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About ten years ago a man died from passing blood an ailment which the Igorot named literally "in-is'-fo cha'-la or in-tay'-es cha'-la." It was not dysentery, as the person at no time had a diarrhea. He gradually weakened from the loss of small amounts of blood until, in about a year, he died. The above are the only fatal diseases now in the common memory of the pueblo of Bontoc.
Usually by 8 o'clock the husband and wife retire for the night, and the children leave home immediately after supper. Transportation The human is the only beast of burden in the Bontoc area. Elsewhere in northern Luzon the Christianized people employ horses, cattle, and carabaos as pack animals.
The personification has become a single person, and to-day this person is one god, Lu-ma'-wig. Over all, and eternal, so far as the Igorot understands, is Lu-ma'-wig Lu-ma'-wig, who had a part in the beginning of all things; who came as a man to help the survivors and perpetuators of Bontoc; who later came as a man to teach the people whom he had befriended, and who still lives to care for them.
Such an instrument is of genuine service in the rough, stony mountain lands, but is not so serviceable as the unshod stick in the irrigated sementeras, because it cuts and bruises the vegetables. The most common wooden vessel in the Bontoc area is the kak-wan', a vessel, or "pail" holding about six or eight quarts. In it the cooked food of the pigs is mixed and carried to the animals.
Separate sleeping houses for girls similar to the o'-lag, I judge, are also found occasionally in Assam. Whereas, so far as known, the o'-lag occurs with the Igorot only among the Bontoc culture group, yet the above quotations and references point to a similar institution among distant people among some of the same people who have an institution very similar to the pabafunan and fawi. Afong
When a litter of pigs is produced the bunch is divided equally, the sow remaining the property of the owner and counting as one in the division. Throughout the Island of Luzon it is the practice to leave most male animals uncastrated. But in Bontoc the boar not intended for breeding is castrated. Hogs are raised for ceremonial consumption.
In Bontoc, ti'-pa is a white beardless variety. Ga'-sang is white, and cha-yet'-it is claimed to be the same grain, except it is dark colored; it is the rice from which the fermented beverage, tapui, is made. Pu-i-a-pu'-i and tu'-peng are also white; tu'-peng is sowed in unirrigated mountain sementeras in the rainy season. Gu-mik'-i is a dark grain.
The su-wan' of the woman of Bontoc and Samoki comes, mostly in trade, from the mountains near Tulubin. It is employed in picking the earth loose in all unirrigated sementeras, as those for camotes, millet, beans, and maize. It is also used to pick over the earth in camote sementeras when the crop is gathered. Perhaps 1 per cent of these sticks is shod with an iron point.
Various meats, called "it-tag'," as carabao and pork, are "preserved" by salting down in large bejuco-bound gourds, called "fa'-lay," or in tightly covered ollas, called "tu-u'-nan." Meats are kept thus two or three years, though of course the odor is vile. The dog ranks last in the list of regular flesh foods of the Bontoc man. In the Benguet area it ranks second, pork receiving the first place.
It is difficult and often impossible to state the essential difference in culture which distinguishes one group of people from another. It is more difficult to draw lines of distinction, for the culture of one group almost imperceptibly flows into that of another adjoining it. However, two fundamental institutions of the people of Bontoc seem to differ from those of most adjoining people.
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