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Updated: June 10, 2025
Each person of the village is assessed a sopa of rice, a bundle of palay, or a small coin with which pigs, basi, and other things necessary, can be purchased. Early in the morning of the appointed day, the mediums, accompanied by many people, go to the guardian stones, oil the head of each, and place a bark band around it.
When the palay is in the milk a great many birds which feed upon it are captured by means of a broom-like bundle of runo. As the birds fly over the sementeras a boy sweeps his broom, the ka-lib', through the flock, and rarely fails to knock down a bird. The ka-lib' is about 7 feet long, 2 1/2 inches in diameter at the base, and flattened and broadened to 14 or 15 inches in width at the outer end.
This ceremony, performed by Som-kad' of ato Sipaat, occurs in the first period of the year, I-na-na'. The usual pig or chicken is killed, and the priest says: "In-fi-kus'-na ay pa-ku' to-mo-no'-ka ad chay'-ya." This is: "Fruit of the palay, grow up tall, even to the sky." Keeng Ke'-eng ceremony is for the protection of the palay.
When rice is needed for food bunches of the palay, as tied up at the harvest, are brought and laid in the small pocket of the wooden mortar where they are threshed out of the fruit head. One or two mortarsful is thus threshed and put aside on a winnowing tray. When sufficient has been obtained the grain is put again in the mortar and pounded to remove the pellicle.
Within two days farther east small coins are unknown, the peso being the only money value in common knowledge. Measure of exchange value The Igorot has as clear a conception of the relative value of two things bartered as has the civilized man when he buys or sells for money. The value of all things, from a 5-cent block of Mayinit salt to a P70 carabao, is measured in palay.
To-day, as formerly, every bargain between two Igorot is made on the basis of the palay value of the articles bought or sold. This is so even though the payment is in money. Standard of value The standard of value of the palay currency is the sin fing-e' the Spanish "manojo," or handful a small bunch of palay tied up immediately below the fruit heads.
In other words he has "good money" probably the best money that could have been devised by him for his society. It is his staple product palay, the unthreshed rice. Palay is at all times good money, and it is the thing commonly employed in exchange. It answers every purpose of a suitable medium of exchange. It is always in demand, since it is the staple food.
In Benguet all people carry on their backs, as also do the women of the Quiangan area. In all heavy transportation the Bontoc men carry the spear, using the handle as a staff, or now and then as a support for the load; the women frequently carry a stick for a staff. Man's common transportation vehicle is the ki-ma'-ta, and in it he carries palay, camotes, and manure.
Some few of the principal men in many of the pueblos throughout the area have in late years acquired either the Army blue-woollen shirt, a cotton shirt, or a thin coat, and these they wear during the cold storms of January and February, and on special social occasions. During the period of preparing the soil for transplanting palay the men frequently wear nothing at the middle except the girdle.
These same Christians also claim that they have seen a human head above the stacks of harvested Ibilao palay; and they claim the custom is practiced annually, though the Ibilao deny it. Some dozen causes for head-hunting among primitive Malayan peoples have been here cited.
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