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Updated: May 15, 2025
The custom of head taking came with the Igorot to Luzon, a custom of their ancestors in some earlier home. The people of Bontoc, however, say that their god, Lumawig, taught them to go to war. When, a very long time ago, he lived in Bontoc, he asked them to accompany him on a war expedition to Lagod, the north country.
The father was so pleased with all these things that he offered his elder daughter to Lumawig for a wife. But the Great Spirit said he preferred to marry the younger; so that was arranged. Now when his brother-in-law learned that Lumawig desired a feast at his wedding, he was very angry and said: "Where would you get food for your wedding feast? There is no rice, nor beef, nor pork, nor chicken,"
"So the boys took a basket, the fangao, to represent Lumawig, and stuck it full of chicken feathers. Before the fangao they placed a small cup of basi. Then squatting in front with the cup at their feet they put a small piece of pork on a stick and held it over the cup. 'Who took my father's head? did Tukukan? they asked. But the pork and the cup and the basket all remained still.
They said they did not wish to go, but finally yielded to his urgings and followed him. On the return trip the men missed one of their companions, Gu-ma'-nub. Lumawig told them that Gu-ma'-nub had been killed by the people of the north. And thus their wars began Gu-ma'-nub must be avenged.
The term "priesthood" is applied to these people for lack of a better one, and because its use is sufficiently accurate to serve the present purpose. There are three classes of persons who stand between the people and Lumawig, and to-day all hold an hereditary office.
But one señorita danced the jota for us, a graceful and charming dance, with one cavalier as her partner, friend or enemy according to the phase intended to be depicted. The native village. Houses. Pitapit. Native institutions. Lumawig. The next day, the 9th, Father Clapp very kindly offered to show Strong and me the native village, an invitation we made haste to accept.
He teaches no morals or ethics, no idea of future rewards or punishments, and he is not an idle, nonproductive member of the group. He usually receives for the consumption of his family the food employed in the ceremonies to Lumawig, but this would not sustain the family one week in the fifty-two.
There is a tradition that Lumawig instructed the people to kill wild carabaos for marriage feasts, and all of those killed of which there is memory or tradition have been used in the marriage feasts of the rich. The wild carabao is extremely vicious, and is killed only when forty or fifty men combine and hunt it with spears.
The father brought him a cocoanut shell full, and before drinking Lumawig looked at it and said: "If I stay here with you, I shall become very strong." The next morning Lumawig asked to see their chickens, and when they opened the chicken-coop out came a hen and many little chicks. "Are these all of your chickens?" asked Lumawig; and the father assured him that they were all.
As soon as all was arranged at the fire a small amount of basi was poured over a sprig of pa-lo'-ki which was stuck in the soil of the sementera, or one or two sprigs were inserted, drooping, in a split in a tall, green runo, and this was pushed into the soil. While the person stood beside the efficacious pa-lo'-ki an invocation was voiced to Lumawig to bless the crop.
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