Note 1 — Chapter XXVII · Igorrotes (7).

The Igorrotes of Cabugalan in Lepanto regard eels as the embodiment of their ancestors; they will not catch them or do them any harm, but feed them when opportunity offers. The Asiteras assist at feasts and make invocations and propose toasts which are drunk by the men present. The private or family feasts are called Bumaguil, being held in the giver’s house or courtyard, but public entertainments or feasts of the whole village are called Regnas, and are held in or in front of the Balta-oa or Town Hall. They are preceded and followed by songs and dances. The songs are inharmonious and monotonous. The dances vary with the localities. In one dance bowing to the beer-mugs is a feature. As amongst other Malay races, ordeals are in fashion to decide disputes. One consists in a priest or chief scratching the scalps of the disputants with a small iron fork. Whoever loses most blood during this operation has lost his case. The Igorrotes work hard at their agriculture, and their rice-farming is excellent. They plough the valleys with the aid of buffaloes and terrace the hillsides, which they cultivate by hand. They burn down the pine-forests to clear the hills. They irrigate where possible, carrying the canals over any ravine by means of rude aqueducts. They grow considerable quantities of tobacco,1 which is, however, of inferior quality. This they sell to the civilised natives, and it is exported. I suppose it goes to Hamburg to make German Havana cigars, just as conger eels go to Paris to make fillets of soles. They cultivate sweet potatoes, also the ordinary potatoes, which grow well, and although small, are much prized in Manila, and meet with a ready sale. The Igorrotes of Lepanto eagerly seek new seeds to plant. It is strange that an agricultural people like this should have little or no idea of breeding cattle, but instead of doing so, they purchase from the Ilocanos and others cattle, horses, and pigs for consumption, paying good prices for them. They even buy dogs to eat. I have been assured by Mr. Ernest Heald, formerly British Vice-Consul at Sual, that he has often seen Igorrotes returning to the hills from Dagupan, leading strings of dogs, which they had purchased for food at prices varying from twenty-five to fifty cents, and that the dogs seemed to have an instinctive idea what they were being taken away for. The cooking of the Igorrotes is abominable, especially their way of cooking meat. It would not obtain the approval of Brillat Savarin. They seem to have no objection to eating it putrid, and their robust constitutions apparently prevent their suffering from ptomaine poisoning. The most remarkable characteristic of the Igorrotes is their skill as smiths, miners, and metallurgists. Their forges are not usually in their villages, but are hidden away in the forest; they use piston-blowers instead of bellows, and charcoal as fuel. Their lance-heads, swords, and other weapons are well shaped and of excellent quality. They worked the copper ores of Mancayen in Lepanto very successfully. From official documents it appears that from 1840 to 1855 they sold on an average each year about nineteen tons of copper, either in ingots or manufactured. Then a Spanish Company took up the work and ignominiously failed. Gold mining and washing was formerly a monopoly of the nobles, and the washing is so still to some extent. For centuries, and long before the Spanish conquest, the Igorrotes have brought down gold to trade with the coast natives. Such particulars as are known to me about Igorrote mining, smelting, and gold-washing, will be found under the headings Gold, Copper, Iron, in Chapter XVI.