Bontoc lies compactly built on a sloping piece of ground, roughly about half a mile square.  Through the pueblo are two water-cut ravines, down which pour the waters of the mountain ridge in the rainy season, and in which, during much of the remainder of the year, sufficient water trickles to supply several near-by dwellings.

Adjoining the pueblo on the north and west are two small groves where a religious ceremonial is observed each month.  Granaries for rice are scattered all about the outer fringe of dwellings, and in places they follow the ravines in among the buildings of the pueblo.  The old, broad Spanish trail runs close to the pueblo on the south and east, as it passes in and out of the pocket through the gaps cut by the river.  About the pueblo at the east and northeast are some fifteen houses built in Spanish time, most of them now occupied by Ilokano men with Igorot or half-breed wives.  There also were the Spanish Government buildings, reduced to a church, a convent, and another building used now as headquarters for the Government Constabulary.

The pueblo, now 2,000 or 2,500 people, was probably at one time larger.  There is a tradition common in both Bontoc and Samoki that in former years the ancestors of this latter pueblo lived northeast of Bontoc toward the northern corner of the pocket.  They say they moved to the opposite side of the river because there they would have more room.  There they have grown to 1,200 or 1,500 souls.  Still later, but yet before the Spanish came, a large section of people from northeastern Bontoc moved bodily to Lias, about two days to the east.  They tell that a Bontoc woman named Fank’-a was the wife of a Lias man, and when a drought and famine visited Bontoc the section of the pueblo from which she came moved as a whole to Lias, then a small collection of people.  Still later, La’-nao, a detached section of Bontoc on the lowland near the river, was suddenly wiped out by a disease.

The Igorot is given to naming even small areas of the earth within his well-known habitat, and there are four areas in Bontoc pueblo having distinct names.  These names in no way refer to political or social divisions —­ they are not the “barrio” of the coast pueblos of the Islands, neither are they in any way like a “ward” in an American city, nor are they “additions” to an original part of the pueblo —­ they are names of geographic areas over which the pueblo was built or has spread.  From south to north these areas are A-fu’, Mag-e’-o, Dao’-wi, and Um-feg’.

Ato

Bontoc is composed of seventeen political divisions, called “a’-to.”  The geographic area of A-fu’ contains four a’-to, namely, Fa-tay’-yan, Po-lup-o’, Am-ka’-wa, and Bu-yay’-yeng; Mag-e’-o contains three, namely, Fi’-lig, Mag-e’-o, and Cha-kong’; Dao’-wi has six, namely, Lo-wing’-an, Pud-pud-chog’, Si-pa’-at, Si-gi-chan’, So-mo-wan’, and Long-foy’; Um-feg’ has four, Po-ki’-san, Lu-wa’-kan, Ung-kan’, and Cho’-ko.  Each a’-to is a separate political division.  It has its public buildings; has a separate governing council which makes peace, challenges to war, and accepts or rejects war challenges, and it formally releases and adopts men who change residence from one a’-to to another.