The Mountain People
Inhabiting the rugged terrain of the Cordillera region of Northern Philippines, the Igorots, translating to “mountaineer” from Tagalog, maintain their traditional religion and way of life. Known for the Banaue Rice Terraces, hanging coffins, and colourful and handwoven traditional native costumes, these ethnic groups are some of the most fascinating in Asia.
The Igorots comprise six ethnolinguistic tribes known as the Ibaloy, Kankana-ey, Ifugao, Kalinga, Apayao/isneg, and the Bontoc. Unlike most of the Philippines, which was colonised by Spain for about four hundred years, the Cordillera region generally escaped interference. Part of this was likely due to the rugged terrain of the area but also because of the fierce nature of the people, who would not surrender easily to outsiders. It wasn’t until the early 1900s when the American Episcopal church came into some areas of the Cordilleras and people started to convert to Christianity and get a formal education. Historically, the people of the Cordilleras were never a united people, and there are peace pacts in place to keep order among many of the tribes. Many groups now proudly proclaim themselves as Igorots while other tribes still prefer to be called by their more specific tribal names.
The Igorot tribes are held together by their common socio-cultural traits as well as their geographic proximity to each other. During pre-christian Cordillera (and to some extent, the present), the six different tribes shared similar religious beliefs, generally Nature-related, and they made proprietary offerings to anitos (spirits), as well as to household gods. Cultural elements common to the Igorot peoples as a whole include metalworking in iron and brass, weaving, and animal sacrifice. They believe in spirits, including those of ancestors, and have complex rituals to appease them. There are no clans or tribes, and political organisations are generally limited to the village level. Kinship is traced on both the paternal and the maternal sides, extending as far as third cousins.
Two broader groupings may be made of the Igorot as a whole: One, by far the larger, comprises the peoples of the higher country who cultivate wet rice, mostly in steplike terraces on the mountainsides; the other comprises peoples of the lower rainforest areas, who grow dry rice in seasonally shifting gardens. Within the first group the Nabaloi or Ibaloi, Kankanay (Kankanai), Lepanto or northern Kankanay, Bontoc
“The Ifugaos built the Banaue Rice Terraces – frequently called the ‘eighth wonder of the world’.”
(Bontok), southern Kalinga, and Tinggian nearly all live in populous villages, but one ethnic unit, the Ifugao, has small farmsteads of kinsmen dotted throughout the rice terraces. The second group – the Gaddang, northern Kalinga, and Isneg or Apayao – are sparsely settled in hamlets or farmsteads around which new gardens are cleared as the soil is exhausted; some Gaddang live in tree houses.
Igorots are known for their colourful and handwoven traditional native costumes. Women wear tops, or kambals, with or without lace trimming, and a skirt-like botton, or divit or tapis. Igorot men wear long strips of handwoven loin cloth called wanes. The design of the wanes may vary according to social status or municipality.
The headdresses of the Ifugao people in Luzon, northern Philippines have a woven frame that is decorated with feathers and often seated on top is a wooden figure – the rice god Bul-ul. Bul-ul brings good luck to the harvest and the village chief wears the crown during planting and harvest rituals.
Hanging coffins are placed on mountain cliffs as part of the Igorot indigenous culture and burial tradition of the people of Sagada. The coffins are made of hollowedout logs normally carved by the elderly Igorots before they die. Each cadaver is smoked throughout the five-day preburial feast to avoid fast decomposition. Hanging the coffins in high elevated cliffs is the traditional way of burying a qualified individual. The indigenous death ritual also involves pushing the bodies into the tight spaces of the coffin for them to fit into the coffin space made from pine tree logs.
This ancient practice in Sagada is a 2,000-year-old tradition. However, it is no longer a common practice for locals of Sagada; the latest addition to the hanging coffins of Sagada was placed there in June 2008. The Igorot ancestors in Sagada believed that the higher your body is laid, the closer they are to “heaven”. Another reason to place coffins high up on the mountainside was to protect the bodies from natural disasters like earthquakes and floods and also to keep the corpses away from wild animals.