Dress

The Bontoc Igorot is not much given to dress —­ under which term are considered the movable adornments of persons.  Little effort is made by the man toward dressing the head, though before marriage he at times wears a sprig of flowers or of some green plant tucked in the hat at either side.  The young man’s suklang is also generally more attractive than that of the married man.  With its side ornaments of human-hair tassels, its dog teeth, or mother-of-pearl disks, and its red and yellow colors, it is often very gay.

About one hundred and fifty men in Bontoc and Samoki own and sometimes wear at the girdle a large 7-inch disk of mother-of-pearl shell.  It is called “fi-kum’,” and its use is purely ornamental. (See Pls.  LXXX and XXX.) It is valued highly, and I have not known half a dozen Igorot to part with one for any price.  This shell ornament is widespread through the country east and also south of the Bontoc area, but nowhere is it seen plentifully, except on ceremonial days —­ probably not a dozen are worn daily in Bontoc.

Other forms of adornment, though only a means to a permanent end, are the ear stretchers and variety of ear plugs which are worn in a slit in the ear lobe preparing it for the earring —­ the sing-sing, which all hope to possess.  The stretcher consists of two short pieces of bamboo forced apart and so held by two short crosspieces inserted between them.  The bamboo ear stretcher is generally ornamented by straight incised lines.  The plugs are not all considered decorative.  Some are bunches of a vegetable pith (Pl.  CXXXVIII), others are wads of sugar-cane leaves.  Some, however, are wooden plugs shaped quite like an ordinary large cork stopper of a bottle (Pl.  CXXXVII).  The outer end is often ornamented by straight incised lines or with red seeds affixed with wax or with a small piece of a cheap glass mirror roughly inlaid.  The long ear slit is not the end sought, because if the owner despairs of owning the coveted earring the stretchers and plugs are eventually removed and the slit contracts from an inch and one-half to a quarter of an inch or less in length.  The long slit is desired because the people consider the effect more beautiful when the ring swings and dangles at the bottom of the pendant ear.  The gold earring is the most coveted, but a few silver and many copper rings are worn in substitution for the gold.

FIGURE 8

Metal earrings.  (A, gold; B, copper (both are two or three generations old and their patterns are no longer made); C, copper; D, silver.)

This is practically the extent of the everyday adornment worn by the boys and men.  Small boys sometimes wear a brass-wire bracelet; but the brass wire, so commonly worn on the wrists, ankles, and necks of the people east, north, and south of the Bontoc area, is not affected by the people of Bontoc.