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Updated: May 4, 2025
On the Samoki side of the valley during a week or so of the driest weather in May, 1903, there were four "well sweeps," each with a 5-gallon kerosene-oil can attached, operating nearly all day, pouring water from a canal into sementeras through 60 or 80 feet of small, wooden troughs. Turning the soil
Women plant, care for, harvest, and transport to the pueblo all camotes, millet, maize, and beans. The men and women together construct and repair irrigated sementeras, men usually digging the earth while the women transport it. Together they prepare the soil of irrigated sementeras, and carry manure to them from the pigpens.
In the vicinity of Bontoc pueblo there are a few sementeras which were never in a position to be irrigated by running water. They are called "pay-yo' a kao-u'-chan," and, when planted with rice in the dry season, need to be constantly tended by toilers who bring water to them in pots from the river, creeks, or canals.
Many kinds of birds that knew how delicious juicy palay is were on hand to get their share, so the boys were sent to stay all day in the sementeras to frighten these little robbers away.
This pit-ug' is suspended in the rapids, by which it is carried quickly downstream as far as the elasticity of the yielding pole and the pi-chug' will allow, then it snaps suddenly back upstream and is ready to be carried down and repeat the jerk on the relaxing pole. A system of cords passes high in the air from the jerking pole at the stream to other slender, jerked poles among the sementeras.
No man may marry who has not first taken a head; and every year after they harvest their palay the men go away for heads, often going journeys requiring a month of time in order to strike a particular group of enemies. The Christians of Dupax claim that in 1899 the Ibilao took the heads of three Dupax women who were working in the rice sementeras close to the pueblo.
Every night the laborer goes to the dwelling of his employer and receives the wage; the wages of unmarried children are paid to their parents. To all classes of laborers dinner and sometimes supper is supplied. For weeding and thinning the sementeras of young palay and for watching the fruiting palay to drive away the birds, the only wage is these two meals.
The camote harvest is continued fairly well throughout the year. Undoubtedly some camotes are dug every day in the year from the dry mountain-side sementeras, but the regular harvest occurs during November and December, during which time the camotes are gathered from the irrigated sementeras preparatory to turning the soil for the transplanting of new rice. Women are the camote gatherers.
A fine of chickens, pigs, sementeras, sometimes even of carabaos, is the usual penalty for assault and battery. Adultery is not a common crime. I was unable to learn that the punishment for adultery was ever the subject for a council of the old men.
The irrigated sementeras are built with much care and labor. The earth is first cleared; the soil is carefully removed and placed in a pile; the rocks are dug out; the ground shaped, being excavated and filled until a level results. This task for a man whose only tools are sticks is no slight one.
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