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BOOKS FROM THE THIRD-FLOOR LIBRARY OF NCCA

Index:
Rice Production in Northern Luzon: p.1
Rice Terraces
Commercialization of Agriculture
Ifugao Myths
Anthropological Explanations of Ifugao History and/or Culture
Details about Banaue the Municipality
Rice Rituals
Environmental Preservation
Ifugao Laws
Ifugao as a Province

Rice Production in Northern Luzon

Scott, W.H. (1969). “On the Cordillera.” MCS Enterprises Inc.

Page 1
Upland rice is grown in swiddens in two areas of the Mountain Province of Northern Luzon: in
one of them it is the major source of food, and in the other it supplements rice grown in
mountainside terraces. Although the overall area in which swiddens are planted to rice gives
no evidence of having recently expanded or contracted appreciable, the boundaries
between them have been driven steadily outwards from the center of the Province by a
dissemination of irrigated rice techniques which has been going on for a century or two and
which is going on at the present time.
Pushing native memory back to living grandfathers’ days, four distinct agricultural areas
show themselves to have flourished in the Mountain Province at that time. One of these was
the old terraces rice culture of the Ifugaos and central Bontocs; another was the shifting
agriculture of the swidden-farming root-eating peoples of Benguet and adjoining Ifugao and
Bontoc; a third was the dry rice culture of the Kalingas and…
Page 2
…Apayao; and the fourth was the Bontoc-bordering part of Kalinga where rice was, and still
is, grown by both methods.
The Ifugaos have become justly famous for their ability to wring a livelihood out of the
sheerest heights of Cordillera Central, and have evidently been using the same techniques
for centuries, although the line of reasoning which attributes such ages as four thousand
years to their Banaue rice terraces is not clear. They have been reported to understand the
effects of tress upon irrigation and water supply, a knowledge which could have spared
them the drying up of terraces which has kept some of the peoples of Western Bontoc from
enjoying the full benefits of this agricultural technique. Just how old Bontoc terraces are,
and whence they came, is not clear, but the demonstrable skill of the Bontoc in terracing
even the most inhospitable slopes argues for long practice.
Entering Kalinga villages thirty kilometers downstream from Bontoc and following the Chico
River is Lubuagan, the general intensity of terraces rice fields remains fairly constant—less
than that of central Bontoc—but there is a steady decline in building techniques
corresponding to the demands made by a steadily less precipitous terrain. Requirements are
still milder below Lubuagan, and by Naneng, at which point terrace-building stops, and the
slopes farmed are too gentle to demand any real skill. This whole area supplements wet rice
by farming swiddens on the surrounding hillsides—one of the characteristics by which the
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Chico Kalingas can be distinguished from the Chico Bontocs; i.e. the Kalingas of Bugnay
grown rice by both methods, while the neighboring Bontocs of Bitwagan share the pan-
Bontoc…
Page 3
… idea that rice cannot be grown successfully at this altitude by dry techniques. (Some basis
for this exaggerated viewpoint is to be found in the fact that all mountain peoples with a
history of subsisting off upland rice have done so below the level at which pine trees grow.)
The borrowing by these Chico Kalingas of Bontoc material culture—but significantly, not
social or religious institutions—in direct proportion to their proximity suggests that stone-
walled terraces came to them from the same source. Whenever this first expansion of
Cordillera farming techniques occurs, at least it was too long ago to have left any memory in
the traditions known to living men.
The expansion of irrigated rice westward as far as Abra and southwestward as far as
Lepanto seems to have come from central Bontoc (rather than Ifugao), at a considerably
later date, and in two different waves. The movement westward was accomplished by a
number of Bontoc accompanying the techniques, migrants who pressed up to the ridge
northwest of Bontoc and flowed down over the back of the Cordillera into the Abra valley,
and whose descendants almost as far north as Manado to this day have retained their
political and religious structure, and much of their language, in Tinguian houses and clothes.
Page 4
By the end of the Spanish regime, this centrifugal diffusion had carried irrigated rice
throughout Benguet, probably from Ifugao as well as from Bondoc, although not to such an
extent that it has even today replaced root crops (camote and taro) as the universal staple.
At the present time, however, even in the southern extremes of the Province where terraces
were introduced in the memory of living men, natives claim to have the requisite skill for
building their fields although admitting that they hire wall-builders from Kiangan and Pingad
“sometimes”.
Page 5
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Page 6
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Page 7

Page 8-9
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Page 10-11
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Page 12-13
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Page 14-15
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Page 16-17
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Page 18-19
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Page 20-21
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Page 22-23
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Page 24-25
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Page 26-27
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Page 28
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Rice Terraces

Pagada, E. (2006). “Ifugao Folkways and Folklore: A Compilation of Articles on Ifugao

Customs and Folklores.”
Page 19

Page 20-21
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Page 22-23
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Page 24
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Dulawan, M. (__). “The Ifugao.”

Page 23

Page 24-25
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Page 26-27
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Page 28-29
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Page 30-31
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Page 39
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Page 40-41
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Page 42
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Dulawan, L. (2001). “Ifugao: Culture and History”. National Commission for Culture and the
Arts.
Page 30-31
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Page 32-33
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Page 34
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Commercialization of Agriculture

Tapang, B.P. (2011). “Cordillera in June: Essays Celebrating June Prill-Brett,

Anthropologist.”

Page 92-93
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Page 94-95
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32
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Ifugao Myths

Pagada, E. (2006). “Ifugao Folkways and Folklore: A Compilation of Articles on Ifugao

Customs and Folklores.”
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35
36
37
 38

Dulawan, L. (2001). “Ifugao: Culture and History”. National Commission for Culture and the
Arts.

Pagada, E. (2006). “Facts about Banaue.”

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40
41
42
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Anthropological Explanations of Ifugao History and/or Culture

Dulawan, M. (2005). “Oral Literature of the Ifugao.” National Commission on Culture and the
Arts.
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45
 46

Scott, W.H. (1969). “On the Cordillera.” MCS Enterprises Inc.

47
48
49
50
 51

Dulawan, L. (2001). “Ifugao: Culture and History”. National Commission for Culture and the
Arts.
52
 53

Pagada, E. (2006). “Facts about Banaue.”

54
 55

Details about Banaue the Municipality

Pagada, E. (2006). “Facts about Banaue.”

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 57

Rice Rituals

Pagada, E. (2006). “Ifugao Folkways and Folklore: A Compilation of Articles on Ifugao

Customs and Folklores.”
58
59
 60

Dulawan, M. (2005). “Oral Literature of the Ifugao.” National Commission on Culture and the
Arts.
61
62
 63

Pagada, E. (2006). “Facts about Banaue.”

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Environmental Preservation

Pagada, E. (2006). “Facts about Banaue.”

Ifugao Laws

Dulawan, L. (2001). “Ifugao: Culture and History”. National Commission for Culture and the
Arts.
 66

Pagada, E. (2006). “Facts about Banaue.”

 67

Ifugao as a Province

Dulawan, M. (__). “The Ifugao.”

68
69
 70

Dulawan, M. (2005). “Oral Literature of the Ifugao.” National Commission on Culture and the
Arts.
 71

Dulawan, L. (2001). “Ifugao: Culture and History”. National Commission for Culture and the
Arts.
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