The Future

Because of their perception of the Benguet Igorots as a hardworking people led by a capable elite and guided by a beneficent metropolitan power, the American officials foresaw a prosperous future.^[4] As Pack self-servingly and naively reported:

Owing to the public works being carried out by the insular government in Benguet Province, the Igorrotes have plenty of money with which to go to the coast and buy stock according to their ambitions, for the Igorrote is never a rich man (or Bocnong) no matter how much money he may have, unless he has animals to show for it. So the ambitious convert their hard-earned cash into hogs or cattle, and possessors of such may take a place among the counselors of their race. This traditionary custom will make these people wealth producers instead of consumers, and as they have a thorough appreciation of the protection of property afforded them by our American Government, they will become valuable allies in pushing our methods of progress still further over the mountains among our natives not yet wholly tamed [Philippine Commission 1904, v. 1:411].

The Keesings (1934:199) also saw a connection between class stratification and economic "progress": "The presence of baknangs in these mountain communities gives the people, in this sense, something of an advantage in the modern struggle toward a wider competence over many backward people whose customs are more communal."

Neither were such optimistic forecasts confined to American observers. Perez (1904:206) articulated the same sentiment in most unambiguous terms: ". . . no doubt, that within a few years Ben-

guet will be one of the richest areas of the Philippines [translation by the author]."

The Keesings (1934:196,219), at least, did worry that communal feasting might thwart economic growth (and harm the breeding stock), although they also appreciated its role in equalizing wealth. A more common forecast, however, saw Igorot culture as doomed by the forces of modernity. Its imminent demise had, in fact, been announced well before the American conquest: in 1890, Meyer (1890 [1975]: 128) declared that ". . . the Igorots are doomed like every other primitive race which comes into sudden contact with European civilization." Some observers thought that "Ilocanoization" would demolish local identity; in 1914, Robertson (1914:471) warned that with the lowlander influx, "pure culture" was disappearing and "real Igorots are becoming hard to study." Others thought their undoing would come at the hands of American sightseers: "[R]oads are to be built, automobiles, stage relays, etc. are to connect this place. Then come easy travel and tourists and then the prostituted work of the natives . . . [Simms 1906a ]."

Regardless of the postulated agent of change, indigenous religion was repeatedly predicted to be the first casualty. Several of the most discerning American Cordilleran scholars thought that they could already see this transformation at work in Benguet, the most advanced highland province. The Keesings (1934:228) found Paganism on the decline in Benguet; and as Barton (1930:123) wrote: "In Benguet foreign influences have been changing the culture and have introduced a laxity of religious observations."

As will be shown, the economic predictions of the early twentieth-century observers were remarkable for their accuracy; their corresponding cultural forecasts were remarkably erroneous. For the people of Buguias would accomplish what seemed impossible: to accept and indeed prosper in a Western economic framework while maintaining their indigenous beliefs, practices, and social identity. But before this was to happen, their old economy was to be utterly demolished in the flames of World War II.