Commerce

The Bontoc Igorot has a keen instinct for a bargain, but his importance as a comerciante has been small, since his wants are few and the state of feud is such that he can not go far from home.

His bargain instinct is shown constantly.  The American stranger is charged from two to ten times the regular price for things he wishes to buy.  Early in April of the last two years the price of palay for the American has, on a plea of scarcity, advanced 20 per cent, although it has been proved that there is at all times enough palay in the pueblo for three years’ consumption.

Rather than spoil a possible high price of a product, outside pueblos have left articles overnight with Bontoc friends to be sold to the American next day at his own price, and when those pueblos came again to vend similar wares the high prices were maintained.

Barter

Most commerce is carried on by barter.  Within a pueblo naturally having neither stores nor a legalized currency people trade among themselves, but the word “barter” as here used means the systematic exchange of the products of one community for those of another.

To note the articles produced for commerce by two or three pueblos will give a fair illustration of the importance which interpueblo commerce carried on entirely by barter has assumed among the Igorot. of the Bontoc culture group, though the comerciante rarely remains from home more than one night at a time.

The luwa, the woman’s shallow transportation basket, is made by the pueblo of Samoki only, and it is employed by fifteen or eighteen other pueblos.  Samoki also makes the akaug, or rice sieve, which is used commonly in the vicinity.  Bontoc and Samoki alone make the woman’s deeper transportation basket, the tayyaan, and it is used quite as extensively as is the luwa.

The sleeping hat is made only by Bontoc and Samoki; it goes extensively in commerce.  The large winnowing tray employed universally by the Igorot is said to be made nowhere in the vicinity except in Samoki and Kamyu.  Bontoc and Samoki alone make the man’s dirt scoop, the takochug, and it is invariably employed by all men laboring in the sementeras.

Neither Bontoc nor Samoki is within the zone of bejuco, from which a considerable part of their basket work is made, and, as a consequence, the raw material is bartered for from pueblos one or two days distant.  Barlig furnishes most of the bejuco.  Every manojo of Bontoc and Samoki palay is tied up at harvest time with a strip of one variety of bamboo called “fika” made by the pueblos from sections of bamboo brought in bundles from a day’s journey westward to barter during April and May.  The rain hat of the Bontoc man is coated with beeswax coming in trade from Barlig, as does also the clear and pure resin used by the women of Samoki in glazing their pots.