On the Cordillera: a look at the peoples and cultures of the Mountain Province

In this volume the reader will find a number of papers devoted to various aspects of life in the Mountain Province as a whole, along with a detailed survey of the economic, cultural and religious life of the Kalingas of Madukayan, and a series of studies on the agriculture, language and folklore of the Sagada Igorots. Scott has some new and important things to say about upland rice, calendars, and religious concepts in Northern Luzon; and his study of cordilleran architecture has clarified the variety of external forms through a detailed analysis and comparison of their internal structure. The survey of the little-known Kalingas of Madukayan was carried out during two vacations as guest of Pangat Gomabol, the headman of this western Kalinga region. Here a group of settlers from the Tanudan valley have introduced wet rice cultivation into a dry rice area and we can see something of the processes of change and acculturation in actual operation. But the bulk of the studies relate to the Igorots of Sagada, where Scott served as Principal and Staff Missionary at St. Mary's School during the decade 1954-1963. Here we see how children grow up in Sagada, how rice is grown, some of the legends which provide their history, the nature of the social and ceremonial cycle, and some of the problems of translating Christianity into the local language and ways of life.