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However, numbers of old men and women guard the palay sementeras from the birds, and they frequently tend their grandchildren about the pueblo. They also bring water from the river to the dwelling. Old women seem generally busy. They prepare and cook foods, and they spin materials for women's skirts and girdles. The blind women share in these labors, even going to the river for water.
There the great hosts of the a-ni'-to live, and there they reproduce, in spirit form, the life of the living. They construct and live in dwellings, build and cultivate sementeras, marry, and even bear children; and eventually, some of them, at least, die or change their forms again.
Nothing in the nature of alimony, except the dwelling, is commonly given by either party to a divorce. There are two exceptions in case a party deserts he forfeits to the other one or more rice sementeras or other property of considerable value; and, again, if the woman bore her husband a child which died he must give her a sementera if he leaves her. The widowed
The Igorot leaves an opening in a low fence built especially for that purpose, as he does not commonly fence in the sementeras. The il-tib' is built of two sections of heavy tree trunks, one imbedded in the earth, level with the ground, and the other the falling timber.
Candon, the coast terminus of the main trail, lies in the coastal plain area about 4 1/4 miles from the sea. From the coast to the small pueblo of Concepcion at the western base of the Cordillera Central is a half-day's journey. The first half of the trail passes over flat land, with here and there small pueblos surrounded by rice sementeras. There are almost no forests.
These two ko'-mis were built four years ago when Bontoc and Samoki had their last important head-hunting forays with Tulubin. They killed and ate their fowls and pigs in a ceremony called "fi-kat'," and, if all was well, approached the mountains near Tulubin and watched to waylay a few of her people when they came to the sementeras in the early morning.
It is claimed that in Sagada the public part of the ceremony consists of a mud fight in the sementeras, mud being thrown by each contending party. Loskod This ceremony occurs once each year at the time of planting camotes, in the period of Ba-li'-ling. Som-kad' of ato Sigichan is the pueblo "priest" who performs the los-kod' ceremony.
The jerking cord repeatedly raises a series of hanging, vertical wooden fingers, which, on being released, fall against a stationary, horizontal bamboo tube, producing the sharp click. These clicking machines are set up on two supporting sticks a few feet above the grain every three or four yards about the sementeras.
Children from 1 to 4 years old are frequently carried to and from the sementeras by their parents, and at all times of the day men, women, and children carry babes about the pueblo. They are commonly carried on the back, sitting in a blanket which is slung over one shoulder, passing under the other, and tied across the breast. Frequently the babe is shifted forward, sitting astride the hip.
The immediate surroundings of every Igorot group is the home of the a-ni'-to of departed members of the group, though they do not usually live in the pueblo itself. Their dwellings, sementeras, pigs, chickens, and carabaos in fact, all the possessions the living had are scattered about in spirit form, in the neighboring mountains.
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