-hunters -- yet it does not follow that the Igorot groups have
to-day identical culture; quite the contrary is true. There are many
and wide differences even in important cultural expressions which are
due to environment, long isolation, and in some cases to ideas and
processes borrowed from different neighboring peoples. Very misleading
statements have sometimes been made in regard to the Igorot -- customs
from different groups have been jumbled together in one description
until a man has been pictured who can not be found anywhere. All
except the most general statements are worse than wasted unless a
particular group is designated.

An illustration of some of the differences between groups of typical
Igorot will make this clearer. I select as examples the people of
Bontoc and the adjoining Quiangan district in northern Nueva Vizcaya
Province, both of whom are commonly known as Igorot. It must be
noted that the people of both areas are practically unmodified by
modern culture and both are constant head-hunters. With scarcely
one exception Bontoc pueblos are single clusters of buildings;
in Banawi pueblo of the Quiangan area there are eleven separate
groups of dwellings, each group situated on a prominence which may
be easily protected by the inhabitants against an enemy below them;
and other Quiangan pueblos are similarly built. As will be brought out
in succeeding chapters, the social and political institutions of the
two peoples differ widely. In Bontoc the head weapon is a battle-ax,
in Quiangan it is a long knife. Most of the head-hunting practices
of the two peoples are different, especially as to the disposition of
the skulls of the victims. Bontoc men wear their hair long, and have
developed a small pocket-hat to confine the hair and contain small
objects carried about; the men of Quiangan wear their hair short, have
nothing whatever of the nature of the pocket-hat, but have developed
a unique hand bag which is used as a pocket. In the Quiangan area a
highly conventionalized wood-carving art has developed -- beautiful
eating spoons with figures of men and women carved on the handles
and food bowls cut in animal figures are everywhere found; while
in Bontoc only the most crude and artless wood carving is made. In
language there is such a difference that Bontoc men who accompanied
me into the northern part of the large Quiangan area, only a long day
from Bontoc pueblo, could not converse with Quiangan men, even ab