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Updated: May 17, 2025
Each dwelling of a widow has several, so it is a fair estimate to say there are 300 dwellings in the pueblo, having a total of 2,400 fangas. Samoki has about 1,200 fangas in daily use. The estimated population of the several towns that use Samoki pots is 24,000. There is about one pot per individual in daily use in Bontoc and Samoki, and this estimate is probably fair for the other pueblos.
In the evening the head is buried under the stones of the fawi. In a head ceremony which began in Samoki May 21, 1903, there was a hand, a jaw, and an ear suspended from posts in the courts of ato Nag-pi', Ka'-wa, and Nak-a-wang', respectively. In each of the eight ato of the pueblo the head ceremony was performed.
It is called "fug-fug'-to," and is said to continue three days. Fug-fug'-to in Bontoc is a man's rock fight between the men of Bontoc and Samoki. The battle is in the broad bed of the river between the two pueblos. The men go to the conflict armed with war shields, and they pelt each other with rocks as seriously as in actual war.
One is fug-fug-to', in imitation of a ceremonial of the men after each annual rice harvest. The game is a combat with rocks, and is played sometimes by thirty or forty boys, sometimes by a much smaller number. The game is a contest usually between Bontoc and Samoki with the broad, gravelly river bed as the battle ground.
Bontok stands on the left bank, and Samoki on the right; separated only by a river easily fordable in the dry season, these two Igorot centers manage to live in tolerable peace with each other, but both have been steadily hostile to Talubin, only two hours away. However, it can not be too often said that this sort of hostility is diminishing, and perceptibly.
Nine-tenths of the men in the pueblos of Bontoc and Samoki wear on the breast the indelible tattoo emblem which proclaims them takers of human heads. The fawi of each ato in Bontoc has its basket containing skulls of human heads taken by members of the ato.
Formerly Samoki made pottery of only the brown clay, and she used cut grass intermixed for a temper, but she claims those earlier pots were too porous to glaze well.
Bontoc and Samoki pueblos, in all essentials typical of pueblos in the Bontoc area, lie in the mountains in a roughly circular pocket called Pa-pas'-kan. A perfect circle about a mile in diameter might be described within the pocket. It is bisected fairly accurately by the Chico River, coursing from the southwest to the northeast.
The Spanish comandantes in charge of the province seem to have remained only about two years each. Saldero was the last one. Early in the eighties of the nineteenth century the comandante took his command to Barlig, a day east of Bontoc, to punish that town because it had killed people in Tulubin and Samoki; Barlig all but exterminated the command only three men escaped to tell the tale.
Analyses made at the Bureau of Government Laboratories, Manila, show that the clays used in the Samoki pots contain the following mineral: Analyses of Samoki pottery clays Minerals. Brown pit clay Blue surface clay Per cent PER CENT Silica 54.46 60.99 Oxide of aluminum 16.77 17.71 Ferric oxide of iron 11.14 9.53 Oxide of calcium 0.53 0.59 Loss by ignition 16.81 10.65
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