er 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,
fastening him by bands about the waist, the arms, and head -- the
vegetal band entirely covering the open mouth. His hands were laid
in his lap. The chair was set close up before the door of the house,
with the corpse facing out. Four nights and days it remained there
in full sight of those who passed.

One-half the front wall of the dwelling and the interior partitions
except the sleeping compartment were removed to make room for those
who sat in the dwelling. Most of these came and went without function,
but day and night two young women sat or stood beside the corpse
always brushing away the flies which sought to gather at its nostrils.

During the first two days few men were about the house, but they
gathered in small groups in the vicinity of the fawi and pabafunan,
which were only three or four rods distant. Much of the time a blind
son of the dead man, the owner of the house where the old man died,
sat on his haunches in the shade under the low roof, and at frequent
intervals sang to a melancholy tune that his father was dead, that
his father could no longer care for him, and that he would be lonely