Good Book...

“For the Americans just the sheer visual spectacle of Ifugao was enough to overwhelm those seeing it for the first time: the magnificent rice terraces which turned the mountain slopes into giant staircases and range after range of steep, forbidding mountains, some stark and bare, others covered with luxuriant tropical forests, but all, to requote Captain Patstone, “grand, wild and beyond description.” Ifugao houses, the best-designed on the Cordillera, nestled picturesquely in clearings beneath areca (bettle) nut palms. The people and culture were equally striking: superb physiques, uniquely Ifugao “bowl” haircuts, spear-carrying warriors, gongs pounding out wild rhythms and bare-breasted women dancing at canaos honoring the ancestral spirits, human heads decorating homes of the brave – all these struck the imagination of the turn-of-the-century America. The Ifugao’s ability to make maximal use of their vertical mountains and centuries of backbreaking labor the terraces represented made clear their industry. They were also courageous warriors, honest and straightforward, willing to attack better-armed outsiders, reply negatively to demands that they stop head-hunting and challenge the Americans “to come and fight.”

The White Apos: American Governors on the Cordillera Central
by Frank Lawrence Jenista (p. 47-48)