everywhere crop out from the grassy hills. Up and down the mountains
the trail leads, passing another small pine forest near Ankiling
and Titipan, about four hours from Bontoc, and then creeps on and
at last through the terraced entrance way into the mountain pocket
where Bontoc pueblo lies, about 100 miles from the western coast,
and, by Government aneroid barometer, about 2,800 feet above the sea.


Marks of Bontoc culture

It is difficult and often impossible to state the essential difference
in culture which distinguishes one group of people from another. It
is more difficult to draw lines of distinction, for the culture of
one group almost imperceptibly flows into that of another adjoining it.

However, two fundamental institutions of the people of Bontoc seem to
differ from those of most adjoining people. One of these institutions
has to do with the control of the pueblo. Bontoc has not developed
the headman -- the "principal" of the Spaniard, the "Bak-nan'"
of the Benguet Igorot -- the one rich man who becomes the pueblo,
leader. In Benguet Province the headman is found in every pueblo,
and he is so powerful that he often dominates half a dozen outlying
barrios to the extent that he receives a large share, often one-half,
of the output of all the productive labors of the barrio. Immediately
north of the Bontoc area, in Tinglayan, the headman is again found. He
has no place whatever in Bontoc. The control of the pueblos of the
Bontoc area is in the hands of groups of old men; however, each
group, called "intugtukan," operates only within a single political
and geographic portion of the pueblo, so that no one group has in
charge the control of the pueblo. The pueblo is a loose federation