rented, and who afterward went to the insular legislature. Red Ant possessed a gun. 106 The Exaltation of Custom He told me he had been tempted to shoot Bulung-perhaps ought to have done so, but had preferred, so long as it was not necessary, to shoot somebody else. Just as the poles of a magnet, acting together, attract more iron filings than either acting alone, so do positive and negative propinquity attract more adherents to one's cause. Against an adversary in the home region, one can muster one's kin including, say the second cousins-perhaps not all of them-but none of the mutual kin. Against a distant adversary, the mutually related kin uphold their neighbor rather than the alien, one's cousins of quite remote degree may aid, one has encouragement from one's coregionists, and the adversary's kin in the home region are lukewarm or neutral. The great significance of propinquity is in the fact that it is a tie that forms a group based not on family but on geographic (territorial) unity. It is the soil in which nationality grows-in Ifugaoland, a feeble soil, out of which as yet has sprung only a feeble institution, the monkalun, mediator between groups. But there in him is the possibility of evolution and differentiation into all the manifold institutions and functions of the nation. Any man may act as monkalun if called on, and every man would like to be called, for both prestige and good pay are to be gained. The role tends to become a profession. 107 The Half-Way Sun Success in it depends on varied qualifications: a powerful family following so that one may speak with firmness and authority; generosity and tact, so that one may hold this following and increase it from his remote kin; personal fitness, knowledge of his folk and their records and of the custom and its precedents. A reputation as a headhunter helps him greatly by attesting him resolute and not to be trifled with. He keeps the support of his kin, partly, by splitting his fees with them. If the monkalun finds that he cannot settle a controversy, he withdraws and imposes a truce. Aided by his own and the family of the other controversant, he will severely punish the family that breaks such a truce-killing some of its members, perhaps. He takes great pride in his handling of his cases. His conscious reason for imposing the truceaside from the fact that it is the custom-is that it gives time for his withdrawal to become generally known, so that any violence that may occur will not be charged to bungling on his part and so hurt his practice. "Otherwise people would not employ him," the Ifugaos told me, "seeing that his cases end unpeaceably. He would lose fees." But this sounds like a rationalization. The monkalun must impose the truce-otherwise he would not be a monkalun. The tie of propinquity has engendered in the custom 108 PLATE XXXI 4P I M X X X Ifugao soldiers who posed themselves before me requesting a picture they could hand down to their posterity. The tallest was, for years, my cook. The Exaltation of Custom the requirement that a mediator keep violence out of cases in his hands and enforce a truce if he finds them impossible of settlement. The social benefit of the truce-of which the Ifugao seems entirely unconscious-is that it gives time for passions to cool, time for sober second thought, time for public opinion to intervene to bring about a reopening. In the institution of the monkalun, the Ifugao embodies many specialized agencies of advanced societies. The monkalun arranges pacts between families of different regions, negotiates marriages, is realtor, registrar and record in the transfer of lands and heirlooms such as gongs, precious jars, and gold neck ornaments. He is broker in the sale of pigs and granary stores. He is an attorney arguing custom, precedent and facts for first one family and then the othermore, he is an ambassador acting for each and has a degree of diplomatic immunity, as we saw in the case of Pitch Pine vs. Eagle (pp. 65-87). And since he acts in cases of controversy with the backing of his own family, he represents a third nation using "good offices" between two others. Most significant of all is his function as a representative of the home region (an indefinite area whose groups are loosely knit together by propinquity as are the nations of the world) for he draws a precarious bit of authority from the feeling of the folk there that it is better for all that neigh109 The Half-Way Sun bors settle disputes without violence. In this capacity he risks his own and his kin's blood to enforce correct procedure and to impose a truce in event of deadlock. But his authority stops there. He leaves it to the litigants themselves to arrive at a judgment and to the successful litigant execution of the judgment. Even so, nations have not yet demonstrated their ability to compel either mediations or a truce when mediation fails. In the League of Nations they have tried to erect an agency that shall achieve these ends, but its effectiveness is unproven. Assuming it to be worth anything at all, we must see in it a first step, just as we see in the monkalun a first step toward statehood. K It strengthens the tie of propinquity that the folk of a region are collectively regarded by those of alien regions. For the property or women of any of them may be seized for a neighbor's alleged debt or tort. I am reminded of how Multiplied drew the folk of the home region to cooperation and unity in the days preceding the coming of the Americans. Chumminess-between-Persons-of-Different-Regions and his brother were returning from the lowlands on the way home to the Maggok region. They sojourned two or three days at the house of Multiplied. A biyao pact, or alliance between families, was discussed and agreed on. Whirlpool, of Bolog, a region about half way between Kiangan and Mag110 The Exaltation of Custom gok, was appointed to act as monkalun in negotiating terms and arranging ceremonials. Then Chumminess-between-Persons-of-Different-Regions and his brother started home. On the way, they were slain and beheaded by people of the Wingian region. Multiplied and Whirlpool were each under obligation to collect a tokom from the headtakers. A tokom is an indemnity for putting another in an equivocal position. Thus, suppose that A, either in the vicinity of B or under such circumstances that B might conceivably be suspected as principal or accomplice, commits a wrong against C. B is not at all concerned about the wrong itself: it is none of his concern, for he is not related to C. What concerns him is that he has been rendered liable to suspicion and therefore to trouble. Accordingly, he demands a tokom from Aa payment of four spear heads, an iron pot, or a death blanket, ordinarily. If thereafter he be accused of the wrong, he exhibits the tokom and tells from whom he got it. The slaying of a man who has just been one's guest, or for whom one is acting as monkalun, obligates one to collect a very large indemnity or else to avenge the death. The Wingian folk who slew Chumminess-betweenPersons-of-Different-Regions and his brother were poormere trash who lived in sheds built on the ground instead 111 The Half-Way Sun of houses raised on posts. No use trifling-they would never be able to pay a tokom acceptable for the killing of a kadangyang like Chumminess-between-Persons-of-DifferentRegions. Therefore Whirlpool immediately slew some of their kin, and Multiplied kidnapped a woman from their region. He sold the woman in the lowlands, and from the animals he received, he allotted a water buffalo to each of the four quarters of the home region on condition that, if the Wingian folk retaliated by kidnapping a woman of Kiangan, that quarter in which the woman was kidnapped would raise the amount needed for her ransom. And when it came to indicating roughly the bounds of each quarter, it was found that folk ordinarily reckoned as semi-alien wanted to be included, anxious to exchange their vigilance for a share of the buffalo meat and the benefit of this form of what we must call, I suppose, "kidnapping insurance." Truly, Multiplied was a statesman! Propinquity of itself could never build a large unit. It tends to center unity-not to extend it. Folk of villages less than two miles apart ridicule each other for differences of pronunciation, strange interjections, a different twist with which the women do their hair, and other tweedledums and tweedle-dees. On the other hand, family relationships, biyao pacts, hospitality and statesmanship like that of Multiplied extend the scope of amity. So also, does 112 The Exaltation of Custom commercial intercourse, although, at first, it is as likely to embroil as to harmonize. 9. Boundary lines are an invention of societies that have gone far in the shift to a territorial basis. An Ifugao is born into a home region that, despite its mountainous nature, has no defined bounds. Encircling it are other regions that comprise what we will call the neutral zone. And surrounding the neutral zone is the feudist zone. All beyond is the war zone. The Ifugao's village is the center of them all. Change to a village only a mile away, though, and you shift both home region and zones. The folk in the home region are homogeneous, much interrelated, and usually on an amicable footing. Except for murder and adultery discovered in flagrante, the death penalty may not be inflicted until every means of correct procedure has been exhausted in the effort to collect the correct indemnity. The folk would like to see a peaceable settlement of even the cases mentioned above, but the pride -of the injured party usually balks at a penalty less than death. In our own or any other society, he who resists the law, even in a trivial civil suit, is in danger of death. So it is in Ifugaoland, but there the infliction of death is likely to 113 The Half-Way Sun have an aftermath of feud. The kin of the slain are likely to call it murder, not execution, and to retaliate. Consequently, when a monkalun withdraws from a controversy, there is the same feeling among the groups in the home region not directly involved as among nations when others sever diplomatic relations. Sheet Lightning and Palma Brava Leaf had a dispute over the boundary between rice fields. They twice failed to settle it by regular procedure. At the termination of the truce imposed by the last monkalun, each led an armed party of kin to protect his right to spade the disputed area. All the folk of the region, together with the mutual kin, gathered on a hill at a safe distance and shouted, "What sort of way is this for men of the same region to settle a dis 114 The Exaltation of Custom pute? Go home and beget some children. Betroth them and give them the fields. Then what odds where the boundary be?" Red Ant, who had a daughter married to a son of each of the principals, and others of the neutral kin yelled, "If one of you kills the other, we are determined to kill the survivor also, so as to do even handed justice and make an end of the question." The two controversants were finally admonished, but not until a follower of each was wounded. The question had not been settled when I left there, though both elderly principals had passed the begetting of children to the second generation. I met Sheet Lightning's son one day right after his wife had presented him a baby. "You look awfully grieved over it," I commented. "Yes. My feelings hurt because it was a girl baby. We hoped for a boy so that we could settle that trouble over the fields," he replied. If a family conduct its case faultlessly, even though the issue be only a debt, and especially if a monkalun be sent, they may, at the termination of the truce, slay the culprit. Public opinion will uphold, and the kin of the slain are not very likely to retaliate. Against an alien culprit, according as he is distant, not nearly so much patience is required. And the number of his kin whose property may 115 The Half-Way Sun be seized grows, embracing remoter and remoter degrees, till finally his neighbors become liable. In the neutral zone surrounding the home region are many people who have the supreme virtue of kinship with those of the home region. The rest are open to suspicion. In the zone of feuds, except for a smaller number of relatives, all are bad. Many a family at home is at bitter feud with one or more families there. A few rich men have pacts of friendship and alliance under which each guarantees the other's safety in the alien territory and on the way to and fro. To all except these, trips into the feudist zone are dangerous. There is one notable exception: a man may, except perhaps when a feud is at an acute stage, go and come safely if his mission be known as one of courtship. This truce to lovers is astute local policy. A husband goes to live in his wife's village. Gaining him, the home region gains a young man valuable as a warrior against some regions and as an ambassador to his former home. Heads of persons slain in feuds in this zone were always taken, and sometimes heads of executed debtors or tortfeasors. But in the home region or neutral zone heads were never taken in such cases. The people in the war zone are thoroughly and at all times bad-else why so outlandish and different! An Ifu116 The Exaltation of Custom gao teacher pointed out one who had come to our village, one day. "Apo, before the Americans came, our people would go to the road leading to the lowlands and lie in ambush. If they saw a man wearing a backbasket like that fellow's [made of deerskin instead of the locally used rattan] they would kill him. Why should he wear such a thing. He is hardly a man-must be a kind of big monkey. Look at the pattern of that g-string!" It is to that region one goes when one's principal motive is to distinguish oneself by taking a head. Though the way be long and dangerous, the simplicity of procedure after arrival compensates. Any head will do: man's, woman's, or child's. In the zone of feuds, one is limited to certain families unless one wants a new feud on one's hands.* I0. At Kiangan, one court session, Limitit, of Ayangan, stood at the bar charged with having murdered his father. Translated into Ifugao, the phrase "Are you guilty or not guilty?" has the sense of "Are you at fault or not at fault?" Limitit pled "Not at fault," and then, with a candor almost * The principal modifying effects of propinquity on custom and grouping are shown in Appendix II. 117 The Half-Way Sun pitiable, added, "He was my father. I had a right to kill him. I gave him a good funeral-I sepulchred him quite decently." His straightforwardness and bearing bore eloquent witness that he had no consciousness of guilt. Testimony showed that Shining Torch, the father, was a wastrel and a gambler. He had raised money by mortgaging rice fields that ought to have been allotted to Limitit, the eldest child, who would stand toward his brothers and sisters as the family center. Shining Torch had made no effort to redeem the fields, though given plenty of time, and had persisted in a course likely to ruin his family irretrievably. Therefore Limitit had killed him. During the course of the trial, Limitit seemed never to realize for what he was being tried. He kept insisting, "I sepulchred him properly... I killed many chickens and three fat hogs.... He was my father-." He seemed to think it was for not funeraling his father correctly that they were going to punish him. I investigated the attitude of the neighbors. They said the father was worthless and deserved killing for having squandered his family's property. Though warned, he had continued his course and was saddling the next generation with debts [for debts are inherited in Ifugaoland, even though nothing else be.] Before taking action, Limitit had 118 The Exaltation of Custom consulted his kin. At any rate, Shining Torch was Limitit's father, and if Limitit wanted to kill him, he had the right — certainly it was the concern of nobody else; "let them look out for themselves!" Another case of the same sort occurred during my stay. The father in each case was a traitor to his family-wasting the family's inheritance and enslaving his children. In a land where a living must be eked from a tough stony mountain side with wooden tools, the means to life handed down from the sweat of former generations are as sacred as the soil of a fatherland-which indeed, they are. The family in each of the cases, merely exercised an attribute of national sovereignty-the right to execute a traitor. IV MY BROTHER'S GODS His God is as his fates assign, His prayer is all the world's-and mine. -Kipling. I.' (STUPENDOUS as is the Ifugao's terracing-perhaps S ) the world's premier scenic wonder-it nowise outranks the structure of his pantheon. Nor is his religion, a vast polytheism with accretions of magic, fetishism, divination, myth and so forth, itself more striking than the extent to which it enters into his daily life. But proportionately as his gods are numerous and prayers to them unceasing, reverence and adoration are absent. What the gods want is satisfaction of their appetites. They are a more practical lot than gods that are content with mere lip praise and leave priests and minsters to reap the material rewards of worship. In number the deities vary according to locality, but no religion is without an ample supply of them, at least a thousand, nearly all of whom have a wife named Bugan. Bugan is the most frequent Ifugao feminine name. The gods love the same things that the Ifugao loves: feasting, betelchewing and wine. They have power to afflict and do afflict, 120 My Brother's Gods in their various ways, not out of malice, but to compel men to give them what they want. Offerings are not propitiations, since the deity is not offended; they are of the nature of a bribe to secure relief from affliction or to buy a positive benefit. An Ifugao knows his ancestors back to the seventh or eighth generation-often much further. These spirits sometimes become offended and signify their displeasure by afflicting their living descendants until propitiated by offerings. They also traffic with other gods in the souls of the living. I asked Sheet Lightning's son one day: "Carlos, your grandfather is so fond of you now and invokes the gods so earnestly when any of his grandchildren are sickhow can you believe that he will harm you after he goes to the Abode of Souls?" "Maybe he'll have no betels, and he'll meet a tayaban [a deity that feasts on soulstuff] and the tayaban will offer him betels in exchange for me, and he'll say, 'All right -take him!'" "But the old man is very fond of you! Wouldn't he trade the soul of somebody outside the family'?" "He would be ashamed to do that." I asked several people why the ancestral spirits do not trade in souls outside the family circle and received the same reply, "They are ashamed to." I was told, too, that 121 The Half-Way Sun an ancestor is likely to long for some kinsman and cause him to die in order to secure his companionship. It requires lots of rice wine and many pigs and chickens to buy the ancestor off. No god is believed to have been the creator and no god is supreme. I investigated the matter with extreme care. The Benguet Igorots to the west, however, were in process of combining their sky-gods into one supreme god, while retaining their earth-gods as a substratum. Since the process is related to a mooted question, let us see how it occurs. The cosmography of all these North Luzon pagans is the same and looks on the universe as consisting of five regions: the skyworld, the underworld, the upstream region, the downstream region, and the known earth. The skyworld has quite a geography in the way of planes and regions that are named. In all the languages it is called kabunian or by cognate words. The root is bunu, meaning "sacrifice," and the whole word means either "the-place-of-those-to-whom-it-issacrificed," or, collectively, "those-to-whom-it-is-sacrificed." All five regions are swarming with deities, but the skyworld has more gods and more important gods than any other. Invoking a god, the Ifugao designates the god's residence or quarters, thus: "Ay-y-y! Thou, Snarer of the Skyworld; Bugan, wife of Snarer; Thunder God of the Skyworld; Bugan, wife of Thunder God...," and so on. 122 My Brother's Gods In Benguet, foreign influences have long been changing the culture and have induced a laxity of religious observance. A few priests there still invoke the skyworld gods by name as the Ifugaos do, but most of them bundle the gods together as Kabunian. They tend to become one god under that name. Is it not likely that often, in the past, when one polytheistic people has been subjected by another, a similar simplification and reduction of the first religion has made it, or a part of it, over into a monotheism And that, being ancient and belonging to a "golden age" before the conquest, the god so derived is conceived as beneficent and a creator, neglected probably as harmless, while the new gods are feared' Not every priest knows all the deities. I have calculated the aggregate number known to the priests of Kiangan region as about twelve hundred. There are three classes of major deities: the Agricultural Gods, the Greater War Gods, and the Gods of Reproduction. The Agricultural Gods are very largely the personifications of natural forces. They have a special attractiveness to the Ifugaos because of their ability miraculously to increase the rice while the crop is being harvested and soon after it has been stored in the granary. They make the grains swell large in cooking, and can bring it about that "when the women take rice from the store, the place left vacant 123 The Half-Way Sun shall be filled again." There are great feasts at harvest; the rice is left beneath the granaries for several days while the folk observe a ceremonial idleness, move slowly, and speak gently so as not to disturb the deities that have come to the village to increase the rice. After the idleness the bundles are stacked into the granary without being counted. Nor are they counted when they are taken out to be threshed. Counting the bundles is taboo, for it would interfere-there is no doubt about it!- with the miraculous increase. An Ifugao asked me if my people likewise besought the miraculous increase of the harvest. "Hardly," I answered cautiously lest I put a gulf between us. "We pray for rain and growth and a good crop, but not for an increase after the crop is made." "Why not?" he asked. "If the gods can give one, they can give the other!" The Gods of Reproduction, aside from the powers indicated by their name, exact sacrifice by making men sick, -denying them children, or by coaxing their souls away for lascivious purposes of their own. But they are slightly more beneficent than the general run. They carry men as men carry little children-in an oban, or baby carrying blanket, slung from their shoulders. Red Ant, a semi-christianized Ifugao, told me that they are more like God than any of 124 PLATE XXXIII PLATE XXXIV.. My Brother's Gods the other deities. They abide principally in the Fabulous Region Downstream. The easiest way to enter trackless tropical mountains is to move up the watercourses; these gods probably are referred back to a former tribal habitat. One division of the Greater War Gods comprises the Sun, the Moon and the Stars; the other division embraces Manahaut-"Deceiver"-and his offspring. The Gods of War are also the Gods of Justice. For an Ifugao to secure justice is sometimes actual warfare and is always more or less suggestive of warfare-hence the connection. The originator and organizer of a headhunting expedition is called the "Sinew." Deceiver is the Sinew among the Greater War Gods and leads them to the sacrifices that men offer them. He possesses men and betrays them into danger. Any accidental, violent, or childbirth death is attributed to Deceiver, instigated by enemy witchcraft. The nature of Deceiver's descendants is shown by the names of a few of them: the Snarer, the Limb-Chopper, the Stabber, the Netter, the Trapper, the Swooper, the Sweller, Gango the Sore-Footer, and so on through a long list. The Sun is the Spearer, and a headhunter who throws a fatal spear is believed to be momentarily possessed, or at least guided, by him. The Moon is the Blood-Drainer. As we shall see later, the roles of these three great deities are 125 The Half-Way Sun depicted and enacted both in the taking of a head and in the climax of the headfeast or other war ceremonies. The Stars and certain meteorological phenomena, such as Flaming Clouds, the Rainbow, Halo-of-the-Sun, Halo-ofthe-Moon, Aurora, Sheet Lightning, are descended from either the Sun or the Moon. Several constellations are named. A halo about the Sun indicates to the Ifugaos that somebody has just lost his head or is about to lose it.* Headhunters in the quest consider it a good omen, being over-assured, perhaps that it will not be their own. The sun at noon is dangerous, equivocal; it is never invoked, and war operations cease at that time. Ifugaos practice divination by observing the flight of birds and the bile sac and liver of sacrificed animals. The Romans divined in the same way. These parallel practices have been connected as a diffusion from Babylon, where clay models of the liver with its several lobes have been found, "each part being inscribed with its significance according as it might bear such and such appearance." t What * There are many other descendants of Sun and Moon. Those whose names I am able to translate are: Pauwit, a constellation near the Southern Cross; Binabayi, (the Women); Monbatang (Twin Stars); Monbunkol (the Dipper); Balalahi (Comet); Kumalit (the Blaster-who causes shooting stars). Many constellations I could not identify. Descended from the sun is Monbinwat, "Sun Shafts" (as when the sun draws water in the opinion of the ignorant). t Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology; p. 209. 126 My Brother's Gods other connections there may be, or what stories of cultural overlappings may be locked in the names of the gods-less than one in ten of which I have been able to translatewho can say? It was hard to get information about the war gods. Priests are reluctant even to pronounce their names. Women and children may not be present at their invocation except at the feasts that follow the taking of a head. But Was-Made-Lonesome-in view of the fact that he was his parents' eighth child, I could never understand the applicability of the name-was not afraid of these gods. Why he was not, and also why he had had the temerity to go headhunting in defiance of the government, I learned while preparing his defense against that very charge. On his fingers he counted his various narrow escapes. There was the time he had gone slave-selling to the lowlands just before the coming of the Melikanos-two of his companions had been killed and he had received a wound in the right temple (how fearful was evidenced by the deep hollow it had left). His soul in the days that followed had indeed been carried up into the depths of the skyworld, but had talked to the war gods and had dissuaded them from keeping it and causing his death. Later he had gone forth and collected "the debt,"-both principal and interest. And there was that time at the limekiln when the laborer had 127 The Half-Way Sun run amok and killed three others-but Was-Made-Lonesome had been as little fazed as was the Full-Fledged Cock when spurred by the Fledgling. And then there was that little incident of the himong, the processional dance to the vengeance ceremonies when a man has lost his head, that he and I had arranged for the entertainment of the great white apos-and neither of us harmed thereby, though three men had lost their lives from it! And hadn't he a right to conclude himself a veritable Hard Stone, a FullFledged Cock, a Father-of-Cobras when the soulstuff was so strong within him? Even to think he might go headhunting in defiance of the Orden? The last of Was-Made-Lonesome's autobiographical references I shall explain, since it shows the folk attitude toward the war gods. Mr. Dean C. Worcester, the insular Secretary of the Interior, called by the Ifugaos the "Big Apo," used to make a trip through Mountain Province at least once a year to greet the people and break down ancient grudges in meetings called "the Big Apo's canyaos." "Canyao" is an Igorot word meaning a glorified religious feast. It has been adopted into the Philippine-American language. The religious element is usually quite absent from the canyaos of our compatriots in the Islands. To the Big Apo's canyaos would be invited all the folk of a certain territory. Invitations were like White House 128 PLATE XXXV.;;^:.:::*:::r^^ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~:::: ij - Ik: ' _.i 7::::B:E,1<.sw The reward of a double-edged knife..,: ' f; t 's:0W~~~~l'f tE tiX;; foff ~~{ ~' |:: f: j f f~KIS PLATE XXXVI A 11~ E f:i05.ffi-0 E..sR,,_::::: }.,i tE; _ii.'0e N d as ii Z g 77 5 ES _::4: i: 5 _i'k''8isK:s _1; _ _lle I'd':: _Fi. iM:: *4::::: _.i.-900: is' A: I'm'' tiffff: _::i: A. _s s if Bear.> _!, _.., F:E::! is:: In:: A::;:j j................................ of::::: i- 0 0::::::: C::: f I.00f3000;::0 f I I,. 0 t; Ad X Poison. My Brother's Gods ones-not to be refused. Once there, the folk danced and made the best of what was often-for somehow there was a false note in these Melikano canyaos-forced attendance. Kadangyangs courted favor in long-winded speeches to the effect that the white men's coming multiplied the pigs and chickens and miraculously increased the rice-insincere speeches because deep in their hearts was the longing to pursue the old and to them genuine road to power and fame and increase of the rice. When they had finished, they would lead their own applause, clapping their hands above their heads, as Ifugaos always do. At the close of the canyao, the visitors from each region would be allotted a water buffalo to cut down and cut up in a free-for-all scramble, every man hacking off and dragging out of the scrimmage what portion he could and delivering it to a friend about fifty feet away. It was like getting money through a host of brokers, salesmen and realtors to deposit it in the bank. About a week before the Big Apo was due in our region, at the time of the incident to which Was-Made-Lonesome referred, our lieutenant-governor, Captain Gallman, asked me to arrange something spectacular for the visitors. There would be other important apos in the party: the GovernorGeneral of the Philippine Islands; a West Point professor, a famous medical man, our provincial governor, satellites 129 The Half-Way Sun and aides. For some time the governor, "Sycamore," had been accusing Gallman of unnecessary killing of Ifugaos and writing official letters with such phrases as, "This slaughter of the innocents must cease." It looked as if he were officially headhunting. Gallman, despite a clear conscience, was a little worried. I sent for Was-Made-Lonesome. Could we, I asked him, arrange a himong procession? It could not fail to impress the great men, for surely in all the primitive world there is no rite more spectacular. Was-Made-Lonesome talked to his folk in Habian, their village down by the river, and came back with the answer that they were very reluctant, there being all manner of taboo against such a thing, but that he believed that two pigs, if he might lead them back to the village, would be irresistibly persuasive. And, oh yes! there must be promised two hogs, fat ones, for sacrifice on the great day, right after the procession, to appease the war gods. The pigs were delivered and produced the effect we hoped for. The site chosen for the canyao was a levelled plateau about two hundred feet above my house. On this plateau were the quarters of a detachment of Ifugao constabulary soldiers, a big building on high piles. Underneath was the jail, a large one-roomed space stockaded by bamboos and constantly patrolled. 130 My Brother's Gods On the eve of the great day the visitors arrived and put up at my house. Next morning, while some of the saddlesore ones were still dragging themselves to breakfast, Gallman came in with a very serious face. "Good morning, all," he said. "Two of the prisoners have just killed their guard. One called him to the stockade and engaged his attention while the other speared him in the neck. He bled to death in about a minute." "And what about the prisoners?" asked somebody. "One of them is dead, too-I shot him," Gallman answered. "They had evidently run amok. They began attacking the other prisoners. Lieutenant Meimban took some soldiers and went into the jail to put the two in irons. The one with the spear drew it back to stab. I shot him. The soldiers mauled the other one; he's in bad shape." "How did the prisoner get the spearS" asked the Governor-General. "We always search their hip-bags and blankets when we arrest them. We presume that he smuggled the spear in his g-string-he must have. It was very small-a monkey spear, the head hammered out of large wire. He probably picked up a stick to serve for a handle when he was out on a work party. I presume you will make an investigation." "What was the charge against the prisoners g" The Half-Way Sun "Failure to work out their poll tax-sentenced to thirty days." "I'm going right up," declared the provincial governor. "There wasn't a bit of need to kill that prisoner." The Big Apo spoke for the first time. "Well," he drawled, "I'd have killed him-if I thought anything of the person in front of his spear!" Had this remark dampened the ardor of our provincial executive, he would have been spared humiliation later. But he went to investigate, and Dr. Richard P. Strong went to render medical aid to the survivor. Dr. Strong found that the spear had severed the soldier's carotid, and was inclined to accredit the prisoner with a scientific knowledge of anatomical landmarks. Vital as is the neck, a spear the size of that used might have been thrust into several other parts of even the neck without being fatal. Since there was no hospital, Dr. Strong requested that the survivor, who had a crushed skull and was in his opinion utterly hors de combat, should be laid on the balcony of the soldiers' quarters. Gallman granted the request, but put leg-irons on. The doctor, I think, asked that they should not be fitted too tight lest they interfere with circulation. All this happened before Was-Made-Lonesome started from his town down by the river. After a while, here they came through the rice fields, a long line of dancers decked 132 My Brother's Gods with gorgeous varicolored head-dresses, white leglets, shields and music sticks painted with white streaks, and wearing on their shoulders bristling black headbaskets. Half of them played the main beats, whung, whung, whung! on the music sticks, and the rest answered on the after beat with tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, upon their shields. "Why do you bring such doings into our village?" screamed the women and old men as the dancers passed through Place-Set-with-Ethics-Locks. "Do you know what you have made to happen? Keep your himong to your own village, you Habianites!" Nor did they leave me out of it. "See what comes of stirring up the war gods, Binalton," they said. "Was-MadeLonesome misled you; he got you into it," they added in accordance with their custom of excusing a covillager. "Never be advised by anybody except people right here." It was not the loss of life they objected to, for the slain were from alien regions-it was the principle! The himong spectacle, though, was enthralling to our visitors. And Was-Made-Lonesome and the Habian priests sacrificed two fat hogs right in front of the sun shed where the apos sat in state. Late that afternoon, after the water buffaloes had been cut down and scrimmaged over, the provincial governor 133 The Half-Way Sun was in the barracks investigating again. The wounded prisoner somehow slipped free of the leg-irons, obtained a bayonet from the gun rack and attacked. The governor seized a saber and retreated, waving it horizontally before him and yelling, "Shoot him! Shoot him!" The sentry rushed from his place in front of the barracks and shot the prisoner. Small wonder it was a tired group of Melikanos that gathered about the dinner table that night! And then another tragedy developed: our provincial governor had lost one of his dentures. To no avail he had searched and had impressed others to search-especially along the line of retreat. Worst of all, he had discredited his own outcry against the "slaughter of the innocents"-had, in fact, himself given the order to slaughter one! Whenever a nation thinks well to force changes in another people's culture, it ought to face the fact that a certain amount of killing has to be done. From that time on, it was doubly hard to get the priests of my home village to tell me about the war deities. They would not even mention their names unless I would provide a chicken for sacrifice. But Was-Made-Lonesome continued unafraid. He would teach me at any time, with or without sacrifice, with or without hire-though I usually paid him ten cents a day for his time. 134 My Brother's Gods 2. Of minor deities there are more than twenty-five classes. The Bulol correspond somewhat to the Roman lares. The term is applied both to the gods and to the little statuettes -usually of wood, of human figure, and kept in house and granary-in which the gods incorporate themselves when being worshipped. Heirlooms, such as gongs and rice wine jars are also means of incorporation for these gods. The Tayaban are flying monsters of anthropomorphic figure, but radiant, so that by night they look like flying fire. They feast on soulstuff. The Gatui are harpies. They also feast on soulstuff, preferring that of the unborn. Miscarriages are in great part attributed to them. Kilkilan are spirit dogs that attend the tayaban and gatui. Was-Made-Lonesome, seeing gargoyles in a picture, declared them to be kilkilan. The Monduntug are mountain-haunting spirits, the terror of hunters. Bakayauwan are hunting spirits, closely analogous to the "Spectre Huntsman" of the Malays. They are much like the mountain-haunters except that they travel by air instead of by land. The two classes are often grouped together 135 The Half-Way Sun under the generic name "west-comers" or "upstreamcomers." The Makalun (cf., monkalun) are certain of the tayaban and gatui who perform the functions of messenger spirits to summon other deities to sacrifices. They are also useful in sorcery-to get possession of the souls of enemies. The Halupe are suggesting deities who keep constantly in the minds of men whatever the invoker wants kept. They harass debtors with remembrance of debt,* soothe controversants to accede to demands, and have a wide field of usefulness in commercial transactions and love affairs. The Mahipnat, the Greater Place-Spirits of the Downstream Region, seem for the most part to be deified heroes or remembered place spirits of a former habitat. The Bibio, ordinary place spirits, dwell in trees, boulders, cliffs, gulches, house roofs, gongs and streams. Every region swarms with them. They frequently steal souls, causing sickness, but may be bribed to return them. The Pili, guardian spirits, are used to watch property against thieves and trespassers. They are usually attended by spirit dogs. One time I built a photographic dark room down by the village spring. I called Poison, a good old priest who called me "son." He would bring eggs and vegetables and, since a father cannot sell to a son, would pre*Ifugao Law, p. 116. 136 j ~ ji i ii R d PLATE XXXVII Some hipag and the basket in which they are kept. PLATE XXXVIII Benders-in-the-Dance performing a ceremony to cure a wound got in a scramble. My Brother's Gods sent me them. Before he went away I would ask him if he needed anything. "If I might borrow a half-peso," he would usually answer, "I would buy a half-grown chicken for our flock." On the present occasion, I told Poison I wanted a pili to guard the darkroom. He assured me that any chicken would answer for a sacrifice, but that the most ferocious pili could be lured by a fat capon. Such a fowl was obtained. Poison built a tiny shed about a foot high near the darkroom, and with appropriate ceremonials placed therein little human and canine figures carved out of soapstone. These were to serve for the pill spirits to incorporate themselves in. When he had finished his rites, he stuck up a cane-like runo stalk near by, its blades tied in a loop, as an "ethics lock" and warning to keep out. Not long thereafter a total stranger presented himself, displayed a swollen knee and said my pili had "bitten" him for going into the darkroom. I sent for Poison. "That is an unusually ferocious pili," said Poison. "Ordinarily a chicken of any size would do, but in this case we must have a large fat capon." The patient fetched one, and Poison sacrificed it. Its flesh was eaten by priest, patient, and my houseboys. The Ifugao way of plucking a chicken is to hold it over the fire 137 The Half-Way Sun till all but the largest feathers are burnt off. The process imparts a flavor to the meat that I could never get used to. But everybody enjoyed the afternoon, and the patient went away much improved. The Liblibayu, liver-spearers, cause pains high in the abdomen. A priest performs the principal part of the ceremony to exorcise them by swinging in front of the patient a spear on which is impaled some flesh and chanting, Liblibayu of Center Mountain, Withdraw, please, that spear of yours. Go spear the deer in the forest, For large indeed is its liver; Large indeed is its bile sac. The chant continues almost interminably-long enough for any ordinary pain to get well of itself-suggesting many other animals that have more tasty livers than the patient's. The Hibolot, belly-spearers, cause pains in the intestinal tract. The Dadungot, tomb-dwellers, descendants from Sun God, "bite" the faces of those who enter sepulchres. The Maki-ubaya, arch-dwellers, if properly won by sacrifice, take residence in arches put over the approaches to a village and turn back or shunt elsewhere malicious spirits. The arch these deities love is made by stringing over a path charms similar to those I was photographing in Manila 138 My Brother's Gods when the student remonstrated against my sending "that pictures" to America. The Binodbod [lit. "tied-up"] tying deities, are in very high favor with givers of great feasts and employers of large numbers of field-workers who must be given a noonday meal. Won by proper sacrifice, these deities tie up men's stomachs so that but little food will satiate and but little liquor intoxicate. They also tie up men's passions so that they will not brawl, pound holes in gongs, break valuable jars, or the like. When about eight days old, every child's stomach is "tied up" for life. Imbagayan of Lingayan is the death-messenger and guide of souls. Himpogtan, the "Enders," can terminate anything: the life of an enemy, sorcery, famine, death, and so forth. The Banig are permanent ghosts-distinguished from transient ones, The Kolkolibag, birth deities, cause difficult labor by blocking the birth canal with an enormous belt ornament that they wear. The Inidu, omen deities, inspire omens from birds, snakes, insects and trees. The Hidit, gods governing relations of enemies, or gods of intergroup propriety, punish the breaking of taboos binding on enemies and their respective groups. In a controversy 139 The Half-Way Sun the litigants and their families are on a basis of theoretical enmity that imposes all the taboos of warfare. Even the unintentional or unknowing infraction of a taboo brings swift punishment from these gods. They seem to have the social function of safeguarding correct procedure. The afflictions they cause are: "bloating" (often enlarged spleen); coughing, nose bleed, "quick-coming fatigue," "wheezings" and "short breath"-probably tubercular indications. The Puok, gods of the winds, dwell variously scattered in all directions from the Ifugao's habitat. They wreck dwellings and steal soulstuff of growing things-that is, blast them. The Amgode are gods of landslides. The Hipag are war fetishes. Some are images up to nine inches high, in human form and in the form of a cock or wild boar. Others are a stone tied to a short stick, fragments of the human mandible, a crocodile's tooth or entire head, and a hard river stone. Power is resident in the fetish but, more important, the fetish is the means of worshipping the monhipag deities, a ferocious class, many of them of a ghoulish and cannibalistic turn. Through the fetish having the figure of a cock is worshipped the Full-Fledged Cock. The stone tied to a stick has also a deity in connection, but there is magic in it, too, that turns an enemy's spear to the 140 M rSz W - X row ro 77 CAI Routine ceremony against enemies. The priest is reading the omen of the bile-sac. PLATE XL (a) He may not trim his locks until he has avenged a kinsman's death. (b) A woman's head. My Brother's Gods ground, making it fall short. All these fetishes are covered with incrustations of the blood of sacrifices-sometimes to the thickness of half an inch. 3 -The Ifugao conceives every entity as having a soul, linauwa, and soulstuff, alimaduan. His conception of the soul is not much different from the usual one, but soulstuff needs elucidation. Everything has soulstuff-the question is, How much? Of a knife whose edge turned, I heard an Ifugao say, "It lacks soulstuff." The same is said of a tree that bears inferior fruit or none, or of a subnormal man. We have conceptions not very different. At one of the most beautiful of the rites that survive from the days of ceremony, graduation at a great university, the venerable president was conferring the honorary degrees. He was reciting the record of the candidate before him: granted a degree here and another there and another... chief of a division in one of our colonies and then of a bureau... professor and dean... volunteered during the war... active service... rose to high rank. Turning from achievement to personal qualities, the mellow voice droned on, "tried and not found wanting... answering every call-" and then the summation and highest tribute possible, "abound141 The Half-Way Sun ing in life!" By "life" the president, of course, meant what he himself considered the most laudable form of life. An Ifugao would probably have said, "abounding in soulsttff," though he often uses the very phrase the president used. The soulstuff of a knife is its quality of taking and holding an edge; of rice, productivity; of pigs and chickens, rapid growth and fecundity; of a man, those attributes desirable in a man. In other words, soulstuff is desirableattributes-giving-stuff. What is desirable depends on the culture. The Ifugao believes that soulstuff can be added or subtracted by magic, ceremony, gift of the gods or, best way of all, by headhunting. That is one of the jaws of his culture's trap. 4 -In my part of Ifugaoland, any man of normal mentality may and ought to become a priest. The higher his rank and qualities, the better priest he makes. A poor man officiates only within his own family unless his personality and the vigor of his invocations gain him repute. When called outside his family, the priest receives five or ten cents for his services, as well as all the meat and rice wine he can consume. Women of the upper and middle classes usually become priestesses, but do not officiate except in agricultural 142 My Brother's Gods ceremonies and the "women's" ceremony. In the northern sections of the sub-province, Professor H. Otley Beyer found the priesthood more restricted. One time I had a touch of malaria. One of my houseboys, a bright little fellow, said his mother could cure me. I told him to go get her and to ask the mother of Red Ant, my landlord, an old lady who was very kind to me, to come also. They brought a little jar of rice wine and some chicken fat, began a long chant, and were soon quaking vehemently under an afflatus. Still quaking, they began to stroke me spasmodically from the feet upward. Having finished with me, they did the same to my two house-boys. They anointed us all with rice wine and chicken fat, assured me that I would soon be well, and the boys that they would keep well. In a few days every man that I met would ask me, with an air of suppressed humor, if the "women's ceremony" had cured me. I learned that that ceremony is only for children and, besides, is of so little consequence that the men do not bother to learn the first thing about it. Indeed, my patronage of it was something I would have to live down. "At least you see that it made me well," I retorted. "You took quinine, Apo!" My cook or houseboys had told them that. 143 The Half-Way Sun Probably the largest part of an Ifugao's education, and the only part he puts forth conscious efforts to acquire is in his religion. He has the hundreds of gods to learn about, with their various powers, appetites and ways of afflicting men, as well as a vast lore of ritual, magic and myth. Hence, with no books and writing to depend on, he must have a memory that far excels the white man's. He attributes its excellence to that bit of his own navel string that he carries in a tiny "medicine" package in his hip-bag to constitute a magic bond between himself and the past. An Ifugao never kills a fowl or domestic animal without utilizing its value as a means of buying benefit from the gods; consequently, a child is always beholding ceremonies. But religious knowledge is not believed good for tender years, and the child is not encouraged to acquire it. When he reaches youth or young manhood, however, he is expected to become an acolyte, in which office he keeps a priest's cup filled and incites his fervor with exhortations. Then he begins to "study." He learns to pray and recite myths and in a few years knows enough to become a priest. But he cannot become one until he has been "given his deity": that is, possessed by a deity that will henceforth be his messenger to summon the gods. It is sometimes a matter of self-preservation to be initiated into the priesthood. A short way from my house My Brother's Gods lived Bugan, a good-looking woman not yet thirty, the wife of a rich man. For some years she had been suffering an indisposition that was the more mysterious because it offered no physical symptoms. Her husband and her own family had sacrificed many animals in the attempt to relieve her. Finally the priests were unanimous in saying that the trouble came from her not being a priestess, and several attempts were made to initiate her. I attended the last one. Sweat was streaming down her face as she waited anxiously, but in vain, to be possessed. Intellectual honesty, I think, doomed her: the deity was supposed to seize her: it did not -and she but waited and waited, and would not deceive herself. Only four or five days afterward, I heard the cry, down in the village: "Bugan, come back! Come back! Perhaps there have gone with you the souls of the pigs, the chickens, the rice and the children!" And I knew that Bugan was dead. My own initiation had the same motive as Bugan's, but my complaint was less dignified than hers. One vacation, with carriers and cook, I hiked into a portion of our subprovince that had been visited before only by Captain Gallman. It was inhabited, not by Ifugaos, but by descendants of folk expelled from the Benguet tribe across the range. They were timid and fled before our approach, leav145 The Half-Way Sun ing an empty village. It had been raining all day; we chose the largest house and made ourselves at home. On the morrow, a few men came back to learn our purpose. In their demeanor seemed written the guilt of their own or their ancestors' cattle-stealing. A large boil was developing in my shoulder. To show these folk that I was human and incidentally to see what kind of ceremonies they had, I asked them for their best priest to treat my boil. They went to tell the rest of their people that it was safe to return, and then brought back the priest. He sacrificed a chicken. After that, causing me to uncover the afflicted part and filling his mouth with a betel quid, he mumbled a long incantation that, at intervals, he interrupted in order to spit betel juice on the boil. I didn't think much of the ceremony: perhaps that is the reason it did no good. As soon as we could, we went back home. I sent for Poison and another priest of some renown, Benders-in-the-Dance, and told them the trouble. After a mumbled conversation, part of which, I suspect, was "We ought to be able to get a hog and a lot of rice wine out of this," they stated that the case was a simple one to them. "You have been bitten by a free messenger deity," they said. "I don't understand," I replied. "Probably the man the deity belonged to before has 146 My Brother's Gods died," said Benders-in-the-Dance. "It is at liberty and wants another man." "What can be done!" "You will have to be given this deity. It sees that you know the names of many gods and that you are ready to become an invoker of them. It has bitten you because it wants to be your messenger." "What will have to be provided?" I asked. "At the very least, one hog, a chicken, two jars of rice wine, and a new g-string-and, of course, my son will do what is customary by the priests," answered Poison. "If the apo succeeds in getting his deity the first time, there will be no repetition of the expense," consoled Benders-in-the-Dance. "It never pays to stint, because the deities are likely to make one repeat." With a repetition threatening, I thought best to make certain pertinent inquiries with the object of insuring success on the first attempt. To the ceremonial, held the following afternoon under the house of Benders-in-the-Dance, came additional priests, several acolytes, and any number of spectators. Poison assigned various ceremonials to my priests. They plunged into them with vigor, sipping rice wine for each deity that possessed them, but slowed down as the alcohol lowered their efficiency. At last my time came, and Poison 147 The Half-Way Sun and Benders-in-the-Dance took me between them and spread the new g-string across my knees and theirs as a bond and connection-symbolic of something like an apostolic succession. Immediately priests and acolytes began to ply me with the cup and to shout at the top of their voices, inviting my deity. I had ascertained from Poison and Benders-in-theDance the day before that the deity's coming would be preceded by a warming, tightening, and thickening of the lips such as follows a big drink of the "Etcotz" of my own people. Then would come a jerking of the muscles. I was warned that I must yield myself and not resist the deity lest it punish me further or even with death. Although I knew I must concentrate on the symptoms in order to have them, the ludicrousness of the situation interfered for a while. But anybody can have a religious experience if he keeps trying, especially if he is helped by such fervent exhortations as I was. The warming and thickening of the lips came; I made myself believe that the deity, not the rice wine, was causing it; and then the jerking came. Harpy-of-the-Stony-Places possessed me, jumped me up (bumping my head against the house-floor above), began to dance me Ifugao style-to the amusement of the spectators-and cried in the words I had known she would use: "Say-ay-ay-ay! I come, I, Harpy-of-the-Stony-Places to 148 My Brother's Gods these hills of yours. I behold your sacrifice, and I drink of our rice wine, for such I delight in-ah! From the skyworld and the underworld, from the downstream region and the upstream, I will summon your deities, for such is my nature-ah!" Then with a final, diminishing "Say-ay-ay!" she left me. I had been given my deity. She was mine, alas! forevermore. After that, priests would frequently ask me to "sit" with them in ceremonies. But I was far from knowing enough to do so-very far from it, though I suppose that my notes that I took on religion alone would fill a large volume. Besides, having something written down and having it in memory are two different things-the Ifugaos could never realize that, since their own memories are so superior. Religious ceremonies consist mainly of prayer, possession, magic and god-"pushing.' The program pattern of every ceremonial-into which ceremonies having a special purpose may be added-is as follows: First, prayer to the ancestral spirits as a class; second, prayers to the ancestral spirits one by one, who come and, through the priest, sip rice wine and declare good intentions. Third, assignment of the various classes of deities to the priests. (Obviously one priest could not invoke them all nor sip rice wine for several hundred). After the assignment, each priest sends his 149 The Half-Way Sun messenger god to summon the particular class allotted him. Four th, prayers made simultaneously by the priests, each to the class of gods assigned him, and possession of the priests by the gods, who through them drink rice wine and, using the human brain and speech organs, declare that they will confer the benefits desired. That the human should furnish the god with brains and speech organs is no unusual feature of religions. Fifth, recitation of appropriate myths for their magic effect. Sixth, god-"pushing." The myths used illustrate how hero ancestors long ago dealt with situations parallel to the one which calls forth the present ceremony. The recitation is powerful sympathetic magic and tends to produce in the present the same happy outcome that the ancestors secured in the past. As the priest recites, he interjects at times a clinching declaration, poltak, which I translate by "fiat," to the effect that it shall result, "now as then" and "here as there." Having secured the myth's effect in parallel magic, the priest turns to god-"pushing," and brings the actor or actors of the myth -in these present days deified or demi-deified-and has them promise that they will effect the result desired by their living descendants. I will illustrate the use of the myth by a very short one that is used at childbirths. Let me explain that the scene of this myth is the ancient Kiangan, the mythical cradle of 150 My Brother's Gods the race down by the river, about two hundred yards from Was-Made-Lonesome's village. Gold and his wife, the ancestors, settled there following a great flood. The birth we will assume to be occurring in Place-Setwith-Ethics-Locks. The woman is inside the house. Underneath, squatted on reed mats, are the priests, surrounded by acolytes and rice wine jars. It will be remembered that a strict taboo forbids the mention of anything relating however remotely to sex when both male and female kin are present, as, of couse, they are in this instance. The taboo is circumvented by calling the foetus the "Friend" and the placenta his "Blanket." Simultaneously the priests are reciting, each a different myth. One is reciting the following: Bugan of Kiahgan-alas! what pangs she suffered. Gold called together the "sitters" [family priests]. "It would be well," said these, "that you and your uncle, Skilful Giver, ascend Center Mountain." Gold agreed. He and Skilful Giver climbed to the summit. They chopped down a balui tree [a tree that corresponds somewhat to our "slippery" elm]. They stripped the trunk of its bark. Gold tossed it down hill. It slid clear down Center Mountain and stopped right under his house. "In like manner will the Friend travel," said Gold, "and his blanket will soon follow after." 151 The Half-Way Sun Fiat ["clinching declaration" by the priest]: It is not then but now; not at Kiangan, but here in our village of Place-Set-with-Ethics-Locks. The pangs cease, and the Friend travels as did the balui trunk that vigorous Ancestor Gold slid down Center Mountain. The blanket will soon follow. The ceremony now enters its second phase, god-"pushing." The time changes to the present. Tulud [the "pushing"]: God is at his village there in Kiangan. Something tickles his ear. It is my invocation. He takes his spear in hand, girds on his hip-bag, and starts across the flat at Kiangan. He ascends at Habian; travels on the level at Uhat.... The priest keeps "pushing" Gold along the trail from Old Kiangan where the ceremony is occurring. Every few acres of the habitat is named. The priest dare not skip a place lest he lose control of the deity. We will omit about thirty of them and suppose the god to have been brought near. The priest's fervor grows, his voice rises, and his muscles begin to jerk. He [Gold] travels the paddies at Haliap; ascends at Springy Place; climbs the steep at Place-Set-with-EthicsLocks. He arrives! [and possesses the priest]. "Why, it is my children at Place-Set-with-Ethics-Locks that call me!" My Brother's Gods "Oh, yes, Deity!" cry the acolytes. "Brave Ancestor Gold of Kiangan, we are to be pitied. We are very dear to you. Let the Friend travel easily. As our fathers called you before, we are calling you now. Drink the rice wine and partake of the sacrifices." "I partake of your viands," chants Gold [using, of course, the tongue of the priest], I drink of your rice wine, for such is my custom-ah! The Friend will travel as easily as did the balui trunk that I slid down Center Mountain in years long ago-ah! The Blanket will soon follow-ah! You will become many and scatter throughout your hills-" "Oh, that's it, Deity!" cry the exhorters. "Eh damu! [lit. 'the meeting'-referring to the present unity of god and priest]. Become many and scatter throughout our hills and give pretentious feasts and wear gold ornaments!" "A profusion of jewelry will encircle your necks; the squealing of pigs [being killed for sacrifices] will be heard day by day in your villages-ah! Say-ay-ay-ay!" With a fading cry the deity is gone. During his entire declaration he has received fervid encouragement and offerings of delicious rice wine from coconut cups. It takes a primitive folk to make the best of Religion. V THE HALF-WAY SUN "... and revenge is something like a ball tossed back and forth, the game is never done." "Kit O'Brien"-Edgar Lee Masters. I. T takes a deep-rooted valor to penetrate an enemy region in small force, barefooted and armed only with spear, knife, and shield. It is not surprising that after he gets there the Ifugao believes in shifting all possible risk to his victim. He intends always to attack in superior force and from ambush. Large expeditions cannot be assembled, nor can they traverse the intermediate zones without warning being transmitted ahead to the enemy region. The population is dense but distributed and the tie of propinquity weak. Bontok towns, on the other side of the range, compact, isolated and commanding more local loyalty, have put forth fairly big war parties. In Ifugao large expeditions have been attempted, but all I ever heard of have met an organized defense and a disastrous end. Four regions attacked Benaue with about one hundred fifty warriors and lost more heads than they took. Nagakaran made a daybreak attack on Kiangan with a similar result. Barlig, a Bontok region, 154 The Half-Way Sun attacked the Ifugao region of Kambulu and came off second best. The better and almost universally used method is for small parties * averaging six to ten men, to slip through intermediate zones at night and, arriving in enemy territory, to waylay one or two or possibly three, and then hasten homeward. There is nothing chivalrous in this, but we are hardly in a position to condemn. Surprise, ambush, and superior force are laudable strategies in modern warfare. The Ifugao's purpose is not to fight a tournament but to obtain a head. He chooses the best possible means to the end. In his culture, vengeance is a necessary concomitant to survival. Let a group forbear to take it and it pays the price of extermination, since other groups are only too anxious for just such a safe hunting ground. Heads may be taken without regard to sex or age. The Kiangan people claim that only they of all Ifugaos, never take the heads of women or girls-that they merely kidnap and sell them as slaves. Other Ifugaos spurn this pharasaical pose of the Kianganites, saying that all Ifugaos take * I think it best to speak of headhunting in the present tense. While suppressed and limited, it can hardly be said to have been stopped as yet. Certainly the Ifugaos have experienced no change of heart, nor have the Kalingas, the Bontoks, the Apayaos or the Ibilaos. All would be hunting heads immediately were our government to withdraw. 155 The Half-Way Sun women's or children's heads unless they wish to profit by selling them into slavery. The favorable location of the Kianganites for disposing of slaves to the lowlanders may well have been the cause of whatever forbearance or mercy they showed women and children. When the people of Kurug captured a woman, she was violated by the entire party, and this was believed to have the same beneficial effect on crops and fertility of pigs and chickens as the taking of a head. Kidnapping might be a legal seizure for debt.* The proposer and planner of a headhunting expedition is termed Nungolat ("He-Who-Was-Made-the-Sinew"), the "Sinew." He may or may not be its leader; for the leadership of a group of Ifugaos depends entirely on which of them is the most forceful. The initiative and repute that prove themselves by getting an expedition under way, however, are likely to render the Sinew its leader. But he, as well as any other member of the party may be turned back by a bad omen on the way, and the others may continue without him. He is in the greatest likelihood of suffering retaliation from the avengers should the party get what it goes after. *Ifugaa Law, sees. 137-8. PLATE XLI (a) A war party. (b) A banyan tree at which heads were left by folk of PlaceSet-with-Ethics-Locks until "entered." I 1F 0I PLATE XLII (a) Putting the head on the banana stalk. (b) Addressing the head. The Half-Way Sun 2. Whether active measures are contemplated or not, a family is at all times performing ceremonies against its enemies. These have the protective purpose of counteracting similar enemy ceremonies and the offensive purpose of betwitching the enemy and entrapping their souls. And the flesh of the sacrifices keeps the family in meat. Let us suppose a headhunting expedition definitely decided on. A few days before the date of its departure, the figure of a man is hewn out of the butt of a tree-fern and ceremonially given the enemy's name. Those who are to go headhunting throw spears into it. A priest addresses it as follows: "You are speared, Tree-Fern-Man, but do not be angry. You are Strong Wind * and his father and mother, his brothers and sisters and kin by marriage. Our young men will meet you in the middle of the road. Your arms will be heavy; you will be all heart; your sleeping board will be the earth. You will be taken in retribution. For if one may collect a single bundle of rice that is owed, may he not collect the life of a man?" This ceremony, called bonat, and all other preliminaries are kept as secret as possible. The whole village probably * In the ceremonies that follow we will take "Strong Wind" as the name of the victim and Alimit as his home region. We will assume the headtakers to be folk of Kiangan region. 157 The Half-Way Sun knows in a general way what is going on, but it is attempted to deceive the folk about the expedition's objective lest the news somehow reach the enemy. In the evening before the day set for departing, the ginlot ceremony, consisting of sacrifices to the ancestral souls and all the deities, is performed, especial sacrifice being offered to the Gods of Reproduction and to the Gods of War. The headhunters betake themselves with all their armament and with their family priests to the house of the Sinew for this ceremony, and do not return home till they come back from the expedition. To the ancestral souls it is prayed: Ye ancestors are exhorted to uphold and assist your children to the end that they meet the enemy. His arms shall be heavy; he shall handle his weapons clumsily. Befuddled, he shall not see clearly or know how to return his vengeance. We will attack him. His body shall be all heart. We will pin him down with a spear. He shall suffer quick death where he stood. We will return from the headhunting expedition. We will be like a full "hand" of bananas, like the reeds of the atag mat. The same man shall be foremost and the same hindmost on the return as on the departure. No one shall have been wounded. We will arrive, and it shall be well. Soulstuff will we have returned, we who went headhunting. The speared man shall be lost-dropped out of existence. We will perform the headfeast ceremonies, and the omens shall be good. They shall forecast abundance of life 158 The Half-Way Sun and the becoming-many of the pigs and the chickens, the miraculous increase of the rice. We will travel the accustomed paths. The enemy and the evil-bringing spirits shall be retarded. They shall always be behind us. We will speak and our words shall prevail. All evil shall be turned aside. We will become many. And in that time ye ancestors are exhorted to move against the enemy to the end that he forego his vengeance; to the end that his witchcraft be muddled and react on his womenfolk and kindred and relatives by marriage. They shall continually die off. We will hear of it. We will keep getting news of it. The shields are painted afresh with the blood of sacrifices. To the Gods of Reproduction it is prayed: Make fast the knot of our oban * blanket in order that there be no crying away [that is, no bad omen] of the life of us who are going headhunting. Do not unsling us from the oban. Unsling the enemy instead; unsling them in the face of the Half-Way Sun. Exhort Deceiver to betray them in order that we may collect the debt. Carry the savor of our sacrifices and cooked rice to our enemies in their village. Let the death-dealing deities of the Upstream Region and of the Downstream Region touch them in the face of the Half-Way Sun, to the end that none of them be left-neither root nor branch of them. Only this we ask of ye Gods of Reproduction. * Figuratively, the members of the party are spoken of as being carried by the Gods of Reproduction slung from their shoulders in the oban (the baby-carrying-blanket) as babes are carried by their parents. The Half-Way Sun If the steam that arises from their sacrifices enters his nostrils, the enemy is bewitched. His case is worse than if he had broken the ordinary taboo against partaking of the food, water, or betels of an enemy. The Gods Governing Relations between Enemies will surely afflict him, and fearful are the ills they visit. But there is still more: by the laws of magic, if the steam reaches him, so will their spears! Continually there is the allusion in all war ceremonies to the sun in its mid-forenoon position, called "The HalfWay Sun." The magic in a sun that is half way up and consequently strong and becoming stronger is easily seen. And the Sun is a great war god, the Spearer. But never have I been able to down the feeling that besides magic and religion there is an interesting prehistoric connection. The peace-time flag of the Japanese is a rising sun-but the war flag! Is it a sun half way up-strong already and becoming stronger? * * During a leave of absence one year I spent several months with Professor Frederick Starr in Japan and Korea. I kept a list of what I considered strong indications of kinship between the Japanese and the Luzon pagans. The Japanese say they themselves cannot distinguish one of their headhunting wards of the Formosan mountains when dressed in Japanese costume from one of their own countrymen, and the headhunters of Formosa are undoubtedly of the same stock as our own headhunters a few score miles to the south. Frbm this physical resemblance, my list grew lengthy, embracing numerous cultural identities (just one of which is that every male Japanese wears a kind of g-string) and passing on to psychic attributes-a somewhat extreme racial sensitiveness and pride and an 16o 30~ + w VIc t-C 0-4 H-14 ET4' wI E-4 Dancing during headfeast. A religious ceremony is being performed at the left. Recitation of the myths. The very young priest on the right has several great-grandchildren-classificatorin, svstem ---althouph no children by our reckoning of rel.tionship.,z - 0 - I - oi-4 The Half-Way Sun The ceremonies continue far into the night. But finally priests and warriors go to sleep on the mats spread underneath the house. From now until their return, they and their families are restricted to the "religious" foods-that is, to rice, chicken and pork. Continence must be observed by all the kin. The family priests must continue to sleep beneath the house. Women must not weave, since the back and forth motions would cause the party to become bewildered. On the other hand, the women try through parallel magic to help the headhunters by sitting and lying straight, by acting definitely in all things, and by keeping ever alert. 3. In the morning, the party set forth, but they go only a little way and encamp in the outskirts of the home region, constructing a shack, bazuwi, in which they will sleep that night. On the route and during the rest of the day, they seek omens. The cry of the omen bird, if slow, is good; if rapid and excited, bad. Direction of flight is an equally inclination to value life as naught when these are touched and to run amok. In view of this last characteristic of a people whom I greatly admire, I hasten to confess the kinship of my own race with the Ainu, a tribe of whites whom the Japanese hold as subjects, and a tribe far lower in the scale of culture than our own headhunters that I believe the near racial kin of the Japanese. (See Appendix III.) 161 The Half-Way Sun important omen: if toward the enemy territory, good; if at right angles to the march, equivocal; if in the face of the party, bad, and they must return home. The same is true with respect to crawling snakes. Falling trees or tree limbs are bad. If the headhunters return home, they ceremonialize some more and make another start in a few days. But snakes are seldom encountered creeping in the trail, trees and their branches rarely fall, and the omen bird habitually tweets slowly and is inclined to fly ahead of an approaching body. Usually the omens are good. At the shack they have built, the party sacrifices a chicken to the omen gods and place-spirits of the locality, and then a small pig to the war gods. Cooked, the chicken is cut into a piece for each member, which is placed on his headbasket. Rice wine is poured into a dish. A warrior prays the omen gods to partake of the food and drink: Come, let us eat. Do not be angry with us for disturbing you, but accompany us as friends, and give us a good omen. That is the right way to do. You gave our fathers good omens, and we are invoking you as did the fathers. The warriors eat. Afterward, each warrior is given a piece of ginger, which, together with the morsel of chicken placed on his headbasket-his "iron" ration-he wraps in a leaf and puts in his basket. The ginger will be rubbed on the face and arms, when the party reaches enemy territory, 162 The Half-Way Sun to keep the vision clear, the head cool, and the arms steady. When the party shall have returned from the hunt, the "roll" will be called ceremonially by collecting the pieces of ginger, which will be kept henceforth as charms along with the war fetishes. A ceremony must be performed to keep harmless the water the headhunters will drink and that which will touch their bodies. Cole states that certain of the Mindanao peo- ple so fear the "washing-out effect" of rain when headhunting that they turn back if caught in a shower. The Ifugaos are not so fearful of it, but are still uneasy. The following is the heart of the ceremony; a priest addresses the water in a coconut cup that he holds: Presently, indeed, thou wilt be swallowed, Water, here, in order to set a precedent that we shall not be bloated who go forth to bring back a head. Thou art drunk, Water, in order to render us like thee; in order to make us like unto the Cataract of Inude and like unto the waters of the river, which never cease flowing. The prolonged religious ceremonies, of which we have given only bits, finally draw to a close, and the party, wearing their side-arms, seek sleep. In the middle of the night, a warrior who must also have been initiated into the priesthood arises and, lighting a torch, carefully inspects the others as they lie sleeping. Any whose scabbards do not 163 The Half-Way Sun extend straight with their bodies, or whose hands, limbs, or bellies appear swollen, must return home. 4. Long before daybreak the party are on the way in the effort to cross the neutral zone without being seen and questioned. The folk there, seeing them, would only toss a spear in their direction, taking care that it be badly aimed -a form of declaring neutralty, of clearing their region of blame. What is more serious, though, is that they would probably send news of the foray to the regions beyond. Let us notice the headhunters' armament. The most striking feature is the headbasket worn on the shoulders and back. The basket itself is of rattan and is suspended by woven rattan loops through which the shoulders are thrust. But we do not see the basket: it is concealed under a black, waterproof thatch of porcupinoid bristles derived from the flower of a palm and makes the wearer look like a gigantic, crouching, and very angry, ape. A long rectangular shield of light wood; a war knife in a scabbard, hanging from the waist; a bundle of three or four old spears, light and crude of workmanship-quite different from the artistically wrought heavy sort that the Ifugao loves to swank in his home region, but longer-ranged and quicker to be gotten 164 The Half-Way Sun into action; a bunch of ground spears, light sticks of bamboo about a foot long, sharpened at both ends, which will be stuck slantingly in the ground on the return trip for the purpose of impaling the avengers who will probably rush in pursuit of the party-these comprise the equipment. Sometimes sharpened stalks of a large reed are carried as additional spears. The Ifugao can throw them with unbelievable force. I have seen them sticking to a sufficient depth in a tree trunk, which had served a party of youths as a target, to maintain their length standing out at right angles. Nor should anyone be able to testify better than I of what the little ground spears are capable. Some sixteen years ago I walked into one. It caught me about four inches above the ankle. Healing, it left an ugly scar with a tendency to become varicose. Twice it has been operated on, is still troublesome, and always will be. The tactics in enemy territory depend on whether the expedition be operating in a feudist zone or a war zone. In the former case, the headhunters seek some particular individual or members of his family. They construct a shack in a well-hidden place. Three or four penetrate to the locality they think, favorable for their purpose, and the rest remain behind in the shack. The advance party, if unsuccessful, returns to the shack at night, and a new one is sent out before morning. But if the expedition be in a war 165 The Half-Way Sun zone where any of the inhabitants are eligible for beheading, the whole party goes into ambush, since it is nearly certain that they will get a head the first day. A favorite place to lie in wait in either zone is a somewhat isolated spring used as a water supply. The head of a kadangyang or "center" is more desirable than that of a less important person. It is more charged with soulstuff. 5. The ideal headtaking procedure is likely to be quite at variance with what actually occurs. He who throws the fatal spear is believed to be possessed by Sun God and has the right to take the head. He dances over the body in characteristic Ifugao manner, slashes the neck with his warknife, draws his finger through the blood that flows, and sucks the blood from it-a form of communion, of "eating the god," perhaps, for the fallen enemy is believed to have been possessed by Deceiver and so betrayed into danger. Or it may be a means of obtaining the enemy's soulstuff. Addressing the corpse, he cries, "So it is done to thee! Thou art taken as a debt. Vengeance for him who has gone before. We kindred are ferocious!" In actuality, there is probably no unanimity of opinion about who threw the fatal spear or which of several spears 166 The Half-Way Sun thrown was fatal. Nor is the Ifugao sufficiently the sportsman to play fair in a matter entailing such prestige as the taking of a head. And then there is the scramble habit. A free-for-all is likely to ensue as soon as a victim is down, with incautious remonstrances that may be heard and endanger the party. The head is likely to be hacked off by several or all in an unseemly struggle of each to strike the severing stroke. Fingers, hands, and the scrotum may also be taken. Of the latter a lime-box for a betel chewing outfit may be fashioned. 6. As soon as they think they safely may, one of the party takes the severed head and, shouting "Leave it, Deceiver, for we have it!" hurls it rolling and bounding on the ground. It may be so addressed and hurled by other members. The purpose is to exorcise Deceiver so that he may not make the head heavy and weigh down him who carries it. The god is bad company when the party is likely to be pursued by avengers. He who is to carry the head addresses it: "Hark thee, hark thee, Head, here! Do not presently be heavy and weigh me down, because Deceiver has left thee. Do not be burdensome. Weigh down your father and kindred. Be to me like the feathery plumes of the cogon and 167 The Half-Way Sun run of reeds. My feet will not be fatigued-I might ascend even unto the skyworld. So thou hast done to our companions before, and now we take thee as a debt." The headcarrier puts the head in his basket, and the party hastens on the return. From now until the "entrance" ceremony is performed, no water may be drunk by any member. As they hurry on, they plant in their wake the wicked little ground spears. As soon as they dare, they shout in characteristic fashion. Not to do so would be unsportsmanlike. It is to be doubted if there be any spirit in this of giving the bereft kinsmen a run for their money-more likely the highest pitch of headhunting ecstasy requires a slight spice of danger. The shouting resembles a college yell, "Yuh-yuh, yuhyuh, yuh-yuh-hwoo!" in concert. As an insult to the living kin, they sometimes employ a final "Hwey!" the shout used to scare away hawks and other 'chicken thieves. Or they may terminate with "Doo-ee!" which intimates that the slain was a hog thief. If the headtakers reach the home region without loss, their ecstasy and elation know no limits. The villagers there, hearing the shouts, answer in kind, likewise transported. Women scurry with pencil-shaped loomsticks to hide behind trees, boulders or thickets by which the headtakers will pass. When these arrive, the woman leaps out in front 168 The cockfight dance. PLATE XLVI The Half-Way Sun of them, squats and beats the loomsticks together. The headtakers shout, jump over the sticks and halt, their backs toward her, for they know that she is going to address them-Ifugaos always receive addresses from behind. The woman arises, swings her arm and screams a speech such as this: "Hark ye, hark ye, children! Ye are brave, but I am braver. For I am the one who has squeezed you forth that you should be, and have imparted my bravery to you so that ye should return the vengeance and collect the debt they owed us. For if we may collect a bundle of rice that is owed may we not collect a human life? Ye have done well, my children. Ye are brave! Ye have returned a head to our village to bring about the fertility of the pigs and chickens and the productivity of the rice. Live, ye headtakers! Ye will not become bloated. Deceiver will not betray you. We of this village will prevail." She dances a bit, and the headtakers pass on to be "ambushed" and addressed by other women. 7 -The head is left somewhere in the outskirts of a village to be ceremonially guarded by youths-but with warriors at hand to reinforce in the event of an attack. Any of the party who may have been wounded must stay with the head. The headtakers hurry to their homes, ascend through The Half-Way Sun the front door, leap down through the rear one, pass beneath the house and enter through the front door. They stay in the house a few moments, mute and quiet. They are trying to make sure of losing Deceiver and his kindred deities. These will be welcomed in a ritual manner to the feasts soon to occur, but are not wanted as pot companions. Priests assemble with animals for sacrifice. At both the house and the granary of the Sinew, an "entrance" ceremony is performed. Nothing of fatidical or portentous significance may be brought into an Ifugao village until such a ceremony has been performed. When Was-Made-Lonesome was stabbed at the limekiln by the laborer who had run amok, his folk were going to make him sleep beneath the house the night they took him home. I took him into my own house and kept him during his convalescence. His people exacted the promise, though, that my houseboys should eat only the religious foods during his stay. They excused me from the taboos-on the ground that a white man is subject to no law, I suppose. The following is the burden of the invocation when a head is to be "entered": Ye deities of ours, a good entrance is besought. Let there be no entrance of Betrayal, Sickness, Famine, Contentiousness or Witchcraft, for that would be evil. Enter, instead, the miraculous increase of the rice; enter the multiplication 170 The Half-Way Sun of the bundles so that when the women fill their baskets, the place whence the rice bundles were taken shall be filled up. Enter the swelling of the grains [in cooking] and the tying up of stomachs so that but a little will satisfy hunger. Enter the fecundity of the pigs and the chickens and our becoming-many. Enter the dissolution of the speared one and his complete loss to the memory of his kin, for these things would be good. Let there be no entrance of sorcery, curses, soultrapping or vengeance-return. Bile sacs of the sacrifices are examined for an omen. A normal bile sac is good. If the omen be bad, the wounded and the head have to remain outside the village until the ceremony can be repeated on the next day. 8. When the head is "entered" into the village, a priest rubs lime into its eyes and addresses it: Hark thee, hark thee, Head, here! Thou art blinded with lime to the end that thou look not upon us kindred who have taken thee. Be mindful, instead, of thine own kin back in thy village of Alimit. Cause them to fall into our hands to serve thee for companions. Lime is rubbed into thine eyes, too, Head, as a parallel to blind thine own kin in order that they shall not keep coming back at us. Seeing not where to seek their vengeance, let them seek it of our enemies of Lamot. Meanwhile the young men have been preparing the paraphernalia that two of the headtakers will wear later in the The Half-Way Sun cockfight dance: woven rattan armlets and leglets, tasselled with feathers, head-dresses, wings and tails made of banyan wood and palm leaves. A banana stalk about five or six feet high is set in a suitable place. The head is fixed on its top, and the paraphernalia are hung from pegs stuck into the stalk. A priest addresses the paraphernalia: Hark ye, hark ye, Palm Leaves there, Banyan Wood there, Rattan and Grass there! Shrivel because ye are palm leaves, wood, rattan and grass! But let not us kindred who have taken the head shrivel and dry up. Let us, instead, be like the waters of the river which do not cease flowing. Let us, instead, be hale and prim as the tail feathers of the Full-Fledged Cock-even like gold, which tarnisheth not. Shrivel instead the witchcraft and sorcery of Strong Wind's kindred. Shrivel Sickness and Famine and the deathdealing spirits of the Downstream Region. Shrivel the return of the vengeance. Shrivel all remembrance of Strong Wind. This speech reveals the Ifugao's extreme sensitiveness to magic influences. In his thought, if one thing shrivels another has to be in sympathy. Naturally, he tries to direct the shrivelling to undesirables. Even before he weeds the walls of his rice terraces, he performs a ceremony to bring it about that sickness, famine, sorcery and the like, and not the growing rice, shall shrivel along with the uprooted weeds. 172 PLATE XLVII ll ls; I~~~,P PILATE XLVIII Poured-Out, of Baay, and the heads that adorned his house. The Half-Way Sun The folk begin to dance in a circle to one side of the head. Ifugao dancing is somewhat mimetic of the flying of birds -or, more likely, deities. At intervals a priest, center, or headtaker steps close to the circle and shouts one of a number of vainglorious speeches, somewhat in the Plains Indian's fashion of counting his coups. During the speech the dancers modestly turn their backs to him. Hark ye! Hark ye, Dancers, Swayers to and fro, Benders in the dance, Flitters in the dance! A double sway, a double bend, And a double dance! The arms are decorated With headtakers' ornaments: When I was young, I went far into the Downstream Region. I travelled over stream and I travelled over mountain. I came to the house of the Cobra. It was awe-inspiring; it was fear-inspiring. I conquered my fear and went into his house. I cut off his head; his tail I used for a clout. The head I took into the village of our enemies at Dukligan, and they were all afraid of me-they stood aside and trembled. Git-git-ta-git [meaningless] Git-tao-wa [meaningless] Nunk-gao-wa [Half-way] Al-gao! [The sun: (that is, the Half-Way Sun)]. Agi-yu-yu-yuu Hwoo! The Half-Way Sun The people all join in on the "Hwoo!" The beginning and the end of these speeches is always the same. But sometimes they are addressed to the head, as in the following: Hark thee! Hark thee, Head, there! I travelled far into the Downstream Region. I came to the Whirlpoolthe Whirlpool of the Crocodile Downstream. I challenged Crocodile. Crocodile rose to the surface. I plunged in, pried open his jaws and wrenched out a tooth. I took it to the house of Wigan at Dukligan, and they were all afraid of me-they stood aside and trembled. Gitgitaowa! Gitaozwa! The Half-Way Sun! Agi-yu-yu-yuu Hwoo! Youths who have not attained priesthood nor influence mock this vainglorious recital from time to time: Hark ye! Hark ye, Dancers, Swayers to and fro, Benders in the dance, Flitters in the dance! A double sway, a double bend, And a double dance! The arms are decorated With headtakers' ornaments. When I was young I travelled far into the Downstream Region. I travelled over stream and I travelled over mountain. I scaled to the climax Of a summit of hogsbacks Saw there a woman! 174 The Half-Way Sun Woman the crest of her, Cobra the rest of her, Scrawny the breasts of her, Foul was the nest of her, Surely not human! I hurried home! Gitgitagit, and so forth. Another of these satires is: Hark ye! Hark ye, dancers, * * * When I was a young man I travelled far into the Downstream Region. I travelled over stream and I travelled over mountain. I saw there a Grass Dweller. Ill-fated was his lot: His fields were very hot, Wide-mouthed his cooking pot, War knife he hadn't got. His clout was smeared with rot. I ran away! Gitgitagit.. 9. On the morning of the second day, while the younger folk continue dancing, the priests perform the lopad ceremony. Its purpose is to frustrate the tingting, an enemy ceremony / \: 175 t lk 'j i~~~~~~~~~~. ~l~~c The Half-Way Sun to select avengers that takes place in the village of the slain this same day. A few illustrations will show the nature of the lopad ceremony. It is besought of ye ancestors that ye be victorious over the witchcraft of the people of Alimit. Bring about a bad omen of their war ceremonies and expeditions. When he [the enemy] returns to his house let him find that his sorcery has reacted on the body of the woman he frequents or on his own body. His house will become grown up with grass, spider-webbed and moss-covered. It is besought of ye ancestors that your children shall become the ones who give pretentious feasts and wear gold ornaments;* that they may become many and scatter throughout the hills of Pugao; t that day by day the smoke of fresh clearings shall arise on the mountain sides. A multitude of food baskets [females] and a myriad of shields [males]-all like unto the waters of the river, which never cease flowing; unblemished as the tail feathers of the Full-Fledged Cock! Let them speak and strike fear into the eyes of the inimical! For that would be well, ye ancestors. Two priests approach the banana stalk. One of them addresses the paraphernalia hanging on it. Hark ye! Hark ye, Rattan, there; Grass, there; Palm Leaves, there! Wither, because thou art grass; dry out, because thou art rattan; turn black, because ye are leaves! But let not us who wear ye wither and turn black! Blacken * Gold neck ornaments are valued at six to twelve times their intrinsic worth if handed down from ancient times. t Pugao, "the,hill country"; i.e., Ifugaoland. 176 The Half-Way Sun the enemies. Let them disintegrate and waste away, to the end that there be neither root nor branch of them left. They garb themselves in these trappings made to simulate the comb, wings and tail of a fighting cock. Soon will occur the most striking single feature of the entire headfeast, the Cockfight Dance. Rightly has the barnyard fowl a hallowed place in Ifugao ceremonial. The Ifugao's culture very largely, as well as probably most of the strains in his blood, came from Burma. The chicken was domesticated in Burma, not for food or eggs but to be used for divination and for sport. "Rival villages settled their claims by cockfights, which thus were at bottom ordeals." * And perhaps at the very hour that this cockfight dance is occurring in the headtaker's village, the kin of the slain in another village are squatted in a circle around a beheaded cock, which, by its flopping, is searching out Strong Wind's avenger! Before the dance, sacrifice is offered to the following pairs of lesser war gods: Full-Fledged Cock and Fledgling Cock; Father of Cobras and Father of Blacksnakes; King Cobra of White Mountain and Python of Center Mountain; Crocodile Downstream and Shark Downstream; Hard Stone and Soft Stone. Myths relate how the stronger of each pair overcame the weaker, and then the deities of the * Lowie, Robert H.: Are We Civilized? p. 59. 177 The Half-Way Sun myth are brought by god-pushing to the village and declare: the stronger, that they will stay with the headtakers; the weaker, that they will go and associate with the enemy. One of the priests dressed in paraphernalia taken from the banana stalk recites the following myth: HOW FULL-FLEDGED COCK TOOK FLEDGLING'S HEAD And it is said that Full-Fledged Cock of Level Place and Fledgling of Naladangan made rice wine. It became strong. They poured it out of the brewing jar. They drank. They became drunk and began to boast. "Do not challenge me! Do not put me to trial," said Full-Fledged Cock. "I am very dangerous." "And so am I," said Fledgling. "If that is the case, let us wade across to the flat at Mapulayan," answered Full-Fledged Cock, "and have a trial of strength." Fledgling agreed. They went down to the river. "Go ahead," said Full-Fledged Cock. "Wade." Fledgling waded. He could not stand against the current. It swept him head downstream, feet upstream. He could hardly stagger to the opposite bank. Fiat, by the priest. It is a parallel for our enemies: they cannot stand against Sickness and Famine and Witchcraft and Contentions. The death-dealing deities of the Downstream Region and the Upstream Region topple them over. 178 The Half-Way Sun Full-Fledged Cock chuckled. "You see!" he said. "I told you not to boast!" Full-Fledged Cock waded. He crossed straight to the other side. The current did not budge him. Not a feather was misplaced. He crowed. Like the voice of Thunder God was his exulting. He flourished his tail feathers. Fiat by the priest. It is a parallel for us kindred. It is not then, it is now; not at Mapulayan, but here at our village of Place-Set-with-Ethics-Locks. The children [i.e. our warriors] are like the Full-Fledged Cock-nothing can touch them or prevail against them. They bargain and get the better of it; ask for what they want and get it. They are like the tail feathers of a full-grown cock, like gold which tarnisheth not. They went on to the flat at Mapulayan. Full-Fledged Cock sat down. "Go ahead. Spur me," he said. Fledgling spurred, but the spur did not enter. Fiat by the priest. The parallel compels. It was not then; it is now. It was not there; it is here. The enemy's spears will fall to the earth. His feet will be slow. His arms will be heavy. Befuddling his weapons, he shall fail in his vengeance. Full-Fledged Cock chuckled. "I thought I heard you say you were dangerous! Now you sit down and give me a chance." Fledgling sat. Full-Fledged Cock strutted around and around him. He saw where the heart was beating. He 179 The Half-Way Sun spurred and struck it. The blood gushed forth. Fledgling fell, head downstream, feet upstream. He licked the dust! Fiat by the priest. It is a parallel for our enemies. They shall fall, heads downstream, feet upstream. There will be neither root nor branch of them left. Our young men will meet them in middle of the road. Suffering quick death where they stand, their sleeping board will be the earth. Full-Fledged Cock looked upward. He saw Sun in the Half-Way place. He saw that Sun had a halo. He cut off Fledgling's head. He started home. There was no bad omen. He crowed on the way. He arrived at his village at Level Place. The women beat loomsticks. He jumped over them. The priests performed the "entrance" ceremonies. They placed the head on a banana stalk, brought out the gongs, danced, sang. And next day the lopad. Full-Fledged Cock taught them the cockfight dance. "Do it so," he said. "The enemy's witchcraft will be turned aside. It will react on his own body." And next day, they performed the ditak. Early another day, they made a procession around the house and hung up the headtaker's adornments. Then they went to listen for an omen. The bird gave them a brave one. "It is well," said Full-Fledged Cock. "He whom I beheaded is as if he had never lived. There will be no returning of the vengeance-no sequel to the little incident!" Fiat by the priest. It is not then, but now; not at Level Place, but here at our village of Place-Set-with-EthicsLoc'ks. Our enemies are laid low. Their centers are like women, like Fledgling Cock, like Soft Stone of Naladan180 The Half-Way Sun gan, like Blacksnake of Center Mountain. We are like Full-Fledged Cock, like Hard Stone of Hunduan, like Cobra of White Mountain. The enemy's witchcraft reacts on his own body and on his womenfolk and kindred. The myth ends and god-"pushing" begins. The priest brings Full-Fledged Cock there to the headfeast: Full-Fledged Cock is strutting about his home in Level Place. Something entices his ear. It is my [i.e. the priest's] invocation. "Truly," he says, "the children in Place-Set-with-EthicsLocks must be calling me. Watch the house, Bugan [i.e. his wife] while I answer the call." He crosses the river at Palpal. Ascends at Anao.. [The priest "pushes" him across perhaps fifty localities intervening between Level Place and the home village]... He walks on the rice field dikes at Springy Place; climbs the steep at Place-Set-with-Ethics-Locks. He arrives! [and posesses the priest]. "Kao!" he says. "Indeed, it is my children at Place-Setwith-Ethics-Locks who have called me." "Yes," [says the priest] "For as you did in times past, so we have done. We were sorely tried. We avenged ourselves. Here is rice wine. Drink with us." [Full-Fledged Cock now possesses the priest. Exhorted continually by the acolytes, and between sips of rice wine, he declares]: "Say-ay-ay-ay! I have come, I, Full-Fledged Cock, of Level Place. I have come to your hills and I drink of your rice wine and accept of your sacrifices, for such is my custom-ah. I will side with you for you are my children-ah. 181 The Half-Way Sun You will prevail and be strong and scatter throughout the hills of Pugao-ah! Increased is your soulstuff and that of your pigs, chickens and rice-ah! "Fledgling Cock will associate with your enemies and they will become like him-ah. Day by day will arise in their villages the wailing of women bereft-ah. Under every house a death chair! Their houses will become moss-covered and their paths will be grass-grown-ah!" There are fervid cries of approval from the acolytes and cup-bearers. The god still possessing him, the priest leaps to his feet and begins to dance. The priest who put on the other set of cockfight trappings is possessed by Fledgling Cock and joins him. The dance consists of sallies and feigned spurrings. Full-Fledged Cock chuckles harshly; Fledgling, in a faint falsetto. An "orchestra" beats gongs and music sticks. Finally Fledgling yields and buries his head. Full-Fledged Cock stands over him in triumph, spurring him. "So it is done to our enemies," shouts the assembled throng. A priest rushes up with firebrands and brandishes them on each side of the victor. IO. After the Cockfight Dance, "coup counting" and addresses to the head and paraphernalia continue till late at night. A picturesque feature of one headfeast was a dance 182 The Half-Way Sun by young boys on stilts. They omitted none of the ordinary dance movements, advancing and retreating, standing, bending and swaying with outstretched arms. Considering that the stilts were mere tree branches with a dopped-off limb for a footpiece, it was a remarkable exhibition of agility. But the grown-ups viewed it with bored toleration. Rice wine gurgles continually from the ancient Chinese jars-some of them must have been spectators at many such scenes. Night finds the assemblage rather boisterous. The young continue dancing, but the old men gather close to the wine jars and chant. HEADHUNTERS' CHANTS I God of the Rainbow, go tonight o'er your course, O'er the path where nightly you shine like the moon, Drink not the blood of us who speared the foe, But drain the blood of his whole kindred; Their souls bear off to the Region Downstream. Give o'er to Imbagay, Death's Messenger. Agi-yu-yu-yuu Hwoo! II Snarer of the Skyworld, look down from your realm! As you travel tonight on your road O'er the way where nightly you shine like the moon, Drop down on Alimit, doman of the foe, 183 The Half-Way Sun Them carry off to quarters most remote. Lock them there throughout eternity! Agi-yu-yu-yuu Hwoo! III Stabber from the Region Downstream, Smite not us who speared the foe! Go by night o'er your route, your way Where habitually you shine like the moon. On Strong Wind's kindred at midnight descend, Transfix them all, as we in sacrificial rite Slay swine. To Imbagayan give them o'er To hale to Kadungayan, the Region of the Shades! Agi-yu-yu-yuu Hwoo! The chant continues heavily on and on. Sometimes there is a switch to the following, which has a lighter air that reminds a little of "Ta ra ra ra boom de-ay." Wigan of the Skyworld, what with your foot Did you brush down, one time, Hastening at headhunters' shouts? A betel leaf for him to chew Who goes to spear our enemies. And it makes him strong; He radiates life; He gets no bloating; He stays in his prime, Him the leaf sustains and strengthens. Areca Palm, standing near the house, Keep growing, keep growing! 184 The Half-Way Sun Your seed is required By th' avenging ones When they go headhunting. You they chew, and there is no wavering. You sustain and strengthen them. Rice of the Skyworld, gift of Lidum,* Of Lidum to Tadona of Kiangan! Tadona planted it and it covers All the hills of Pugao. Avengers take it when they go Headhunting downstreamward; Take it and eat it together. It makes their arms hot, They slash off the head, And, shouting, carry it home. It multiplies the pigs and the chickens; It increases the harvest; It brings abundance of life to our hills. There is a sense of well-being in the circle of dancers near the head, in the throng of old men squatted around the wine jars, many of them maudlin drunk, and in the folk massed thick under the houses. For their star is in the ascendant. The whole region has gained life: not an indi- vidual life, but life that is diffused throughout the fields to better the crops, life that will vitalize the domestic animals, life that will make the folk themselves more nearly what they want to be. No longer theirs to worry about an * References to the mythical origins of betels and rice. 185 The Half-Way Sun /uncollected debt of life. And this triumphant feast! What a relief from the anxiety of the last few days and the monotony of months and months before! Alas for taboos! Except for them, pleasure would, perhaps, rise to the summit of general license. They forbid Love! But the individuals are buoyant, and since the sexes cannot make a harmonious contact, they make an antagonistic one. The younger set align under the houses, sexes separate, and alternately criticize each other in song. One improvises; the others of the same sex join in the phrase, "Di-din-ay-an," in this age meaningless-perhaps it had a meaning once. A Man: You womenfolk, DI-DIN-AY-AN! You gather rice-field snails, DI-DIN-AYAN! You cook and eat, and hide the rest, DIDIN-AY-AN! You let your menfolk grow gaunt, DI-DINAY-AN. A Woman: You menfolk, DI-DIN-AY-AN! You go forth with nets, DI-DIN-AY-AN! You catch a big river fish, DI-DIN-AY-AN! You cook it in a big pot, DI-DIN-AY-AN! You eat it into a pot belly, DI-DIN-AYAN! Morning finds them still at it without having improved the theme. Why do they keep it up? It would be unfair, 186 The Half-Way Sun and incorrect, besides, to suppose the Ifugao's belly so disproportionately his solicitude as to determine the theme of music, poetry, or conversations between men and women. Such may have been the case at one time. Indeed, it is believed that the self-preservative activities, among all people, antedate the reproductive as song themes. These food songs may be survivals of that epoch, useful now as a means of making an untabooed contact between the sexes. Possibly there are, sub rosa, improvisations that violate the taboo. II. The headfeast culminates on the third day in the great series of ceremonials called the ditak. Every member of the party furnishes one or more animals for sacrifice. Twenty or more priests may be taking part simultaneously in the invocations. Their differently pitched, impassioned voices "rise and fall like bamboo harps." That land of the Ifugaos entices the eye with more of natural and even of manmade beauty, I believe, than any equal area of the earth. Equally signal is one of these ceremonials in its appeal to the ear. Against the cadences that rise and fall in threnodic measure, how like angrily plucked strings the explosive exhortations of the acolytes!... Here-I am musing-is an episode in Man's rise from The Half-Way Sun the brute. To live he must have rice, pigs, and chickens; to get them he must exchange time and effort, the substances of his life. He doesn't want to do this-he tries to get rice, pigs and chickens at the expense of the life of another man. Well, that can be done, that is being done, but primitive man attempts it irrationally,-he is thralled to magic. Advanced societies have evolved both superb means of increasing the rice, the pigs and the chickens and ways of making other men spend their lives for one's self, but Man finds himself as badly off as ever... and here am I, in this young world and of a race that is a baby that reaches for bright-colored globes and crystals and wants principally to stuff itself, a race to which knowledge and Reason serve not even feebly as guides... here, this fellow, I, fated to live in the babyhood of blundering Humankind that seems always to exhaust every possible combination and permutation of error before accidentally at last hitting upon the right way!-I must have been born a thousand years later; would I care to be? I am surprised-I find myself not at all wishing such a thing! WhyS Am I, an atom of foolish humanity, no more guided by reason than other men? Or is it that I distrust Progress'? Is Evil as necessary in the world as Good' Is there, must there be, in the very nature of things, a bipolarity, a duality of opposites? [From out the hodgepodge of invocation that rises 188 PIATE XLIX ~~~~-~~~~ioi i~~~~~k,~~i i.~~ e.iI sli.;- ~" j PLATE L The Half-Way Sun above the priests squatted yonder about the wine jars on the mats, there intrude on my meditation, now and anon, phrases from the barked exhortations of the acolytes"miraculous increase... gold ornaments... soulstuff of the slain... we, the ones... give pretentious feasts... abundance of life!"] Come, come! Why could you not say "Amen!" to the idea of living a thousand years later? Well, then-the other direction: a thousand years earlier, or two thousand... I close my eyes to the sunshine and the palm trees and the bronze-skinned manhunters! Another scene... another, a feebler sun, straining through bare branches of oak and ash and beech... clumps of gray withered grass from which spears of green are shooting... another people, primitive, too, but tall, heavy-boned, skins weathered to dull red, yet white where the wind lifts thornpinned sagum-a biting wind! A shivering folk, cuddled in little groups for warmth... watching their priests, too, although now and again their glances stray without pity to a youth and a girl, garlanded and adorned but bound with thongs that bite the flesh. Strange, muddy-bearded priests and wild-eyed priestesses invoke Odin and Baldur and Freya and many gods... exhortations from the folk"piercing shouts" and "broken roars"-fervid exhortations they are, from deep in hungry bellies, for last year's crop 189 The Half-Way Sun was poor. A blear-eyed priest with bloated cheeks, stringy beard, hairy pendulous abdomen, takes up a broad bronze dagger and begins a chant... the girl whimpers hopelessly like an abused child... the youth's ashen face turns dead.... I am afraid of that priest, afraid of the whole group. I fear my own people! My own race is stern, terrifying, awe-inspiring-hastily I open my eyes to return to the sunshine and the palm trees and the lesser folk. Rather than that other, let me look on this present scene, which is somehow less real despite the actuality of flesh and blood headhunters and the stomach-wrenching stench that a soft, changeful breeze brings fitfully from what is on the banana stalk.... The staccato exhortations of the acolytes stand out against a background of invocation that rises and falls like the cadence of bamboo harps! I2. The ditak ceremonies of the headtakers and of the headlosers are as alike as the prayers of warring nations that profess the same brand of Christianity-the objective is reversed, that is all. We shall see them again in connection with the vengeance ceremonies of the headlosers. On the morrow of the next day, the headtakers, brandish190 The Half-Way Sun ing the paraphernalia, make a procession around the houses, chanting: Lagitlagit [the Ifugaos do not know the meaning] Paraphernalia! You have shrivelled, And we hang you up In the house of the bees. You are terrifying, You are fear-inspiring! The paraphernalia is then divided. Each headtaker hangs his portion under the eaves of his house, and a priest addresses it: Hark ye, hark ye, Paraphernalia, there! Wither and turn black because ye are leaves; shrivel because ye are grass; dry out because ye are rattan! But be not a parallel for us kindred who will continually gaze upward at you. We will be like gold, which does not tarnish. We will not bloat nor suffer from enlarged spleen.* We will sweat freely. When we climb the steeps, our legs shall be swift like unto feathery plumes of cogon and runo riding the wind. We will travel the accustomed paths as travel the waters of the river, which never cease flowing. Be a parallel instead for the vengeance of our enemies and for Sickness, Witchcraft, Famine.... Before being removed from the banana stalk, the head is addressed: * See page 140. The Half-Way Sun Hark thee, hark thee, Head! Thou art taken down, but do not take us down. Take down thy father and mother and all thy kindred. Let them serve to avenge thee in order that thou have companions. Take down Sickness and Famine and Sorcery, and even the evil-bringing deities of the Downstream Region and of the Upstream Region. For you have become one of us; you have become familiar with us. The head will usually adorn the Sinew's house; if another's, that detail was agreed on before the party set forth. All the members share in the actual ownership, and it cannot be sold against their will. Only old heads are sold, as a rule, although sometimes the enemy family will purchase their kinsman's head at heavy cost. In Kiangan, the head is buried under the house whose entrance it will adorn. Of course it is again addressed: Thou art buried, Head, in order to give life to that which is planted, multiply the pigs and the chickens, and to the end that we become many. / Thou art buried, Head, so that thou wilt become one of us. Thou art buried, Head, to the end that thou disintegrate and waste away as a parallel for thy kindred. They will be afflicted with quick-coming fatigue, shortness of the breath, pestilence and coughings. In thy village every woman will wear mourning bands. Thou art buried in order to bury all memory of thee-all returning of the vengeance. 192 PLATE LI The procession halts for the leader to shout an invocation. The legs of the body may be seen just beyond the woman, who is shouting to the soul. The Half-Way Sun In Kurug the head is boiled until the flesh drops from it. Folk of other regions claim to be afraid to boil it, believing that if it looks at them they will die. That is why they bury it. The Kurug folk hold it face downward in the pot by a stick pressed against the occiput. For a while, headtakers and kindred must eat only the "religious" foods, maintain continence and go dirty. But at the next waxing phase of the moon, released from the taboo, they go with sacrifices to a river or stream, and address the water: Wash, Water, but do not wash away the soulstuff of the pigs, the chickens, the rice, nor our becoming-many. Wash away death-dealing spirits and the returning of the vengeance. What we plant will be as sound as that for which Lidum himself [the "Great-Teacher" deity, brother of the hero ancestor] performed the seed-bed ceremony. We wash away the dirt, but nothing shall be taken from us. We will frequent the women, yet we will remain abounding in life. We will become many, we who have returned the vengeance. How long the head will remain buried depends greatly on how long the members of the party require to secure another supply of animals for sacrifice. For each must perform expensive general-welfare ceremonials when the head is dug up and cleaned of flesh. A hog is sacrificed, and the head is addressed: 193 The Half-Way Sun Thou art given a full-grown hog, Head, and art ridden of flesh to the end that thou become one of us. Thou wast taken as a debt. Thou wilt increase the soulstuff of our region here. Thou wilt turn aside the westcomers and Famine and Sorcery.... The flesh is scraped off. In Kurug, he who cleans the skull eats a little of the flesh, saying, Thou art eaten, Flesh of the Beheaded, in order that I may be ferocious [brave]. I shall not become bloated or short-winded. The afflictions of the hidit will be far from me. I will travel our hills continually and my feet will fly up the steeps. I abound in life. I sweat freely and am ruddy. I am like the cataract of Inude, which never grows less. I am like Talal of Ambalal, who ate his own children, yet did the hidit fear to afflict him. Kiangan folk deny ever having done this. They are beginning to be ashamed of their culture. But I believe that they did do it and that they would again. Ceremonial anthropophagy in some form seems to have been practiced by all the headhunters of Luzon, the motive, apparently, being to secure invigoration through the soulstuff of the beheaded. The Kalingas mixed brains and rum in the calvarium and drank them. Nearly all Borneo headhunters eat some part of the victim. In Piwong, adjoining Kurug, an American soldier of the detachment that passed through Ifugaoland close on the heels of Aguinaldo, straggled and 194 The Half-Way Sun was slain. Two kadangyang of that region ate a portion of his skin and a great many people drank the soup made from it. They hoped thus to lighten their complexions. Over a large part of Europe our own ancestors used to eat their dead parents. The ancient Teutons and Scandinavians used to slay-sometimes by burning-the wives of a chief or rich man at his grave. The flesh and scrapings from the head are carried to the river and thrown in, with the words: Thou art sent to the falling place of the waters, [the "navel of the seas" that nearly all Malays believe in], Flesh of the Head of the Slain, in order that thou be lost, forgotten to men, swallowed up, disintegrated, so that thy companions return not the vengeance. Carry with thee Sorcery, Famine, Sickness, Bloatings, Wheezings, and quickcoming Fatigue, for that will be good. But do not carry the soulstuff of the pigs, the rice and the chickens, nor our becoming-many, for that would be evil.... The mandible is severed in the first molar region on either side. The anterior portion is used as a handle for a gong; the posterior parts are put in a basket or little trough along with the war fetishes, headhunting charms and the like. The skull is placed on a little shelf, that bears other skulls, probably, at the side of the front door. Of course it is addressed again: To clinch the benefits of taking the head, all, together The Half-Way Sun with their kin, have now to perform general-welfare ceremonials. And from time to time there must be witchcraft and soultrapping and continual sacrificing to offset enemy ceremonies. Soon or late, they will have to perform the headlosers' ceremonies for one of their number slain in a "returning of the vengeance." Then they will begin on a new cycle in the usually interminable spiral, and re-return the vengeance. But they do not think their lot hard or dream of any better way through which life may abound, the pigs and the chickens become many, the rice dikes climb the steeps and the people scatter throughout the hills. -3. Back of headhunting may be distinguished two kinds of motives: the social-and basic-ones that lead a group to desire and applaud it and the specific motives that lead individuals to brave and risk it. Some of the social motives are unconscious. Thus, I doubt that the Ifugaos know consciously that retaliation is necessary to save their group from extinction. Still less do they know that they long for headhunting as a relief from the monotony of daily life and fare-they do not even know their life and fare to be monotonous. On the other hand, the slaying of a neighbor 196 The Half-Way Sun strikes dangerously near all, and everybody quite consciously wants to see it avenged. Quite consciously, too, the folk want headhunting because a head brings back soulstuff that' diffuses and entails freedom from pestilence, famine, and the like, better crops and a miraculous increase of rice in the granaries, fecundity and rapid growth of domestic animals, greater fertility of women-in short, all that comprises Ifugao well-being. The individual goes headhunting to gain distinction, obtain vengeance, ingratiate himself with the women or to secure a change of luck or surcease from grief. Headhunting enables him to marry a wealthier girl than himself. It greatly helps toward a career as a monkalun. Also it lessens the expenditure of gifts to the girl's kin when one takes a wife. The man who speared my predecessor, Mr. William M. Wooden, had lost his children one by one from sickness. To dispel his sorrow, he came headhunting into the Kiangan region, with three of his kinsmen. With one of these he went into ambush only about half a mile from the constabulary cuartel. Since Nagakaran, their home region, is closely related by blood to Kiangan, they had to be careful whom they speared. As if led by Deceiver himself came the white man, with a Filipino teacher-whom, probably, they did not see-a few yards behind. They cast a spear. Mr. 197 The Half-Way Sun Wooden had time to throw out his arm, and this saved his life for the time being. For the spear was fortunately of the sort whose head is set into the handle. The head pierced the arm and was entering between the ribs when the handle was stopped by the out-thrown arm. With rare presence of mind the teacher saved him again by shouting as if to an escort of soldiers just around a turn in the trail, "Hurry, hurry! They have speared the Apo!" The attackers fled. They went into hiding in their home region, their coregionists disclaiming all knowledge of their identity. Not till years afterward did it all come out-when the Sinew was killed by a policeman for resisting arrest for failure to work out his poll tax. By that time the government thought it best not to punish the other participants. I4. Ifugaos do not lie about their enemies. We do. They do not lie because Right and Wrong have nothing to do with enmities once they are established. We are more advanced: the merits of a war have weight with us, and deep in our hearts we even realize that an enemy is a fellow man. Such an attitude, however, is not favorable to the conduct of a modern war, and so, in wartime, we reach eagerly for the lies that government hothouses propagate and give out, help 198 The Half-Way Sun patriotically in the distribution, and so work hatred and intolerance up to a heat that is known as excellent morale. Thus, because we are more magnanimous than the Ifugaos, we have to be meaner; because we are better, we have to be worse. We have advanced in two opposite directions. Which is basic in headhunting, the vengeance-selfpreservative motive, or the diffusible-capturable-soulstuff doctrine? Taking into account a habit cultures have of rationalizing and reinforcing their dominant features, one would judge that the former is basic and the soulstuff doctrine secondary and auxiliary. At any rate, working together, each doubles the strength of the other. For all that, feuds often remain quiescent for a long time. By no means all Ifugaos go headhunting. Going on a successful expedition gives one the status of a headtaker. Ask any of say twelve men who have gone on such an expedition if he ever: took a head and he will answer affirmatively. If the expedition got two heads he will claim to have taken two; he will claim the aggregate number taken by all the expeditions he has ever been on, and probably greatly exaggerate that. Some such fact possibly explains the extravagant reports on headhunting that have sometimes emanated from travellers in the past. A little calculation should convince anybody that no tribe could exist long which made the taking of a head the requirement for marriage. 199 The Half-Way Sun How frequent headhunting was among the Ifugaos was an investigation that I did not complete. Four villages in Kiangan region, having a population of about 600, lost six heads between the exodus of the Spanish garrison and the coming of the Americans-a period of about five years. This is an annual death rate of 2 for each 1ooo-more than five times the present death rate in California from automobile collisions. In comparing the two evils, however, we ought to take into account the death-in-life of many of the survivors of the automobile accidents. Headhunting was at least merciful in that it made no cripples. (tc. -',L For several reasons the period between the leaving of the ": Spaniards and the coming of the Americans was one of intense headhunting directed against Kiangan. The regions round about blamed Kiangan for inviting the Spaniards to the country and for everything the Spaniards did. The Kiangan folk, too, took advantage of Spanish partiality and protection to evade payment of debts. They were decidedly unpopular with several other regions. That they did not lose more heads is due very greatly to the fact that Red Ant and several other centers had guns. Still the rate for the period was abnormally high, I think. I was negligent in not conducting an investigation in a district that was never brought under Spanish control. But the reader can have no idea of the time that would be required to make 200 PLATE LIII 1-1 - Fi. 2 p#." PLATE LI) (a) A procession. (b) Moon God, drinking the pig's blood. The Half-Way Sun such an inquiry worth anything at all; the difficulties of securing information in a strange region and of calculating time in a land where no account is kept of the years. My feeling is that headhunting normally took no more lives than automobile and industrial accidents do among ourselves. IS. One time the Big Apo brought movies with him. General James G. Harbord, then, I think, a major, some Ifugaos and I were in a group looking on together. The film story carried through a supposed battle of the Boer war. In those days the World War had not taught actors how to die, and the technique was very poor. The moribund would throw up their arms, execute a gyration and lunge all in precisely the same fashion. Some young fellows in our group were tittering at this standardized manner of death. An old center reproved them sharply. "What did he say to them?" General Harbord asked me. "He said, 'Silence, you shameless ones! What matter if that be their way? Are they not men?-and dying?'" "Well-I'll be damned!" said the general and was henceforth an advocate of the mountain folk in the seats of the mighty. One could, indeed, summon a "cloud" of witnesses. All 201 The Half-Way Sun who have ever known Malay headhunters have been impressed by their amiability, fortitude, docility within the group, their patience, ingenuity and industry in making the best of their habitat's resources, and their frequent nobility of thought. 202 VI LOST SOULSTUFF All are sent into the thicket of life, Some to hunt and survive, some to be hunted... to death. What was it gave them the scent of me, Made them pursue, and fortuned Fate and Nature In a league against me..... -Edgar Lee Masters in "The New Spoon River." I. H 7 EADTAKERS like to hide their victim's body or throw it into a stream so as to plague and delay the kindred and hinder their vengeance ceremonies. But usually they fear to spend the time required to do so. If the coregionists of the slain do not discover their loss immediately, they will learn of it soon from the exultant shouts of the headtakers themselves. For even though the concerted yelling that follows the taking of a head be deferred until the headtakers are well within a neutral zone, the inhabitants of that zone will shout the news from one spur to another by a peculiar explosive bellow, and it will soon reach the region of the slain. When the loss is known there, all is terror, rage and confusion. Women snatch up their children and rush into houses. The men, always bearing spears, hurry for their 203 The Half-Way Sun shields. Some search for the body; some follow the trail of the headtakers. The pursuers must go cautiously-there is danger of ambush-and they must be ever on the lookout for the wicked little ground spears that the headtakers have almost certainly planted in their wake. Unless they can overtake the enemy in friendly territory, they are compelled to defer vengeance. 2. When the body is found, someone approaches and throws sand or dust on it, shouting, Hwoo! Leave it, Deceiver, for we are here to take it to the village. Look upon our enemies. Travel with them and carry them to the skyworld. For we are to be pitied, alas! Throughout all the subsequent ceremonies the body is given treatment that is at total variance with the care and respect accorded those dead from natural causes. I once saw some Ifugaos carrying the body of a kinsman who had died of sickness a hard two-day's journey on their backs, as a child is carried, instead of by other easier and less offensive means. The beheaded body is trussed to a pole "like a pig" and dumped with a thud outside the village until an "entrance" ceremony can be performed. When "entered" the body is set on a stone, facing the 204 PLATE LV PLATE LVI Lost Soulstuff enemy region, tied by a clout to a shield that rests against a house post. In one or both hands it holds a ceremonial spear, the ancient fighting spear of wood, tipped, perhaps, with bamboo. Preservative measures are omitted, and soon every wound is wriggling with maggots; whereas in the case of one dead from sickness, a caretaker and smudge prevent such a repulsive condition. Unless the body be neglected, even insulted, say the folk, the soul of the dead will take its fate too philosophically: "Oh, it is not so bad to be speared. Never mind-everybody has to die!" The soul is thought to have been carried by the betraying god to his quarters in the skyworld; whereas the soul of one dead from natural cause goes to the Abode of Souls in the Downstream Region. 3. Nearly all Ifugao ceremonials are shotgun affairs aimed at some particular benefit, perhaps, but scattering their petitions sufficiently to include all else that comprises wellbeing. Childbirth or debt collection may instigate the ceremony, but the priests pray also for miraculous increase of the rice, immunity from disease and afflictions of the evil-bringing gods, tying-up of stomachs so that but little food will satiate, and so forth. Those that follow are the only exceptions: they are directed single-heart and single205 The Half-Way Sun mind to the obtaining of vengeance. The ceremonials are the same for the murdered, whether or not the head was taken. Somewhat modified they are the ceremonies following a death in childbirth, for the woman is believed in such case to have been killed by enemy witchcraft. When the body has been arranged in place, a priest approaches, holding an egg in his uplifted hand, and addresses the body: Hwoo! Strong Wind! Do not stay in the distant quarters of the Skyworld. Do not be stupid; do not be drowsy. Open thine eyes, because the sun is halfway up! Look down on Nagakaran.* See him who wears the headtaker's ornaments. If he eats, eat with him; if he goes for water, go also [so as to bewitch his food and water]. If he goes to get wood, go with him. Turn the axe into his own body. If he travels, accompany, and push him off a steep. Do so to the end that thou secure vengeance, for thou art, alas! to be pitied. And dashing the egg on the ground, "Hwoo! Hwoo-oo-oo! Strong Wind! Let it be for a parallel for thine enemy, since * By rights I ought to have the priest say "Kiangan," since we assumed the folk there to have taken the head. But I have an insuperable inhibition against directing any ceremonials against my former home region, preferring to turn them against Nagakaran, an enemy district. Partly it is because the priests taught me to do so; partly the inhibition is grounded in the same feeling that would prevent even one who is not a devotee of the flag cult from trampling on his country's flag even in a closet. I hope my reader will not be confused: Kiangan really took Strong Wind's head, but now we blame it on Nagakaran. 206 Lost Soulstuff he was the one who did likewise to thee!" Sometimes several persons shout invocations and break eggs for a "parallel." Henceforth until the body is put into the sepulchre, the women kin, relieving each other by turns, shout incitations to vengeance, gesticulating upward with pencil-shaped loomsticks or thrusting them toward the neck: \ Hwoo! Hwoo-oo-oo! Strong Wind! Do not stay in the depths of the skyworld. Be not stupid! Open thine eyes, because the sun is half way! Look down on Nagakaran. See him who did this to thee and his father, mother, brothers, sisters, cousins, children and kin by marriage. Carry them all off. Thou hast no one for a companion up there: no one to cook for thee, no one to get water, no one to bring wood. Thou art to be pitied. Alas! Thou art very dear! If he [the killer] goes on a journey, push him off a steep. If he sleeps, sleep with him. In the middle of the night, thrust thy spear into his vitals and carry him off to the skyworld. Stay there, ye two. It was not sickness, not a fall or accident, that laid thee low. Thou wast speared. It was not a drunken brawl. Thou art to be pitied. We had not borrowed his pigs. Thou owedst him no chickens, no rice. There was no debt. Carry off his kindred, root and branch. They wanted him to kill thee. The Americans have established "order." * No one can avenge thee. It is for thee alone to secure thine own vengeance. Thou hadst no children. All thy kin are women.* * Neologism, and arguments for "direct action" shouted even when not true. 207 The Half-Way Sun Keep slaying them all so that we will continually receive notices of it. Thou art very dear. Thou art to be pitied. The ferocity and abandon with which the women project themselves into these invocations are well nigh unbelievable. Hate and vengeance-thirst grow and feed upon themselves. Mother and grandmother, sisters and cousins, keep it up day and night except when the sun is at full meridian, when invocations are believed to react on themselves. Even in that slightly differentiated culture, women's lives are narrower than men's. The taking off of a kinsman leaves a bigger blank in their lives. They will never forget. Conservative, and the repository of family history and accounts, theirs is really the prime role in headhunting. "Returning of the vengeance" may be long deferred, but sooner or later, a woman has a dream that commands it, hears "ancestral voices prophesying war" or, possibly attributes her baby's sickness to the spite of the unavenged soul. She tells the other women, and they drive the lukewarm procrastinating kinsmen to organize an expedition-wheedling, spurning, encouraging, weeping, offering a skirt to wearand never letting up. The women, it is true, are not always so projected into their invocations to the soul of the slain as they appear to be. Once I saw an old woman shouting with such frenzy and violence of grief that I thought she was at least hys208 Lost Soulstuff terical. When her voice gave out, she yielded her place to another, calmly wiped the sweat from her face, and went to get from the stone on which she had laid it her cigar, a roll of home-grown tobacco about a foot long and an inch in diameter, which she had been smoking intermittently for a day or two. Finding it gone, she croaked, "Whoever took my cigar, bring it right back and put it where I left it!" But the hatred is most dependably there and none the less effective for being backed by histrionic talent. 4 -On the second day after the body is found, there occurs the selection of a Sinew and Vice-Sinew to organize a party of avengers. The ceremony is more or less a formality, since it by no means precludes more able and energetic men than those it selects from functioning in the capacity. All the male kin of an age to fight squat in a circle, in the center of which sit two priests. In front of them, on the ground, is a music stick, a slightly curved piece of hard wood about two feet long and three inches wide, having at the center a plaited rattan loop by which it is held when being beaten. On the opposite side of the music stick, an acolyte faces a full-fledged cock toward the priests. After certain preliminary prayers, one of the priests addresses the cock: 209 The Half-Way Sun Thou, Chicken, here! We are to be pitied, for we owed them nothing, yet they go killing us. Be not stupid, Chicken! The Gods of Reproduction gave thee a soulsearch out him who has the hot arm! Flap him with thine arms [wings]. He will return the vengeance; for if we may collect a single bundle of rice that is owed, may we not collect a human life? Thou art to be pitied, Chicken-blame thy lot to the headtakers. Continually advise Deceiver to cause the enemy to meet our young men in the middle of the road. The earth shall be their sleeping board; our young men will collect the debt. Find him who has the hot arm! Thou, Chicken, here! Thou wilt advise the Westcomers to settle down on our enemies; thou wilt continually exhort the Bloater, the Snarer, the Lifter, the Limb-Chopper, the Trapper, Gangoo, the Sore-Footer, and the Netter to afflict after their [respective] natures our enemies of Nagakaran yonder to the end that there be neither root nor branch of them left. Thou wilt advise the Fledgling Cock to dwell with them; thou wilt bring hither thy brother, the FullFledged Cock, to dwell and be with us. Do not be stupid, do not be indifferent. Thou hast a soul; search out him who has the hot arm! One of the priests draws the fowl's neck across the music stick; the other cuts its head off. The body flops toward the warriors, who lean toward it, eager for the distinction of being singled out as having the "hot arm." The priests and bystanders shout: "Go on! Go on! Flap him! He will return the vengeance; he will be like the Full-Fledged Cock. 210 Lost Soulstuff The enemy's body will be all heart. Search out them who have the hot arm! Go on!" The first two the chicken flaps are given its claws to carry in their hip bags. In one of the ceremonies I witnessed, the chicken did not flap much-it merely approached two men. The folk were depressed, and an old woman, disgusted, remarked, "That's what comes of the orden you Americans have established!" After the ceremony, the participants go by couples to nearby ravines or streams. One of each couple taps his shield with a spear; the other strains his eyes, looking for the omen bird. Seeing one, he cries: Go ahead! Well! Spread out your g-string [tail]. Split it in two. Open out your blankets [wings]. Give us a little beloved talk and favorable to the life of us who will go forth to avenge the beheaded man. For we are to be pitied.... Meanwhile the female kin keep up the shouting-they have been shouting for about twenty-four hours. Their voices are hoarse but are forced to continue their raucous duty by a consuming rage and vengeance thirst that almost transports. The little group of women awaiting their turn at this duty keep telling each other over and over what he who was so lately one of them said and did the last time they saw him or on yesterday just before it happened. And in their incitations they keep recurring to the soul's lone211 The Half-Way Sun liness there in the immensities of the skyworld to which it has been snatched, whether out of sorrow that they can no longer render the accustomed little female services or whether in the belief that its desire for companionship is most likely to stir the sluggish soul to action. It seems incongruous that they should call on the soul to take its enemies as companions. We must remember that the soul is not the personality that once inhabited the body-it is something else, something sublimated above affections and all earthly ties save only the one tie that in Ifugaoland is never severed, the tie that binds one to the family. Mother and grandmother, in daily life patient drudges whom sorrow and this event have lifted to a terrible dignity, sisters and cousins and nieces, some of them young and comelyI do not believe any man can hear their cries without being powerfully moved. I remember the case of Galangi, of Montabion. At the village where I passed the night when I was on my way to attend Galangi's funeral, an Ifugao policeman told me how Galangi came to be slain. He had got quarrelsomely drunk at a general welfare feast in a village of his home region and, in a discussion with another man as to whose ancestors were the richest, had become senselessly enraged and had drawn his war knife. Other guests tried to hold him, but he slashed them and wounded five people, 212 Lost Soulstuff three of them seriously. One of the wounded speared him. There was never a plainer case of self-defense: the policeman said so, everybody said so-that is, until everybody went, next day, to the house where the women were shouting. And then, everybody changed his mind-convinced by the peculiar quality of feminine outcries that seems utterly to bereave the human male of his reason. The policeman began to blubber, "They ought both to be dead; the other ought to be killed, too, so that the case would balance." 5. The sepulture takes place on the third day after most spectacular processions and ceremonies. The whole region and the kindred and friends of kindred from other regions attend. The kindred wear old clothes and smear their bodies with ashes or white clay. The other folk dress in their finest and wear gold neck ornaments and amber beads. About their necks, too, the men wear the strands of white beads with which their women folk ordinarily do up their hair. Surmounting the head is a gorgeous helmet made of the leaf petiole of an areca palm, trimmed with white feathers and strips of the reddish dongola, a sacred plant.* It may stand * Dongola: cordyline terminalis, Kunth [Liliaceae]. This plant is sometimes reared in our greenhouses for the beauty of its leaves. 213 The Half-Way Sun fifteen inches or more high. Ribbands of the same petiole are tied about the wrists and legs. About half the men bear shields, freshly smeared with white figures of crocodiles, dancing men, or zigzags. The rest carry music sticks painted with zigzags. These are of seasoned ironwood and, beaten with a stick, of astounding resonance. In place of the beads loaned to the men, the women do their hair with clusters of Job's tears or bands of grass. My visit one morning to one of the largest and most thickly populated of all Ifugaoland's valleys was well timed for observing the processions-processions of the same sort Was-Made-Lonesome and I got up for the Big Apo's party, but now in deadly earnest. Across the valley with its more than a hundred tiers of terraces ranked almost to the top of the mountain walls, I saw processions emerging from numerous palm-crowned villages to dance single file along the edge of the winding terraces toward the village of the slain. Usually two men, armed each with two spears, led the way, dancing backward most of the time with feinting thrusts at a second couple who returned the passes. The rest were bent to one side, beating music sticks or shields. They were dancing along the dike at the edge of the terrace wall: on one side, water and mud; on the other, a drop of twenty or more feet, sometimes. From time to time those at the rear swing to the other side. The 214 Lost Soulstuff change, taken up by those in front, traverses the file like a wave impulse, making the procession look in the distance like a gigantic gay-colored centipede, rolling and twisting. Arrived at a path over which processions from neighboring villages will pass, one delegation waits for others, so that a line may easily grow to a quarter of a mile in length before reaching the destination. And all the while, the resounding whung of the music sticks is answered by the tap-tap on a hundred, perhaps five hundred shields. Arrived at the house, each procession halts for its leader to shout an incitation to vengeance. Filing past the body, it may halt now and again for other members who may feel moved to shout. All forenoon the women keep up their cries and the brandishing of loomsticks. All forenoon the processions keep coming in, followed by women carrying food and cooking pots. 6. Having passed the body, the processions go to the Hill. On the same day, the headtakers are performing the same ceremony, the ditak, within their village. But the headlosers dare not call into theirs the terrible gods who have just shown themselves so active and malevolent, lest harm come to the women and children. They go to a flat-topped 215 The Half-Way Sun hill that has served them for this purpose from times immemorial and on which no man will plant. Young men stick up sunshades. Sometimes-a work of only ten or fifteen minutes-they construct a shack for the priests. Some ten to twenty of these gather about rice wine jars. They begin invoking their ancestral spirits: Come, ye ancestors, and drink of the rice wine and partake of the sacrifices. We did not borrow their chickens, their pigs, their death-blankets nor their irons, and yet they go, alas! killing us. Exhort Deceiver, Sun God, Moon God, the Netter, the Sweller, the Striker, Halo of the Sun [and so on through a long list] to carry our enemies to the remotest depths of the skyworld to the end that we secure vengeance. Bring the enemy face to face with our young men in the middle of the road.... After the prayer, the priests are possessed, each by his own ancestors, who, one by one, through him sip rice wine and declare what he wants them to. Then follows a prayer to the messenger gods and possession of each priest by that messenger given him at his ordination. During the possession, the messengers cause the priests to dance with flitting arms around the animals to be sacrificed; then they depart to summon the gods. While the messengers are gone to call the gods, a priest takes the leadership and assigns some twenty or more classes of the deities among his colleagues. A priest will pray to 216 Lost Soulstuf each class generically, and then the gods of that class will possess him one by one. Here is a priest who has been allotted the suggesting deities, and who has begun to invoke them. Let us listen: It is besought of ye Suggesting Deities that ye do not harass us headlosers, for we are very dear to you. Instead, suggest to the Westcomers that they enter not our village, but travel on to the headtakers'. Suggest to the Gods of Reproduction that henceforth they carry us as in a blanket, and to the Gods of Intergroup Propriety that they afflict us not with Bloatings, Wheezings, and quick-coming Fatigue. Soothe our enemies to forgetfulness of all danger from us. Suggest to Deceiver that he betray them into danger so that our young men may collect the debt. Sitting next to him is a priest who has just finished his prayer to the Gods of Reproduction. He is ready to be possessed and calls a god: Ay-y-y-y-y, Thou, Ngayun, of the Downstream Region! Say-ay-ay-ay-ay! [comes the long-drawn possession note, crescendo] I come upstream, I, Ngayun, of the Downstream Region. I drink of your rice wine, I behold the swine to be sacrificed, and these I delight in-ah. I tighten the blanket of my children of Alimit and will loosen that of your enemies the Nagakaran folk-ah. You have, indeed, been sorely tried; you are very dear to me-ah! Say-ay-ay-ay! [diminuendo]. An acolyte, meanwhile, replenishes the cup when needful and keeps up a rapid fire exhortation: "Oh, that's it, 217 The Half-Way Sun Deity! Hold us tight in your blanket. We are precious. Drop the enemy! His house shall be moss-grown and spiderwebbed! Oh, that's it." In some of the classes are upward of a hundred gods, and the priest must sip for each. Only a reliable acolyte can pull him through, by putting words in the drinkbefuddled brain-and not always he. When all have finished, there comes the climax, the sacrifice to the War Gods. A priest calls Deceiver, "Ay-y-y-y, Thou, Deceiver of the Skyworld!" "Say-ay-ay-ay-ay!" comes the possession note as the priest is seized and caused to dance to the pig and encircle it amid exhortations from bystanders and acolytes. "I come down to your hills, I, Deceiver, from the skyworld-ah! I partake of your rice wine, I accept of your sacrifices, for such I delight in year by year-ah! I will betray you no more but henceforth will betray your enemies-ah! Your young men will meet them... Before he has finished-"Say-ay-ay-ay-ay!"-a priest is possessed by Sun God. Amid transporting excitement and fervid exhortation, he follows Deceiver who is dancing as if to show him the pig. Seizing a convenient spear he jabs it deep into the animal's chest, the bystanders crying, "It is a parallel for our enemies," and "So it is done that it may be done so to our enemies!" An acolyte clasps 218 Lost Soulstuff his hand over the wound to hold back the blood that spurts. "Say-ay-ay-ay!"-another priest is possessed by Moon God, dances to the pig, throws himself on it, drinks the gushing blood. "Drain the pig's blood and do likewise to our enemies! Vengeance for him who has gone before!" they shout from all around. Moon God, it is said, would stay forever drinking, except that Lumangda, his son-a star-possesses a priest and drags his father away by the hair. Now comes Limb-Chopper, son of Deceiver, with his war knife and chops the pig's feet. "Oh, that's it, LimbChopper!" cry the people. "Afflict the enemy according to your peculiar nature! Be fearless! Be active!" And then an invocation to Bugan, the wife of Limb-chopper: "Drop down. Gather the feet into your basket. Take them to Danggo of Bontok. Tell him to sorefoot the enemy." The Beheader descends, but beheads the pig only symbolically, merely hacking-wasting no blood-for the Ifugaos are a practical people where something edible is concerned. Sticking a spear in the pig's ear, a priest shouts an invocation to Lifter to carry the head to the skyworld and then to do the same to the headtakers. And so it goes.... Not always do these affairs come off smoothly, for rep219 The Half-Way Sun resentatives of unfriendly regions are present. Besides, there are always fools. Once a presumptuous young fellow hacked off and started to run away with a piece of a pig that had just been sacrificed. Immediately others joined in a scramble. Hundreds of men leaped for their spears. The women, sitting at a considerable distance, ran away. My Ifugao boy hurried with two or three men to guard my horse lest the scramble extend to it. For once the scramble fury possesses them, Ifugaos will pile on anything that is meat like twenty-two men on a football. I stop-watched them once on a buffalo weighing about sixteen hundred pounds. In less than twelve minutes there was nothing except a little blood left for the dogs' share. To say the least it was atrocious etiquette to scrimmage over sacrificial meat-the prerogative of priests and centers. Everyone's heart was in his mouth. How would the affair end? My companions from Kiangan thought best not to wait to see, for this region was in their feudist zone. Catching my arm they tried to take me back with them but these were the first ceremonials of this kind that I had a chance to witness, so I stayed to see them through. Priests and centers vituperated till hoarse. They secured the return of a little meat-pitiful compensation for the amount of language they expended but still enough to finish the ceremonials with. Only this first, of about eight such 220 PLATE LVII ~1 * 0 r1 0 0 0b 0t 0b PLATE LVIII (a) A procession halts at the body. (b) Breaking an egg at the sepulchre. Lost Soulstuff ceremonials that I saw, did not go off smoothly. At others the sacrificed pigs were singed over a fire and then cut up. The folk thrust forward their music sticks to be smeared with fresh blood, but the priests would always minimize this use of blood since blood is a thickener of soup. While the food is cooking, ceremonies of soultrapping are performed. Sentinels are stationed all about with switches in hand and strike down bees, dragon-flies, or blue-bottles that may come. These are imprisoned to die in a bamboo joint. It is believed-or, at least, hoped-that they are enemy souls. A little palm leaf basket is made and in it are put betels, chicken blood, a piece of liver and a little wine. Imbagayan, the personification of death, is called upstream, and sent to the enemy village to bring back the Sinew's soul. A priest ties the little basket to a stick and goes a little way toward the enemy region. If a bee, large fly, or dragonfly be attracted by the bait, the priest whacks it with a switch, brings it back in triumph, and corks it up in a bamboo joint. Flesh of the sacrifices, when cooked-and cooking amounts to little more than a thorough heating of the meat -is placed on cooked rice in broad flat baskets. A priest blows the rising steam toward the enemy region, saying: Ye are blown upon, Rice, Chicken, and Pig Flesh. Cool, but do not cool the lives of us who have lost a head. Cool 221 The Half-Way Sun the remembrance of our enemies, that our young men may meet them in the middle of the road. Cool the MountainHaunters, the Westcomers, Sickness, Witchcraft, Contentiousness.. Ye are blown, Savor of Rice and Savor of Flesh. Do not disseminate, but go upstream to the hills of our enemies. Enter their nostrils that they may rejoice in ye, thinking ye the savor of their own witchcraft ceremonials! They will continually die off; whilst we shall flourish as the banyan tree.... And throwing some soup into the fire, he says: Quench, but do not quench our soulstuff, our becomingmany, nor the prolificity of the pigs, the chickens and the miraculous increase of the rice. Quench the witchcraft of the enemy, their alertness and mindfulness of danger from us... Twenty odd priests now recite myths. Their voices rise and fall like the sound of the bamboo harp, and when they "clinch" a parallel in magic, they swing their war knives toward the enemy quarter. A few of the myths (my own titles) are: Bugan, Wife of Deceiver, Carries off Our Enemies. The Miraculous Birth of Gold, Hero Ancestor. Gold Pays His Compliments to Binlang. A Quarrel between Sun and Moon. How One Boy Became Eight. 222 Lost Soulstuff Lumawig and Wigan Take the Wrong Head. Ammotingan of Lamot Turns Misfortune into Success. The Hipag the Tayaban Gave Alakayang. Hard Stone Overcomes Soft Stone. The First Hipag. Over and over the same phrases recur. Truly the heathen has his "vain repetitions." But not only he. I watched the "deliberations" of a deadlocked political convention once: day by day a different kind of preacher or priest opened it with prayer-day by day the same phrases were repeated, "Controller of the destinies of nations," "endue with plenteous wisdom," "in peace and security to dwell," "leadership for righteousness," "divine guidance and counsel," "favored among the nations"... "service." By varying the order of and the filler between some twenty such phrases, several hundred prayers suitable for use in "deliberative bodies" and yet sufficiently different from each other can be made. As a matter of fact there have to be repetitions in both religions; both are ritualized and fixed -the period of freedom has passed and there can be no invention. Still, in the myths named above and in the god"pushing" that follows there are novel and ingenious designs for securing destruction of enemies. The god-"pushing" given below, which is set forth just as I recorded it 223 The Half-Way Sun under Poison's teaching, reveals a faint, beginning evolution in the direction of literature. Deceiver is sitting on his lounging bench [the insignium of the kadangyang] at his house in the skyworld. Something tickles his ear. It is my invocation. He walks to the edge of his hill and looks down on Place-Set-with-EthicsLocks. He goes back to his house. "Wait here, Bugan, and watch the house," he says to his wife. "There is a call, and I must go to Place-Set-withEthics-Locks." He puts on his war knife and scabbard. He packs up his betels. He girds on his hip bag. He takes wine in a little jar. He grasps his spear. He crosses Ablatan. [The priest "pushes" the god across some thirty named localities.] He arrives at Place-Set-with-Ethics-Locks. "Ah kao!" he says. "Truly it is my children Binalton and Poison who call me!" "Yes, it is we. You are besought to go upstream to the village of Damaon and Balahao.* Carry off that whole kindred. Here are rice wine and betels and a chicken. As our fathers did in times past, so we are doing. We are to be pitied, alas! we, your children. He takes his betel nuts and betel leaves. He takes also his rice wine. He carries them on his head. He goes down out of the house. He goes west to Malpao; ascends at Ahudon; [again we omit the place names]. He arrives at Pau [in Nagakaran Region]. He finds the houses of Damaon and Balahao. He sets his burden down before them. He pours out rice wine. They refuse to drink. He offers betel leaves. * Names of Poison's hereditary enemies in Nagakaran. 224 PLATE LIX Lieutenant Governor Jeff D. Gallman and the president, who arrested Wild Raspberry. IOF' -d 3 row t X Pagan Basketry: 1, i', headbaskets; 2, 2', small backbaskets for carrying lunch; 3, backbasket for sweet potatoes; 4, handbaskets; 5, net with which grasshoppers in flight are captured; 6, hopper into which grasshoppers on bushes are shaken; 7, 7', 7", baskets in which grasshoppers are kept alive; 8, basket for table ware; 9, 9', 9", 9"', baskets for threshed rice. Lost Soulstuff They do not partake of them [because they sense the supernatural]. Deceiver is discouraged. He gathers up his betels and pours back his rice wine. He ascends into the skyworld. Bugan, his wife, laughs at him. "Where is what you got?" she says. "Wait, let me go; I do not take journeys for nothing." Bugan packs up. She puts on her newest loin cloth and new girdle. She puts on her finery of neck ornaments. She causes Deceiver to wind her brass fore-armlets for her. Deceiver looks at her. "Nakayang! You are beautiful, Bugan," he says. Bugan takes a gong. She wraps it in her blanket. She takes also betels and wine. She descends on Nagakaran. All the men there gather around her. Her beauty astounds them. They say, "Nakayang! How beautiful this woman is." They play the gong. Bugan dances. The men do not dance with her. She chews betels. The men will not chew with her. Bugan becomes angry. She procures a sleeping board. She spreads a bright new blanket on it. She lies down, opens her thighs and takes off her loin cloth. The men rush to her. Like the rushing of a whirlwind is their haste. She wraps her blanket around them, ties the four corners together, and rises to the skyworld. She hands them to Deceiver. "Did you get anything?" she says. "I am the one who get what I go after."... In the failure of Deceiver to capture the enemies' souls we have an element that is utterly useless so far as the religious purpose is concerned-Bugan, the wife, might as 225 The Half-Way Sun well have been sent in the first place. Deceiver's failure, however, gives plot, and that is what very, very few myths have. Finally the priests have finished their recitation of the myths; finally they have brought the heroes of the myths to the hill and then have sent them against the enemy. And now women bring food to their men-folk. The men squat about large flat baskets of cooked rice in groups of eight or twelve. Over each group stands a woman waving a war-knife or twirling a spear to keep the war deities from bewitching the food. Who knows whether much sacrifice has bought favor from the gods so lately illdisposed? The eating finished, everybody gathers on the side of the hill that looks toward the enemy, whilst priests shout curses: Hwoo! Hwoo-oo-oo! Die, [Sinew's name], and all of you kindred, for we did not steal your pigs and chickens. We owed you nothing. If you travel, Strong Wind will push you off a steep. If you sleep, Strong Wind will sleep with you. In the middle of the night he will ram you through the vitals with his spear. Bugan, wife of Deceiver, will carry you to the remotest depths of the skyworld. The Westcomers will sit down in your village. Bloater, LimbChopper and Sweller will afflict you after their several natures. Under every house a death chair; on every woman's head a mourning band! Grass-grown your paths, moss226 Lost Soulstuff covered your houses, we kindred will keep getting news of it! Our sun is half way! Hwoo! Hwoo-oo-oo! On one occasion, American-like, I sympathized with the murderer. He was a man of Kurug region who had lost his real name to the descriptive one, "Cripple." From his home he could see the assemblage on the hill and hear the curses. Cripple had been afflicted when quite young-infantile paralysis, probably. His legs were tiny and twisted, and he had to scoot along on his croup. He had lots of scooting to do, too, for he was a rich man with many debtors to bespeak. But his arms were strong. One day a young fellow living in the outskirts of that region passed him as he was laboriously going somewhere. "Wait a bit, Brass," said Cripple. "How about that chicken you borrowed from me two years ago'?" Brass, who must have been a fool or he would have known the danger of insulting the sore-afflicted, went unheeding a little farther and then turned and called as if summoning a dog, "Do-ah, do-ah-deeh, deeh, deeh!" "I don't want any hurt feelings about the chicken, Brass," said Cripple, as if utterly spiritless, when he had scooted up alongside. "We've had all the trouble about it we're going to have. I just happened to need it because my 227 The Half-Way Sun mother is sick. The drouth on the fields is terrible, isn't it? The worst you ever saw, I suspect. How you have grown in the last few years! And what a handsome warrior you have become! I fancy you have turned many a young girl's head." He followed with more flattery and then remarked casually, "That is a handsome spear you are carrying-a new one, I see. Fine workmanship, too. Let me look at it closely, and I'll tell you whose. I can distinguish the handicraft of all the spearmakers; it's a study I've made." Brass let him examine it. Cripple admired the perfectly bevelled head and felt the edge with his thumb, saying over and over, "How could any man have made so fine a spear? Surely, no man could have made it!" "It's pretty sharp, too, isn't it?" he sneered, as he rammed it powerfully upward into the other's belly. "There, you see, Deceiver himself made that spear. I am sure of it!" I could not help wondering if Cripple quailed under the tumultuous curse from the hill, that day. I think not, for at the trial he told the whole story simply and without emotion. He received a twelve year sentence. I saw him later in the "bilibid" at Bontok and he seemed to be happy. He made baskets andrl cted as priest for the other Ifugao prisoners. 228 Lost Soulstuff 7. The ceremonies on the Hill are finished; everybody straggles into the semblance of a line, the coregionists of the slain preceding, to go to the house where the corpse is. There is probably an unseemly scramble for second place, since those farther back will be unable to see the sepulture soon to occur. As the procession passes along the rice dikes it may be joined by others arriving late from a distance. At the house of the slain, all take off their head-dress, leglets and wristlets and string them on poles provided. The ornamentations are later used to decorate house and sepulchre. In some cases the leader of the procession is possessed, after a short prayer, by Haab, son of the Conductor of Souls, and by him carried to the sepulchre; in others there is no ceremony, the body being placed on a crude bamboo stretcher and, at the tomb, given a final insult by being dumped with a macabre thud onto the ground. Their faces bear a ridiculous expression when they do it. Rice straw is usually burned at the place where the body sat in order to clear Deceiver away. As the body is borne, women follow, keeping up the shouting and brandishing of loomsticks, their fervor increasing as the time grows short. One of the women brings the corpse's spears and shield. The tomb is a sepulchre dug in a bank of sandstone or 229 The Half-Way Sun shale. A man goes inside and drags the body in after him. It is interred nude instead of being swathed in deathblankets as are those dead from natural causes. Stakes are set about the sitting figure to hold it upright; a bending over would have a bad effect in magic and cause the soul to relent toward the enemy. The shield is tied to it. The man inside leans over the corpse, his voice shaking with emotion, and shouts: Whoo! Strong Wind! You are put in the sepulchre butdo not bend over [relent]. There is your spear! When it is midnight, go to Nagakaran where your enemy sleeps. Transfix him. Carry him away. Take him to Deceiver to be your companion there in the depths of the skyworld. Whoo! Whoo-oo-oo! Strong Wind! There is your war knife. Cut your enemy's throat. It was not a fall, not a drunken brawl that did this to you; it was intended.... Whoo! Breeze from the Abode of Souls! Come upstream. Breathe on our enemies of Nagakaran. Carry them back to your home. Destroy them so that neither root nor sprout of them be left! The man emerges. The women keep up their shouting. The mouth of the sepulchre is walled up with stones. A priest shouts an invocation and breaks an egg as a "parallel." One time they forgot this last rite and I had to remind them. Laughing and thanking me, they sent a woman scurrying for an egg. 230 Lost Soulstuff The visitors disperse to their homes. On the way back they stop at a stream and perform a ceremonial washing whose thoroughness varies according to the disposition of the bather. Merely wetting the arms, legs and forehead is sufficient to satisfy the religious requirements. Wash, Water, but do not wash away the rice, the pigs and the chickens nor the souls of the children and kinsmen. Wash away Death and Sorcery and Sickness. Wash away Death by the spear and Death by violence. Wash away the souls of the enemy... At the house of the slain, ceremonies of soul-trapping and witchcraft continue till far into the night. On the third day after the entombment, the opa ceremony is performed to bribe the deities of the skyworld to release the soul imprisoned there, to call it back and to send it to its fathers in the Abode of Souls. And all the kindred must conform to taboos and mourning observances and finally to ceremonials of release from these. And then they must perform general-welfare ceremonials to remove the curse of the misfortune that has befallen them and assure a clear sky in the future. And continually throughout the months to come, the ayak ceremony of sorcery and witchcraft must be done against the enemy as well as sacrifices to the hidit to protect against bloating, bleeding from the nose, quick-coming fatigue, wheezings and laborings of the lungs. 231 VII CASES IN COURT U. S. vs. Wild Raspberry. U. S. vs. Of-a-Soundness. U. S. vs. Too-Little and Father-of-Landslides. I. ILD RASPBERRY, this apo will assist you W^ ~when you come before the Apo Juez." In these words Sergeant Juan Candelario was introducing me to a man in the calaboose at Benaue. I looked at my client who bore the name of the bitterish, seedy, little red berry that I had often halted to pick on the tops of high mountains where the moist soil and the cold suit its vine-fruit I had eaten less for its own sake than out of memory of the homeland. He was just an ordinary-appearing Ifugao, though prematurely oldish. From behind the bamboo bars of his cell, he returned my gaze blankly, indifferently, skeptically. Because of white men he was where he was, yet here came one of them, bound to him by no tie, and offered him help! Help how —except the dead might be raised, nothing could help. Strange people, these white men, but why try to understand them-nothing mattered now, not even the imprisonment. I needed no keen perception to see that Wild Raspberry would never again 232 PLATE LXI IOFI PLATE LXII A far-fetched ethnic element. The ancestors of these girls were pirates deported from the southern islands and dumped into Kalinga by the Spaniards. They have not yet amalgamated with the rest of the tribe. Cases in Court feel a major emotion. Tomorrow morning he would be tried for killing a woman. Twice a year, a judge, prosecuting attorney (called fiscal), clerk of the court and interpreter would travel through the mountains by horse and hold court in the capital of each sub-province. Murder and headhunting comprised nearly all the cases-at least in the more remote sub-provinces, where I was stationed. I was usually the only American in these not somehow connected with the arrest or preliminary hearing of persons brought before the court. Slender and only qualification though this was, the judges would frequently, since no attorneys were available, appoint me to defend these serious cases. In the present instance, the judge had put up the night before at my house in Kiangan and had asked me to come with him to Benaue and defend the cases in the ensuing session of court. It may have looked better to have a defending attorney-I certainly was unable to do any of my clients any good that term. "Tell me how it happened, Wild Raspberry." "I came home and saw my children, the boy and the girl, lying in their own blood. The boy was still in the baby-carrying blanket," he said, and stopped as if that were sufficient. "Who killed them?" 233 The Half-Way Sun "Centipede killed my two children-the boy while still in the baby-carrying blanket," he repeated patiently. But by questioning I drew out the following facts: Wild Raspberry was from Banao region. For a long time after his marriage his wife had borne him no children, but he had stayed with the woman because she was a good one. Then a girl was born. Not until four or five more harvests had passed did the boy come; it was two harvests ago that he began to talk. The girl would always carry him slung on her back, notwithstanding he was too big to be carried. "About two moons ago I was working in the fields," he said, "and a woman came running toward me. 'Our neighbor, Centipede, has gone crazy and killed both your children,' she screamed. I didn't believe it, I thought she was crazy herself, but I ran home as fast as I could. "It was true-there they were! The girl had run away from the man, the boy on her back. She was climbing up the ladder into the house; he killed the boy there-right on her back in the baby-carrying blanket. I know because there was blood on the ladder, a big clot of blood... and then he-" "Wild Raspberry! Tell what you did then, Wild Raspberry"-hastily, I almost sobbed it. "I got my war knife. I didn't take my shield-I wanted one hand for the knife and a spear in the other. They told 234 Cases in Court me, 'He ran toward Ligaue.' I followed; I came to a clearing-there he was, killed already! He had attacked two women working in their garden and they had killed him. He had no brothers-only two sisters. I went back to the village and killed one of them." "Why did you kill her? She had no guilt." His brow wrinkled and he looked puzzled. Finally he answered, "There were no brothers." "You don't understand me. Why kill anybody?" He thought I was hard of hearing and raised his voice. "I would rather have killed a man, or two men, but there was no man to kill-only women. Yes, I was very angry'Why did you kill him?' I screamed at those women in the clearing. 'We had to; he was going to kill us,' they answered." "He was insane, he was dead; why kill anybody else?" "They killed two of mine-the boy and the girl. Before I could kill the other sister, the police held me. What fault have I? Do you blame me because I did not kill one of the remote kin-a male of the remote kin? Must one kill a female for a female and a male for a male?" "One must not kill at all," I answered. "You say just what Apo Gallman said," he went on hopelessly. "How can a Melikano know the feelings of the men?"-unconsciously he arrogated to his own kind the 235 The Half-Way Sun name of men, as primitive folk so often do, all over the world. "The girl was so high [indicating] and the boy, so high-he was in the baby-carrying blanket we always carried him in!" Wild Raspberry would be sent to prison-that was sure; and it was better that he should be since, if set free, he would go home and kill the other sister-I knew that. But I wanted the judge to hear the story as I had; I wanted it to be hard for him to sentence the man. In court, next morning, after the presidente and the other witnesses had testified, and after the confession had been read, I put Wild Raspberry on the stand. He was lifeless, unconcerned; he mumbled bare colorless responses to the questions put to him. Far from attempting self-justification, he revealed nothing of the tribal viewpoint or even of how he felt when he saw his children in their own blood; he was like a man whose arms and legs are frozen hard and in whom life barely lingers. I had hardly begun a little speech in his behalf that I had turned over in my mind during the night, when the judge began looking up the penalty in his copy of the code. [Lawyers of the older generation in the Philippines will remember the judge who had this disconcerting habit]. I stopped-I suddenly comprehended why Wild Raspberry had made so poor a witness: he had been hopeless of making any American comprehend his tribal code; 236 PLATE LXIII ( 17;:~I"~ PLATE LXIV Cases in Court if I had ostensibly let him convince me yesterday that his course had been most praiseworthy, he might have tried to convince the judge today. "Your Honor," I said, "I have not handled this case right. If I had, the prisoner would have told you his story as he told it to me; and then, I believe, Your Honor would have felt that the government's ends would be served by giving him a short sentence in which he might reconstruct his attitude and learn Civilization's code, a sentence that would leave him hope of getting out in time to beget children to replace the two he saw lying in their own blood." It was a silly sort of speech, and the judge was eminently sane. "Nothing could influence the court once the guilt is established. It's a singularly clear case, a unique case-not a lie has been told in it. We are here, Mr. Barton, not to condone these offenses, but to get them out of such practices. He is entitled to the benefit of three alleviating circumstances: he committed the crime in avenging the death of a near relative; he is a member of a backward tribe; and he acted in the heat of anger." The judge then proceeded to sentence him to twelve years, four months and twenty one days-a penalty correct to the day. But Death had sentenced Wild Raspberry to only six months more of this strange imprisonment that we call life. The next case was one of headhunting. A powerful, wide237 The Half-Way Sun shouldered kadangyang in the prime of life had been the "sinew" in an expedition that took two women's heads. A family distant a day's journey up toward the territory of the tree-dwelling Gaddanes had been owing his family a debt of life that had remained uncollected for a long time. But one night his sister dreamed-and, next morning offered him a skirt to wear! His demeanor on the witness stand was the antithesis of Wild Raspberry's. He didn't want to go to prison; he had much to live for and went into great detail trying to justify his act by telling about killings back and forth between the two families for generations. When he told of his sister's having offered him a skirt to wear, he asked the judge, "What would you have done " "Had you not heard of the government's order against headhunting?" returned the judge. "I had, indeed, and I went into the Province of Isabela and asked a pishalet [an official] there if the town of my enemies was in Apo Gallman's jurisdiction. The pishalet told me 'no.'" (As a matter of fact, the territory was in dispute between the two provinces). To him Gallman was the government; thinking he was acting outside Gallman's domain, he took two heads. I was relieved when his case was finished and he was sentenced to twenty years. I had told him not to reveal on the stand 238 Cases in Court who were his companions on the expedition unless I told him he had to. The question did not come up; I had feared it would and that he might be compelled to answer and that the judge would order the rest of them prosecuted. Gallman came to me after the trial and said, "Don't feel bad about that twenty years." "Hell, no!" I replied. "You'll have that fellow out in four or five years' time." "Three," he answered. It came to pass as Gallman said; three years later this headhunter was one of his presidentes. That was Gallman's way; largely to it he owed his remarkable success in handling this, the largest tribe-inveterate headhunters, all. He perceived that those whom our law regarded as the worst and most heinous criminals were really the most energetic, forceful and valuable characters. Such men he did not let waste any more time in jail than he thought necessary to their souls' good. His superiors had confidence in him and he would get those he wanted to use paroled and tell them they might stay out of the "bilibid" so long as they obeyed him and worked hard at carrying out his orders. When minor offenders, guilty of extortion, sedition, or disobedience of some sort came before him in his capacity of Justice of the Peace, he would, if he thought them promising material, give them the limit, work them hard for about half their sentence and remit the rest if they chose 239 The Half-Way Sun to join the constabulary. Many of the non-coms in the three detachments under him had risen from such records. "All they need," Gallman would say, "is disciplina, and a policy of iron and vinegar." But he had the ability to look at things from the pagan's viewpoint and was thoroughly just; his men loved him. The next case I refused to take-it was that of an Ifugao from my home region at Kiangan, who, left an orphan and reared by a Spanish missionary, had coldbloodedly killed and robbed a lowland merchant-this case I have already referred to as the only murder during my eight years' stay in Ifugaoland whose motive was robbery. He was a smart fellow; he had confessed, but repudiated his confession, saying that it had been got by third degree methods (which, as I happened to know, was partly true). But it was in Lubuagan, capital of Kalinga sub-province, that I had the most interesting term of court of all. I was transferred there about six months before I left the Bureau of Education. On the way to my new station, travelling through Bontok sub-province, I witnessed in the broad river bed that separates the large towns of Bontok and Samoki, the annual stone-throwing battle in which the men and boys of each of these towns are pitted against those of the other. The event occurs just before rice-planting time. The con240 Cases in Court testants take shields into the battle, but the shields are smashed, and so are heads and ribs. Still the contest must occur every year, since otherwise, the Bontok thinks, rice would not grow. Away up in Korea there is a similar battle between villages just before spring opens. The Bontoks are considerably different from the Ifugaos in physical type and culture. Whenever I read of the Kenyahs, a headhunting tribe of Borneo, especially if the matter be illustrated, I have the feeling that I am among a Bontok people. So strong is this feeling that I am compelled to believe the two folk brothers in culture and blood. And again, when I read of the Nagas and Aos of the North Burma Hills, I feel that I am among Ifugaos. If my feeling is correct, how strange that Bontoks and Ifugaos, whose near kindreds are so widely separated, should be occupying adjacent territory in Northern Luzon! The transfer to Kalinga required quite a respectable train of cargadores and pack animals. As we passed near a large town on the road north from Bontok, we encountered a group of two or three of the region's principal men, together with some less important ones, sitting on the trail. They had with them a corpse tied to a pole and, as it developed, were awaiting us. "Apo," said one of the centers, "an old man from Bangad, the next large town you will come to, died in our terri241 The Half-Way Sun tory last night. He was out gathering grasshoppers. A cold rain came up, and we think he lost his way and died of exposure. We were at enmity with that town till recently, and we are afraid to take the body to them lest they think we killed him. But if you will permit these people of ours to carry it along with your cargo and will explain to the Bangad folk that we didn't kill him, we believe that there will be no trouble." "When did you find him?" I asked. "Early this morning." "Why have you waited till now to do anything about returning the body?" "Because they telephoned from Tukukan that you camped there last night and were coming. We thought we'd better wait and let you return it." I looked the body over. There were no bruises; confirming their story were the old man's net he had used to capture grasshoppers and his basket half full of the insects. "Very well," I said, "but will not his covillagers be angry at the way you are carrying him-trussed to a pole? That is the way we carry pigs in Kiangan!" "Inoy-ka! So you come from Kiangan, Apo? Yes, truly, for you feel the same way as that folk. We have heard that they carry their dead ones on their backs as babies are carried, and that only the slain may be borne with a pole. 242 Cases in Court But our custom is different; it will be all right, Apo. Drink some basi before you start-sorry we do not have any rice wine to offer, but we seldom make it in these parts." "Basi is very good, but it makes me sleepy so soon that I can't enjoy it," I answered. "You will become seasoned to it, Apo," encouraged one of the centers. In a linguistic hodgepodge of Ifugao, Bontok and Kalinga, we engaged in much the same sort of introductory conversation as occurs in the smoking room of a ship the first few days out when the passengers are getting acquainted-at least it centered around the same theme. They told me how they made their basi from sugar-cane juice and how one gets better results by sacrificing a chicken and praying a great deal. The Bontoks, they said, make a sort of drink that is nothing but fermented slop: they throw sweet potato parings, greens left from the family meal, even chicken bones, into a pot with a little water in it and drink whatever a few days' time brings forth. When I was ready to go, I asked, "Who is going to give the people of Bangad the details of this man's death?" "This boy here," indicating a youth of about sixteen, "is courting a girl of Bangad. He will accompany you." "Oh-a truce to lovers?" "Yes, Apo, an excellent custom." 243 The Half-Way Sun "Well, you could have sent the body back by him." "So we could except that the boy quarreled with his mistress last week. Now he will go along with you, and he will see the girl and will speak with the tongue of a suggesting deity, and everything will be well." Away we started, the corpse leading the way. I thought of an old jingle: "How little did my mother think, That time she cradled me What lands I was to travel in, What sights I was to see." About sunset we arrived at the dead man's town. The folk there gathered about and accepted the story of the old man's death without any objection. I went to the rest house above the town where about an hour was spent in getting cargo under roof, caring for ponies, cooking and eating. Then my boy spread blankets and pillow on the floor, and I turned in. Suddenly there was a great hubbub in the village below. I dressed hurriedly and went down, wondering who was being killed now and why. I came to a scene lighted by pitch pine flambeaux: a throng of scrambling and remonstrating men and a fringe of interested women and children standing around. The presence of the women and children was reassuring. Seeing 244 Cases in Court me, one of the centers stepped forth and thrust a bamboo dipper into my hand. "Here, Apo," said the center, "be so good as to take this dipper and serve the basi out to these men. They are accusing me of partiality in my dipping. You know none of them, and they will be satisfied. Oh, such men! Are you men-or are you just containers of liquid? Inoy-ka! The eagerness of these men for basi!" The crowd dispersed a little to make way for me to two jars that stood nearly waist high. "Take a big drink yourself, first, Apo," advised the center. "The basi is better now than it will be when it gets low in the jar." I did as advised. I realized that I was about to open the funeral services of the dead man I had brought them; a vision of our own precise dismal obsequies popped into my mind, and I had to laugh at the contrast. Then everybody laughed. It was a good-natured crowd-but-a bit anxious about the supply. I judged that the jars contained about fifteen gallons each. Peeling my jacket, I went to the task. The center certainly had not exaggerated the "eagerness" of the guests: they thrust out bamboo jugs and began clamoring and wheedling, begging for a second helping right after a hurried disposition of the first. I worked according to a system, 245 The Half-Way Sun from right to left, revolving around the jar like a planet around a sun, one dipperful to each bamboo, paying no heed to pleadings direct from the heart for just a little more or for favors out of turn. Finally both jars were finished, the guests applauded with a yell, and the center stepped forward, took me by the hand and thanked me. He led me to his house where he seated me on the floor. The Kalinga house is usually hexagonal in plan. The floor, raised about three feet above the earth is of split bamboo, polished, kept exceedingly clean. In the center is the hearth under a smokehole in the roof. There are, of course, no tables, chairs, or other furniture. This was a large house, about eighteen feet in diameter. It began to fill with visitors curious to see the white man, each, as he arrived, sitting without ceremony or greeting. There was some conversation about different customs, Ifugao, Bontok, Kalinga. We kept carefully off that one being exemplified in our midst, it being bad form to talk about funerals after dark. The center's wife put a bowl of steaming rice before me. "I have already eaten all I can hold," said I. "Apo," said the Kalinga, "if a man comes among us for the first time, we always put food before him. If he does not eat, we know thereby that we have to deal with an enemy." This sounded reasonable, although I never heard of the 246 Cases in Court Ifugaos employing such a test. So strong is the taboo against partaking of an enemy's food that a pagan would hardly do it even to save his life. I began eating with the wooden spoon provided. The center's wife, as if floating, moved across the floor again and set a black, polished coconut bowl beside the rice. I affected not to see the addition to the menu and began to eat rice more energetically. "Eat some of the snails," said the center, when he saw the suggestion was needed. "We Americans don't eat them," I said. Atrocious table manners, and I can only plead that on a long mountain journey one has to be prudent about his eating. The Ifugaos, better acquainted with white men, had never felt hurt when I turned down a delicacy of theirs. "Apo, you know the customs of us hill folk, and you know that, with us, to dine is to eat both rice and isda [an 'extra']." I looked about the room. In the brown-red light from the dying fire, I could see only pairs of eyes fixed on me from every part of the house. The brown red faces were not visible. "It is untrue that eyes are the windows of the soul," one side of my brain was thinking. "Eyes without facial modification are only tense"; and the other side: "If I tell them snails are taboo to me as likely to slow my journey, likely as not they'll bring maggoty sausage or 247 The Half-Way Sun grasshoppers. After all the Romans considered snails a luxury." I took up a snail, munched off the small end of the shell to give entrance to air, and sucked the mollusk out from the other end as noisily as possible. Utterly tasteless! "These snails are good indeed!" I said, in an effort to compensate for my bad manners. "I am glad to learn that they are such good food"-and hoped the center would not insist on my drinking the "soup"-always the termination of a pagan meal. He did not, and after some more talk, I went lighted by a torchbearer, back to the rest house. "Far from being a dominant white man, I seem to have been a dominated one, today," I mused while crawling under the blankets, "a day unusually free of blunders since I have done just what I was ordered." The trail next morning soon led for more than a mile through an immense shale precipice. I had seen many such in that country, but this was the largest yet. The mythology of the mountain folk abounds with incidents in which a god or hero ancestor has cut a mountain in two with his war knife and has kicked one of the halves over. This one looked as if just that had happened to it. Every day or two a landslide buried or carried away a part of the trail. A man might be on the very part of the trail that the landslide hit-it would be nothing new in the annals of Mountain 248 Cases in Court Province that he should be! There were places where fifty or a hundred yards of trail had slipped downward ten or fifteen feet with very little cracking or disruption. We hardly dared breathe as we passed over these sections, although they were perhaps firmer than others that were just about to slip. Beyond the great slide we came to the camp of a little elderly Spaniard, a road foreman. He had started his gang of men working and had come back to his shed for breakfast, and the house was mine and I was at home and here was coffee. He was an Andalusian and effusively glad to have a white man to talk to. His household comprised two Bontok women and the children of the elder. The younger was going to start another family for him pretty soon. Ay de mi! What cares, this being a family man! Everything in life has to be paid for. He wished he had gone back to Spain after the war instead of returning to Bontok where he had been serving as cabo in the Guardia Civil. But he had been unable to put the Igorota out of his mind and truly she was, though only a Bontok, a remarkable woman. Would I believe it she knew what was in his mind without his speaking-truly a veritable mind-reader. They had called him away to fight the insurrectos and he had been captured-made to pound rice for Filipino principales, to cook for them, used as a servant by those mon249 The Half-Way Sun keys! He had fallen into the part cunningly, had bespoken them well; indeed he might have married the daughter of the family. "But what a fool a man is! I couldn't put the Igorota out of my thoughts. You see, yourself, sir," he said as the woman placed morisqueta before him at the very moment he was ready for it, "how well-ordered my household is-the woman is a mind-reader! "Well, she is an excellent woman. When they ordered me from Bontok to fight the insurrectos, a child was going to be born soon. After the war I could have gone back to Spain-transportation free. But I wanted at the very least to know whether the nino that had been given to light was a boy or a girl. So I came back to Bontok-and then I couldn't go away! Now I have three grown sons-fine fellows to look at, but they have no intelligence; they have married Igorotas, every one! I counselled the oldest: 'Don't be in a hurry to marry yourself or you will marry an Igorota. Wait a little while till the daughter of Sefior Aula [Hora] at Mancayan will be big enough to marry. She is your own kind, a mestiza. Don't take a step backward!' But he paid no attention. I counselled the next and the next. They did not listen. The woman told me they would not-she knows just what is in my mind. She said 'They will marry themselves to Igorotas.' Can you believe it, sir.?-a few months ago the woman said to me, 'You have 250 Cases in Court higa-you want another woman, a young girl.' I said, 'No! For what do I want another woman-to raise another sea of children ' "She said, 'You are lying; you want Chinayu, of Samoki.' I said, 'Probably she will not have me, and even if I got her it would mean only another sea of children to be disappointments.' She said, 'Well, I will get her for you, but I will stay with you and take care of our children and you.' And so it resulted. Do you not think the younger one is beautiful, sir? The most beautiful Igorota I have seen in all of Bontok-perhaps not just now-with the figure as it is! "Oh, yes, I have grandchildren, but it is as if my blood was not in them; they are Igorots. Well, I have been fortunate in one thing-I have only one girl out of the eight, and I hope that the one that is coming will be a boy. It is not so bad for them to marry Igorotas. Pero, mientras que vivo yo, esta," he said, indicating his eight-year-old daughter, and then repeated, "While I live, this one shall not marry herself with a monkey." I left him to his woes and joys, and in about three hours arrived at Lubuagan, the capital of Kalinga sub-province. 251, The Half-Way Sun 2. The Kalingas have been noted by several observers as being the most handsome natives in the Archipelago. Perhaps it is because they are a mixture of many racial strains. The mating of widely differing strains, however, seems not usually to produce a good-looking offspring. At Decoration Day ceremonies in Manila one may see numbers of veterans of the Philippine War who have married native women, along with their children. The products of such marriages incline to inherit units of feature entire from one parent or the other rather than a harmonious mean. One will see the proud Caucasian nose against a background of Malay skin color and keeping company with a chin inherited from the native parent, or he may see the reverse. There is an element of pathos, too, in the fact that many of these children quite apparently feel as we do-for I take it there is an emotion-stuff characteristic to each race in which the individual ego abides. Compared to the Spanish-Filipino mestizo the American blend is more active and has a trend toward business and industry rather than politics. The disharmony of feature is not without exception, nor does it manifest itself until adolescence. As children, American half-castes are usually very good-looking. Once I stopped for lunch near a large pagan town. A boy brought 252 PLATE LXV It Cases in Court forage for my horse for which he imposed on a kinship of race to the extent of asking half a peso instead of the customary ten centavos. He was a very handsome child, with skin the color of a clean Chinaman's, clear-cut, regular features, broad shoulders overhung with long brown hair. His sole garment, a tiny g-string, left his well-knit figure displayed to advantage. His mother had come along to acknowledge him proudly and get the money the white man would pay him. He was evidently the pet of the village and bossed even the centers. Probably he will become a kadangyang; and when he enters the priesthood, he will, if he knows who he really is, invoke as one of his ancestral maise the soul of an early governor of one of our most populous states. In its essentials, Kalinga society is about the same as Ifugao. Cohesion within the village is a little more developed and centers have more power. This is partly due to polygamy. The centers take a wife from their own class and mistresses from the commoners. The wives do not object. "Their [the mistresses'] children cannot inherit from my husband," one of them said to me. "He helps the mothers with a suckling pig to rear now and then, or with capital for a little trading or weaving. But they do not cost him much. And their children, when they grow up, will back mine in controversies." 253 The Half-Way Sun The center, too, can command a degree of backing from the families of his mistresses. 3 -In my new station, one day a few weeks before the Judge was due to arrive, a middle-aged, aristocratic Kalinga, Star God, came to me. "Apo," he said, "I want you to be abogado for my son when the Apo Juez comes." "What is he charged with?" "With killing a man. Do you think, Apo, that the Americans will kill him by machinery " "Well, I've heard talk about some such thing. You hill folk are doing almost as much headhunting now as before orden was established; you had almost quit it, and now you are starting up again. Why?" "But, Apo, it was not a case of headhunting. It was his cousin and he was spoiling my son's wife. Apo, I'm a rich man; if you'll save my boy, I don't care what it costs!" "If it's that sort of a case, I'll take it and do my best." It was a case through which I thought some good might be done for all the pagans. When the Americans took possession of the Philippines, they found in force a remarkably suitable system of law: 254 Cases in Court codified, terse, and equitable. It was the code promulgated by Napoleon on the continent and, incidentally in Louisiana where it is still in force. The so-called "unwritten law" is embodied in the code to this extent: that if a man, legally married, surprise his wife and her paramour in delicto, and then and there kill either or both, the only penalty imposed is exile twenty-five kilometers from the site of the crime for two years. The exile is for the sake of the peace of the community and the safety of the husband. Our administrators made few changes in the code and left this provision intact. They also left the Philippine judicial system unencumbered by juries. Our courts had been punishing headhunting and feudist murders rather mildly-usually by twelve to twenty years' imprisonment. It was recognized that in these primitive cultures the two were filial duties that appealed to the most public spirited and, in a way, the highest type of men. Certainly they were not crimes involving moral turpitude. For this reason, a special penitentiary had been established in Bontok for pagans. After serving part of their time, the prisoners were often paroled and sent back to their villages where what they had learned was likely to make them quite valuable to the government. Why, then, was this Kalinga gentleman alarmed lest the Americans kill his son "by machinery"? It was because there 255 The Half-Way Sun had occurred a political upheaval in America that had induced one in the Philippines. The Governor General, a man of long and distinguished service, had been replaced by a Tammany politician, and the Big Apo by a tenderfoot lawyer who knew nothing of the hill folk and made no effort to learn. Indeed, so little to his taste was this, the biggest part of his job, that he "delegated" the governing of the pagans to a friend from Boston. Not much is required to tempt the incompletely tamed Malay back to headhunting; administrative changes of less importance than those made would have been quite sufficient. Headhunting events became numerous, entailing a reflection on the "delegate's" administration. He was considering bringing it about that headhunting or murder be punished by death and that executions be public at the site of the crime. The pagans heard of the plan-hence the alarm of the Kalinga whose son was being held for murder. 4 -To be eligible to the light penalty for killing his wife's paramour, a man must be legally married to the woman. During the Spanish regime in the Philippines, Church and State had been so united that a marriage ceremony, to be legal, had to be a Roman Catholic one. In the days of our 256 Cases in Court Military Occupation a number of people were united in wedlock by Protestant chaplains or missionaries, only to find out later that they were not married in a legal sense at all. The Commission sent out by President McKinley dealt promptly with the situation by enacting a statute governing marriage. Its essence was the following: No special form of ceremony is prescribed, but the contracting parties, in the presence of a priest or minister of any religion, or of the governor of a province, a judge of a court of first instance [there follows a list of the civil authorities who are authorized to officiate] must declare their intention to take each other as husband and wife. Perhaps the Philippine Supreme Court believed that pagan marriages were mere matings such as are fairly frequent among the poorer lowlanders, or perhaps they followed court decisions on American Indian marriages; at any rate they ruled that pagan marriages were not legal within the statute. I felt this erroneous and unjust. Are not the men who pray: "Ancestral spirits and deities of the Skyworld, of the Underworld, of the Downstream Region and of the Upstream Region! Ye are exhorted to increase the soulstuff of the 'children' [i.e. the bride and groom]. Increase their rice supply. Multiply their pigs and chickens. Give them many children, of whom let some be male and some be female"-are not these men priests of a 257 The Half-Way Sun religion? At least they pray and ceremonialize a whole day at weddings. And though bride and groom do not make a declaration of intention in words, is not their presence at their own wedding a declaration? Shortly before Star God came to me, my sense of the wrong done the pagans had been sharpened by having read in the Official Gazette a decision of the Supreme Court denying the law's clemency to a pagan convicted of the same crime for which Star God's son was being held and committed under the same provocation, on the ground that he was not legally married to his wife. I took the present case, expecting to lose, but intending to get the facts relating to the pagan marriage ceremony into evidence, to appeal and to get a lawyer in Manila to handle the case before the Supreme Court. With the father I went to see the boy, Of-a-Soundness. He was a handsome youth of seventeen or eighteen, of clean and transparent complexion; his hair, long behind, tumbled over his wide shoulders, but was trimmed short and evened in front and came like bangs half way down his high forehead. Not yet entirely emerged from the normal dullness of adolescence, he was completely mystified by the calamity that had befallen him. I interviewed witnesses and prepared the case as best I could, but ran into obstructions. Tied-up, the slain, a second or third cousin of 258 Cases in Court Of-a-Soundness, was a first cousin of the presidente, the American-appointed mayor of the region, a powerful, wealthy, aggressive man of whom our witnesses were afraid. Star God had a great deal of trouble to get them to come to me and tell their story. Of-a-Soundness' wife, Tanggo, had no pity for him and, for the sake of her own reputation if for no other reason, was telling a story quite at variance with his. Her family, of course, took the same stand that she did. Tanggo was the most beautiful girl I ever saw in the Philippines or in Japan, Korea or China. Her complexion was like old ivory; her eyes had just the trace of a slant; she had the divinely sloping shoulders and firm hemispherical breasts of the Malay woman; her features and body proportion were almost Caucasian. Long hair, bound in red and yellow beads, rippled abundantly to her waist. Her forearms were wrapped in strand upon strand of manycolored beads-if they should rest on a man's shoulders, he would feel them substantially there-they would fascinate him-he might be very suggestible while they were there. Purposely, I think, she had woven her loin-cloth a bit meagre, just long enough that when she wrapped it around her waist, the ends met, but when she walked, they pulled apart on the left side, revealing her thigh like a bas-relief in yellow-red ivory. 259 The Half-Way Sun 5. The judge, attended by the other court officials, came. He was a Filipino of mixed blood, a man who would be a credit to any race. Educated in Spain and England, the best of each country seemed to have left its impress. There were three white men in the sub-province, the lieutenantgovernor sent a few months before to replace LieutenantGovernor Walter F. Hale who had done all the hard work of pacifying the Kalingas and bringing them to a semblance of order, a lieutenant of constabulary, and I. We joined with the Filipino merchants, clerks, and teachers in giving the judge and his entourage a ball. I saw the one-step and fox trot for the first time that night, danced by the dudish subordinate court officials, all Filipinos. Our local society took the importations up as if born to them. A book had come in the day's mail (we had three mails a week) and, leaving the ball at a reasonable hour, I went home, to bed, and was reading it when there came a timid rap at the door. I said "Come in," and there entered a strange delegation of about ten men, most of whom had the bearing and strong faces that indicated centers. Their long black hair fell on smoke-begrimed shoulders. "Apo, we wish you to be our abogado," they said. "I have all the cases I can handle." 260 Cases in Court They were insistent, but I as persistently refused, and they went away. In about half an hour there came another tap at the door and the same men entered. The foremost carried grandiosely in front of him a bag that had been made by tying a section of a trousers-leg at one end. He advanced without a word and extended the sack. Looking in, I saw about a quart of silver money of all denominations. These centers, believing that I had refused their case because not satisfied that I would be paid, had taken up a collection. Ordinarily I was not paid, and they had misunderstood my reason. The curious money bag and proud bearing of its carrier, however, aroused my interest. "Well, put the sack over there in the corner," I said, as if such sacks were brought in every day. "What kind of a case is this." "Cutting off the head of a man." "Where are you from?" "Sumadel folk are we." Theirs was a large town a good half day's hike away, set in exceedingly steep mountains. Although in Kalinga sub-province, its people were predominantly Bontoks. "All right. Tell me about it." "Apo, it happened thus," said Headtaker's Wreath, one of the centers, a man of magnificent physique whose coarse, soot-encrusted features I have never forgotten. "The Dana261 The Half-Way Sun nao people kept stealing our irrigation water and killing us, besides. They killed one of my grandmothers. Of course, we killed them, too. The enmity continued after you Melikanos came; though there was not so much cutting off of heads. Two years ago, Gofinyachol Haree [Governor Hale] got us to make peace with Dananao. And we have kept the peace, Apo. It was not our fault we took the head!" "Not your fault! Do you mean that you took it accidentally '" "Yes, Apo-by accident. It occurred about two moons ago. A party of Dananao hunters followed a deer into our territory. Galanto, one of our men, was down in a gulch. He was bent over, looking at the tracks of the deer, when one of the Dananao hunters came to the bank above and threw a spear into him. Balauwag, a boy, saw Galanto fall, and ran to a mountain spur, whence he shouted down to our town: 'The people of Dananao are killing us; they have killed Galanto!' "But Galanto only fell-his soul did not leave him. The Dananao man, whose name was Angayon, thought he was dead and ran up to cut off his head. Galanto arose unexpectedly and slashed him in the shoulder. Angayon ran away. "When the boy shouted to the town that Galanto was dead, there was an outcry of all the people. Those work262 Cases in Court ing in the fields rushed in. The men hurried for their shields; their eagerness was great. But we centers told the people, 'There is orden now; we must obey our apos, the Americans. We must not fight Dananao, we must make a report to the gofinyachol.' " The center looked to me for approbation of this virtuous command. Up to this point the story had seemed to be holding up well to the truth, but I suspected that it was now sagging fearfully and would henceforth be mostly a lie. The centers, I was sure, had told the people no such thing. Taking into consideration that lying in general was nothing new to the pagans, I was not so sorry as perhaps I ought to have been. We hedge the rights of the accused most carefully with "cannot be compelled to testify against himself" and "must be warned that anything he says may be used against him" and with other rights none of which the wild man knows. In effect, our procedure gives an accused the chance to lie to save his skin and he usually does. Headhunting and feudist murders-to the pagans praiseworthy acts-were nearly the only crimes committed in the tribes not yet civilized. The folk knew that the government forbade headhunting but, confident in each instance that their own was justified and righteous, believed for years that a thorough explanation would bring the government to their viewpoint. The formal phrase, "It is your right not 263 The Half-Way Sun to testify against yourself," meant nothing to them. Having said those words, the apo who had arrested them would ask questions and they would answer with the naivete of children. He would make a writing on paper, tell them to put a finger on his fountain pen while he made a mark, call two lowland people to sign-and there was a confession, duly witnessed! Skilled lawyers were sent to prosecute, and men who were not lawyers were appointed to defend. Assuming that no innocents were convicted, it yet seemed hardly fair that civilized criminals a thousand times more wicked should have all the advantage over those who had done right by their own code. I never suggested a lie or helped any of them make one. But if these Sumadel folk had devised a plausible one, while I would deplore it of course, as a patriot I was bound to rejoice in the progress manifested toward civilization, implying, as it did, the effective working of our American program. A lie would show that they were beginning not only to realize headhunting to be always forbidden by law but also to prepare a defense as white men would. They were getting into the current with the rest of us-becoming, to borrow the words used by a speaker at a luncheon recently, "right-minded people that think like we do." Was not this cause for rejoicing? Headtaker's Wreath probably suspected that his last 264 Cases in Court statement was being questioned. At any rate he bolstered his veracity by evidence confirming the part of his story I had never doubted. "Galanto," he said, "come and show the apo where the spear hit you." A man came from out in the hall, turned his back to me and bent to a right angle, displaying across his buttocks a great scar as yet hardly healed. "You see, Apo," said Headtaker's Wreath triumphantly, "how the people of Dananao kept the peace." "We centers," he reiterated, "told the people they must remember the orden of the Americans. Then we decided that the right thing would be to send a delegation to report the matter to the gofinyachol. So we chose four men. Stand up, Serves-as-a-Hand and Lover's Harp!" Two men out in the hall stood up. "These two men were in the delegation. The other two, Father-of-Landslides and Too-Little, are in the calaboose awaiting the Apo Juez." I glanced at the two men. They were ordinary poor folk and very young. "No more than would I be sent to the Court of St. James!" I said to myself. "Wait," I said. "What kind of spears did they carry?" "None," said Headtaker's Wreath. Inasmuch as a pagan is almost never without: his spear 265 The Half-Way Sun and would certainly not dream of going fifty yards from his village unarmed, this was a daring statement. It took originality to invent it and the other centers looked at Headtaker's Wreath, astounded. It sounded like a good thing to tell the judge, though. "Why would they carry spears on a peaceful mission to the Apo Gofinyachol? Somebody, seeing them, might not understand their peaceful purpose." The unction with which Headtaker's Wreath said it made me laugh uncontrollably. The center was pained, but laughter is contagious in all climes, the others caught it, and finally Headtaker's Wreath laughed, too. "Since the Sumadel folk obey their centers so well, it is clear who will be to blame if any further headhunting occurs," I said, to restore solemnity. "Go on." "The men started off, single file. They expected no peril because they were going to make a report to the Apo. A spear was thrust out of the grass along the trail and wounded Lover's Harp, the foremost. Lover's Harp, show where you were wounded." Lover's Harp advanced, raised his right arm, and showed a faint white scar in the armpit, less than two inches long. The wound could have been of skin depth only, and I estimated the scar to be not less than two years old. It certainly was not recent. 266 Cases in Court "Lover's Harp fell into the arms of his brother, Servesas-a-Hand. Father-of-Landslides, the third in the line, leaped forward and slashed the man in the grass with his axe. Too-Little, the rearmost, cut off the head. They brought it to Sumadel and buried it." "Did you perform the headfeast ceremonials?" "We had to, Apo," Headtaker's Wreath answered apologetically. "Could we enrage the great gods? Of course the young men danced and the old men prayed. But the head was not to be seen... it was buried... we didn't like to leave it to be eaten by wild hogs!" "Then the body out there in the tall grass-was it eaten by wild hogs?" "We have heard that it was so, Apo; it must have beenthe Dananao people and the police did not find it till the next day." "Of course, in that case, no spear wound could have been recognized in it-in fact-in fact, no one could say for sure whose body it was," I mused, thinking of the corpus delicti the fiscal would have to prove in order to convict. "We have heard that the flesh was eaten from the bones, Apo." "What about the man who started it all-the man who speared Galanto'?" 267 The Half-Way Sun "We complained against him. On the second day, the constabulary came to Sumadel and took Too-Little and Father-of-Landslides. We centers all came with them to Lubuagan and told the gofinyachol how the Dananao man had speared Galanto. So the constabulary went and arrested him. He will also come before the Apo Juez-and I hope they kill him by machinery!" "That Dananao man whose head was taken-he must have been crazy to attack a party of four," I remarked to see what he would say to a very weak part of his story. "The ferocity of that Dananao folk! Who can understand why they hate us so'? But perhaps he saw only one man when he thrust with his spear. The others were a little behind, and the trail was very crooked," answered the center with more or less plausibility. "Do you think, Apo, that the government will kill Too-Little and Father-ofLandslides by machinery?" "That's hard to say. You had better go now, and let me think the case over." Next morning, with Headtaker's Wreath, I went to interview my clients in the calaboose. They told the same story I had already heard. "Which of you really killed him9" I asked. "Did you, Father-of-Landslides, kill him with your head-axe, or did you, Too-Little, kill him when you cut off the head?" 268 Cases in Court Each began to put the blame on the other. As a matter of fact, I doubt if either knew. When an enemy is down, decapitation follows so quickly that no one has time to note so unimportant a circumstance as whether the victim is dead or not. My notion of what happened is that the whole town was out to avenge Galanto whom they believed slain, and that this party of four came across a Dananao hunter separated from the main body. Father-ofLandslides, who, according to the story had brought the man down, had the right to take the head. His tattoos showed that he had been on headhunting expeditions before; Too-Little was untattooed; the two were cousins. Father-of-Landslides may have foregone his privilege in order that Too-Little should have an honor already old to himself. They seemed to think the question I had asked, of who killed the man, very important, and their debate over it became acrimonious. I told them it did not matter, that the great question would be whether they had needed to kill him to defend themselves. Headtaker's Wreath conversed a long time with the two in low mumbling tones and seemed to comfort them greatly. "Did you tell the Apo lieutenant anything about the case or put your finger on his pen while he made a mark on paper?" I asked. 269 The Half-Way Sun "We did not," replied one. "Our father, Headtaker's Wreath, told us not to tell him one word." It then came out that they were distant poor kin of whose family Headtaker's Wreath was the center. Fortunate the family with such a center. Neither in Ifugao or Kalinga did I ever see any resentment against the government, despite its continual interference in the ancient folkways, its forcing of labor, its punishing for doing the duty of avenging. The folk could no more think of resenting than a scientist falling out of an apple tree could think of crying out against the law of gravitation. Even less, in fact, for the scientist, if he lived, might devote his life to trying to neutralize or circumvent gravitation. The pagans looked upon the government as too powerful and inevitable to rebel against and accepted it with almost as little thought of justice or injustice as a fundamentalist accepts a god, who, having created him daring, will not forgive him under any considerations for cursing the Holy Ghost, and who, having created him lustful, has ordained against satisfaction of lust and, having made him frivolous, has ordained against Sunday amusements. 270 Cases in Court 6. My sincerest sympathy was with Of-a-Soundness, the boy in the other case. He had told all when first arrested and had signed a confession that I was sure was truthful. But the law placed the burden on us of proving that he had slain the man in delicto. The presidente was very much against us and was intimidating our witnesses. Presidentes have a great deal of power in a Kalinga village and can make life miserable for those against whom they cherish a grudge, what with continually impressing them as cargadores, forcing them as laborers in public works, and the like. The lieutenant-governor, too, was anxious to see Of-aSoundness convicted. He had caused the arrest and probably thought that a conviction would help break the epidemic of headhunting that had begun when he replaced Governor Hale. "Oyez! Oyez! The Court of First Instance in and for the Sub-province of Kalinga...." Americans and Filipinos stand up, and the bailiff motions imperiously for the Kalinga centers who pack the courtroom to stand, also; the judge walks in. A ceremony hardly worthy the name, yet one that greatly fascinates Ifugaos, Kalingas and Bontoks, always. It is of a sort their 271 The Half-Way Sun own cultures lack utterly, a societal ceremony, and feeds a hunger in their natures. These Melikanos, they have noted, make no sacrifices to the gods, pay no attention to magic and but little to family ties, but they utilize and obey ceremonies that bind them together and make them act as one man for the purposes of their race despite the fact that numerous individual grudges and hatreds divide them. Some of them stay at home and manufacture guns, others bring these guns across the ocean, sailing in great ships past the perilous "navel of the seas," others yet put the guns in the hands of picked warriors in every tribe and drill these warriors to act as one man too, and with all the snap and precision of the locks of those marvelous guns themselves, by means of a ritual of march, countermarch, and of opening and extending ranks. They pay these tribesmen whom they use to extend their power with money-of whose manufacture they have discovered the secret. Thus their group has become mighty, and surely there must be great virtue in their ceremonies. Whether civilized or uncivilized, the Philippine Malay craves a feudalism. His nature has long been ready for, or at least desirous of, a social progress that he never, of himself, has attained. Perhaps the torpor of the tropics and his own intense personal pride have hindered. The Japanese, to the north, far more successful in this regard, cir272 Cases in Court cumvented the anti-social tendency of an equally hypersensitive pride by exalting hara kiri as the supreme expression of wounded pride or non-conformist opinion and a means of automatically removing the dissenter. "The United States versus Of-a-Soundness," called the clerk. The indictment was read, I entered a plea of "not guilty," and tried to shorten the case: "This defendant, Your Honor, when first arrested, admitted having slain Tied-up. He hid nothing. Indeed, knowing nothing of our law, he could not have known how to better his case either by concealing or inventing-a fact that reinforces the ordinary presumption that his confession is the truth. Although an ignorant savage, he yet is of the best blood of his tribe. And I believe the evidence will show that he has acted just as an aristocrat of any race or degree of enlightenment is required to act, before, during, and after the crime-if it was a crime. We are quite willing, and we offer, to simplify the trial by limiting the evidence to the defendant's legal marriage, his having surprised his wife and her lover in delicto, and his having immediately slain the man." The fiscal objected, saying that he would show aggravating circumstances, thereby unnecessarily prolonging a trial held in the very middle of the hot season. In the Philippines, nocturnity, treachery, premeditation, cruelty 273 The Half-Way Sun or the use of poison in committing a homicide are circumstances that add to the severity of punishment. The confession was admitted into evidence; in substance it was that for some time before the crime, Of-a-Soundness had been aware of improper relations between his wife and Tied-up; that ten days before the slaying, he had asked his father to remonstrate with Tied-up regarding this most uncousinly behavior and to threaten him with death if it should be kept up; that Star God had bespoken Tiedup, and Tied-up had promised not to offend again. About sunset of the day of the crime, some Kalinga soldiers of the Constabulary had encamped at the river about a mile down the mountain side from the village. Tanggo, the wife, had told Of-a-Soundness that she had been informed that a kinsman of hers and a kinsman of his were in the detachment, and had suggested that he go down and invite them to the house for a visit. He went, but found no kinsmen. His suspicions were aroused, and, returning by a roundabout path, he found his wife not at home, left his spear and took his head-axe. He had found the couple and had set upon Tied-up, who ran away. He had followed, slashing whenever he could, finally inflicting a mortal wound. Three or four prosecution witnesses testified that Tied-up and Tanggo had not been together that night. Ongay and Bayinay, two girls of about seventeen, testified that Tied-up 274 Cases in Court had been sitting on a stone wall all evening, blackening his teeth after the fashion of Kalingas, and that Of-aSoundness had set upon Tied-up whilst thus beautifying himself. I couldn't shake them on cross-examination, but have no doubt that it would have been easy for one skilled in the art. On the other hand, our witnesses corroborated Of-a-Soundness' confession. I asked two or three witnesses, "Were Of-a-Soundness and Tanggo legally married " One interpreter put the questions into the Ilokano dialect, and another interpreter put them into Kalinga. By that time, "legally" had necessarily become "properly" or "according to custom." "Of course they were properly married," the witnesses answered. "Were they not rich folk? Nothing was left undone." Surprisingly the fiscal made no effort to show that the marriage was a tribal one-perhaps he had not read the Supreme Court's decision in a parallel case. I was prepared with plenty of evidence to show the nature of Kalinga marriage, believing that this would be an issue. Since it was not made one, it seemed best to let a sleeping dog lie and not stir it up by using testimony that was not needed. At last, in the stifling courtroom, the evidence was in, and the court asked what counsel had to say. The fiscal argued that whatever the past relations between Tanggo 275 The Half-Way Sun and Tied-up might have been, the evidence showed that Tied-up had been sitting on the wall all evening, and so could not have been with the girl when he was attacked. He held that inflicting sixteen wounds was a cruel manner of slaying comparable to the Chinese execution by slicing; that an unarmed man had been attacked in the dark with a deadly weapon; it looked as if there had been premeditation, too, but he would not press the point since there were already enough aggravating circumstances to get the savage hanged. When the fiscal had finished his argument, I started to explain away these aggravating circumstances, but the judge stopped me kindly with, "There is no need to argue those points. The Court can see no merit in them, being convinced that the defendant killed his victim as soon as he could. There is no evidence to show that he chose nighttime to facilitate either the deed or his escape. In fact he did not try to escape. But the Court would like to be satisfied as to the defendant's having found his wife and the deceased in delicto that night." The evidence on this point was highly conflicting, and no amount of argument could make it anything else, besides which I did not know how to argue it, though I tried. "The Court feels that you have not proved that the deceased was attacked in delicto, and as you know, Mr. Barton, the burden of proof is on the defense in this." I could 276 Cases in Court say nothing. The judge reached for his copy of the penal code and turned to the tabulation of penalties. It would be of no use to appeal from a decision based on the evidence. If the case had hinged on the legality of the marriage, as before the trial I had expected, an appeal might possibly have reversed the case and set a much-needed new precedent. Now it was solely a matter of saving the boy's liberty, and I clutched at straws. I felt that the judge was about to give him fifteen years-or possibly only twelve. "I request the Court to let me call Tanggo to the stand. We will waive the provision that a man's wife may not testify in a case of this sort." But the fiscal objected. It could not be allowed in the Philippine Islands, although permissible in some states. "Then please let me recall Ongay. I am sure the presidente has been entirely too partisan in this case, and I believe that I can show that the witnesses on the other side are unreliable." An American court would never have tolerated such an irregularity of program-I could have recalled witnesses before the arguments but not after,-even to do justice. But this judge wanted to decide the case aright. Ongay, a prosecution witness was recalled. "When was Of-a-Soundnes arrested?" 277 The Half-Way Sun "Three months ago." "Who arrested him?" "The presidente." "What is your relationship to the presidente?" "He is my uncle." "Is he the center of your family group?" "Yes." "Did he tell you what to say here?" "No." "Did he ever talk to you about what you would say here?" "No." "He never talked to you about the case at all?" "Never." "Your Honor, it is incredible that the presidente did not talk to her both as a member of his family and as a witness of the killing-if she was a witness." "Probably so, but the Court cannot feel that the essential part of her testimony has been impeached. She is possibly overcautious in admitting having talked to him through fear that an inference be drawn that he told her what to say and she be punished for it." Now came two or three minutes that seemed an hour. It is safe to say that the most agonizing situation there can be is that of having another's fate in your hands and not 278 Cases in Court knowing the technique of saving him. I was asking questions about the terrain and the wall and the grouping of the houses and coffee bushes, at the same time suffering the humiliation of knowing that the case would be an easy one for a lawyer and vowing never again to take the case of an innocent man, and, while laboring under all this emotional disturbance, trying to pick up the clue to the fallacy in the witness's testimony. I hung blindly on because I felt that but little would be needed to tip the balance. By chance I asked, "What were you doing when you saw Ofa-Soundness attack Tied-up?" "I was on the wall, blackening my teeth." Then there flashed into my mind a note I had made some months before: "Blackening the teeth-done in groups of both sexes who mutually assist each other; has sexual significance and is somehow correlated with exogamy. Kin of opposite sex may not see or be present. The taboo seems to be as strong as that against the use of suggestive language in the presence of female kin or that against partaking of the food or drink of an enemy." I felt on safe ground, now, and the world grew brighter. "You say that Tied-up was your cousin?" "Yes," was the answer. "You were blackening your teeth with your cousin'?" 279 The Half-Way Sun "He was not blackening his teeth." The witness showed some embarrassment. "Where was he?" "Sitting on the wall apart from us." "How far away?" She took a long time to consider how far away she could put him for decency's sake and still cling to her testimony that she had been in sight of him all evening. Finally she replied, "About twelve arm spans." "So near! I am afraid you were lacking in shame or else that Tied-up was not on the wall. You could see so far in the night?" "Yes." "Even when a cloud covered the moon?" "Yes." "And you kept your eyes on Tied-up all the time?" "Yes." The answers were coming with difficulty. I asked her next about the taboo against blackening teeth in the presence of a kinsman, and she answered, truthfully, that there was such a taboo. "And now, Your Honor, I request that that portion of the witness's testimony in which she tells about the beginning of the attack be read from the record." 280 Cases in Court Q. Where was Tied-up? A. Sitting on the wall. Q. What was he doing? A. Just sitting there blackening his teeth. Q. State what happened. A. Of-a-Soundness came running out of the coffee bushes behind. He didn't say anything, but I screamed to Tied-up to run.... "Your Honor, I submit that the witness has lied, one time or the other." "Yes," said the judge, "she has." I looked at Of-a-Soundness and was irritated that he sat impassive, not knowing what a crucial moment it was in his life. "Cause the defendant to stand," ordered the judge. "Of-a-Soundness, the Court finds you guilty of the crime of homicide, but with the extenuating circumstances mentioned in section so and so of the penal code, and sentences you to exile for two years for a distance of twenty-five kilometers from the site of the crime." "Some provision," he continued, "ought to be made for this boy during the two years he will be away from home. He ought to have something to keep him busy and whereby he can earn his living. "If Your Honor will dictate a letter to the Provincial Board explaining the circumstances, it is likely they will find employment for him." The judge dictated the letter. Of-a-Soundness, mean The Half-Way Sun time, was being put in shackles, and was led back to the calaboose between two soldiers with fixed bayonets. His father had heard the sentence, but probably did not understand it. At any rate, the sight of his son being marched back to jail between soldiers with fixed bayonets made the stronger impression on him. He came to me as I was wearily going home. "Apo," he said, "is it good or bad?" "Good." He shook his head, incredulous. "I tell you it is good! Go and tell him so. He has to stay in Bontok for two years-that is all. While he is here, they will keep him in the calaboose. They will take him with the other prisoners, after the judge goes away, to Bontok. But before he gets to Bangad, they will take the chains off and let him walk free. And there in Bontok, I think, they will give him a job and pay him a salary. Tell him to do nothing foolish, and all will be well." Still, the father was less than half convinced. He had no mind for technicalities. If the boy was going to be set free, why were they keeping him in the calaboose? Why handcuff him and take him there between two naked bayonets? I saw that he could never explain to the boy; so, fearing that Of-a-Soundness might run amok, I went to the calaboose and explained to him, myself. 282 Cases in Court A few years afterward, the Supreme Court reversed its stand on pagan marriages. 7. Next morning the other case was called. The fiscal moved to dismiss, saying he could find no witnesses who could give first hand evidence. (As a matter of fact, with all but the bones eaten by wild pigs, he probably could not have proven who was killed). The lieutenant-governor objected that it would never do to "let those men get away with taking that head," and suggested that they be punished for cutting the head off if they couldn't be for killing the man. "Look up the law, Mr. Fiscal, and see what kind of a complaint you might be able to bring against them," ordered the judge. The fiscal looked through the penal code and reported that it hardly anticipated such an emergency-that the best he could do would be to bring a charge of mutilating a corpse, the penalty for which would be a fine of loo pesetas ($20) and a short imprisonment. I suggested that such a punishment might give spectators in the courtroom a wrong idea of the penalty for taking a head. The judge gave the heathen a severe lecturing and turned the prisoners loose. The Dananao man who started the trouble was tried 283 The Half-Way Sun next and received a rather heavy penalty. When his sentence was given him, he thrust his shoulder toward the judge and said, "Here is the wound Galanto gave me in return, Apo! Isn't the case even-handed without sending me to the 'bilibid'?" Headtaker's Wreath and the other Sumadel centers left the courtroom snickering. They were in a group, still exulting over the Dananao man's sentence and laughing at his remark to the Court when I came out a few minutes later. They had been conferring on another matter, too, for they extended me an invitation to visit Sumadel. They would provide three fat hogs and about forty-five gallons of basi, they said, and give a canyao at which I might see what excellent folk they were and what good customs they had. Also, they broached another subject. "Apo, there are some girls in our town that are large and of whitish complexion," said Headtaker's Wreath, evidently mentioning the qualities they had decided most likely to carry an appeal. "What you fellows had better do," I replied, trying to be stern, "is to think how lucky you are to go free after taking that head; not only Too-Little and Father-of-Landslides, but even you centers. Next time you try it, you'll get caught sure. Some of you they'll kill by machinery and some of you centers they'll put in the 'bilibid' for several 284 Cases in Court years. You'd better stay and see what the judge gives those boys on the other side of the range for killing that girl! I'm going back to America soon and won't be here to help you out of it. Better not do any more killing." I would have loved to participate in their canyao, but knew they would misinterpret if I did. I even yet dream of paying them a belated visit. Star God moped about till the end of the term of court, worrying about the fate of his son. He would sit near the jail for hours for just a sight of the boy. When the prisoners were taken to Bontok, I sent him back to his village with orders to return the fifth day. And on that day, when I got up in the morning, there he was, waiting patiently outside the door. As soon as I thought the warden would be in his office at the 'bilibid,' I called him on the telephone, inquired about Of-a-Soundness, and repeated to Star God what the warden said. Still Star God looked dubious, so I asked the Warden to call Of-a-Soundness to the phone. In about half an hour there was a ring, and the warden said Of-a-Soundness was there. I handed Star God the receiver. He had never talked on the telephone before. He recognized his son's voice, but his ears were pounding so with excitement that he could hardly understand and had to ask continually for repetitions. Finally he 285 The Half-Way Sun turned from the telephone. Never have I seen the stolid Malay countenance so enlightened. "Apo, he says that he eats and sleeps at the 'bilibid' but he is not locked up nor made to work, and the food is very good and he comes and goes as he pleases. He says two great apos are very kind to him. One is the apo at the hospital. That apo is said to kill the sick ones, sometimes, and to cut out the sickness with knives and make them live again. Is that true, Apo' I cannot tell you all he says, but he says the apo of the sick is going to teach him how to take care of the sick ones-and give him a salary!" That salary it was, no doubt, that made the cup o'erflow. For, while not especially fond of wages, any Malay prizes a salary almost as his right arm. "How much do I owe you, Apo?" asked Star God with a touch of trepidation, remembering, probably, his rash offers when fearing his son would be killed by machinery. "I worked hard on that case. Bring me the head-axe that Of-a-Soundness used, and whatever else you want to." Star God hurried to his village half a day's journey away. Late that night he rapped at the door as I was reading. Entering, he delivered the head-axe and ninety dollars. He then sat on the floor, silent except to answer questions. How would Of-a-Soundness' mother bear the sep286 Cases in Court aration? The mother was dead. His other sons-were they married? He had no other sons-only daughters. Sensing an internal conflict, I asked him what he was thinking about. "Apo, I shame to tell you. It is against the Custom." "But I am an American. Probably it is not against my Custom." "Do the kin of the girl ever arrange marriages in America, Apo." "Yes, the girl's mother always tries to." "My daughters are all married, but my brother has one who is a widow. You would have to wait for her to grow up... she has many fields... I, myself, would pay the kin of the dead husband the gibu indemnity for her remarriage," he offered. "I have to go back to America," I told him. "Are you a rich man in America, Apo?" "No." "You would become rich here. The girl has many fields. You would get lots of money defending us Kalingas. There is a man in our town whose brother was sent to the 'bilibid' for ten years. He has served four, and if you will get him out, the brother says the kindred will pay you four hundred dollars. And, Apo"-the conservative old fellow found it hard to say this-"the girl is very pretty 287 The Half-Way Sun... large for her age... whitish of skin. She will soon grow up." I felt very uncomfortable at the old fellow's breaking his custom on my account and at its costing him such agony. The fee and his gratitude I felt I deserved, but hardly so much as this. "No doubt you advise me well," I said. "But I have to return to America. My parents have ordered it, and I have to obey. So you can see that although your advice is good, I cannot follow it. I shall be gone in a month or two." 8. On the way to Manila I visited friends at the "bilibid." Was-Made-Lonesome, who had drawn a light sentence and had shortened it by good behavior, was soon to be released. Cripple was more than content. He no longer had to scoot about in pursuit of insulting debtors. Persimmon's wounds where he had stabbed himself deep in the liver had healed with that hypertrophy of scar tissue to which Malays are predisposed so that three excrescences stood out on his belly about the size and shape of drawer knobs. He was disconsolate. "The 'bilibid' would not be so bad if they would let us out now and then to court a woman," he said. Of-aSoundness was a student nurse in the hospital. I wondered 288 Cases in Court how deeply his recent depressing experience had touched his heart and asked him his opinion of Bontok girls. "I have no time for girls now," he answered, shamefaced. "He lies," said a fellow nurse, an Ifugao boy. "Apo, he is already visiting the olag [girl's dormitory]-there's his girl now," and he pointed to one loitering on the path leading to the hospital. She was short and wide, waistless, flatnosed, and very dark-the very antithesis of that proud goddess-in-old-ivory, Tanggo. "Is she pretty?" I asked Of-a-Soundness. "No," he answered honestly, "but her feelings are the same as mine and I don't think anybody will get her away from me." "No, Of-a-Soundness, I don't think anybody will!" EPILOGUE A STRONG impulse drew me back to Ifugaoland. I must look again on that terracing built by the persistence of generations upon generations throughout no one knows how many centuries. I must see Poison, Sheet-Lightning and Benders-in-the-Dance before leaving the Islands, as I then thought, forever. I would return by way of the Salt River Region-through perhaps the most magnificent of all terracing. A Bontok girl going to the lowlands joined my cargadores. On the second day out, when we camped at noon, I asked, "Why have you joined my party without my permission?" "Is this trail your property?" she countered. "Do my cargadores, or any of them, belong to you?" I returned. She laughed with the complacency of a woman whose own will is her sole law. But affably she answered civil questions put in a civil way. She was going to Bayombong to work for wages; she was from the town of Barlig. Her lover for the past two years had married another because she herself had borne him no child. She didn't blame him, but she couldn't bear to see him day by day and had decided to go away-that was all. She was tall and straight and broad-shouldered; her back was muscled like an ath291 The Half-Way Sun letic youth's; when she walked her breasts quivered but did not sag. Two German merchants from Saigon who had fled to the Philippines at the outbreak of the war met us on the trail. They had had to leave their businesses on four hours' notice, they said, and they were positive that Germany would never be conquered. I travelled by easy stages from rest house to rest house. Near almost every rest house was a pool. As I was bathing, one day, the Bontok girl came. "I bathe as often as you do," she said, unwrapping her skirt and plunging in. "You are no cleaner than I, even if you are an apo." She splashed me with water, scoured my back with a stone. We came to the Salt River Region. Save only the terrace walls and their projections upward above the edge of the fields as rims to dam back the water, many a whole mountain side is a lake. Tier upon tier upon tier the great flooded earth shelves climb the steeps, surmounting enormous boulders or wrapped cunningly around them. Now that harvest is over, they are dotted with little mounds standing in the water-mounds the size of beehives women have built and on which they have planted garden truck. Here and there the dikes bear clumps of the dongola shrub whose red-purple leaves are the loved habitation of a certain class of beneficent deities who speak soothingly and persuasively to evil spirits and shunt them elsewhere. Dur292 Epilogue ing the rice-growing season, the folk, watching their fields all night long against theft of water when drouth threatens, flee to these shrubs for protection whenever they think they see a flaming tayaban or hear the raucous cackling of a harpy or the calling of a mountain-haunter to his demon dog. Our trail led over rugged spill-ways with rock-lined vertical walls built to carry off flood waters, past tiny plats of bright green tobacco growing at the noses of terraces or in rich soil piled on flat-topped boulders-the women splash them with water from the fields every rainless day; in my ears was the trill of a hundred little cascades as water from the upper fields tumbled down terrace walls, singing its way to lower fields and lower, down to the foamy torrent that roared a dull diapason in the chasm below; the thatched huts were scarcely to be discerned, as if they had taken on a protective coloration or were appropriately subordinating themselves to the terrace walls that are so much more important than they in this cosmoseven whole villages seemed lost in the immensity of this strange vertical lake that men have made. But yonder a jutting headland, itself engulfed, holds safe above the climbing lake a core of solid rock taller than any tree, on which two dainty betel palms have rooted and are tiptoeing to kiss the sky!-I travelled slowly through it all. 293 The Half-Way Sun Let no words of mine, however, have any part in heading toward Ifugaoland the bulk of those who, reaping the rewards of our own civilization, are, in yearly increasing numbers stopping at Manila in their round-the-world tours. I cannot advise them to go so far from modern conveniences. They would be disappointed in the scenery as too unstandard. They might come under the joint influence of rice wine and an uplift urge and suffer as did poor Grovf at the dog canyao. Besides, there are the Ifugaos to be considered. No, that fruition of our civilization had better continue liquoring away the time on the veranda of the Manila hotel, philandering in the dance halls of Santa Ana or Lerma, and praying for the heathen and the President of the United States, Sunday mornings, in the Cathedral or Community Church. On the other hand, if anyone be somewhat a pagan -and it seems to be a sad fact that only pagans are tolerant and appreciative of cultures other than their ownhe will, I am sure, delight in those other pagans and in the mountain fastnesses whose harsh outlines they have smoothed with verdant terraces. Poison greeted his "son" affectionately and borrowed half a peso. He and I worked hard for some days clearing 294 Epilogue up hazy points in theology. Then I told him I must set out for America. "We must perform the proper ceremonials, my son." "What will be required?" "A hog and a pig, three jars of rice wine and two capons -fat ones!" It was a glorious feast. We had seven priests, about a dozen exhorters and some women to help. We invoked the ancestors. And then my priests besought the deities: Ye, our deities of the Skyworld and of the Underworld, of the Downstream Region and of the Upstream Region: The Was-Made-Barton will travel the paths through Benawol and Bontok and Hlabantit [Cervantes] to Manila, and over the ocean to Han Palantitko. Surely it would be well to turn from the path of this, your son, Pestilence and Famine, Sorcery and Witchcraft, Controversy and Violence. Ye are exhorted to turn aside, too, the landslides, the Westcomers, the spears of the enemy, and even the centipedes, the poisonous snakes and the sharp-edged stones. He will journey as if traversing the accustomed paths of the home region. People will freely offer him hospitality. He will get drunk, but commit no violence. He will talk and talk, and talk straight; ask for what he wants, and get it. When he speaks, he will shame the eyes of kapatanit and henelalit and gobyelnadolit. They will answer, "All right; yes, yes!" His creditors will extend the term of debts, but when he seeks to collect from his debtors, his words will be as those of a suggesting deity. He will seek from his kin, and they will give him of their rice, their pigs, their The Half-Way Sun irons, their death-blankets and their rice wine jars. Like the tail feathers of the Full-Fledged Cock, like gold which tarnisheth not shall he be, and his journey like unto the feathery plumes of the cogon and yapyapo riding the wind -even like the waters of the river which halt not in their course. Well, we have made our will the "gardener of the soul" of that people; we have made them raw material out of which to work a national stunt; with government, schools, and a brand of education to them of doubtful value, we are fast destroying a culture incalculably old. Whether they profit more than they lose by the process, no one can be sure. It might have been more propitious to have merely helped them out of the trap of headhunting and to have left them the rest of their culture, with appeal to our courts only when necessary to avoid violent terminations of controversies. Such, essentially, is the policy the Rajahs Brooke have pursued for nearly a hundred years in ruling a kindred people in Sarawak, and their subjects may safely be accounted one of the fortunate folk of the earth. Our pagans did not have to be prepared against a civilization that often exterminates primitive folk, because there is nothing in their habitat that would lure Civilizationneither gold nor pearls nor diamonds nor camphor nor purchasing power-only bleak forbidding mountains that yield 296 Epilogue frugally at a cost of much sweat. No, nothing that we want now. But some day, if we, ourselves attain a higher civilization, we may long-and very keenly-for just such beauty spots of primitive culture as now, in our passion for making other folk like ourselves, we are destroying. 297 S79D1rINIddJ' I. PAGAN TRIBES OF SUB-PROVINCE PHYSICAL AND DR A TRIBE LOCATION MENTAL CHAR- CIFFUR POPULATION ACTERISTICS FURE AMBURAYAN In the Southwest, Small, short, wiry. Adopting fashions Igorot and reaching the coast; Timid, evasive. and habit of lowTinggian, 7,500 * principally f o o t - landers with disashills. trous aesthetic results. BENGUET Southernmost; high Stocky, short, stur- Women: loin- cloth, Nabaloi, I3,421 mountains and dy. Timid, but not waist, turban. Men: Kankanai, 13,317 plateaus. cowardly. g-string, coat, headband. Both bob their hair. LEPANTO North of Benguet Physique and dis- Women: loin - cloth, Kankanai, 36,184 and Amburayan; position range waist in some rehigh stony moun- from that of Ben- gions; bob hair. tains. guets in the south Men: g-string, coat to that of Bontoks sometimes; headto the north. band; short or bobbed hair. BONTOK Center of the prov- Large, splendid Women: loin - cloth, Bontoks, 60,514 ince; steep, rocky physique; coarse long hair. Men: grather sterile features. Bold, string, rattan skull mountains. frank, outspoken. cap; long hair, with bangs in front. KALINGA North of Bontok; Excellent phy- Women: loin-cloth; "Kalingas," mountainous, b u t sique; best fea- long hair. Men: g78,200 more open. Soil tures in the archi- string, long hair, ("An ethnic and rainfall bet- pelago. Alert and with bangs in front. hodge-podge") ter. aggressive. Both sexes in one section wear a twothirds upper garment. IFUGAO East of Lepanto Physique b e t t e r Women: loin-cloth; Ifugaos, 129,380 a n d Ben gu et. than Igorot, but long hair. Men: gSteep mountains, hardly equal to string; hair trimmed but often good Bontokor Kalinga. to form a natural soil. Rainfall Genial, docile, hat. heavy. mystic. Tendency to run amok. APAYAO Northernmost. Dainty, effeminate Women: loin-cloth; Apayaos, 28,5oo Hills and swamp. features. Medium long hair. Men: gphysique. Aesthetic string; long hair. temperament. * All statistics as to population are taken from "Population of the Philippine Islands in 1916" by H. Otley Beyer. (See Bibliography.) I am sure it is much more accurate 300 MOUNTAIN PROVINCE. HEADHUNTING TATTOO NATIVOG INSTITUTIONS EATING Ceased long ago. Occasionally on Now decadent. In some hands, or a goiter. districts. Ceased less than one Formerly elaborate. Village council and Yes. hundred years ago. Now rare. wealthy overlords. Fairly active headhunt- Decadent. Still tattoo Ward, ward council, Yes. ers in some parts until hands, arms, goiters, men's club and girls' Americans came. Ex- more rarely the face. dormitory. peditions by faminles and wards. Active and inveterate. Distinctive, conven- Ward, ward council, Yes. Expeditions conducted tionalized; a head- men's club, and girls' by wards and families. hunter's privilege. dormitory. In defense, village a Whole body. unit. Active and inveterate. Same status as among In some regions like In some Expeditions conducted Bontoks, but patterns Bontoks; in some re- districts. by families and promi- somewhat different. gions like Ifugaos. nent men. Often large Overlords more powparties. erful than in Ifugao. Active and inveterate. Distinctive, pictorial; Dormitory for un- No. Expeditions conducted chest, arms, neck, married. Monkalun by families; small par- legs. Practiced in cer- (go-between). ties usually. tain parts. Active and inveterate. Small parties, probably family affairs. with respect to the non-christian tribes than the official census taken about five years later. Prof. Beyer grouped the pagans of Amburayan and Lepanto together. 301 II. CUSTOM AND GROUPING AS MODIFIED BY PR OPINQ UITY. SPECIFIC HOME REGION NEUTRAL ZONE FEUDIST ZONE WAR ZONE APPLICATION IN CONTROVERSY: Immediate family Includes more remote Against adversary of Has moral supA man's adherents only; greatly modi- kin. Kin of alien ad- this zone, man has port of whole when adversary fied by the personal versary living in still more adherents. home region. lives in region or factor. Mutual kin home region are luke- Alien's near kin in zone specified. powerful for peace. warm in his cause. home region likely to be passive in his support. IN CONTROVERSY: Absolute. Monkalun ought to Fresh feuds are not Monkalun alRequirement as to be sent, but less pa- ordinarily desired, but most never sent. following custom in tience is required. monkalun need not be both spirit and pro- sent. No patience recedure. quired. TERMINATION OF May seize from sibs.* May seize from sibs May seize from kin Even from neighMONKALUN'S TRUCE: Kidnapping impossi- and cousins; kidnap- or coregionists; kid- boring regions. Seizure or kidnap- ble. ping rare. napping frequent. ping. TERMINATION OF Feud unlikely. If one Feud likely, but also Feud certain, and Always at deoMONKALUN'S TRUCE: results, public opinion likely to be short- likely to be perma- sultory warfare. Result of legal exe- will make it short- lived. nent. cution. lived. * Here used in the sense of brothers and sisters. 0 CD O 303 III Compare with the Ifugao instances of running amok the following from a law report (211 Pacific 8; 19o Cal 174). It is a perfect clinical picture, and points to the essentially Malay psyche of at least one Japanese. It appears that T. Marui was convicted of murder in the first degree, with sentence of death, and feeling aggrieved, "prosecutes an appeal to this court." Now let the decision speak: Appellant had been a lodger in the Shintani household for some three years, but three or four weeks before the fatal meeting, changed his abode and took lodgings [elsewhere] * * * Apparently the killing was the result of an incident that had occurred about three weeks before. It appears that Mrs. Shintani requested appellant to purchase for her a pair of corduroy pants for one of her boys. The article was secured and appellant reported that it cost $2.25, whereupon Mrs. Shintani said to appellant she thought he paid too much, and asked if he had the bill. It seems that some time before she bought a similar article for another of her boys at the same store for a less amount. Appellant appeared to regard the incident in the light of an insult, that his honor and integrity had been questioned, and thereafter the thought evidently possessed him finally culminating in the sacrifice of the two lives. The evidence indicates that he was far more impressed with the incident than were the Shintanis, for while he seemed to be obsessed by it, 304 Appendix making it the subject of every conversation when they met, referring to it on all occasions and expressing concern as to its effect on his standing in the Japanese community, they apparently tried to convince him that his character had not been impugned; in short their position seems to have been that the price was spoken of only because of Mrs. Shintani's purchase on the previous occasion. * * * [Mrs. Natsuda who witnessed the tragedy, testified in parts as follows:] "Q. Did you hear any conversation between those three after you seated yourself in the kitchen? A. Talking about those pants. "Q. What pants' What did you hear about pants? A. Talking about those pants or trousers and regarding about the price. Mr. and Mrs. Shintani asking Marui about the bill, where is it? "Q. What else was said? A. Then when asking about this bill Marui is very much dissatisfied about it, and Marui demanded Shintani for a written excuse and not insulting him like that again. * * * Marui asked Mr. and Mrs. Shintani to apologize to writing on the form of a letter to a form of apology which will not happen again, something like that. He is very much dissatisfied. "Q. An apology for what? A. Well that is he purchased the goods for them and they have to trust what he done for it, and as they are asking the price and they say it is kind of insulting, and therefore Marui asking to Mr. and Mrs. Shintani for apologies. The Half-Way Sun "Q. For an apology in writing? A. In writing. "Q. What did Mr. or Mrs. Shintani say, if anything, when the defendant asked for an apology in writing? A. Mr. and Mrs. Shintani say to Marui if it is very much a necessity to do so they might will to do it, and a few conversations between them and then Marui pulled out a pistol. * * * "Q. Did you hear the word "thief" or "robber" used by anybody? A. Well, Marui said to the Shintanis, he says, 'You think I am a thief?' But Mrs. Shintani told Marui 'I don't think any minute you are a thief.' That is Marui said so. * * * "Q. What did she say? A. Sorry asking about that bill; it isn't meaning to doubt you or anything like that so apologize you know Mrs. Shintani is once in a while. "Q. She [he] said that several times didn't she [he] A. Once or twice." * * * Appellant further testified that he then tried to shoot himself, to commit suicide, but the gun would not work;... that his mind was clear up to the time of the shooting, and that he had been "suspicious of Shintani." It was testified that appellant was sober. On being apprehended, he [appellant] * * * said, "I want to shoot myself." Appellant stated that when he was hiding he dreamed the Shintanis were there with him or that he saw them in a dream. * * * The judgment and order are confirmed. [All concurring] 306 BIBLIOGRAPHY Barton, R. F. 1. "Harvest Feast of the Kiangan Ifugaos," reprinted from the Philippine Journal of Science. Vol. VI Section D. Bureau of Printing, Manila: 1911. 27 pages, 8 plates. 2. "Ifugao Economics," University of California Press, Berkeley: 1922. 3. "Ifugao Law," University of California Press, Berkeley: 1919. 186 pages, 33 plates. $2. A consideration of the customs that serve as Law, set forth with detail, particularity, and instance. Beyer, H. Otley 1. "Origin Myths among the Mountain Peoples of the Philippines." Reprinted from the Philippine Journal of Science. Vol. VIII Section D. Bureau of Printing. Manila: 1913. 34 pages, 4 plates. 2. "The Non-Christian Peoples of the Philippines." Separate from the Philippine Census of rIY8. Bureau of Printing, Manila: 1921. 49 pages. 3. "Population of the Philippine Island in 1916." Philippine Education Co. Manila: 1917, 95 pages, alternate columns of English and Spanish. 307 Bibliography This and the work listed just preceding are the best general treatment published on the subjects surveyed. The official census of 1918 contained palpable and even ridiculous errors, so far, at least, as the pagan tribes were concerned. I have, consequently taken Mr. Beyer's statistics in this work. Beyer, H. Otley and Barton, R. F. 1. "An Ifugao Burial Ceremony." Reprinted from the Philippine Journal of Science, Vol. VI Section D. Bureau of Printing, Manila, 1911, 27 pages, 10 plates. 2. "History and Ethnography of the Ifugao Peoples." A collection of about 250 typewritten manuscripts and 400 plates. Bound in 20 volumes. Manila: 1912-16. Unpublished. Malumbres, Julian 1. "Vocabulario en Castellano, Ingles, e Ifugao del Quiangan." Imprenta de Santo Tomas, Manila: 1911, 60 pages. Villaverde, Juan Fernandez 1. "The Ifugaos of Quiangan and vicinity." Reprinted from the Philippine Journal of Science. Bureau of Printing, Manila: 1909. (Translated from the Spanish by Dean C. Worcester; with notes and an addendum by Levi E. Case) 26 pages, 15 plates. 2. "Supersticiones de los Igorrotes Igugaos." In El Correo Sino Anamita, Vol. 38, pp. 281-485. Imprenta de Santo Tomas, 1912. Willcox, Cornelius DeWitt i. "The Headhunters of Northern Luzon. From Ifugao to Kalinga. A Ride through the Mountains of Northern 308 Bibliography Luzon." With an appendix on the "Independence of the Philippines." Franklin Hudson Publishing Company: 1912, 304 pages. Worcester, Dean C. 1. "The Non-Christian Tribes of Northern Luzon." Reprinted from the Philippine Journal of Science, Vol. I, pp. 791-875, 67 plates. Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1906. 2. "The Non-Christian Peoples of the Philippine Islands." In the National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 24, pp. 1157-1256. With 32 pages of illustrations. Washington, D. C. 1913. LITERATURE IN THE IFUGAO LANGUAGE 1. "The Gospel of St. Luke in Ifugao." Translated by R. F. Barton. American Bible Society. 2. "The Gospel of St. Mark in Ifugao." Translated by R. F. Barton. Manuscript with the American Bible Society. So far as I know, not published. 3. "The Gospel of St. Mark in Benaue Ifugao." Translated by H. Otley Beyer. Manuscript with the British Bible Society. So far as I know, not published. 309 INDEX Agriculture, 60 rice cultivation, 61-63 Americans, 2-3, 12, 14-15, 19-20, 22-23, 32-36, 128-134, 207, 211, 254-256, 264-265, 294 Ancestor worship, 29, 121-122, 149-150, 158, 295. See also Religion Animism, 29. See also Religion Apayaos, tribe of, 29. See Appendix I Apo, definition of, 45 (n) Asia, 39, 63-64 Australia, 39 Benaue, city of, 32 headhunting against, 154 prostitution in, 52 Benguet Igorot tribe, language of, 29-30 religion of, 122-123 See Appendices I, II Beyer, Prof. H. Otley, cited, 60 (n), 143, 302 (n)-303 (n) Bontok, tribe of, 21, 24, 261 language of, 29 habitat of, 30 government of, 30, 35 headhunting among, 154 agricultural customs and superstitions of, 240-241 similarity to Borneo tribes, 241 See Appendix I. 311 Borneo, 241 Burma, fire piston in similar to that in Philippines, 10 source of Ifugao culture, 177 Cannibalism. See Headhunting. Cargadores, carriers, 5, 7, 8 -9 impressment of, 23-24, 271 Cervantes, town of, 9, 21 school in, 10-11, 20 Child marriage, 30, 56 See also Marriage China Sea, 21 Cleanliness, body, 53-54 Cole, cited, 163 Concubinage, 30, 253 See also Marriage Costumes, 2, 10, 24, 26, 29, 117, 147-148 in vengeance ceremonies, 213 -214 Courtship, 48-51 love chants of, 48-49 technique of, 56-57 See also Ifugao Dananao, tribe of, 262-263, 267 -269 Divination, 120, 126 use of chicken for, 177 See also Religion, Ifugao: religion Index Divorce. See Marriage customs and ceremonies. Dog-eating, 12-15, 19, 29 Easter Island, 39 Education, methods among Igorot, 16-19 Bureau of, 28 Family, 29 cohesion of, 31 taboos, 55 strength of, 96-o106 rights of, 117-119 See also Marriage; Kinship; Ifugao Fogg, Mr., transportation contractor, 2, 3 Food, 5 betel, 46 during headhunting ceremonies, 161-162 Furniture, 5-6, 45 Gallman, Jeff D., lieutenantgovernor, 32-36, 129-132, 238-240 G-strings. See Costumes. Government of provinces, described, 27-28 of tribes, 29-30 ideas of, 63-64, 270 law and court trials, 232-240, 254-259, 263-264, 272-286 Grovf, M., veterinary, 14-15, 294 Hale, Walter H., lieutenant-governor, 28, 260 Hawaii, 39 Headhunting, 2, 29, 30-31, 44, 296 technique of preparation, 154 -156, 164-168 preparatory ceremonies for, 157-163 taboos of, 160, 193 role of women in, 161, 168 -169, 207-209, 226, 229 armament for, 164-165 celebration of success, 169 -196 cannibalism in, 193-i95 motives for, 142, 196-201 frequency of, 200 vengeance ceremonies against, 203-231, 267 punishment and trial for, 237 -239, 255-256, 263, 283 See also Ifugao; Kalinga Homes, construction of, 38, 246 Ibilaos, tribe of, 155 headhunting among, 155 Ifugao, tribe of, 7 (n) terracing, 23, 32, 60-61, 120, 214, 291-293 habitat of, 31, 6o population of, 60 headhunting among, 31, 154 -156 (n), 157-202, 237-239 vengeance ceremonies against headhunting, 203-231 development in arts, mythology and religion, 35 language of, 29, 39-42 characteristics of, 43-44, 299 similarity to Burmese tribes, 241 sleeping customs of, 45, 55-56 312 Index Ifugao, tribe of, sex taboos of, Igorot people, care of forests by, 55-58, 156, 186-187 21-22 courtship among, 48-51, 56-57 habitat of, 30 contraception among, 58 government of, 30 infant mortality of, 58 agriculture of, 60 Kadangyang, definition of, 44-45 irrigation of, 60-61 (n), 68, 74, 129 rice cultivation by, 61-63, 197 value of head, 166 Custom, inviolability of, 63- Kalinga, tribe of, 29 93, 96 language of, 29-30 slavery and slave trade, 66-68 habitat of, 30-31 monkalun see Monkalun government of, 30 kadangyang see Kadangyang headhunting, 31, 254, 263, 283 trial for justice in, 87-93, 125 construction of house, 246 family in, 253 funeral ceremonies of, 244-246 sex equality among, 40, 99 } physical characteristics of, zoning among, 113, 116-117 252-253 religion and its ceremonies and organization of, 253 customs, 120-153 reaction to American rule, 270 gods of, 120-128, 132-134, taboos, 247 134-141, 144, 158-162, 166, sex taboos, 279-280 177-185, 205, 215, 217-219, See Appendices, I, II 223-224 Kankanai tribe, language of, 29 -priests of, 123, 142-152, 157- 30 158, 161, 163, 170-182, Kiangan, region of, 38 187-190, 205-206, 209-210, headhunting against, 154-155 216-222, 226, 230, 295 slave trade among, 155-156 conception of soul, 141-142, Kinship 205, 212, 221, 231 propinquity ties,106-16,117(n) law and court trials, 232-240, See Family 254-259, 263-264, 272-278 Korea, 68, 241 reaction to American rule, 270 Kroeber, A. L., cited, 126 (n) See also Appendices I, II; Headhunting; Family; Mar- Language, differences and simiriage larities of, 29-30 Igorot people, habits described, 10 Ifugao, 29, 39-42 school, 1o-19 Kankanai, 29 characteristics, 11, 19 Benguet Igorot, 29-30 under Spanish rule, 19 Lepanto Igorot, 29-30 under American.'itie, 19 Ilokano, 29-30 Index Language, Nabaloi, 29-30 Pangasinan, 29-30 Lepanto (Igorot) tribe, language of, 29-30 characterization of, 63 See Appendix I. Lowie, Robert H., cited, 177 (and n) Luzon, largest island of Philippines, 1 mountains of, 22 population of, 31 sexual freedom in, 95 Madagascar, 39 Malay race, 29, 272 languages of, 39 kadangyang, 68 headhunting by, 256 Malaysia, fire piston in, similar to that in Philippines, 9-10 Mancayan, Igorots, 34-35 village of, 22 mineral deposits near, 22 Marriage customs and ceremonies, 30, 58-59 divorce, 59 strength of tie, 96, 99-106 division of property, 99 relation to war, 116 value of headhunting for, 197 intermarriage, 252 laws governing, 256-258 See also child marriage; Fam ily; Ifugao. Mindamao, tribe of, 163 headhunting among, 163 Monkalun, definition of, 45 (n) duties of, 71-79, 82-84, 86-89, 93, 107-110, 114-115 Monkalun, result of headhunting, 197 See Appendix II Monogamy, 30 See also Marriage Mount Datu, mountain of Luzon, 18, 22 Mountain Province, Northern Luzon, described, 1-2 author transferred to, 2 under American control, 2 tribes, their numbers and characteristics, 31 (n) Nabaloi tribe, language of, 29-30 New Guinea, 39 Pangasinan tribe, language of, 29-30 Philippine Commission, composition, duties, powers of, 27 Place-to-get-salt, Luzon, described, 1 Polygamy, 30, 253 See also MarriagA Polytheism, 29, 120, 123 See also Religion Prostitution, 52-53 Provincial government, See Government Reed, Governor, 12 Reeder, Mr. Henry, miner, 32 -36 Religion, 120, 144 deities of, 120, 134-141, 144, 146-149 ancestor worship, 121-122, 149-150 priests, 123, 142-152 314 Index Religion, divination, 126 soul, conception of, 141-142 education in, 144 See also Ifugao: gods Religious ceremonies and customs, 149 rice wine, 33-36 prayer, 149 possession, 149-150 magic, 149-150 god-"pushing," 149, 152 See also Religion Rice wine, 33-36, 122, 135 use in headhunting ceremonies, 162, 183 See also Religion, religious ceremonies Rowley, Mr., geologist, 14-15 Sagado, town of author's experience, 23 Samoki, town of, 240 Sarawak, 296 Sawyer, H. H., on justice, cited, 95 (n) Sex taboos. See Ifugao; Kalinga Starr, Frederick, cited, 29 (n), 37 alluded to, 160 (n) Sumadel, town of, 261, 264, 266 Stimkins, Dr., museum collector, 32-36 Strong, Dr. Richard, 132 Taboos. See Religion; Ifugao religion; Headhunting Tagudin, town of, 3 Teeth, 37 Tomlinson, Captain L. A., lieutenant-governor, 28 Women, role of, See Ifugao; Headhunting Worcester, Dean C., 128 This book was set in 12 point Original O. S. on the linotype, printed and bound by J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York, U. S. A. ~o -- 11 " UF i " - k", -i. THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DATE DUE JUN 05) 1984 MAY 1 11 ~: y '- ~~4; - - f ~ ~ I 'i, I 1 ", -APR 0 8 2002 - 8 i.. I,. ~ ri>.' '? ' ' ". -s -;, I t * a: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 3 9015 00235 3004. i K,i.,> DO NOT REMOVE OR MUTILATE CARD