
THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 61 
nothing more than ‘‘ Mountain People.’ The Bontok 
are named after one of their towns which happened to 
be chosen as the seat of government for the district. 
Head-hunting was in full swing at the time of the arrival 
of the Americans; but like all the other pagans, the 
Bontok accepted American rule kindly and almost 
cheerfully. While often irked by the enforcement of the 
law against feuds and head-taking, they appreciate the 
advantages of security, and seem to resent American 
authority much less than the attempts at Spanish rule 
and the exactions of the Christianized Filipino. The 
Bontok are to date the best-known pagan people of 
Luzon, and appear to have developed certain pecu- 
liarities such as the institution of the ato, a local 
division or ward within the town. ‘To the south of the 
Bontok are the Kankanai with a large territory, and 
beyond them, the Nabaloi, often known as the Benguet 
Igorot. Spanish influence became rather strong among 
these people toward the end of the nineteenth century, 
but they have succeeded in maintaining many of their 
old habits and nearly all of their religion. Of the three 
groups, the Bontok are the most, and the Nabaloi the 
least numerous; taken together, they aggregate well 
over a hundred thousand people. 
Eastward of the last are the Ifugao—the word'means 
merely ‘‘ people’’—a group living packed together in the 
subprovince of the same name, to the estimated 
number of 132,000. The system of growing irrigated 
rice on terraces built up the mountain sides and watered 
by ditches heading in the river miles above—a system 
followed by most of the pagans of Luzon—reaches its 
greatest development among the Ifugao, some of their 
engineering works being truly astounding. The terraces 
are sometimes forty feet in height and less than that in 
breadth, so that the labor involved in the construction 

