Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/542

536 trees, cañons, 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-worshipping 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 "bĕ tung"; the spirits of the dead were "gi na vá." The Ilongot of Patakgao, curiously, 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 mentioned "Impiĕdno" (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 cañon 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 sacrificed 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, Bŭliŭd, 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