Barton's account of a native funeral.
Mr. Barton, already mentioned as in residence at Kiangan as local
Superintendent of Schools, went out to see the funeral of the
Constabulary private killed on the morning of the 2d. He was strongly
advised not to go, because these highlanders resent more or less the
presence of strangers at their funeral ceremonies. But this made him
only the more eager, as very few Americans, or any others for that
matter, have ever been present on these occasions.
Passing through Manila a month or two later, he very kindly dictated
for me an account of what he saw, and I give it here, with his
permission, in his own words:
The Funeral of Aliguyen.
"On the third day after the soldier was killed, the principal funeral
ceremonies took place. To these ceremonies came a great number of
people from their various _rancherías_, the party from each _ranchería_
being led by the relatives of the soldier, some of them very distant
relatives.
"Aliguyen, the dead soldier, lived in the _ranchería_ of Nagukaran,
a _ranchería_ until quite recently very unfriendly to Kiangan, where
I live. Aliguyen, however, had some kin in Kiangan, and this kin,
together with their friends, went to the funeral. Their shields,
as well as the shields of all who attended, were painted with white
markings, taking some the form of men, some of lizards, some were
zig-zags. All men who attended had a head-dress made of the leaf
petiole of the betel tree and the red leaves of the dongola plant. To
these leaves were attached pendant white feathers. Everybody was
dressed in his best clout, and the women in their best loin-cloths
and in all their finery of gold beads and agate necklaces.
"Nagukaran is one _ranchería_ of several in a very large valley. When
I reached a point in the trail commanding this valley, there could be
seen from various _rancherías_ in the valley a procession from each
of them wending their way slowly toward Aliguyen's home. From the time
that they came within sight of the house, which was sometimes when they
were a mile and a half or two miles from it, each procession danced
its way, beating on the striped shields with their drum-sticks and
on their _bangibang_. This last is a kind of wooden stick, made of
resonant hard wood, coated over with chicken blood. It is extremely
old. It is curved slightly and is about two feet long, and is held in
one hand suspended by a _bejuco_ string so that the vibrations are
not interfered with. It is beaten with a drum-stick, as is also the
shield. The _gansa_, or brass gong, the usual musical instrument of
the Ifugaos, is never used in the funeral of a beheaded man. The two
men who headed each procession carried two spears each. Behind came a
man carrying a spear and shield. The two in front faced the on-coming
procession, stepping most of the time backward, making thrusts toward
the two who bore the spears and shields. The bearers of spear and
shield made thrusts at them, the whole being a dance which in some
respects resembles one of the head-dances of the Bontoc Igorots. From
the high place on the trail where I was, they looked, in the distance,
like nothing so much as columns of centipedes or files of ants all
creeping slowly along the dikes of the rice-paddies toward the central
place. It usually takes an hour for such a procession to cover one
mile. The beating of shield and stick could easily be heard across
the wide valley on that still morning.
"Arriving at Aliguyen's house, we found him sitting on a block
facing the sun, lying against his shield, which was supported
by the side of the house. The body was in a terrible state of
decomposition. It was swollen to three times its living girth. Great
blisters had collected under the epidermis, which broke from time
to time, a brownish red fluid escaping. The spear wound in his
neck was plugged by a wooden spear-head. In each hand Aliguyen
held a wooden spear. No attempt whatever had been made to prevent
decomposition of the body or the entrance to it of flies. From the
mouth gas bubbled out continually. Two old women on each side with
penholder-shaped loom-sticks about two feet long continually poked
at Aliguyen's face and the wound to wake him up. From time to time
they caught the grewsome head by the hair and shook it violently,
shouting, Who-oo-oo! Aliguyen, wake up! Open your eyes! Look down
on Kurug. [Kurug being the _ranchería_ from which came Aliguyen's
murderer.] Take his father and his mother, his wife and his children,
and his first cousins and his second cousins, and his relatives by
marriage. They wanted him to kill you. All your kin are women. [They
say this in order to deceive Aliguyen into avenging himself.] They
can't avenge you. You will have to avenge yourself! There is _ordén_
[law]; no one can kill them but you! Take them all!
"This calling on Aliguyen's soul never ceased. When an old woman got
hoarse, another took her place. As the procession came to the house
it filed past Aliguyen and its leaders stopped and shouted words to
the same effect. The key-note of the whole ceremony was vengeance. It
is true that both persons who were involved in killing Aliguyen were
themselves killed, but the people of a _ranchería_ regard themselves
as being about the only real people in the world and hold that three,
four, or five men of another _ranchería_ are not equal to one of
theirs.
"Nagukaran being the _ranchería_ that speared and nearly killed my
predecessor, Mr.----, I explained my presence to the people there by
saying that the soldier, being an agent of our Government, was in a
way a relative of mine. The explanation was a perfectly natural one
to the people, and they treated me with the greatest courtesy and
helped me to see whatever was to be seen.
"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 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 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 spear strike the earth so that it might not strike him. [28]
"As the pig was being put in the pot to be cooked for the old men
who had performed the feast, some unmannerly young fellow started
to make away with one piece of the flesh. Immediately there was a
scramble which was joined by some three or four hundred Ifugaos of
all the different _rancherías_. Then the feasters (I think there were
about one thousand who attended the feast) leaped for their spears
and shields. The people who had come from Kiangan rushed to where I
was and took their stand in front of and around me, and told me to
stay there and that they would protect me from any harm; all of which,
as may well be supposed, produced no trifling amount of warmth in my
feelings toward them. Fortunately nothing came of the scramble.
"I have no hesitancy in saying that two or three years ago, before
Governor Gallman had performed his excellent and truly wonderful work
among the Ifugaos, this scramble would have become a fight in which
somebody would have lost his life. That such a thing could take place
without danger was incomprehensible to the old women of Kiangan, who
doubtless remembered sons or husbands, brothers or cousins, who had
lost their lives in such an affair. With the memory of these old times
in their minds they caught me by the arms and by the waist and said,
'Barton, come home; we don't know the mind of the people; they are
likely to kill you.' When I refused to miss seeing the rest of the
feast, they told me to keep my revolver ready.
"Looking back on this incident, I am sure that I was in little, I
believe _no_ danger, but must give credit to my Ifugao boy who attended
me in having the wisest head in the party. This boy immediately thought
of my horse, which was picketed near, and ran to it, taking with him
one or two responsible Kiangan men to help him watch and defend it. Had
he not done so, some meat-hungry, hot-headed Ifugao might easily have
stuck a bolo in his side during the scramble and its confusion; and
immediately some five hundred or more Ifugaos would have been right
on top of the carcase, hand-hacking at it with their long war-knives,
and it would probably have been impossible ever to find out who gave
the first thrust.
"The old men who had performed the feast, after things had quieted
down somewhat, began scolding and cursing those who had run away with
the meat. Finally they managed to prevail upon the meat-snatchers
to bring back three small pieces, about the size of their hands,
from which I concluded that Ifugao is a language which is admirably
adapted to making people ashamed of themselves. For I knew how hungry
for meat these Ifugao become.
"Three old men stuck their spears in a piece of meat and began a long
story whose text was the confusion of enemies in some past time. At
the conclusion of each story, they said: 'Not there, but here; not
then, but now.' By a sort of simple witchcraft, the mere telling of
these stories is believed to secure a like confusion and destruction
of the enemies of the present. When this ceremony had been completed,
each old man raised his spear quickly and so was enabled to secure
for himself the meat impaled. In one case, one of the old men just
missed ripping open the abdomen of the man who stood in front.
"The feast being finished, the people made an attempt to
assemble by _rancherías_. Then they filed along the trail to bury
Aliguyen. Nagukaran _ranchería_ took the lead. As the procession
came near the grave the men took off their head-dresses and strung
them on a long pole, which was laid across the trail. A Nagukaran
_ranchero_ went to where Aliguyen was sitting and picked him up,
carried him to the grave, and placed him in a sitting posture facing
Kurug, the _ranchería_ that killed him, Aliguyen was not wrapped in
a death-blanket, as corpses usually are. His body was neglected in
order to make him angry, so to incite him to vengeance.
"The grave was a kind of sepulchre dug out of a bank. It was walled up
with stones after Aliguyen was placed in it, and an egg thrown against
the tomb, whereupon the people yelled: '_Batna kana okukulan di bujolmi
ud Kurug!_ ('So may it happen to our enemies at Kurug!') The poles on
which were strung the head-dresses were taken and hung over the door of
Aliguyen's house. After this the people dispersed to their homes. On
the way home they stopped at a stream and washed themselves, praying
somewhat as follows: 'Wash, Water, but do not wash away our lives,
our pigs, our chickens, our rice, our children. Wash away death by
violence, death by the spear, death by sickness. Wash away pests,
hunger, and crop-failure, and our enemies. Wash away the visits of
the Spear-bearing Nightcomer, the Mountain Haunters, the Ghosts,
the Westcomers. Wash away our enemies. Wash as vengeance for him who
has gone before.'"