Uprooted Igorots Returned Home

In the previous issue of this paper, I stated that when the Aguinaldo forces came, and the American soldiers after them, the Ibalois who were uprooted from their respective villages returned to them thus making  Baguio seemingly devoid of people except a few who belonged to the Apulog – Padya Clan, that is the Dengbises or Enrique Ortega Clan, the Pinaoan Baticalang and Picnay Clan, the Dovos Badjating and Tadaha Apulog Clan, and Kidit Apulog and his wife, Samay Piraso; and the Kumicho II clan. 

The descendants of Kumicho by his son Apsan Carantes were Cuidno, Mateo a.ka Kustacio, Jatjaten and Tacdoy, a.k.a. Damsis.

In Pacshal and its adjacent areas, there were the descendants of Baticalang and his wife Sela the Ubanan or Uvanan (with grey hair, i.e  uba n or uvan).  They were Piraso, Pinaoan, Khasima and Sulikham.

From Piraso descended Salming, Cotileng, and others. From Pinaoan and Picnay were Molintas, Rafael who is also known as Rebes or Rives, and others.  From Khasima were Mendoza (Tonged) Djaris, and  Siwed and Shagul Abodilis.  And from Sulikham and Comising who was also known as Tagdi  and Tagley or Tagle and Tagley Soley was Amado, a.k.a Takinan.

These were the people who lived within the Baguio of that time, the one-square kilometer where the ‘paoay’ grass abounded hence its being referred to as Kafagwayan, aside from its being a place where the Baguio  hang from the pine tree branches  in great numbers.

There were also other Ibalois in Baguio then  who did not leave the place when the Americans came.  But  some who were brought to the one-square kilometer wide Baguio that the Spaniards made into a ‘pueblo’  went back to their villages which they were forced to leave because of the Spaniards desire to concentrate them in their so-called pueblo.  Kalias of Loakjan was one who went back to Loakan when the Americas came but his son Comising Tagle or Tagley was left behind with his wife Sulikham Baticalang.   Their house was on the spot where the Baguio Cathedral now stands.  Sulikham’s hrother Piraso lived on the area  east of  the Baguio Cathedral.  

For some reasons, Tagdi and his wife Sulikham left for Bisil  where the Bell Church was built years later when she was about to give birth to her second baby.   There, Sulikham gave birth to her second and youngest son Takinan,  after which she died.

Amado B. Tagle was said to have been born when the Americans arrived in Baguio.   The person who wrote  the information as to the date of birth of the late Amado based on the information relayed to him, that is, the date  nunta  inmu’gaw ni Merikano shi Baguio, i.e., when the Americans arrived in Baguio  wrote Amado’s birth date  as being on November 17, 1900.

Because of the demise of his wife Sulikham, Comising, or Mising who became Tagdi  or Tagley followed his father Kalias  to Loakan, bringing his baby boy and his firstborn with him.  His female cousins who had babies of their own nursed Amado until he could eat solid food. 

After a short while, Kalias died.   But before he expired, he left instructions to his oldest daughter Bogan who was already  a widow at that time, and to his youngest child Tagdi or Tagley who was already a widower at a young age,  to help each other raise their children, where Bogan should act as the mother of their children, and  Tagdi  who was then still called Comising  as the father of their children.   This resulted to Tagley’s being known as the father of Bogan’s children, hence their surname Comising.  Bogan;s children were Canaya, Pilanta, and Masinag, a.k.a Shaon who all bore the surname Comising.  (To be continued).

B.T. Pistola
(Authority to repost given by Author)

Published at:
Volume 1, No 4
TNT, Baguio City, Philippines
August 10, 2014
https://thenortherntribune.blogspot.com/

The Early Ibalois

Would you like to write a column in The Tribune? 

So I asked the little old girl. What about? 

Well, maybe you could write about the Ibaloys  

Oh well, maybe.

So here I am, and hoping to be able to help in telling the story of the Ibalois in a manner that will be of help to them.

The Ibalois today, compared to their fellow people from the mountains, or Igorots, are a much abused group of people. They were the people who owned the mines and the mountains in the land that became known as Benguet, they were the ones who. according to them, their gods chose to use the hills and mountains that have been included in the land now known as Benguet. Of course, they are not the only ones. There are also the Benguet Kankanais, and the Ikadasans, or Kalanguyas.

I say they were the ones who, according to them, their god chose to use the hills, and the mountains and the plains that came to be part of what is now known as the Province of Benguet. My mother said that the old people of Benguet did not call the lands they tilled their own. They ascribed the ownership of these to their god “Kabunian”.

And because they were the ones he chose to use the land, they did their best to prevent other people from getting into it and bringing along with them diseases.- They did what they could to prevent people from other places to destroy their improvements. (See also The book, Discovery of the Igorots, by W.H. Scott).

The Ibalois, or Ibaloys, or Ivadoys spoke and still speak Inibaloi, their dialect which, when pronounced by a shubdaan – smoking Ibaloi old woman sounds like “Nabaloi”, but is actually Inibaloi. Sometimes, they call their dialect Inikholot, or Inigodot with the letter “g” pronounced with a rush of air from the throat that makes it sound unlike “go” as in you go.

The shubdaan is a kind of leaf which the Ibaloi women dried, rolled and smoked. I used to help my lola dry and roll her shubdaan, and also to smoke it when she was not looking. That was when I was a little girl, and we still lived with my lola. I do know that when one speaks a word while one has a shubdaan in one’s mouth, the word one speaks get deformed somehow as when one says Inibaloi which ends up sounding like Nabaloi especially in a foreign ear.

The early Ibalois did do their best with what meager weapons they had, with some degree of intelligence, to send the Spaniards packing. For years, the Spaniards tried to get them to show where and how they got their gold. But the Igorots from the mountains of what is now known as Benguet foiled their attempts for more than 200 years. It was only in the 1800s that the Spaniards were able to get into their domain, and it was not because of the gold that they sought, but because of their desire to stop the Igorot s from getting their hands in the Tobacco Trade which was the Spaniards solution for funding their government.

It was in 1829 that the Col. Guillermo Galvey marched into the mountains of Benguet from La Union. His first target was the place called Benguet (now La Trinidad), a place then known for its large herds of carabaos, cows and horses and irrigated fields of taro, camote and sugar cane. Two days after reaching the place on January 8, 1829, he burnt 180 houses and departed because the villagers “were so hostile that he could not even conduct a parley”. From there, he went to Kapangan, then Kayan where he got hurt before reaching it, but pretended to be all right so that his men will not be demoralized. Thus started the attempt to make the Cordilleras part of the Spanish Colony, but they were not really able to do so as the Igorots sent the last governor packing as the 19th century was ending.

On his return to Benguet after travelling thru the Cordilleras, Galvey establisjed his Commandancia Militar there and renamed it La Trinidad after his wife. Galvey, “the greatest despoiler of the Igorots” died in 1839, but to date, the place still bears his wife’s name.

From her father, my mother said the place was called Benguet because of the foul smell emanating from somewhere in the place after the eruption of a volcano. The people referred to it as “shima khawad an ni eman benguet where the letters ‘ng’ are pronounced in the same way as in the ‘ng’ in the Tagalog word ‘ngayon.’ Other people have other versions of how the place got to be called Benguet, but I find this version plausible in the face of tales that there did emanate a sulphuric smell in the place after a volcanic eruption. The phrase “shima khawad-an ni emanbenguet” means where there is a foul smell. (To be continued).


By: B.T. Pistola

(Authority to repost given by Author)

Published at:

Volume 1, No 1

TNT, Baguio City, Philippines

July 20, 2014

https://thenortherntribune.blogspot.com/