eter, 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
of smaller political groups.

The other institution is a social development. It is the olag,
an institution of trial marriage. It is not known to exist among
adjoining people, but is found throughout the area in which the
intugtukan exists; they are apparently coextensive. I was repeatedly
informed that the olag is not found in the Banawi area south of Bontoc,
or in the Tinglayan area east, or among the Tinguian to the north,
or in Benguet far southwest, or in Lepanto immediately southwest --
though I have some reason to believe that both the intugtukan and
olag exist in a crumbling way among certain Lepanto Igorot.

Besides these two institutions there are other differing marks of
culture between the Bontoc area and adjoining people. Some of these
were suggested a few pages back, others will appear in following pages.

Without doubt the limits of the spread of the common culture have
been determined mainly by the physiography of the country. One of the
two pueblos in the area not on the common drainage system is Lias,
but Lias was largely built by a migration from Bontoc pueblo --