536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



trees, canons,, streams and sea ; horribly conceived monsters and ghouls, 

 and furthermore, and omnipresent in the affairs of the living, are the 

 spirits of the dead — the ghosts. The Negrito, on the contrary, seems 

 to be very little disturbed by such beliefs. His elementary religious 

 notions leave him free for the most part from terror by night or by day. 

 Where troubled with conceptions of " anito " or " diwata " it is almost 

 certain that he has been learning at the feet of some demon-worship- 

 ping Malayan. Now, the Ilongot appear to have religious ideas that 

 have come from various sources. Those of Nueva Vizcaya, with whom 

 I talked, professed belief in spirits and called them " be tung " ; the 

 spirits of the dead were " gi na va." The Ilongot of Patakgao, curi- 

 ously, have been affected by Christian nomenclature. The ruling spirit 

 or spirits is " apo sen diot " ("apo" meaning lord or sir and "diot" 

 being a corruption of Dios). They had no word for heaven, but men- 

 tioned " Impiedno " (Infierno). They said that when people die " they 

 go to the mountains." They bury the dead near their houses in a 

 coffin of bark (ko ko). They said that there were no " aswang " 

 (malignant monsters believed in by the Christian Filipinos) in their 

 mountains. They stated that prayer is a frequent observance; that 

 they prayed when some one is sick or injured. " When an animal is 

 killed we pray before cutting up the animal," and as stated above prayer 

 is offered before the dangerous ascent of trees. In one house I saw a 

 little bundle of grasses which was put there, following prayer made 

 " at the first time when we are eating the new rice." Prayer is then 

 made that rats may not destroy the harvest or other ill occur to crops. 



These notes are too fragmentary to give any definite idea of what 

 the religion of the Ilongot may be, but two other things observed had 

 religious significance. When our party reached the vicinity of the 

 community at Patakgao, we encountered in the bed of the canon we were 

 following a curious contrivance placed over the running water. Two 

 stakes had been set up, and attached horizontally was a branch twelve 

 feet long, five or six feet from the ground. A chicken had been sacri- 

 ficed here and its blood had been daubed along this pole in at least 

 eighteen different stains. Feathers had been tied to the ends of the 

 upright poles and midway between them a curiously whittled stick of 

 shavings was tied perpendicularly and the giblets and head of the fowl 

 stuck upon it. Our guide, who was a Christian native from a small 

 barrio which has some relations with this community, pronounced this 

 contrivance to be a warning against further approach, in fact a " dead 

 line." But later, Biiliud, one of the important men of Patakgao, 

 insisted that it was an offering made for the cure of their wounds 

 received a few days before in a fight with hostile Ilongot. 



In the houses of the Ilongot at Bayyait were many curiously 

 whittled sticks suspended from the rafters. Some of these were of ir- 



