An account of the people in the North Luzon Highlands, Philippines

Ethnographic Background
- Kalingas live in the North Luzon Highlands (Cordillera Central)
- Population: approximately 72,500
- “A fine lot of headhunting savages, physically magnificently developed, mentally, acute,
but naturally very wild” ~ Dean Worcester, 1st American administrator
- Houses
- Raised above the ground on posts w/ steps or ladder leading up to a single
entrance; square, single-room dwellings
- Walls: made up of split and plaited bamboo
- Pitched roofs: made of strong reeds and thatched w/ thick grass
- Floors: split bamboo mats resting on a grating of small beams
- Each dwelling has a hearth: square box filled w/ sand and accumulated ash
- Marriages
- Practice matrilocality
- Observe regional endogamy, thereby produce a deme
- Relatives closer than fourth cousins are forbidden
- Polygyny is allowed but only practiced by few wealthy Kalingas
- Labor
- Work is done through human muscle power
- Carabaos used for trampling the soil in the terraced rice fields
- Dogs used in tracking wild animals
- Reciprocal work group: highly important part of Kalinga social structure
- Accomplish work with a simple tool kit (axes, fishing rods, spears, chisel,
hammer, shovel, dibble stick, grubbing hoe)
- Household items
- Clay pots, iron vats coconut shells (for cups & ladles)
- Richer households have imported, modern items (aluminum pots and pans,
glasses, and plates)
- Social structure
- Large units: village and deme
- Small units: household and ili (neighborhood)
- Household is the center and focal point of their world
- Autonomous (do not have strong leadership or territorial organizations)
- Decisions are done through discussion and consensus
- Believe that all things (animate and inanimate) must be given due honor and
respect
Production
- Rice
- Can be grown in terraced and irrigated paddies and in rain-fed swiddens
- Traditional Kalinga rice varieties are tall w/ droopy leaves and weak stem,
susceptible to lodging (causes the plant to bend over when it reaches a certain
height, exhibit perennial growth habits, and highly resistant to local diseases and
insects
 - First crop (planted in Jan-Feb & harvested in June) - one variety; Second crop
(planted in July-Aug & harvested in Nov-Dec) - six varieties
- Paddies: usually continuously wet all year-round, clean, close to household,
highly productive, have no leeches
- Paddy cycle: preparation, planting, cleaning, harvesting, also including repair and
maintenance of terrace walls, irrigation ditches, selection and care of seeds, the
use of carabaos and tools, and formation of reciprocal work groups
- Transplanting and Harvesting are accomplished by a reciprocal work group
- After harvest is dried, it is piled under granary for a few days then stored inside as
stalk palay
- Meat
- Comes from carabaos, pigs, and chickens
- Carabaos were initially used as animals to butcher for various ceremonies;
obtained through borrowing, buying, husbandry, inheriting, renting, and stealing;
paid back with an equivalent item
- Pigs: highly adapted to the local environment, very resistant to pests and diseases,
will eat almost anything, require little care, effective scavengers of human feces;
little husbandry is practiced, male pigs are butchered before females pigs
- Cattle have never been plentiful until the beginning of 20th century; carabaos
were still preferred because they could both be used for ceremonies & trampling
(cattles are not effective for trampling because they lack enormous feet & more
susceptible to diseases)
- Most common fowl is the chicken, however they were relatively rare & an egg is
a rare treat (ducks were also present during this time)
- Dogs are fairly rare but they are slaughtered and roasted for a social event (no
name, eventually called “piknik”) exclusively for men, which is often done with
secrecy in the nearby forest/distant fields
- Vegetables and Tubers
- Classifications can be subdivided into crucifer (cabbage), cucurbits (squash, bitter
melon, bottle gourd, luffa), legume (peas, beans), bulb crops (onions, garlic),
tubers (camote, taro), and solanaceous (eggplant) and malvaceous plants (okra)
- Other parts of the vegetables (tops and leaves) are used for cooking & treated as
vegetables as well.
- Tubers are more important on the diet of peoples
- Camote is more popular than taro because it is less susceptible to disease, has
higher yield, faster maturing, easier for both human and pigs to eat; can also be a
substitute in lieu of rice
- Leaves and vines are usually fed to the pigs
- Fish
- Little fishing occurs on the Pasil River
- Fishing as a food supplement to the household’s rice fields and other food sources
- Fishinng techniques: bag-net fishing, bait fishing, falling-net fishing, fishing
traps, grappling, lifting-net fishing, stunning, and wounding
- Beginning of the dry season (April and May), mark the beginning of the fishing
season (trapping and line fishing techniques are popular during these months)
 - Nets are used from Aug-Nov (rivers are often swollen); grappling and wounding
are used from Jul-Aug or whenever the water is clear; falling-net technique is also
used from Jul-Aug when rivers are not swollen and water is clear; bait-fishing,
stunning, and wounding may be used anytime
- Fish most often caught are dalit, eel, ikan (squat fish), kollidaw (largest fish),
parilong (sucker fish), lagdaw (small shrimp), kipkip (small fish), tilapia, balanba,
small mochi fish
- Fruits
- Primary fruits are avocado, mango, papaya, oranges, guavas, santol, gayuvana,
star apple, sugarcane, coconuts, pineapple, jackfruit, karvasa
- Considered food for children (parents sacrifice eating fruit for the sake of their
children)
- Beverages
- Americans introduced coffee
- Basi: fermented sugarcane juice; important in ceremonies and social gatherings
- Snack foods
- Major snack food is maize, which was once a major crop
- Favorite of wild pigs and rats
- Maize is eaten by Kalingas only as a snack, boiled or roasted
- Raw stalks of a sugarcane may also be chewed as a snack
- Seasoning
- Sili: hot, small green and red pepper that grows plentifully along the river banks
- Introduced by the Spaniards from Mexico
- Peppers are gathered and dried and sometimes mashed
- Bagoong: salty fish or shrimp delicacy from the Ilokanos; used as flavoring
- Traded various items to purchase salt (since indigenous production of salt is quite
laborious)
- Hunting and Gathering
- Kalingas usually hunt with dogs, and a good hunting dog is highly valued
- Hunters go out in groups of 10 and split into groups of two or three, each with
several dogs
- The most common game are deer and wild pigs
- Weapons used are spear (tibay; either steel or bamboo tipped), machete (made
from iron)
- Four main traps: a pit for trapping wild pigs and deer (beto); a falling log trap
usually placed at the edge of a swidden (korbit); a string-triggered spear trap for
deer and pigs (balais); a springloop trap for birds, mitit, and wild chickens (lasag).
- Apad (smaller version of lasag) is lesser used for trapping lizards
- Primary hunting season: Feb-April although hunting may be done year-round
- Rainy season brings out the much disliked leeches and dry season is where
hunters are usually free from their primary work in paddies and swiddens
- Vegetables that are cultivated also grow wild (Pakpako, Saksakrong, Chayote)
which are boiled and used mostly to flavor rice
Preparation
- Highly influenced by the Ilokanos
- “Half and half” cooking: using garlic, soy sauce and pimenta
 - Adapted the Iloko dish Dinuguan
- Rice is hand-pounded usually by women (used chupa: pan-Philippine volume
measurement); rice is cooked in boiling water in a clay pot (absoprtion cooking)
- Meat from domesiticated animals (not wild animals) can be eaten only on special
occasions
- Vegetables and tubers: very little preparation is done (shaking the dirt off & washing);
eaten raw or boiled
- Beverages: coffee beans are stored, pounded w/ palay peelings, dried, cleaned by
winnowing, pounded again ro remove skins. Then they are dried, roasted, and pounded
into power
Consumption
- Typical Kalinga meal: rice (core ingredient) and boiled bean sooup (probably without
salt)
- Meals are usually eaten three times a day with snacks for those working in the fields
- Meat is typically not chewed but simply swallowed
- Coarser vegetables and tubers are chewed, but slimy vegetables are eaten by simply
tipping back their heads and letting the stuff slide down their throats (Kalinga diet is
exotic and bland)
- Coffee is widely used drink at all time of the day having replaced camote soup as an all-
purpose drink
Availability and Preference
- Kalingas have no nutritional information about the food they intake (no vitamin/mineral
content, food pyramids, calorie counts, dietitians); they also have no food disorders, they
view food as fuel
- They have food preferences. Selection of food is highly influenced by aroma, color, taste,
texture, cultural expectations and individual preference
- Selection is determined primarily by smell and color (since they do not chew food)
- Dull and subdued colors are preferred to bright ones (children often prefer the bright ones
that’s why they like fruits)
- Kalingas tend to smell all foods eating them, anything with a rotting smell is discarded
- Meat of any kind clearly ranks as the preferred food
- “Ideal meal”: several huge chunks of meat, small handful of rice, few vegetables
- Common meal today: relatively large pile of rice, big handful of vegetables, occasionally
a small chunk of meat
Human and Crop Diseases
- Not much is known about health among the Kalingas, much more us known about the
health of crops
- Lodging: most common ill health of the rice crop in the lowlands (caused by fertilizer);
since Kalingas do not use fertilizer, lodging is not much of a problem
- Rice virus disease: transmitted by leafhoppers and planthoppers (most common: tungro
(vukaw), it strikes soon after transplanting & recognized by discoloration of leaves)
- Ing-gi: most common rats, eat rice plants at any stage
- The jute semilooper, hairy caterpillar, and jute mite attack corchorus, and stem rot is the
most common plant disease.
 - Diseases of the mung bean: powdery mildew (caused by fungus), carcospora leaf spot
(shows up in rust-colored spots), mungoic mosaic virus (symptoms are deformed leaves
and shunting)
- Disease of maize: downy mildew
Feasts and Famines
- have had experiences with famines and have learned to cope with food shortages
- Shortage resulted in changed food habits.
- Formerly eels and dogs were taboo, but apparently the taboo against eels and dogs went
out with the 1927-1929 food shortage
- Another change in eating habits (1970s) is the use of the inner trunk of the banana tree as
a vegetable, especially during the summer months. (normally fed to pigs)
- If it’s noticed that a pig doesn’t eat for two days and is sick, it is slaughtered
- Feet of slaughtered animals were used to be thrown away but are now eaten
Rituals and Taboos
- Food rituals play an important part in the interactions among often feuding demes
- It was a custom among the tribe to offer visitors salt if they have it, bananas if salt is
lacking, and water in the event that neither salt nor bananas is available
- Visitors are offered a drink and if one refuses to drink/eat, that means the person is
considered an enemy (if they eat/drink = accepts friendship)
- Most common ritual in hunting: interpretation of the behavior of the idaw (variety of
myna)
- Idaw carries messages from the spirit world and foretells the future
- Hunters must receive a favorable sign from the idaw before beginning and during the
hunt (unfavorable sign = aborted hunt)
- Paniyaw: covering prohibitions and omens in agriculture (taboo)
- Taboo
- Wet rice nursery
- Visiting those who just planted the wet nursery
- Eating dogs and eels for the household involved in the wet nursery
- Harvesting
- Stepping over harvested panicles after they are placed on the dike
(banong)
- Sneezing and whistling are prohibited
- Using bamboo as fuel
- Fallen grains of bundles (bobod) that are hung to dry should be picked up
and used only by women
- Getting palay from the granary is prohibited until after the third day in the
belief that the rice will last longer if it is allowed to settle into its new
home
- Southern Kalingaland: old men harvest (inapowan) and plant first, in
Western Kalingaland, old women do these first
- Currently rats and snakes are taboo, but some kill and eat these creatures
when they come across them