During the period when the water-soaked soil of the sementera is turned for transplanting palay the women engaged in such labor generally lay aside their skirts.  Sometimes they retain a girdle and tuck an apron of camote leaves or of weeds under it before and behind.  I have frequently come upon women entirely naked climbing up and down the steep, stone dikes of their sementeras while weeding them, and also at the clay pits where Samoki women get their earth for making pottery.  In May, 1903, it rained hard every afternoon for two or three hours in Bontoc pueblo, and at such times the women out of doors uniformly removed their clothing.  They worked in the fields and went from the fields to their dwellings nude, wearing on their heads while in the trail either their long, basket rain protector or a head covering of camote vines, under which reposed their skirts in an effort to keep them dry.  Sometimes while passing our house en route from the field to the pueblo the women wore the girdle with the camote-vine apron, called pay-pay.  Often no girdle was worn, but the women held a small bunch of leaves against the body in lieu of an attached apron.  Sometimes, however, their hands were occupied with their burdens, and their nudity seemed not to trouble them in the least.  The women remove their skirts, they say, because they usually possess only one at a time, and they prefer to go naked in the rain and while working in the wet sementeras rather than sit in a wet skirt when they reach home.

Few women in the Bontoc area wear jackets or waists.  Those to the west, toward the Province of Lepanto, frequently wear short ones, open in front without fastening, and having quarter sleeves.  Those women also wear somewhat longer skirts than do the Bontoc women.

In Agawa, and near-by pueblos to the west, and in Barlig and vicinity to the east, the women make and wear flayed-bark jackets and skirts.  From Barlig bark jackets for women come in trade to Tulubin.  They are not simply sheets of bark, but the bark is strengthened by a coarse reinforcement of a warp sewed or quilted.

Many of the women’s skirts and girdles woven west of Bontoc pueblo are made also of the Ilokano cotton.  The skirts and girdles of Bontoc pueblo and those found commonly eastward are entirely of Igorot production.  Four varieties of plants yield the threads; the inner bark is gathered and then spun or twisted on the naked thigh under the palm of the hand (see Pl.  LXXXIII).

All weaving in Igorot land is done by the woman with the simplest kind of loom, such as is scattered the world over among primitive people.  It is well shown in Pl.  LXXXIV, which is a photograph of a Lepanto Igorot loom.

Implement and utensil production

Introduction

It is only after one has brought together all the implements and utensils of an Igorot pueblo that he realizes the large part played in it by basket work.  Were basketry and pottery cut from the list of his productions the Igorot’s everyday labors would be performed with bare hands and crude sticks.