﻿ix, d, 6 Robertson: The Igorots of Lepanto 521 



jurisdiction of the pueblo, for the purpose of bathing, on arriving at the 

 creek, took a bit of unit (wet earth that is used as soap for the head) 

 to rub themselves with for the bath. One of them upon rubbing his head 

 with the abovesaid earth saw that his hands had become tinged a saffron 



ernor Guido de Lavezares, influenced no doubt by report of gold, planned 

 and despatched an expedition to northern Luzon, but the undertaking 

 had no result. In 1591, the energetic governor, Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, 

 sent his son Luis, afterward acting governor, and two other expeditions 

 to explore the so-called province of Tuy. In 1594, Luis Perez Dasmarinas 

 despatched Captain Toribio de Miranda to the same region. See Blair 

 and Robertson, ut supra, 14, 281-326, for an account of these early expe- 

 ditions. Pages 301-307 relate "What has been known from old times, in 

 these districts, of the rich mines of the Yglotes [that is, Igorots] both 

 from seeing the great amount of gold that the Indians of those mountains 

 have extracted without skill, and are still obtaining, and which they sell 

 to the neighboring provinces, and trade for food; and by persons- 

 (Spaniards as well as Indians) who have been in the mines opened by 

 those mountaineers." As early as 1624, the workings of the Igorots appear 

 to be very old, and many of them were already abandoned. An engineer 

 conversant with Chinese methods of mining told me recently that it was 

 his belief that the Igorots had learned their methods from the Chinese. 

 See Becker's account on native methods of mining in 21st Ann. Rep. U. S. 

 Geolog. Surv. (1901), III, 576-680. Quirante writing in 1624 (Blair and 

 Robertson, ut supra, 20, 276-279) says that the Igorot men, women, and 

 children were accustomed to wash gold in the small mountain streams 

 during the rainy season. This was traded in the lowlands for cattle 

 and other animals by its quantity as determined by sight instead of by 

 weight. Quirante says that the natives had five hills where they had 

 tapped the gold-bearing quartz rock, although they obtained but a small 

 amount of the metal. The workings as described by Quirante appear to 

 have been rather extensive. Their tools he says were "certain stakes of 

 heavy wood fashioned like pickaxes, with the knot of the said stake 

 larger at the end of it, where, having pierced it, they fit into it a small 

 narrow bit of iron about one palmo long. Then seated in the passages 

 or works, as the veins prove, they pick out and remove the ore, which 

 having been crushed by a stout rock in certain large receptacles fixed 

 firmly in the ground, and with other smaller stones by hand, and having 

 reduced the ore to powder, they carry it to the washing-places." The gold 

 was then obtained by repeated washings and crushings. Under Quirante's 

 directions 26 assays of the ore taken from the old workings were made. 

 Worcester [This Journal (1906), 1, 848] says of the gold mining of the 

 Lepanto-Igorots : "The men have mined gold for centuries. They work 

 over the faces of exposed cliffs, when necessary suspending themselves by 

 means of rattans, and pick out the streaks of rich ore which show free 

 gold. This they dig with their crude iron or steel implements, the use 

 of powder being unknown among them. The ore, after being dug, is 

 crushed and panned. Both men and women also wash gold from the 

 sands of the streams, and the women are especially famed for the skill 

 with which they save the very light float gold — a skill which American 

 miners have found it impossible to attain. The gold is usually sold in 

 the form of dust, although it is sometimes melted and run into ingots." 



