The Rain-Maker.

Abstract

BV GEORGE BALLARD BOWERS THE Igorots of Bontoc, although natives of the Phihppines, were never considered citizens while Spain ruled that archipelago. They were pagans : only Christians were eligible to Spanish citizenship ; so it happened that when our Dewey thundered at the gates of Manila, the Igorots were yet devotees of Animism, spirit-worship. While American sovereignty did not give that pagan people citizenship, it did give them a legal status denied by Spanish law. Through the centuries the Igorots had known the Spaniards as ruthless, cruel invaders, but they accepted the .\mericans as less ruthless only because in their fight with Aguinaldo's bruxfooted legions, they, the Igorots, played the role of the innocent but injured bystander. Scarcely had peace been declared in the Philippines before the former foes of America, the Christian Filipinos, began to complain of the headhunting proclivities of the Igorot warriors who frequently descended into the coastal regions to secure the heads of their Christian enemies. The Igorot considered the head of an enemy a social as well as a religious necessity ; in fact, the existence of Igorot society depended upon those grewsome trophies brought back from the lowlands. No youth of tbe tribe could become a warrior until he had taken part in a successful headhunt. No maiden ever took a mate who had never participated in a kill, the head of a foe was as much a part of the marriage ceremony as is the ring at a Christian wedding. Governor Taft's desire to protect the Christian coast-dwellers and at the same time to help the Igorots caused him to send a troop of cavalry to Bontoc for station. Captain Peck, the troop commander, was a cavalryman of the old school. He was six-footfour, w^ore long, faded mustachios, two qualities that made him an object