228 BEYER AND BARTON. 



PART I. INTRODUCTION. 



The religious and public ceremonies of the Ifugaos of northern Luzon 

 are probably as highly developed as any such ceremonies to be found in 

 the whole Malay-Polynesian area, and their religion is so closely inter- 

 woven with the daily life of the people that its' importance can scarcely 

 be exaggerated. Every event of life is accompanied by its appropriate 

 ceremony, and the greater the event the more elaborate the ceremony. 



The purpose of this paper is to describe the ceremonies connected with 

 the burial of beheaded bodies and the bodies of persons killed by hered- 

 itary enemies, whether or not their heads be taken. With the passing 

 of the custom of head-hunting, these and all other ceremonies more or less 

 directly connected with that custom will soon fall into disuse or mate- 

 rially change their form. It is desirable that an accurate record of 

 them be made before they become wholly matters of hearsay and valuable 

 details are lost. For this reason the authors offer no apology for here 

 presenting a detailed account of such of these ceremonies as have come 

 under their observation. 



To understand the ceremonies clearly, some knowledge of Ifugao 

 general customs is necessary. The most important facts are briefly set 

 forth in the following paragraphs. 



THE IFUGAO CLANS AND THE FOEMEE P8EVALENCE OF HBAD-HUNTIKG AMONG THEM. 



The Ifugao people are divided into a large number of hereditary clans, each 

 of which occupies a definite clan district and has a definite name. They vary in 

 population from a few hundred, up to four or five thousand people each, distributed 

 in from ten to a hundred or more villages. In most cases, each clan is cut 

 off from those surrounding it by natural barriers such as rivers, canons, and 

 mountain ranges. The people invariably call themselves by their elan name, 

 with the prefix i- (equivalent to the English preposition "of"). Thus: I- 

 ianauol-kami, "We are (people) of Banauol clan"; I-nagaJcAran-kami, "We 

 are (people) of Nagakaran clan". These clans were once wholly exogamie, as 

 all members of the clan were believed to be descended from a common ancestral 

 pair. Within recent years the exogamie feature has more or less broken down, 

 and the whole clan organization is in the process of slow disruption. 



Among these clans the institution of head-hunting grew up, in ages past. 

 Each formed a little state, politically independent of all the other clans surround- 

 ing it, and making war or declaring peace with them, as it chose. In war, 

 the head was regarded as a trophy, as was the scalp among the American Indians. 

 The chief reason for desiring the head was not so much the excitement of the 

 actual fighting to secure it, in which only a very few people took part, as the 

 fact that the possession of a head was necessary before the great head-ceremony 

 (or celebration of victory) could be held. This ceremony, in which all the 

 people of the clan took part, was one of the three greatest given by the Ifugaos. 

 It is not the purpose of this paper to describe it, but rather the exactly opposite 

 one given by the clan of the beheaded man at his burial, the munhimAng, which 

 is also one of the three greatest Ifugao ceremonies. 



