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Updated: June 7, 2025


Presently the sound of a loud chant was heard, and from the farthest point of the camp emerged a long line of warriors, hundreds and hundreds of them, all painted in red and black with horrible designs. They were naked except the breechcloth and moccasins, and everyone waved aloft a tomahawk as he sang.

They wore moccasins on their feet, made of buckskin, with a heavy fringe or tassels pendant from the seam behind, long enough to permit it to drag upon the ground. These, with leggins made from a piece of blanket, which was wrapped about the leg below the knee and fastened with a thong of buckskin, heavily fringed, and the breechcloth, completed the dress.

A common form of invitation is for the girl to steal a man's pipe, his pocket hat, or even the breechcloth he is wearing. They say one seldom recovers his property without going to the, o'-lag for it. When a girl recognizes her pregnancy she at once joyfully tells her condition to the father of the child, as all women desire children and there are few permanent marriages unblessed by them.

When I first knew them, the men seldom wore more than a pair of moccasins and a breechcloth in summer, with buckskin shirt and trousers, and a Navaho blanket over the shoulders in winter. The conventional dress of the women at that time was a skirt made of shredded cedar bark, which was suspended from the waist to below the knees, without shirt or shirt-waist.

The burial clothes of a married man are the los-a'-dan, or blue anito-figured burial robe, and a breechcloth of beaten bark, called "chi-nang-ta'." In the coffin are placed a fa'-a, or blue cotton breechcloth made in Titipan, the fan-cha'-la, a striped blue-and-white cotton blanket, and the to-chong', a foot-square piece of beaten bark or white cloth which is laid on the head.

Among the Ilokano words common in the language of commerce are the following: Ma'-no, how much; a-sin', salt; ba'-ag, breechcloth; bu-ya'-ang, black; con-di'-man, red; fan-cha'-la, blanket, white, with end stripes; pas-li-o', Chinese bar iron from which axes, spears, and bolos are made; ba-rot', brass wire; pi-nag-pa'-gan, a woman's blanket of distinctive design.

I picked myself up in time to climb the tree, and was fairly out of reach when he gathered himself together and came at me more furiously than ever, holding in one paw the shreds of my breechcloth, for in the fall he had just scratched my back and cut my belt in two, and carried off my only garment for a trophy!

The sale instinct, and not the barter instinct, is foremost now in Bontoc and Samoki when an American is a party to a bargain, and this is true in all pueblos on the main trail to Lepanto and the west coast. But one has little difficulty in bartering for Igorot productions if he has things the people want such as brass wire, cloth for the woman's skirt, the man's breechcloth, a shirt, or coat.

A square was formed on the edge of the basket with four turkey wands. The invalid sat to the northeast of the circle; a breechcloth was his only apparel. During the chanting an attendant made suds from the yucca. The basket remained in position; the man stooped over it facing north; his position allowed the sunbeams which came through the fire opening to fall upon the suds.

Mayinit uses her salt in much the same way, only probably to a less extent. Salt is not consumed by all the people. To-day, as formerly, the live pig and hog and pieces of pork and carabao meat are used a great deal in barter. As far back as the pueblo memory extends pigs have been used to purchase a particularly good breechcloth called "balakes," made in Balangao, three days east of Bontoc.

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