In a head ceremony which began in Samoki May 21, 1903, there was a hand, a jaw, and an ear suspended from posts in the courts of ato Nag-pi’, Ka’-wa, and Nak-a-wang’, respectively.  In each of the eight ato of the pueblo the head ceremony was performed.  In their dances the men wore about their necks rich strings of native agate beads which at other dances the women usually wear on their heads.  Many had boar-tusk armlets, some of which were gay with tassels of human hair.  Their breechcloths were bright and long.  All wore their battle-axes, two of which were freshly stained halfway up the blade with human blood —­ they were the axes used in severing the trophies from the body of the slain.

On the second day the dance began about 4 o’clock in the morning, at which time a bright, waning moon flooded the pueblo with light.  At every ato the dance circle was started in its swing, and barely ceased for a month.  A group of eight or ten men formed, as is shown in Pl.  CXXXI, and danced contraclockwise around and around the small circle.  Each dancer beat his blood and emotions into sympathetic rhythm on his gangsa, and each entered intently yet joyfully into the spirit of the occasion —­ they had defeated an enemy in the way they had been taught for generations.

It was a month of feasting and holidays.  Carabaos, hogs, dogs, and chickens were killed and eaten.  No work except that absolutely necessary was performed, but all people —­ men, women, and children —­ gathered at the ato dance grounds and were joyous together.

Each ato brought a score of loads of palay, and for two days women threshed it out in a long wooden trough for all to eat in a great feast.  This ceremonial threshing is shown in Pl.  CXXXII.  Twenty-four persons, usually all women, lined up along each side of the trough, and, accompanying their own songs by rhythmic beating of their pestles on the planks strung along the sides of the trough, each row of happy toilers alternately swung in and out, toward and from the trough, its long heavy pestles rising and falling with the regular “click, click, thush; click, click, thush!” as they fell rebounding on the plank, and were then raised and thrust into the palay-filled trough.

After heads have been taken by an ato any person of that ato —­ man, woman, or child —­ may be tattooed; and in Bontoc pueblo they maintain that tattooing may not occur at any other time, and that no person, unless a member of the successful ato, may be tattooed.

After the captured head has been in the earth under the fawi court of Bontoc about three years it is dug up, washed in the river, and placed in the large basket, the so-lo’-nang, in the fawi, where doubtless it is one of several which have a similar history.  At such time there is a three-day’s ceremony, called “min-pa-fa’-kal is nan mo’-king.”  It is a rest period for the entire pueblo, with feasting and dancing, and three or four hogs are killed.  The women may then enter the fawi; it is said to be the only occasion they are granted the privilege.