I believe not 5 per cent of the people are without eruptions of
the skin. It is practically impossible to find an adult whose body
is not marked with shiny patches showing where large eruptions have
been. Babes of one or two months do not appear to have skin diseases,
but those of three and four are sometimes half covered with itching,
discharging eruptions. Babes under a year old, such as are most
carried on their mother's backs, are especially subject to a mass of
sores about the ankles; the skin disease is itch, called ku'-lid. I
have seen babes of this age with sores an inch across and nearly an
inch deep in their backs.

Relatively there are few large sores on the people such as boils
and ulcers, but a person may have a dozen or half a hundred itching
eruptions the size of a half pea scattered over his arms, legs,
and trunk. From these he habitually squeezes the pus onto his thumb
nail, and at once ignorantly cleans the nail on some other part of
the body. The general prevalence of this itch is largely due to the
gregarious life of the people -- to the fact that the males lounge in
public quarters, and all, except married men and women, sleep in these
same quarters where the naked skin readily takes up virus left on the
stone seats and sleeping boards by an infected companion. In Banawi,
in the Quiangan culture area, a district having no public buildings,
one can scarcely find a trace of skin eruption.

There are two adult people in Samoki pueblo who are insane; one of
them at least is supposed to be affected by Lumawig, the Igorot god,
and is said, when he hallooes, as he does at times, to be calling to
Lumawig. Bontoc pueblo has a young woman and a girl of five or six
years of age who are imbecile. Those four people are practically
incapacitated from earning a living, and are cared for by their
immediate relatives. There are two adult deaf and dumb men in Bontoc
pueblo, but both are industrious and self-supporting.

Igorot badly injured in war or elsewhere are usually killed at
their own request. In May, 1903, a man from Maligkong was thrown to
the earth and rendered unconscious by a heavy timber he and several
companions brought to Bontoc for the school building. His companions
immediately told Captain Eckman to shoot him as he was "no good." I
can not say whether it is customary for the Igorot to weed out those
who faint temporarily -- as the fact just cited suggests; however,
they do not kill the feeble aged, and the presence of the insane
and the imbecile shows that weak members of the group are not always
destroyed voluntarily.



PART 3

General Social Life


The pueblo

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. Its
altitude ranges from about 2,750 feet at the river to 2,900 at
the upper edge of Bontoc pueblo, which is close to the base of the
mountain ridge at the west, while Samoki is backed up against the
opposite ridge to the southeast. The river flows between the pueblos,
though considerably closer to Samoki than to Bontoc.

The horizon circumscribing this pocket is cut at the northeast,
where the river makes its exit, and lifting above this gap are two
ranges of mountains beyond. At the south-southeast there is another
cut, through which a small affluent pours into the main stream. At
the southwest the river enters the pocket, although no cut shows in
the horizon, as the stream bends abruptly and the farther range of
mountains folds close upon the near one.

Bontoc lies compactly built on a sloping piece of ground, roughly
about half a mile square. Through the pueblo are two water-cut ravines,
down which pour the waters of the mountain ridge in the rainy season,
and in which, during much of the remainder of the year, sufficient
water trickles to supply several near-by dwellings.

Adjoining the pueblo on the north and west are two small groves where
a religious ceremonial is observed each month. Granaries for rice are
scattered all about the outer fringe of dwellings, and in places they
follow the ravines in among the buildings of the pueblo. The old,
broad Spanish trail runs close to the pueblo on the south and east,
as it passes in and out of the pocket through the gaps cut by the
river. About the pueblo at the east and northeast are some fifteen
houses built in Spanish time, most of them now occupied by Ilokano
men with Igorot or half-breed wives. There also were the Spanish
Government buildings, reduced to a church, a convent, and another
building used now as headquarters for the Government Constabulary.

The pueblo, now 2,000 or 2,500 people, was probably at one time
larger. There is a tradition common in both Bontoc and Samoki that
in former years the ancestors of this latter pueblo lived northeast
of Bontoc toward the northern corner of the pocket. They say they
moved to the opposite side of the river because there they would
have more room. There they have grown to 1,200 or 1,500 souls. Still
later, but yet before the Spanish came, a large section of people
from northeastern Bontoc moved bodily to Lias, about two days to the
east. They tell that a Bontoc woman named Fank'-a was the wife of a
Lias man, and when a drought and famine visited Bontoc the section