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Vikingsword Staff
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: The Aussie Bush
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Over the past few months there has been much discussion on these pages of weapons attributable in style to the Ilocano people of northern and central Luzon. We have been uncertain about specific attributions because of the possible diffusion of styles among various cultural groups in the region. To better understand these people and their interactions, I have been reading some of the anthropological and ethnographic studies conducted in the early 20th C by U.S. researchers. A prominent author on the peoples of this region was Fay-Cooper Cole, a researcher and later a member of the curatorial staff at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He went on to become Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
Cole, accompanied by his wife who assisted with the research, undertook field studies in northern Luzon from January, 1907 to June, 1908. Their findings were published later, and the main work, The Tinguian: Social, Religious and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe, appeared in 1922. Lengthy and detailed, this is considered a classic of ethnographic research. Additional publications focused on language, customs and folk lore. The following is taken from the Introduction to the main work: " ... I am under the impression that at one time this whole region was inhabited by pygmy blacks, known as Aeta or Negrito, small groups of whom still retain their identity. With the coming of an alien people they were pressed back from the coasts to the less hospitable regions of the interior, where they were, for the most part, exterminated, but they intermarried with the invaders to such an extent that to-day there is no tribe or group in northwestern Luzon but shows evidence of intermixture with them. I believe that the newcomers were drawn from the so-called primitive Malay peoples of southeastern Asia; that in their movement eastward and northward they met with and absorbed remnants of an earlier migration made up of a people closely related to the Polynesians, and that the results of this intermixture are still evident, not only in Luzon, but in every part of the Archipelago.In one of the attachments to this post is a PDF file that contains the full Introduction to Cole's work and selected abstracted comments and figures concerning edged weapons and shields used by this group. Being mountain people, the Tinguian had adopted the head axe, spears and shields similar to the Igorot and Kalinga groups. However, their knives are much closer to the style of the Ilocano than the mountain groups. The text drawings of the weapons are also shown below. In Figure 7 of Cole's publication, knife no. 5 is of the form we often call a tabak and attribute to the Ilocano, but which is also used by the Negrito where it seems to have been called a katana. This is known to be a fighting knife. The remaining knives are likely multipurpose, being tools that could be used for weapons. The hilts on these knives have full length tangs peined over at the end, and each seems to have a spiral wrap of twisted wire along the grip, with two short metal ferrules, one at each end. A curious feature on each of these knives is a small cut-out notch at the ricasso where, presumably, the forefinger would rest rather than slide down onto the sharpened edge. Such notches are not seen (at least not commonly) on Ilocano knives or the knives from other mountain dwelling groups. A notch at this point is sometimes found on Spanish colonial knives (e.g., Canary Islands knives), and has been noted also on some Visayan knives. If you are interested in anthropology, Cole's work is a good read and very thorough. It is, however, nearly a hundred years since publication and more recent research may have negated some of his conclusions. If anyone has more recent information on ethnic groups of northern Luzon (with particular reference to weapons), please let me know. The full text of Cole's paper can be found at the Gutenberg Project here. Ian . Last edited by Ian; 10th July 2018 at 06:49 PM. Reason: Added link to full text article--spelling |
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