NGOT OR IBILAO OF LUZON

By Dr. David P. Barrows

University of California

Reprinted from the Popular Science Monthly, December, 1910.

The grewsome practise of taking human heads is particularly associated
with the Igorot peoples of the Cordillera of Luzon. These all engage
in it or have done so until recently. But to-day the most persistent
and dreaded headhunters are neither Igorot nor inhabitants of the
Cordillera; they are a wild, forest-dwelling people in the broken
and almost impenetrable mountain region formed by the junction of
the Sierra Madre range with the Caraballo Sur. They have been called
by different names by the peoples contiguous to them on the north,
west and south, "Italon," "Ibilao," "Ilongot" or "Ilungut." The last
designation would for some reasons be the preferred, but "Ibilao,"
or as it is quite commonly pronounced locally through northern Nueva
Ecija, "Abilao," has perhaps the widest use. [5]

There are no early records of these people and until late in his
rule the Spaniard knew almost nothing of them. In the latter half
of the eighteenth century, the valley of the Magat was occupied and
the mission of Ituy founded, out of which came the province of Nueva
Vizcaya, with its converted population of Gaddang and Isinay. To
reach Ituy from the south the trail followed up the valley of the Rio
Pampanga almost to its sources and then climbed over the Caraballo Sur
to the headwaters of the Magat. On this trail along the upper waters
of the Pampanga grew up several small mission stations, Pantabangan
and Karanglan, with a population of Pampanga and Tagalog people drawn
from the provinces to the south. After more than a hundred years
these small towns are still almost the only Christian settlements
in northern Nueva Ecija. From the time of their establishment we
find references to the "Ilongotes" who inhabited the mountains to
the east and were spoken of as "savages," "treacherous murderers,"
"cannibals," and wholly untamable. Much as described a hundred years
ago they have continued to the present day. Their homes are in thick
mountain jungle where it is difficult to follow them, but, from time
to time they steal out of the forests to fall upon the wayfarer or
resident of the valley and leave him a beheaded and dismembered corpse.

Here are a few instances occurring in recent years which came under
my own notice or investigation. In 1902, the presidente of Bambang,
Nueva Vizcaya, informe