The Ilongots and their country.--Efforts of our Government
to reach these people.--The forest trail.--Our first contact
with the wild man.
These people, the Ilongots, although very few in number, only six
thousand, stretch from Nueva Vizcaya to the Pacific Coast, inhabiting
an immense region of forested and all but inaccessible mountains. Over
these they roam without any specially fixed habitation. They have the
reputation, and apparently deserve it, of being cruel and treacherous,
as they certainly are shy and wild. It was these people who killed
Doctor Jones, of the Marshall Field Museum, after he had been with
them eight or nine months. So recently as 1907 they made a descent on
Dúpax, killing people and taking their heads. When they mean to kill a
man fairly, according to their ideas, they hand him a fish. This is a
signal that he must be on his guard: to refuse the fish is of no use,
because by so doing one puts one's self beyond the pale, and may be
killed in any fashion. We heard a story here of a Negrito stealing a
pig from two Ilongots who had a Negrito brother-in-law. Failing to
recover the pig, they decided that they must have a Negrito head,
and so took their brother-in-law's. Pig-stealing, by the way, in
the mountain country is regarded much as horse-stealing used to be
out West. Besides the spear and head knife, the Ilongots, like the
Negritos, with whom they have intermarried to a certain extent, use
the bow and arrow, and are correspondingly dreaded. For it seems to be
believed in Luzon that bow-and-arrow savages are more dangerous than
spear-and-ax-men; that the use of this projectile weapon, the arrow,
induces craftiness, hard to contend against. An Ilongot can silently
shoot you in the back, after you have passed. A spear-man has to get
closer, and can not use an ambush so readily. [13]
Now our Government in the Philippines, by and through and because
of Mr. Worcester, had made repeated efforts to reach these Ilongots,
to bring them in, as it were, and only recently had these efforts met
with any success. For one thing, it is a very serious matter to seek
them out in the depths of their fastnesses if only because of the
difficulty of reaching them; many of them even now have never seen a
white man, and would escape, if I recollect aright, on the approach of
our people. But in 1908 some fifty of them did "come in," and, gaining
confidence, this number grew to one hundred and fifty in 1909. They,
or some of them at least, now sent an invitation to Mr. Worcester
to come and see them, and he accepted on condition of their making
a trail, saying that they could not expect a man of his stature to
creep through their country on his hands and knees. This trail they
had built, and they had assembled at Campote, four hours from Dúpax,
for this first formal visit; It was the desire of Mr. Worcester
that this visit should be happy in all respects; for, if not, the
difficulties of intercourse with this people, already great, would
be so seriously increased as to delay the civilizing intentions of
the Government for many years to come.
We rode off at about two o'clock, passing under numberless
bamboo arches, on an astonishingly good road, built by Padre Juan
Villaverde. About two miles out we left the road, turning off east
across rice-paddies, and then followed a stream, which we crossed
near the foot of a large bare mountain facing south. Up this we
zigzagged four miles, a tiresome stretch with the sun shining full
upon us. But at the top we had our reward: to the south reached a
beautiful open valley, its floor a mass of green undulations, its
walls purple mountains blazing in the full glory of the afternoon
sun. At the extreme south, miles away, we could make out Las Salinas,
Salt Springs, [14] whose deposits sparkled and shone and scintillated
and danced in the heated air. Grateful as it would have been to rest
at the top and enjoy the scene, we nevertheless had to turn our backs
upon it, for we had yet far to go over an unknown trail, and it was
most desirable to get in before dark. So we turned and now plunged
into a forest of tall trees so thick overhead and so deeply buried in
vines, and creepers and underbrush generally, that just as no light
got in from above, so one could not see ten yards in any direction
off the trail. This effect was no doubt partly due to the shades of
evening, and to our being on the eastern slope of the mountain. And
that trail! The Ilongots, poor chaps, had done their best with it,
and the labor of construction must have been fearful. [15] But the
footing was nothing but volcanic mud, laterite, all the worse from
a recent rain. Our ponies sank over their fetlocks at every step,
and required constant urging to move at all. Compared to the one
I was riding, Bubud was a race-horse! Cootes, Strong, and I kept
together, the others having ridden on. As the day grew darker and
darker, the myriad notes of countless insects melted into one mighty,
continuous shrill note high overhead, before us, behind us, in which
not one break or intermission could be detected. Anything faster than
a walk would now have been unsafe, even if it had been possible, for
at times the ground sloped off sharply down the mountain, the footing
grew more and more uncertain, and part of the time we could not see
the trail at all. Indeed, Cootes's pony stepped in a hole and fell,
pitching Cootes clean over his head, and sending his helmet down the
mountain-side, where Cootes had to go and get it. Soon after this,
though, the forest thinned perceptibly, the trail grew better, and
we met Connor, who had turned back to see how we were getting on,
and who informed us we had only one-half hour more before us. Going
on, we were greeted by a shout of welcome from our first Ilongot,
standing in the trail, subligate, or gee-stringed, otherwise stark
naked, and armed with a spear, the sentinel of a sort of outpost,
equally naked, with which we soon came up. They were all armed, too,
spears and shields, and all insisted on shaking hands with every
one of us. You must shake hands when they offer to, an unpleasant
matter sometimes, when you notice that the man who is paying you this
attention is covered with _toenia imbricata_, or other rare tropical
skin disease. [16] _Noblesse oblige_, here as elsewhere; besides,
a consideration for your own skin may require you to put aside your
prejudices. The trail now turned down over a broad, cleared hog-back,
at the flattened end of which we could see two shacks and a temporary
shed for our mounts. Smoke was rising cheerfully in the air and people
were moving about. This was Campote.