The Bontoc Igorot

Published in 1905, this groundbreaking ethnographic study documents the Bontoc Igorot people of northern Luzon during the height of American colonial rule in the Philippines. Albert Ernest Jenks spent months living among the Igorot in 1902-1903, producing what he considered the most comprehensive portrait of a "primitive mountain agriculturist" in the region. The work stands as a remarkable archive: hundreds of photographs capture faces, rituals, villages, and crafts that have largely vanished from the modern world. Jenks details their social organization (noting the striking absence of slavery), animist religious practices, agricultural rhythms, and the controversial practice of head-hunting. Yet the book is more than specimen-collecting. It reveals a complex people Jenks himself described as industrious and dignified, preserving a way of life that would soon face irreversible transformation under colonial administration. For readers today, it serves as both invaluable historical document and unsettling reminder of anthropology's colonial origins.