Women and small children wade about the river and pick up quantities of small crabs, called “ag-ka’-ma,” and also a small spiral shell, called “ko’-ti.”  It is safe to say that every hour of a rainless day one or more persons of Bontoc is gathering such food in the river.  Immediately after the first rain of the season of 1903, coming April 5, there were twenty-four persons, women and small children, within ten rods of one another, searching the river for ag-ka’-ma and ko’-ti.

The women wear a small rump basket tied around the waist in which they carry their lunch to the rice sementeras, and once or twice each week they bring home from a few ounces to a pound of small crustaceans.  One variety is named song’-an, another is kit-an’, a third is fing’-a, and a fourth is lis’-chug.  They are all collected in the mud of the sementeras.

Vegetal production

All materials for timbers and boards for the dwellings, granaries, and public buildings, all wood for fires, all wood for shields, for ax and spear handles, for agricultural implements, and for household utensils, and all material for splints employed in various kinds of basket work, and for strings (warp and woof) employed in the weaving of Bontoc girdles and skirts, are gathered wild with no effort at cultural production.  There are three exceptions to this statement, however.  One small shrub, called “pu-ug’,” is planted near the house as a fiber plant, and is no longer known to the Igorot in the wild state.  Much of the bamboo from which the basket-work splints are made is purchased from people west of Bontoc.  And, lastly, there is no doubt that a certain care is taken in preserving pine trees for large boards and timbers and for coffins; there is a cutting away of dead and small branches from these trees.  Moreover, the cutting of other trees and shrubs for firewood certainly has a beneficial effect upon the forest trees left standing.  In fact, all persons preserve the small pitch-pine trees on private lands, and it is a crime to cut them on another’s land, although a poor man may cut other varieties on private lands when needed.

Cultural production

Agriculture

In all of Igorot culture the most apparent and strikingly noteworthy fact is its agriculture.  In agriculture the Igorot has reached his highest development.  On agriculture hangs his claim to the rank of barbarian —­ without it he would be a savage.

Igorot agriculture is unique in Luzon, and, so far as known, throughout the Archipelago, in its mountain terraces and irrigation.

There are three possible explanations of the origin of Philippine rice terraces.  First, that they (and those of other islands peopled by primitive and modern Malayans, and those of Japan and China) are indigenous —­ the product of the mountain lands of each isolated area; second, that most of them are due to cultural influences from one center, or possibly more than one center, to the north of Luzon —­ as influences from China or Japan spreading southward from island to island; third, that they, especially all those of the Islands —­ excluding only China —­ are due to influences originating south of the Philippines, spreading northward from island to island.