three suicides in Bontoc. Many years ago an old man and woman hung
themselves in their dwellings because they were old and infirm, and
a man from Bitwagan hung himself in the Spanish jail at Bontoc a few
years ago.

The spirit of the person who dies a so-called natural death is called
away by an anito. The anito of those who die in battle receive the
special name "pin-teng'"; such spirits are not called away, but the
person's slayer is told by some pin-teng', "You must take a head." So
it may be said that no death occurs among the Igorot (except the rare
death by suicide) which is not due directly to an anito.

Since they are warriors, the men who die in battle are the most
favored, but if not killed in battle all Igorot prefer to die in
their houses. Should they die elsewhere, they are at once taken home.

On March 19, 1903, wise, rich Som-kad', of ato Luwakan, and the oldest
man of Bontoc, heard an anito saying, "Come, Som-kad'; it is much
better in the mountains; come." The sick old man laboriously walked
from the pabafunan to the house of his oldest son, where he had for
nearly twenty years taken his food, and there among his children
and friends he died on the night of March 21. Just before he died a
chicken was killed, and the old people gathered at the house, cooked
the chicken, and ate, inviting the ancestral anitos and the departing
spirit of Som-kad' to the feast. Shortly after this the spirit of
the live man passed from the body searching the mountain spirit land
for kin and friend. They closed the old man's eyes, washed his body
and on it put the blue burial robe with the white "anito" figures
woven in it as a stripe. They fashioned a rude, high-back chair with
a low seat, a sung-a'-chil (Pl. XLI), and bound the dead man in it,