I have seen Tukukan women come to Bontoc wearing a solid diadem about the hair.  It consisted of a rattan foundation encircling the head, covered with blackened beeswax studded with three parallel rows of encircling bright-red seeds.  It made a very striking headdress.

Now and then a woman is seen wearing beads around the neck, but the Bontoc woman almost never has such adornment.  They are seen frequently in pueblos to the west, however.  The beads for everyday wear are seeds in black, brown, and gray.  There is also a small, irregular, cylindrical, wooden bead worn by the women.  It is sometimes worn in strings of three or four beads by men.  I believe it is considered of talismanic value when so worn.

Many women in Mayinit and some women of Bontoc wear the heirloom girdle, called “a-ko’-san,” made of shells and brass wire encircling a cloth girdle (see Pl.  CXL).  The cloth is made in the form of a long, narrow wallet, practically concealed at the back by the encircling wire and shells.  Within this wallet the cherished agate and white stone hairdress is often hidden away.  In Mayinit this girdle is frequently worn beneath the skirt, when it becomes, in every essential and in the effect produced, a bustle.  I have never seen it so worn in Bontoc.

Decoration

Under this head are classed all the forms of permanent adornment of the person.

First must be cited the cutting and stretching of the ear.  Whereas the long, pendant earlobe is not the end in itself, nor is the long slit always permanent, yet the mutilation of the ear is permanent and desired.  In a great many cases the lobe breaks, and the two, and even three, long strips of lobe hanging down seem to give their owner certain pride.  Often the lower end of one of these strips is pierced and supports a ring.  The sexes share alike in the preparation for and the wearing of earrings.

The woman has a permanent decoration of the nature of the “switch” of the civilized woman.  The loose hair combed from the head with the fingers is saved, and is eventually rolled with the live hair of the head into long, twisted strings, some of which are an inch in diameter and three feet long; some women have more than a dozen of these twisted strings attached to the scalp.  This is a common, though not universal, method of decorating the head, and the mass of lard-soaked, twisted hair stands out prominently around the crown, held more or less in place by the various bead hairdresses. (See Pls.  CXLI and CXLII.)

Tattoo

The great permanent decoration of the Igorot is the tattoo.  As has been stated in Chapter VI on “War and Head-Hunting,” all the members —­ men, women, and children —­ of an ato may be tattooed whenever a head is taken by any person of the ato.  It is claimed in Bontoc that at no other time is it possible for a person to be tattooed.  But Tukukan tattooed some of her women in May, 1903, and this in spite of the fact that no heads had recently been taken there.  However, the regulations of one pueblo are not necessarily those of another.