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The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon

Note 1 — The Funeral of Aliguyen.

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“Toward noon they told me that they were going to perform the feast which looked towards securing vengeance for Aliguyen’s death. They went to where the people had built a shed to protect them from the sun’s fierce rays on a little hillock some distance from any house. Two pigs were provided there, one being very small. Only the old [98] men were permitted to gather around the pigs and the rice-wine and the other appurtenances of the feast. The feast began by a prayer to the ancestors, followed by an invocation to the various deities. The most interesting and the principal part of the feast was the invocation to the celestial bodies, who are believed to be the deities of War and Justice, Mánaháut (The Deceiver), a companion of the Sun God, was first invoked. The people cried: Who-oo-oo! Mánaháut, look down! Come down and drink the rice-wine and take the pig! Don’t deceive us! Deceive our enemies! Take them into the remotest quarters of the sky-world; lock them up there forever so that they may not return! Vengeance for him who has gone before!’ Then an old man put his hands over his forehead and called: ‘Come down, Mánaháut.’ Mánaháut came and possessed him, causing him to call out: ‘Sa-ay! sa-ay! I come down Mánaháut; I drink the rice-wine; I will deceive your enemies, but I will not deceive you,’ The old man, possessed, jumps up and, with characteristic Ifugao dance step, dances about the rice-wine jar and about the pig. Quickly follows him a feaster who has called Umalgo, the Spirit of the Sun, and was possessed by him. Mánaháut dances ahead of Umalgo to show him the pig. Umalgo seizes a spear, dances about the pig two or three [99] times, when he steps over to it and with a thrust, seemingly without effort, pierces its heart. The blood spurts out of the pig’s side and there quickly follows a feaster who has been possessed by Umbulan, who throws himself on the pig and drinks its blood. He would remain there forever, say the people, drinking the pig’s blood, were it not that one of the Stars, his son, possesses a feaster, causing him to dance over to Umbulan, catch him by the hair and lead him from the pig. Following these ceremonies, there came feasters of various spirits of the Stars to cut the pig’s feet and his head off. Then comes the cutting up of the pig to cook in the pots. The blood that has settled in its chest is carefully caught; it is used to smear the bangibang and the jipag. The jipag are interesting. They are little images of two or three of the deities that help men to take heads. The images are of wood about six or eight inches high. Sometimes there are images of dogs also. When an Ifugao goes on a head-hunting expedition, he takes the images in his head-basket, together with a stone to make the enemy’s feet heavy so that he cannot run away, and a little wooden stick in representation of a spear, to the end of which is attached a stone—this to make the enemy’s [100] spear strike the earth so that it might not strike him.1

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