The Bontoc Igorot | Page 3

but there are no data as yet throwing light on this question.
To-day the Archipelago lies like a large net in the natural pathway of people fleeing themselves from the supposed birthplace of the primitive Malayan stock, namely, from Java, Sumatra, and the adjacent Malay Peninsula, or, more likely, the larger mainland. It spreads over a large area, and is well fitted by its numerous islands -- some 3,100 -- and its innumerable bays and coastal pockets to catch up and hold a primitive, seafaring people.
There are and long have been daring Malayan pirates, and there is to-day among the southern islands a numerous class -- the Samal -- living most of the time on the sea, yet they all keep close to land, except in time of calm, and when a storm is brewing they strike out straight for the nearest shore like scared children. The ocean currents and the monsoons have been greatly instrumental in driving different people through the seas into the Philippine net.[2] The Tagakola on the west coast of the Gulf of Davao, Mindanao, have a tradition that they are descendants of men cast on their present shores from a distant land and of the Manobo women of the territory. The Bagobo, also in the Gulf of Davao, claim they came to their present home in a few boats generations ago. They purposely left their former land to flee from head-hunting, a practice in their earlier home, but one they do not follow in Mindanao. What per cent of the people coming originally to the Archipelago was castaway, nomadic, or immigrant it is impossible to judge, but there have doubtless also been many systematic and prolonged migrations from nearby lands, as from Borneo, Celebes, Sangir, etc.
Primitive man is represented in the Philippines to-day not alone by one of the lowest natural types of savage man the historic world has looked upon -- the small, dark-brown, bearded, "crisp-woolly"-haired Negritos -- but by some thirty distinct primitive Malayan tribes or dialect groups, among which are believed to be some of the lowest of the stock in existence.
In northern Luzon is the Igorot, a typical primitive Malayan. He is a muscular, smooth-faced, brown man of a type between the delicate and the coarse. In Mindoro the Mangiyan is found, an especially lowly Malayan, who may prove to be a true savage in culture. In Mindanao is the slender, delicate, smooth-faced brown man of which the Subano, in the western part, is typical. There are the Bagobo and the extensive Manobo of eastern Mindanao in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Davao, the latter people following the Agusan River practically to the north coast of Mindanao. In southeastern Mindanao, in the vicinity of Mount Apo and also north of the Gulf of Davao, are the Ata. They are a scattered people and evidently a Negrito and primitive Malayan mixture. In Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, Isabela, and perhaps Principe, of Luzon, are the Ibilao. They are a slender, delicate, bearded people, with an artistic nature quite different from any other now known in the island, but somewhat like that of the Ata of Mindanao. Their artistic wood productions suggest the incised work of distant dwellers of the Pacific, as that of the people of New Guinea, Fiji Islands, or Hervey Islands. The seven so-called Christian tribes,[3] occupying considerable areas in the coastwise lands and low plains of most of the larger islands of the Archipelago, represent migrations to the Archipelago subsequent to those of the Igorot and comparable tribes.
The last migrations of brown men into the Archipelago are historic. The Spaniard discovered the inward flow of the large Samal Moro group -- after his arrival in the sixteenth century. The movement of this nomadic "Sea Gipsy" Samal has not ceased to-day, but continues to flow in and out among the small southern islands.
Besides the peoples here cited there are a score of others scattered about the Archipelago, representing many grades of primitive culture, but those mentioned are sufficient to suggest that the Islands have been very effective in gathering up and holding divers groups of primitive men.[4]

PART 1
The Igorot Culture Group
Igorot land
Northern Luzon, or Igorot land, is by far the largest area in the Philippine Archipelago having any semblance of regularity. It is roughly rectangular in form, extending two and one-half degrees north and south and two degrees east and west.
There are two prominent geographic features in northern Luzon. One is the beautifully picturesque mountain system, the Caraballos, the most important range of which is the Caraballos Occidentales, extending north and south throughout the western part of the territory. This range is the famous "Cordillera Central" for about three-quarters of its extent northward, beyond which it is known as "Cordillera del Norte." The other prominent feature is the extensive drainage system