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The chak-lag' is the most important tattoo of the Igorot, since it marks its wearer as a taker of at least one human head. It therefore stands for a successful issue in the most crucial test of the fitness of a person to contribute to the strength of the group of which he is a unit.
One boy in Bontoc, just at the age of puberty, has a tattoo encircling the lower jaw and chin, a wavy line across the forehead, a straight line down the nose, and crosses on the cheeks; but he is the youngest person I have seen wearing the jaw tattoo a mark quite commonly made in Bontoc when the chak-lag', or head-taker's emblem, is put on.
No matter what the exact social importance or advantage may be, it seems that every man in Bontoc who has the right to the emblem shows his appreciation of the privilege, since nine-tenths of the men wear the chak-lag'. It consists of a series of geometric markings running upward from the breast near each nipple and curving out on each shoulder, where it ends on the upper arm.
The chak-lag' design on the man's breast is almost invariably supplemented by two or three sets of horizontal lines on the biceps immediately beneath the outer end of the main design. If the tattoo on the arms of the woman were transferred to the arms of the man, there would seldom be an overlapping each would supplement the other.
The Igorot distinguishes three classes of tattoos: The chak-lag', the breast tattoo of the head taker; pong'-o, the tattoo on the arms of men and women; and fa'-tek, under which name all other tattoos of both sexes are classed. Fa'-tek is the general word for tattoo, and pong'-o is the name of woman's tattoo. It is general for boys under 10 years of age to be tattooed.
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