Introduction

A view of Buguias from the air in the 1920s would have revealed a complex landscape of interwoven plant communities. On the highest reaches of the eastern slope, outliers of the dense, oakdominated cloud forest (or kalasan ) protruded below the misty ridgeline of the Cordillera. Downslope, the oaks gave way to single-species pine stands, forming a true forest on the higher and steeper slopes and thinning out at lower elevations. Near the upper hamlets of the village, pines crowned a savannah community of short grasses, yielding on steeper sites to cane-grass swards. Still farther downslope, the pines dropped out altogether, leaving only pasture grasses on the lowest slopes.

Within this broad zonal pattern, variations of soil, relief, and long-standing agricultural practice created a vegetational mosaic. The shady northern faces of steep side canyons supported diverse hardwood thickets, while on their sunny southern exposures grew a jumble of brush, pine, and coarse grasses. Scattered throughout the landscape, but particularly in the lower reaches, were sharply bounded cultivated plots. Most contained tangles of sweet-potato vines, a select few were flooded and planted to rice, and small plots surrounding the village's several score dwellings supported diverse assemblages of herbs and fruit-bearing trees.

This landscape was a cultural artifact, continually reshaped through the labor of the Buguias people as they wrested their livelihood from the land. In provisioning themselves, the Buguias people transformed their homeland, altering both its physical substrate and its biotic communities. Through cultivating and pasturing they worked their greatest ecological transformations. But the residents

of Buguias also gleaned a harvest of wild edible plants and animals, as well as vital nonfood plant products (including fibers, woods, and medicines). All microhabitats of Buguias thus contributed to human livelihood, and all were remolded in turn by human activities.

But if the Buguias people transformed their landscape, the human impact varied widely in extent and duration. Sites found suitable for terracing were entirely remade; others, such as ravines, were only casually tapped for wild produce. The territory of Buguias was thus loosely divided into separate geographical zones, each subjected to different kinds of human pressures.

The fundamental division enclosed the cultivated from the "wild." Both cropped and non-cropped lands were further subdivided according to the plant associations they supported. Agricultural plots were of three distinct named types: dry fields (devoted largely to sweet potatoes), flooded rice terraces, and door-yard gardens. Less exact divisions marked the uncultivated lands, as many species (the insular pine, for example), could grow in virtually any area; yet even here, distinct plant associations emerged in part through human interference. These various plant communities, both wild and cultivated, might aptly be called subsistence sectors (what Wadell [1972] refers to as "agricultural subsystems"), highlighting at once their role in provisioning the human community and their spatial boundedness.

The areal configuration of subsistence sectors was never static. In the long view, fields and pastures expanded steadily. New dry fields could be carved from woodland, meadow, or canebrake; hillsides were slowly terraced; and new pastures sprouted from the charred soils of former woodlands. In specific instances, the direction of change could be reversed. A rice field might yield to cane or brush, for example, if its supply of water suddenly diminished.

The following chapter reconstructs Buguias subsistence as it existed in the 1920s and 1930s, the earliest period accessible through living memory. Deeper historical background is examined through archival sources where possible. The first section details each of the three major agricultural sectors: dry fields, door-yard gardens, and rice terraces. The next two sections outline the products of uncultivated lands. Here subsistence was less rigidly constrained by sector; domestic animals, for example, could often wander through

vast uncultivated areas. These discussions are thus organized along product rather than sectoral lines, first considering domestic stock, and then moving to undomesticated plants and animals. The fourth section examines first human agency in the formation and maintenance of distinct communities of uncultivated plants, and then turns to the processes of agricultural intensification at work in the prewar era.