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The dam built annually across the river at Bontoc pueblo is constructed by all, or at the instance of all, who benefit from the additional irrigation water. Wild carabaos are hunted by a group of men, and the domestic carabaos can be caught only when several men surround and attack them. All interpueblo commerce is carried on by a group of people.
Such pueblos as Titipan and Antedao, about three hours west of Bontoc, use both the ax and bolo, while the pueblos further west, as Agawa, Sagada, Balili, Alap, etc., use the bolo exclusively frequently an Ilokano weapon. The Sapao bolo is, in appearance, superior to that of Ilokano manufacture.
'Did Sakasakan? asked the boys all was as before. They went over a list of towns at enmity with Bontoc, but there was no answer given them. At last they asked, 'Did the Moon? but still there was no answer. 'Did the Sun? the boys asked, and suddenly the piece of pork slid from the stick into the basi. And this was the way Lumawig had said a person should know who took his father's head.
The building as shown in Pl. XXXIII is typical of the nineteen found in Bontoc pueblo though it does not show, what is almost invariably true, that it is built over one or more pigsties. This condition is illustrated in Pl. XXIX, where a widow's house is shown literally resting above the stone walls of several sties.
These two ko'-mis were built four years ago when Bontoc and Samoki had their last important head-hunting forays with Tulubin. They killed and ate their fowls and pigs in a ceremony called "fi-kat'," and, if all was well, approached the mountains near Tulubin and watched to waylay a few of her people when they came to the sementeras in the early morning.
The Igorot does not know how or why it is so, but he says that Lu-ma'-wig gave the earth with all its characteristics, the water in its various manifestations, the people, all animals, and all vegetation. To-day he is the force in all these things, as he always has been. Once, in the early days, the lower lands about Bontoc were covered with water.
The Bontoc Igorot have their center in the pueblo of Bontoc, pronounced "Ban-tak'," a Spanish corruption of the Igorot name "Fun-tak'," a common native word for mountain, the original name of the pueblo. To the northwest their culture extends to that of the historic Tinguian, a long-haired folk physiographically cut off by a watershed.
Behind came a man carrying a spear and shield. The two in front faced the on-coming procession, stepping most of the time backward, making thrusts toward the two who bore the spears and shields. The bearers of spear and shield made thrusts at them, the whole being a dance which in some respects resembles one of the head-dances of the Bontoc Igorots.
The necklace quite resembles the Indian bear-claw necklace, but it is worn with the tusks pointing away from the breast, not toward it, as is the case with the Indian necklace. There are about six of these necklaces in Bontoc, and it is almost impossible to buy one, but the armlets are more plentiful.
The insurrectos were evidently worse than the Spaniards. They did all the things the Spaniards had done, and more they robbed through falsehood. Consequently, insurrectos frequently lost their heads. Major Marsh went through Bontoc close after Aguinaldo in December, 1899.
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