ISINAY BIRD'S NOTE: This part of the travel report of of Lieutenant Colonel Cornelis De Witt
Willcox took place on April 28-29, 1910. From Aritao, the team of American visitors from Manila,
led by then Governor-General William Cameron Forbes and the Secretary of
the Interior Dean C. Worcester, went to Dupax. Up until now, Forbes and
Worcester are the highest-ranking American officials to ever visit
Dupax. This particular segment of the series shows that even at the
time, Isinays as well as Ilongots were already good hosts to visitors.
According to a typescript of THE HISTORY AND CULTURAL LIFE OF DUPAX, the
Presidente of Dupax then (1910-1911) was Don Marcelo Doctor. When I
read this part of the travelogue, it was my first time to come across the word Campote, and for a
while I thought it was not part of Dupax. But when I consulted the book
THE ILONGOTS 1591-1994 by Fr. Pedro V. Salgado, I found out that the
Ilongot community generously described here was not only a part of of
the old Dupax but also that it “still exists today, along the road that
leads to Belance”, a barangay of Dupax del Norte.
A SHORT RIDE through the charming, smiling country (part of it might
have been France), over a really good road most of the way, brought us
to Dúpax. On the way we were met by some of the American officials of
the province, among them Mr. Norman Connor, Superintendent of Education
(Yale, 1900), and by two Belgian priests, De Wit of Dúpax and Van der
Maes of Bayombong. The natives met us, all mounted, with a band, so that
we made a triumphant entrance, advancing in line to the
presidente’s house, while the church-bell pealed out a welcome.
Dúpax must, like Aritao, have been a point of some importance in the
past. It has a large brick church with a decidedly Flemish facade, and a
detached pagoda-like belfry. Its streets are overgrown with fine soft
grass, and its houses had somehow or other an air of comfort and ease.
Here we made quite a stop, first of all quenching our thirst with
bubud,
beer, cocoanut milk, anything, everything, for we had ridden nearly all
the way so far in the sun. We then sat down to an excellent breakfast,
and smoked and lounged about until two, when fresh ponies were brought,
and we set off on a side trip to Campote, where we were to have our
first contact with the real wild man, the Ilongot.
These people, the Ilongots, although very few in number, only six
thousand, stretch from Nueva Vizcaya to the Pacific Coast, inhabiting an
immense region of forested and all but inaccessible mountains. Over
these they roam without any specially fixed habitation. They have the
reputation, and apparently deserve it, of being cruel and treacherous,
as they certainly are shy and wild.
It was these people who killed Doctor Jones, of the Marshall Field
Museum, after he had been with them eight or nine months. So recently as
1907 they made a descent on Dúpax, killing people and taking their
heads. When they mean to kill a man fairly, according to their ideas,
they hand him a fish. This is a signal that he must be on his guard: to
refuse the fish is of no use, because by so doing one puts one’s self
beyond the pale, and may be killed in any fashion. We heard a story here
of a Negrito stealing a pig from two Ilongots who had a Negrito
brother-in-law. Failing to recover the pig, they decided that they must
have a Negrito head, and so took their brother-in-law’s.
Pig-stealing, by the way, in the mountain country is regarded much as
horse-stealing used to be out West. Besides the spear and head knife,
the Ilongots, like the Negritos, with whom they have intermarried to a
certain extent, use the bow and arrow, and are correspondingly dreaded.
For it seems to be believed in Luzon that bow-and-arrow savages are more
dangerous than spear-and-ax-men; that the use of this projectile
weapon, the arrow, induces craftiness, hard to contend against. An
Ilongot can silently shoot you in the back, after you have passed. A
spear-man has to get closer, and can not use an ambush so readily.
Now our Government in the Philippines, by and through and because of
Mr. Worcester, had made repeated efforts to reach these Ilongots, to
bring them in, as it were, and only recently had these efforts met with
any success. For one thing, it is a very serious matter to seek them out
in the depths of their fastnesses if only because of the difficulty of
reaching them; many of them even now have never seen a white man, and
would escape, if I recollect aright, on the approach of our people.
But in 1908 some fifty of them did “come in,” and, gaining
confidence, this number grew to one hundred and fifty in 1909. They, or
some of them at least, now sent an invitation to Mr. Worcester to come
and see them, and he accepted on condition of their making a trail,
saying that they could not expect a man of his stature to creep through
their country on his hands and knees. This trail they had built, and
they had assembled at Campote, four hours from Dúpax, for this first
formal visit. It was the desire of Mr. Worcester that this visit should
be happy in all respects; for, if not, the difficulties of intercourse
with this people, already great, would be so seriously increased as to
delay the civilizing intentions of the Government for many years to
come.
We rode off at about two o’clock, passing under numberless bamboo
arches, on an astonishingly good road, built by Padre Juan Villaverde.
About two miles out we left the road, turning off east across
rice-paddies, and then followed a stream, which we crossed near the foot
of a large bare mountain facing south. Up this we zigzagged four miles,
a tiresome stretch with the sun shining full upon us. But at the top we
had our reward: to the south reached a beautiful open valley, its floor
a mass of green undulations, its walls purple mountains blazing in the
full glory of the afternoon sun. At the extreme south, miles away, we
could make out Las Salinas, Salt Springs, whose deposits sparkled and
shone and scintillated and danced in the heated air.
Grateful as it would have been to rest at the top and enjoy the
scene, we nevertheless had to turn our backs upon it, for we had yet far
to go over an unknown trail, and it was most desirable to get in before
dark. So we turned and now plunged into a forest of tall trees so thick
overhead and so deeply buried in vines, and creepers and underbrush
generally, that just as no light got in from above, so one could not see
ten yards in any direction off the trail. This effect was no doubt
partly due to the shades of evening, and to our being on the eastern
slope of the mountain.
And that trail! The Ilongots, poor chaps, had done their best with
it, and the labor of construction must have been fearful. But the
footing was nothing but volcanic mud, laterite, all the worse from a
recent rain. Our ponies sank over their fetlocks at every step, and
required constant urging to move at all. Compared to the one I was
riding, Bubud was a race-horse! Cootes, Strong, and I kept together, the
others having ridden on.
As the day grew darker and darker, the myriad notes of countless
insects melted into one mighty, continuous shrill note high overhead,
before us, behind us, in which not one break or intermission could be
detected. Anything faster than a walk would now have been unsafe, even
if it had been possible, for at times the ground sloped off sharply down
the mountain, the footing grew more and more uncertain, and part of the
time we could not see the trail at all.
Indeed, Cootes’s pony stepped in a hole and fell, pitching Cootes
clean over his head, and sending his helmet down the mountain-side,
where Cootes had to go and get it. Soon after this, though, the forest
thinned perceptibly, the trail grew better, and we met Connor, who had
turned back to see how we were getting on, and who informed us we had
only one-half hour more before us.
Going on, we were greeted by a shout of welcome from our first
Ilongot, standing in the trail, subligate, or gee-stringed, otherwise
stark naked, and armed with a spear, the sentinel of a sort of outpost,
equally naked, with which we soon came up. They were all armed, too,
spears and shields, and all insisted on shaking hands with every one of
us. You must shake hands when they offer to, an unpleasant matter
sometimes, when you notice that the man who is paying you this attention
is covered with
Toenia imbricata, or other rare tropical skin disease.
Noblesse oblige,
here as elsewhere; besides, a consideration for your own skin may
require you to put aside your prejudices. The trail now turned down over
a broad, cleared hog-back, at the flattened end of which we could see
two shacks and a temporary shed for our mounts. Smoke was rising
cheerfully in the air and people were moving about. This was Campote.
It was too dark by this time to see or do much. We had supper, looked
up the place where we were to sleep, and then collected at the lower of
the two shacks. Here we received visits, so to say, from as many
Ilongots, grown men only, as could get into the place. In truth, we were
as much objects of curiosity to them as they possibly could have been
to us. To Mr. Worcester the occasion was one of business, explaining
through interpreters why we had come, what the Government wanted,
getting acquainted with the cabecillas (head men), and listening to what
they had themselves to say. One of our visitors was a grandfather,
remarkable, first, because of his heavy long beard, and, second, because
his own grandfather was alive; five generations of one family in
existence at the same time.
Campote, I may as well say it here as anywhere else, is merely a
point where Connor has established a school for children, under a
Christianized Filipino teacher. Some thirty children in all are under
instruction, the average attendance being twenty-four. It is almost
impossible, so Connor told us, to make these people understand why
children should go to school, or what a school is, or is for, anyway.
However, a beginning has been made. They all have a dose of “the three
Rs”; the boys are taught, besides, carpentry, gardening, and
rope-making, and the girls sewing, weaving, and thread-making from
cotton grown by the boys on the spot. They ought to show some skill in
all these arts; for the native rice-basket is a handsome, strong affair,
square of cross-section, with sides flaring out, and about three feet
high, and some of their weapons show great manual skill. The garden was
on show the next morning, displaying beans, tomatoes, cotton, perhaps
other things that I failed to recognize or have forgotten, anyway, a
sufficient garden. There is besides an exchange here for the sale of
native wares.
One of our party had ridden a white pony, and was much amused, as
were all of us, to receive an offer for his tail! There is nothing else
the Ilongots hold in higher estimation than white horse-hair, and here
was a pony with a tail full of it! But the offer was refused; the idea
of cutting off the tail was not to be entertained for one moment.
Certainly, he might keep its tail: what they wanted was the hair. Would
he sell the hair? No; that was only a little less bad than to sell the
tail itself.
On our way back to the shack in which some of us were to sleep (the
school-house it was) we noticed an admiring crowd standing around the
pony, tethered under the house, and all unconscious of the admiration he
was exciting, most rudely presenting his hind-quarters to his admirers.
But that was not his intention; the crowd – half women, by the way –
wanted to be as close to the tail as possible. We left them
gesticulating and pointing and commenting, much as our own women might
while looking at crown jewels, but not so hopelessly; for the next
morning, when we next saw the pony, nearly all the hair had been pulled
out of his tail, except a few patches or tufts here or there, tougher
than the rest, and serving now merely to show what the original
dimensions must have been.
While we were undressing in came a little maiden, who marched up to every one of us, shook hands, and said,
“Good evening, sir.”
We were pretty well undressed, but our lack of clothes looked perfectly
natural to her, perhaps inspired her with confidence. She said her name
was Banda, that she was thirteen, but of this she could not know, as
all these children had had ages assigned to them when they entered the
school; after greeting us all, and airing her slight stock of English,
she withdrew as properly as she had entered. A trifling incident,
perhaps not worth recording, but in reality significant, for it marked
confidence, especially as she had come in of her own accord. We all
agreed that she was very pretty.
The next morning we turned out early, and got our first real
“look-see.” Campote is completely surrounded by mountains, the hogback
dropping off into the valley below us. About four or five hundred people
had assembled, men, women, and children. As a rule, they were small and
well built, but not so well built as the tribes farther north. The men
were fully armed with spears, bows and arrows, shields, and head-knives;
gee-strings apart, they were naked. Some of them wore on the head the
scarlet beak of the hornbill; these had taken heads. Quite a number,
both men and women, had a small cross-like pattern tattooed on the
forehead; the significance of this I did not learn. The shield is in one
piece, in longitudinal cross-section like a very wide flat V open
toward the bearer, the top terminating in a piece rising between two
scoops, one on each side of the median line.
The women had on short
skirts and little jackets (like what, I am told, we call bolero
jackets), the bosom being bare. Around the waist they wore bands of
brass wire or of bamboo stained red and wound around with fine brass
wire. These bamboo bands were pretty and artistic. You saw the children
as they happened to be; the only thing to note about them being that
they were quite bright-looking. What the men lacked in clothes they made
up in their hair, for they wore it long and some of them had it done up
in the most absolute Psyche knots. Such earrings as we saw were worn in
the upper cartilage of the ear. It may be remarked, too, that the women
had a contented and satisfied air, as though sure of their power and
position; we found this to be the case generally throughout the Mountain
Country.
The purpose of the visit being to cultivate pleasant relations with
and receive the confidence of these shy people, the real business of the
day was soon opened. Mr. Worcester took his place in the shade of his
shack, and proceeded to the distribution of red calico, beads, combs,
mirrors, and other small stuff, the people coming up by
rancherías
(settlements or villages); none of the highlanders seem to have any
conception of tribal organization, a condition no doubt due to the
absence of communications. A
cabecilla, or head man, would
receive two meters, his wife one, and others smaller measures. This sort
of thing was carefully studied out, so far as rank was concerned, for
it would never do to give a common person even approximately as much as a
cabecilla. One
ranchería would take all red beads,
another white, another blue, and so on. Not once did I see a trace of
greediness or even eagerness, though interest was marked. The whole
thing was conducted in the most orderly fashion, the various
rancherías awaiting their turn with exemplary patience.
The issue over, dancing began. In this only men and boys took part,
to the music of small rude fiddles, tuned in fifths, played by the men,
and of a queer instrument consisting of two or three joints of bamboo
with strings stretched over bridges, beaten with little sticks by the
women. The fiddles must be of European origin. The orchestra, seven or
eight all told, sat in the shade, surrounded by an admiring crowd. Among
them was a damsel holding a civilized umbrella over her head, whereof
the stick and the rib-points were coquettishly decorated with white
horse-hair tied in little brushes, doubtless furnished by our white
pony.
The dancing at once fixed our attention. Two or three men, though
usually only two, took position on the little terreplein below the
shack, and began a slow movement, taking very short, formal, staccato
steps in a circle against the sun. Keeping back to back and side to
side, they maintained the whole body in a tense, rigid posture with the
chest out, head up and thrown back, abdomen drawn in, right hand
straight out, the left also, holding a shield, eyes glazed and fixed,
knees bent forward. Between the steps, the dancers would stand in this
strained, tense position, then move forward a few inches, and so on
around the circle.
After a little of this business, for that is just what it was, the
next part came on, a simulation of fighting: and, as everything before
was as stiff, strained, and rigid as it was possible to be, so now
everything was light, graceful, agile, and quick; leaps forward and
back, leaps sideways, the two combatants maneuvering, as it were, one
around the other, for position. It was hard to realize that human
motions could be so graceful, light and easy. Then head-knives were
drawn, and cuts right, and cuts left, cuts at every part of the body
from the head to the ankles, were added to the motion; the man on the
defensive for the moment making suitable parries with his shield.
The dance completed, the dancers would advance and face Mr.
Worcester, put their heels together in true military fashion, hold their
arms out right and left, and make a slight inclination of the head, a
sort of salute, in fact, to the one they regarded as the principal
personage of the party.
We saw much dancing later on in our trip, but none that equalled this
in intensity and character, apart from its being of a totally different
kind, Heiser managed, with some difficulty, to take a photograph of the
tense phase of one of the dances; it gives a better idea of the phase
than my imperfect description.
The dancing was followed by archery, the target being a small banana
stem at some thirty paces. This calls for no especial comment, except
that many hits were made, and many of the misses would have hit a man.
More interesting was an ambush they laid for us, to show how they
attacked. While collecting for it, to our astonishment the entire party
suddenly ran in all directions at top speed and hid behind whatever
offered. On their return, in four or five minutes, they explained that a
spirit had suddenly appeared among them, and that they had had to run.
On our asking how they knew a spirit had turned up, they asked if we had
not noticed leaves and grass flying in a spiral. As a matter of fact,
some of us had, a very small and very gentle whirlwind having formed for
a second or two. They had seen it, too, and that was the spirit.
It was now mid-day; we had tiffin, and began preparations for our
departure. The various arms, shields, and other things we had bought
were collected to be cargadoed back to Pangasinán. Among them, alas!
were not two beautiful head-knives, which their wearers had absolutely
declined to part with on any terms whatever. They resisted the
Governor-General even. I give a photograph here of a knife and scabbard
that Connor sent me on later. It is a handsome one, but not as handsome
as those two jewels!
Our last performance was to look at the garden and to see the school
at work, making thread and rope, weaving mats, and so on. I take it that
this school was really the significant thing at Campote, apart from the
significance of the occasion itself. We spent but little time over it,
however, our interest in the arts of war having left us only a few
minutes for those of peace. Nevertheless, here is a beginning that will
bear fruit, and in the meantime Connor rides alone and in safety among
these wild people, which proves a good many things, when you select the
right man to do your hard work.
Mr. Worcester, as we rode off, expressed the liveliest satisfaction with the meeting. These people, returning to their
rancherías, he said, would talk for a year of their treatment at the hands of the Americans, of the gift of
palay (rice) to four hundred people, for two days, to say nothing of two
vacas
(cows) and of other gifts. Next year, he hoped, half of them would come
in; besides, the start made was good; the presence of so many women and
children was a good sign.
And equally good was the total absence of old women. For these are a
source of trouble and mischief with their complaints of the degeneracy
of the times. They address themselves particularly to the young men,
accusing them of a lack of courage and of other parts, taunting them
with the fact that the young women will have none of them, that in
their day
their
young men brought in heads, etc. Thus it has happened, especially when
any native drink was going about, that trouble has followed. It is the
practice, therefore, of our Government when arranging these meetings to
suggest that the old women be left at home, and if so left, it is a good
indication.
- - - - -
Source: Cornelis De Witt Willcox, 1912. The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga Franklin Hudson Publishing Company. [2005 by The Project Gutenberg Ebook]
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