Puberty

Puberty is reached relatively late, usually between the fourteenth and sixteenth years.  No notice whatever is taken of it by the social group.  There is neither feast nor rite to mark the event either for the individual or the group.

This nonobservance of the fact of puberty would be very remarkable, since its observance is so widespread among primitive people, were it not for the fact that the Igorot has developed the olag —­ an institution calculated to emphasize the fact and significance of puberty.

Life in olag

Though the o’-lag is primarily the sleeping place of all unmarried girls, in the mind of the people it is, with startling consistency, the mating place of the young people of marriageable age.

A common sight on a rest day in the pueblo is that of a young man and woman, each with an arm around the other, loitering about under the same blanket, talking and laughing, one often almost supporting the other.  There seems at all times to be the greatest freedom and friendliness among the young people.  I have seen both a young man carrying a young woman lying horizontally along his shoulders, and a young woman carrying a young man astride her back.  However, practically all courtship is carried on in the o’-lag.

The courtship of the Igorot is closely defined when it is said that marriage never takes place prior to sexual intimacy, and rarely prior to pregnancy.  There is one exception.  This is when a rich and influential man marries a girl against her desires, but through the urgings of her parents.

It is customary for a young man to be sexually intimate with one, two, three, and even more girls at the same time.  Two or more of them may be residents of one o’-lag, and it is common for two or three men to visit the same o’-lag at one time.

A girl is almost invariably faithful to her temporary lover, and this fact is the more surprising in the face of the young man’s freedom and the fact that the o’-lag is nightly filled with little girls whose moral training is had there.

Young men are boldly and pointedly invited to the o’-lag.  A common form of invitation is for the girl to steal a man’s pipe, his pocket hat, or even the breechcloth he is wearing.  They say one seldom recovers his property without going to the, o’-lag for it.

When a girl recognizes her pregnancy she at once joyfully tells her condition to the father of the child, as all women desire children and there are few permanent marriages unblessed by them.  The young man, if he does not wish to marry the girl, may keep her in ignorance of his intentions for two or three months.  If at last he tells her he will not marry her she receives the news with many tears, it is said, but is spared the gossip and reproach of others, and she will later become the wife of some other man, since her first child has proved her power to bear children.