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It is employed in handling earth, and conveying the dirt to the ko-chuk-kod', or dirt transportation basket. A basket very similar to tak-o-chug', but called "sug-fi'," is employed by the woman in her housework in handling vegetables. It is shown in Pl. XCIV, containing camote parings. The to'-pil is the man's "dinner pail."
The soil is turned from the spaces used as paths over the spaces which become beds, but the earth under the bed is not turned or loosened. Bontoc beds are almost invariably constructed like parallel-sided, square-cornered saw teeth standing at right angles to the blade of the saw, which is also a camote bed, and are well shown in Pl.
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.
When the cultivation of camote is retained, the old plants are allowed to multiply their runners, and only the tubers are taken out of the ground. But larger produce is obtained by cleaning out the ground and planting anew. From eighteen to fifteen gantas may be had for half a real. Formerly it might be sold in the country, but now it has to be delivered to the government.
Six or seven days after birth a chicken is killed and eaten by the family in honor of the child, but there is no other ceremony there is not even a special name for the feast. If a woman gives birth to a stillborn child it is at once washed, wrapped in a bit of cloth, and buried in a camote sementera close to the dwelling. Twins The Igorot do not understand twins, na-a-pik', as they say.
She is usually more spectacular than those about the margin, and frequently holds in her hand her camote stick or a ball of bark-fiber thread which she has spun for making skirts. I once saw such a dancer carry the long, heavy wooden pestle used in pounding out rice.
As the earth is turned a camote, passed by in the camote harvest, is discovered; the old woman picks it up and lays it on the dry ground beside her. The little girl shyly comes for it and stores it in a basket on the terrace wall with a few dozen others found during the morning. After a section of earth 10 or 15 feet square has been turned the rhythmic labor and song ceases.
He delivers the lessee's share of the harvest and retains the other half himself, together with the entire camote crop which is invariably grown immediately after the palay harvest. Unirrigated mountain camote lands are rented outright; the rent is usually paid in pigs. A sementera that produces a yield of 10 cargoes of camotes, valued at about six pesos, is worth a 2-peso pig as annual rental.
I never saw men, nor even boys, gathering camotes. At no other time does the Igorot woman look so animal like as when she toils among the camote vines, standing with legs straight and feet spread, her body held horizontal, one hand grasping the middle of her short camote stick and the other in the soil picking out the unearthed camotes.
That day, as usual, the boys had in their topil for dinner only boiled camote vines, such as the hogs eat, and a small allowance of rice, just as much as a dog is fed. At night the boys brought some very good wood wood of the pitch-pine tree. In the morning the mother complained that such wood blackened the house.
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