Bontoc Erotic

The Bontoc are the people of the upper Chico River valley in Mountain Province, in the mountains of northern Luzon, and for most of their history they answered to the village, not to any larger state. Life is built around the ato, a ward with a stone-paved platform and a house where elders meet, settle disputes and plan rituals. In the past each ato also served as a dormitory for boys and unmarried men, and girls slept in their own house, the olag. A Bontoc village is a cluster of these wards. People were loyal to their ward first, their village second, and hardly at all to anything past the next ridge.

The land is steep, and the Bontoc worked it in stone. Their rice terraces are walled with fitted rock rather than packed earth, climbing the valley sides around Bontoc town, Maligcong and Guinaang, and they are watered by channels the community maintains together. Rice is the prestige crop, while sweet potatoes and other dry-field crops fill out the diet. The Bontoc language belongs to the Central Cordilleran branch of the Austronesian family. It is closely related to Kankanaey, spoken just to the west, and more distantly to Ifugao and Kalinga. Most Bontoc also speak Ilocano, the common language of northern Luzon, along with Filipino and English.

The Bontoc are one of the Igorot peoples, and outsiders once knew their name mainly for head-hunting. Raids between villages did happen, bound up with ritual duty and a man's standing, and a man who took a head earned the chaklag, a chest tattoo that everyone could read. Women wore tattoos on their arms. The raids ended under American colonial rule in the early 20th century. In those same years, Bontoc people were put on display at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and in touring shows across the United States. Meanwhile Bontoc town became the capital of Mountain Province, and missionaries brought churches and schools.

Most Bontoc today are Christian, Catholic or Episcopal, but the older religion has not disappeared. People still remember Lumawig, who in Bontoc tradition came down from the sky, married a local woman and set out the customs the villages follow. Ancestral spirits are still honored with animal sacrifices at weddings, funerals and key points in the farming year, and on ritual rest days work in the fields stops. Traditional dress now comes out mostly for ceremonies and for the provincial Lang-ay Festival held in Bontoc each April.