The Head Hunters of Northern LuzonWillcox, Cornélis De Witt
History
The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon
Willcox, Cornélis De Witt
Igorot (Philippine people); Luzon (Philippines) -- Description and travel
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.
CHAPTER VII
School at Campote.--Our white pony, and the offer made for
his tail.
It was too dark by this time to see or do much. We had supper, looked
up the place where we were to sleep, and then collected at the lower
of the two shacks. Here we received visits, so to say, from as many
Ilongots, grown men only, as could get into the place. In truth,
we were as much objects of curiosity to them as they possibly could
have been to us. To Mr. Worcester the occasion was one of business,
explaining through interpreters why we had come, what the Government
wanted, getting acquainted with the _cabecillas_ (head men), and
listening to what they had themselves to say. One of our visitors was
a grandfather, remarkable, first, because of his heavy long beard,
and, second, because his own grandfather was alive; five generations
of one family in existence at the same time.
Campote, I may as well say it here as anywhere else, is merely a
point where Connor has established a school for children, under
a Christianized Filipino teacher. Some thirty children in all are
under instruction, the average attendance being twenty-four. It is
almost impossible, so Connor told us, to make these people understand
why children should go to school, or what a school is, or is for,
anyway. However, a beginning has been made. They all have a dose of
"the three Rs"; the boys are taught, besides, carpentry, gardening,
and rope-making, and the girls sewing, weaving, and thread-making
from cotton grown by the boys on the spot. They ought to show some
skill in all these arts; for the native rice-basket is a handsome,
strong affair, square of cross-section, with sides flaring out, and
about three feet high, and some of their weapons show great manual
skill. The garden was on show the next morning, displaying beans,
tomatoes, cotton, perhaps other things that I failed to recognize
or have forgotten, anyway, a sufficient garden. There is besides an
exchange here for the sale of native wares.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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