5
Commercial and Political Relations

Introduction

Prewar Buguias was by no means a wholly self-sufficient community. The inhabitants of the upper Agno Valley were widely noted as long-distance merchants. Through trade the Buguias people procured part of their subsistence needs; more importantly, through incessant buying and selling they developed a mercantile orientation. In Buguias it was commercial endeavors, not agrarian practices, that formed the pivot between the economic and the ideological realms, the mundane and the spiritual. And it was the legacy of prewar trade that nurtured the postwar vegetable industry.

Paralleling the community's economic linkages were political ties. For just as prewar Buguias was not self-sufficient, neither was it wholly autonomous. From the beginning of the twentieth century, the village lay within an international structure of power relations centering on the American colonial government in Manila. Compared to many other peripheral regions of the world economy, imperial power was relatively light here, but in many respects American policies, intentionally and accidentally, molded the development of Buguias society.

Trade Relations

Historical Background

Well before the Spanish era, southern Cordilleran miners exchanged gold in coastal villages for Chinese porcelains, raw iron, cloth, livestock, and other goods (Scott 1974; Keesing 1962). Highland-lowland commerce in all probability expanded through the Spanish period as the population erratically grew and as the mountain people responded to new trade opportunities. After the state mandated a tobacco monopoly in the 1780s, for example, highland-

ers soon began exporting large quantities of contraband tobacco to the lowlands (Scott 1974: 232).

In the late 1700s, Francisco Antolin, a Spanish friar stationed in a remote mission in the Magat Valley to the southeast of Buguias, documented an extensive and closely knit exchange system in the southern Cordillera. At that time, gold-mining communities typically procured food from nearby agricultural villages and even from the lowlands; the more prosperous mining districts regularly imported slaves from peripheral communities as well. Other villages specialized in manufacturing ironware and copperware, which, along with other handicrafts, were exchanged over long distances. Villages located athwart trade routes profited by charging tariffs on goods passing through their territories (Antolin 1789 [1970]).

At the time of Antolin's writings in the late eighteenth century, the southern Cordilleran trade network centered on two villages in the eastern cloud forest: Tucucan, located eleven kilometers east of Buguias, and its neighbor Tinoc, some twelve kilometers east-southeast of Buguias (Antolin 1789 [1970]). In this period, Buguias itself was noted for its production of copper vessels and iron tools and weapons, rather than for long-distance exchange (Scott 1974; Meyer 1890 [1975]; Semper 1862 [1975]). Sometime in the middle or late nineteenth century, however, Buguias gained ascendancy in transmontane trade—an abrupt shift evidently owing to the migration of Tinoc and Tucucan traders to the Buguias region, perhaps in response to Spanish incursions from the east. Virtually all presentday Buguias genealogies trace back to one wealthy Tucucan trader, Lumiaen, who migrated to Buguias during this period, and the Buguias people remember Lumiaen's son Basilio and his grandson Danggol as powerful merchants.

Buguias Trade in the American Period

Buguias trade patterns in the American period owed much to environmental and cultural variation within the southern Cordillera. Complex topography, vertically banded production zones, monsoonal seasonality, a patchy distribution of mineral resources, and a diversity of cultural groups all contributed to pronounced differences in local production over short distances. Trade linkages cen-

Map 6.
The Buguias Trade Sphere. Only the most important trade routes are indicated on the map.

tered on Buguias integrated multiple environmental zones and several different peoples (see map 6).

The Buguias mercantile system was predicated on a consistent pattern of exchanges carried out between specific centers of production. In the immediate neighborhood each substantial village occupied a unique position in the network. Beyond this local zone, trade involved exchanges across broad cultural and ecological zones; these included both the cloud forest (or kalasan) and the Ifugao culture region to the east, the lower elevation areas of Benguet to the south and west, and the Ilocos Coast along the South China Sea.

Kabayan, 10 kilometers to the south, was a major local partner.

At 1,200 meters, this Ibaloi village is 200 meters lower than Buguias, hence distinctly warmer and drier during the low-sun season. Its steep hillsides, however, offered fewer suitable sites for dry fields. Whereas Buguias umas yielded sweet potatoes abundantly throughout the year, those in Kabayan were barren in the dry months. Rice, by contrast, flourished here and was produced in great abundance. Kabayan's terraces were not only much more extensive than those of Buguias, but they also gave larger and more assured harvests. The residents of the two villages thus found each other natural trade partners, and many Buguias households bartering dried sweet potatoes here for rice. In addition, some Buguias residents purchased Kabayan rice with cash, clothing, or other trade goods, and not a few poorer individuals labored in Kabayan's fields in exchange for harvest shares.

Buguias residents also exchanged foodstuffs with the Kankanaey villages of the upper Agno Valley. Occasional frosts in Lo-o, 8 kilometers north, precluded the cultivation of ginger and other crops. Furthermore, the Lo-o people grew no rice until cold-tolerant strains appeared in the 1920s; earlier they had purchased necessary stores in Kabayan and occasionally in Buguias. In exchange, Lo-o exported, among other goods, meat-horses raised on its extensive bottomland pastures. Residents of the smaller settlements on the slopes above the Agno River also procured rice in both Buguias and Kabayan, usually in exchange for hogs or chickens. Hogs and cattle also flowed from these marginal communities to Buguias as interest payments, as the local system of animal lending bound these small villages tightly to Buguias financiers.

East of Buguias, along the main ridge of the Cordillera and into Ifugao province, lay the extensive cloud forest, dominated by oak and other hardwoods. The Kalanguya-speaking inhabitants of this mossy oak woodland were closely connected, genealogically and commercially, to the Buguias people, and during the American period a good part of the region was an economic hinterland of Buguias. Unlike the Agno Valley, this area was the province of professional traders, men who had learned the art of "buy and sell" and who could profit by their knowledge of the geographic variation of commodity prices.

The cloud forest produced hogs in great abundance. Its thick forests yielded ample mast, fungus, and earthworms, and its perennial humidity allowed year-round sweet-potato harvests while

militating against porcine skin disease. Here Buguias traders could also obtain forest products, such as rattan and various species of bamboo, unavailable at home. Minor cloud-forest specialties included chickens, eggs, mushrooms, honey, and migratory birds (attracted by torchlight and captured with nets on foggy autumn nights along the main ridge).

The Buguias traders brought copper pots, ironware, and textiles (especially funeral blankets) to exchange for these coveted products of the cloud forest. In addition, the local residents were eager to obtain silver pesos and copper coins—scarce items in this remote area but readily obtained by the Buguias people elsewhere in their trading sphere.^[1] Buguias merchants would also extend credit, both in cash and in livestock, to cloud-forest dwellers. In fact, the wealthiest Buguias residents managed to accumulate hundreds, and at times thousands, of hogs and cattle throughout this region, and many kalasan dwellers remained perpetually in their debt.

One thread of the Buguias trade network continued east across the cloud forest to the Ifugao district of Kiangan. An expedition to this region required some ten days, but Kiangan supplied highvalue goods, particularly water buffalo. The Buguias people valued buffalo for rituals and sometimes as work animals, but they resold most of them for profit in other Benguet communities. The Kiangan people did not raise these animals themselves, but rather imported them from the adjacent Magat Valley. Only occasionally would Buguias merchants travel so far to purchase directly from the stock breeders. Human chattel formed another element of the Kiangan trade in the early American period. Kiangan slavers typically trafficked in debtors, convicted thieves, and captives from other Ifugao regions. Buguias residents recall the average Kiangan slave as selling for roughly the same price as a large cow or water buffalo, a value similar to that found by Worcester (1903) for the lowland areas of northern Luzon.^[2]

Buguias traders traveled extensively through the northern two-thirds of Benguet, primarily to purchase swine. Benguet hogs, especially ones from the lower, warmer areas, were different animals from those of the cool, moist cloud forest. Never as fat, they were however more easily fattened. According to local theory, Benguet hogs were accustomed to such an impoverished diet (of sweet-potato leaves, rice hulls, garbage, and human waste) that they would readily eat—and even batten on—the raw sweet potatoes

that their spoiled cloud-forest cousins found indigestible. Buguias traders therefore keenly purchased such animals for fattening at home. Cash-hungry Benguet villagers would also sell their aged hogs, prized throughout the Cordillera for their long tusks. Buguias traders sometimes sacrificed tuskers in their own rituals, but more often they sold them to Ifugao and Northern Kankana-ey itinerants who were willing to pay well for this particular form of ostentatious display.

Through their extensive trade network and local production, the Buguias elite had access to a larger supply of hogs than could be consumed at home. Their outlet for this meat supply lay in the gold-mining village of Suyoc (see Lednicky 1916; Marche 1887 [1970]), 12 kilometers to the northwest. Suyoc supplied cash for the entire Buguias trade network and formed its most concentrated consumption point: its miners had both abundant coins (obtained from local traders who sold their gold in the lowlands) and a prodigious appetite for pork. Above all else, the Buguias merchants' profits came from provisioning this mining community.

The steady, high level of demand for pork in Suyoc stemmed from the exclusive concentration of the community on the mines. The miners spared no time for agriculture. Instead they imported their food: rice from the Northern Kankana-ey, sweet potatoes and vegetables from Lo-o, and hogs primarily from Buguias and Lo-o. Although the wealthy among them sometimes owned substantial cattle herds (raised in other communities), the miners could not consume beef in the rainy excavation season: the spirits guarding the ore were believed to find its odor offensive. Pork, however, was a ritual necessity as well as a staple food. Every strike called for a thanksgiving feast, and the miners performed other elaborate rituals as well. One funeral in the late Spanish period reportedly lasted three months, during which time sacrifices continued and the entire community abstained from labor (Scott 1974:286). And pork formed a staple as well, since the miners believed that only a diet of meat would provide them sufficient strength for their arduous work.

Along the coast, the Buguias merchants' main destination was the old commercial center of Naguilian (see Keesing 1962:107). Here the Buguias traders brought coffee, dried legumes, and cash. In return, they primarily purchased cloth, a good generally not produced in Benguet. Lowland Ilocano weavers furnished several

varieties of funeral blankets, loincloths for men, skirts and jackets for women, and plain white fabric. The intricate designs in funerary blankets may have followed patterns designed by the highlanders and originally used in decorating the local bark fabric, and the lowland weavers had to meet the exacting standards of their highland customers. Other notable products of Naguilian included dogs, tobacco, salt, and sugar, all of which could be obtained in Buguias but were cheaper and often of better quality in the lowlands.

Buguias merchants also conducted business in other lowland Ilocano towns. Cervantes, probably the second most important lowland destination, furnished pig iron (used in the Buguias foundries), cotton cloth, cattle, and horses. Buguias merchants occasionally visited the coastal town of Tagudin to buy Chinese porcelains. But most of these lowland trade partners began to be replaced after the first decade of American rule by the new highland city of Baguio, which grew to rival even Naguilian as a commercial center once the American colonialists established their summer capital and hill station there (see Reed 1976). Although well within the mountains, Baguio functioned as an imperial and lowland-Filipino outpost, and it eventually emerged as the preferred source for many lowland products.

As for economic relations with the far north, animosity with the Bontoc people of the central Cordillera prevented Buguias traders from venturing north of Mount Data. Since the Northern Kankanaey (living north of Data but south of the Bontoc) produced goods desired in Buguias and were themselves in need of cash, commerce did occur, but it could only be carried out by the northerners. Northern Kankana-ey men, who visited Buguias primarily for contract work, sometimes traded; northern women came specifically to sell their handicrafts, especially ceramic vessels (neither Buguias nor its neighbors produced pottery). The Northern Kankana-ey also wove and sold funeral blankets and other fabrics, in increasing competition with the Ilocano weavers.

The Organization of Trade

Financial and Social Structures

The southern Cordilleran economy was partly commercialized well before the American era. In the 1700s, traders usually carried scales

"with which they measured out gold dust like cash" (Scott 1974: 181), and by the late 1800s, while other subjugated Cordilleran areas still paid in kind, most Benguet villages yielded their tribute in coin (Scott 1974:285). Copper-working villages even minted their own copper coins modeled on Spanish currency. Indeed, the American government considered it necessary to purchase and remove these coins before issuing its own coinage.^[3]

If cash-based economies were unevenly distributed even in the southern mountains, Buguias traders turned this differentiation to their own advantage. Virtually all villagers desired cash, but few could obtain it locally. Yet Buguias merchants could acquire an abundance of coin through their foothold in the far periphery of a global economic network.

As Suyoc suffered the chronically inflated prices typical of goldmining camps, a good profit could always be made by buying low in the interior and selling high in Suyoc. Buguias elders remember well the price gaps they exploited in the prewar period. In the 1930s, one could often purchase a sizable hog in Kabayan for 25 pesos and sell it the same day in Suyoc for 35. A chicken bought in Tinoc could fetch twice as much money in Buguias, and even more in Suyoc.

A successful trader needed a good economic understanding and a facility with numbers, unaided (in the early period) by formal mathematics. One Spanish observer noted in 1877 that the mountain people "are familiar with coins, recognizing and evaluating them exactly . . . [and] they count with precision from one to the hundreds of thousands" (quoted in Scott 1974:239). The Buguias traders also recognized the utility of keeping their cash circulating. Residents of certain other Benguet villages guarded their money more warily; many of the Ibaloi elite buried substantial hoards under their dwellings (Scheerer 1932 [1975]: 199). But Buguias traders even found ways to profit from this: when the value of old coinage suddenly jumped in the early postwar years, several returned to their old Ibaloi trading partners to repurchase coins they had previously spent.

Buguias merchants customarily traveled in groups of four to eight, seeking companionship and mutual protection. Most men began trading as teenagers, usually working under a wealthy sponsor for cash wages (in the 1930s, often one peso per day, respectable pay at the time). When the party reached its destination, the

senior members would seek lodging with relatives, business partners, or local leaders. The actual transactions, however, usually required canvassing, as each trader had to seek individuals willing to sell (or buy) and ready to settle at a good price. In a few regions, however, exchange sometimes took place at customary sites, such as Abatan ("meeting place") between Lo-o and Suyoc.

To prosper, traders had to know how to handle animals as well as to make deals. Simply staying upright on the slippery cloud-forest trails during the rainy season was arduous for the uninitiated; leading recalcitrant hogs and water buffalo along these trails was an enormously exacting job. The young merchant had to master the art of man-dodo , or "hog-following." In this technique, ropes were affixed to a hog's hind feet; by expertly alternating jerks on each rope, the trader could urge the animal in the desired direction. The most skillful men could manage as many as four hogs and two water buffalo at a time, but two hogs was the usual quota.

Successful merchants also had to cultivate friendships with their trading partners. Many did so through gift giving. In the Ibaloi village of Nagey, one Buguias trader is still fondly recalled for his presents of delectable dried locust. Kinship also softened commercial relations, just as it partially molded trade patterns; many traders worked primarily in areas where they could be aided by relatives.

A young trader needed an apprenticeship, but after acquiring a small store of capital and the necessary skills and connections, he faced no barriers to independence. Although many did manage their own ventures, few developed large businesses. To do so required fortitude, skill, luck, and continued patronage, for as one began to accumulate, one's social obligations increased apace. Redistributive rituals were never-ending, and even secular feasts burdened the rising merchant. A profitable trip had to be commemorated; a trader who had earned 10 pesos selling a Kabayan hog in Suyoc, for example, was expected to devote at least half to feasting his neighbors.

Several traders prospered by reaching into new territories. The Buguias trade network ramified so intricately that no individual could master its entire extent, leading ambitious men to explore unknown districts in search of inexpensive swine. Others sought out new commercial niches. The second wealthiest person in prewar Buguias, Paran, initiated his career by purchasing coffee in

Tinoc and reselling it in Naguilian. In doing so he contravened the wishes of his father, who had advised a traditional business entree in the animal trade. Paran was disinherited for his disrespect, but he prospered nevertheless.

The supreme traders, who functioned equally as financiers, comprised the elite class of prewar Buguias. These men conducted most of their deals through intermediaries, usually sons, sons-inlaw, and nephews. Their business partners also traveled to Buguias to work out new agreements and to renegotiate old ones. The varied enterprises of the master traders also demanded specialized labor. Information had to move rapidly, and the swiftest runners found periodic employment as messengers. Immigrants often served as couriers to, and mediators with, their natal villages. Business accounts—complex ledgers of debts and credits (in cash and animals)—also required unerring attention. Although arrangements of knots in loincloth threads registered appointments, such mnemonic devices were not used to record finances. Rather, memory alone sufficed until literacy became widespread later in the American period. But the wealthiest merchant in the early twentieth century, Danggol, could rely on a famed "verbal mathematician," Palbusa, to keep track of his many accounts.

Geographical Patterns

Although Buguias may well have supported the largest trade network in the southern Cordillera, every important village nested in its own web of exchange. The larger Ibaloi settlements trafficked mainly with the lowland towns of Pangansinan and La Union. Their ties to the east and north were tenuous; compared to Buguias, they were not trade oriented (see Moss 1920a :214). But the other sizable villages of the upper Agno, Amlimay and Lo-o, exhibited a similar mercantile bent. Villages specializing in mineral extraction (Suyoc) or metal-goods manufacture (such as Ubanga, a small copper-working village) maintained different kinds of exchange systems, as they attracted many traders from other areas into their territories. Suyoc merchants themselves were concerned with little other than the gold trade. Adding another layer of complexity, the trade routes of many central Cordilleran villages also extended well into the southern mountains (Conklin 1980:98).

Ifugao miners and traders returning from the Baguio area, for example, often lodged in Buguias where they commonly purchased cattle to lead home. One Buguias family actually specialized in this narrow trade.

In short, prewar Buguias lay at the center of two very different spatial economic structures. One, an extensive trade network, was perpetuated through the efforts of numerous individual traders, its many strands enmeshing with webs centered on other commercial villages. Buguias formed this reticulum's organizational hub, despite the fact that the village proper was not, strictly speaking, a market center. Buguias traders rather established a price-setting market wherever they went, bridging the area of supply (western Ifugao and most of central and northern Benguet) with the seat of demand (Suyoc). This was certainly not a "perfect" market, for the backwoods people had limited access to price information. But it was a market nonetheless; prices varied according to supply and demand, and deals were haggled, not instituted (on the theoretical implications of the Buguias trade system, see Lewis 1989).

Buguias's second economic region was more exclusive, more cohesive, and smaller than this long-distance trade network. At the local level, the village integrated the economies of several neighboring settlements, largely through its financial role. As purveyors of capital, the Buguias elite influenced, and to some extent dominated, the indebted economies of the village's immediate periphery. Their effective hinterland extended along the Agno River north toward Lo-o, south toward Kabayan, and eastward well into the cloud forest of Ifugao province. In so doing, it sliced across several cultural boundaries, encompassing peoples of all the major southern Cordilleran language groups.

Local Specialization of Production

The Buguias region had long provided the southern Cordillera with quality ironware and copperware. During the American period, few smiths lived in Buguias proper, but nearby villages continued to supply cooking pots and cutting tools for a wide area. This geographically segregated production system both depended on and helped to support the local trade networks. Within Buguias itself, diverse artisans also provided goods to help fill the back-

packs of local traders. While craft specialization was at best a secondary impetus for exchange, it nevertheless contributed to the integration of the southern Cordilleran economy.

Ironwork

Most larger Cordilleran villages possessed an iron smithy. The smiths of the Buguias region, however, had long been noted for their expert work; others simply could not match the temper they imparted to their implements. Accordingly, they worked in secrecy. The German naturalist Carl Semper (1862 [1975]: 29) could not even learn the locations of the local workshops. Buguias wares—and the smiths themselves—were thus in demand through much of Benguet. Local traders often carried iron goods on their rounds, while outsiders traveled to Buguias to purchase them directly.

In the late American period, iron forging was centered in the small village of Lingadan just north of Buguias proper. The smiths had to live and work in remote, wooded areas, so great was their demand for charcoal. Although legends tell of iron ore once being gathered in the river bed, it is more likely that raw iron was always obtained through coastal trade, its ultimate source being eastern China (see Scott's note in Meyer 1890 [1975]: 63). Buguias smiths fashioned sundry iron tools, most notably bolo knives, culinary knives, digging trowels, iron or iron-tipped bars, and axes. Different grades of iron served for different kinds of bolos: soft but cohesive metal for rough tasks, such as smashing bones, and harder but brittler steel for finer work.

Copper

Copper work was the true specialty of the greater Buguias region, and by the American period the area's forges supplied the entire southern Cordillera. But rather than Buguias proper, it was the small, peripheral village of Ubanga that formed the preeminent copper-working center.

Copper ore originally was extracted in the mineral district extending from Suyoc to Mankayan (see Wilson 1947). A dwindling fuel supply here probably forced the wide separation between the workshops and the mines that was later evident; Mankayan in par-

ticular was deforested early (Marche 1887 [1970]:125). Ubanga, sitting on the edge of the heavily forested Palatang region, offered a prime site for copper works. In any case, by the later American period, imported copper wire purchased in Baguio substituted for local ore in the Ubanga forges.

In Spanish and early American times, the local artisans fashioned a variety of copper and bronze items. Fine ornamental works included bracelets, arm and leg bands, and earrings, the latter finding their main market among the Northern Kankana-ey. Copper smoking pipes moved rapidly throughout the southern Cordillera. Elders still tell of local manufacture of ritual gongs, but these vital items may have always been imported. Certainly in the later American period, richly resonating Chinese bronze gongs were everywhere in use (Goodway and Conklin 1987). Completely discontinued was the making of copper coins, as the imperial government could not abide their circulation.

The large cooking vessels called gambang ("copper"), used for preparing the food of both hogs and humans, overshadowed all other copper goods. Any person raising swine needed at least one large copper pot for boiling sweet potatoes. The Ubanga smiths fabricated gambang in several sizes and shapes for the extensive market; the largest allegedly could shelter a traveling merchant from a downpour. In earlier times, more decorative urn-shaped vessels were also made, the German traveler Schadenburg having purchased one in the late 1800s for the princely sum of four water buffalo (Scott 1974: 312).

Copper working required a team of at least seven, with each individual specializing in one or two tasks. In general, it required more skill and was more arduous than ironwork, which could be done in groups of only two or three. Virtually the entire male population of Ubanga labored in this industry. Boys too young for the workshops made charcoal and gathered the pine bark and halfrotted wood well suited for the slow-burning fires necessary at certain stages of the manifold manufacturing process. The copperware industry also created linkages with nearby villages; forges were made in the neighboring hamlet of Sebang, while clay molds (used for casting) came from the Northern Kankana-ey.

Copper vessels were marketed through a complex network of intermediaries. Buguias and Lo-o merchants carried copper pots deep into the cloud forest, while Northern Kankana-ey and Kalan-

guya traders traveled to Ubanga to buy directly. Individuals also brought in broken pots and gongs for repair, and one Ubanga man made a special trade of searching out and fixing broken copperware throughout the Agno Valley. As a by-product of such business dealings, the smiths had a much better geographical knowledge of the central Cordillera (north of Mount Data) than did most other residents of the Buguias region.

Other Local Specialties

The Buguias people of today do not recall other significant local products, but the American administrator David Barrows, who visited Buguias twice (in 1902 and 19o8), was so impressed with their crafting of smoking pipes, wooden spoons, and effigy figures that he devoted a three-page journal entry to them (1908:91–93). Evidently, several Buguias artisans made four different kinds of pipes from three different materials (copper, wood, and clay). Pipe making must have disappeared soon after his visit; in the later American period Buguias traders were purchasing old pipes from the Kalanguya. Barrow's attention to wooden spoons indicates a subsequent decline in workmanship; the later examples of this art are simple utilitarian objects. The carving of representations of deities and spirits disappeared completely; evidently, as trade opportunities grew, the Buguias people abandoned several of their customary arts. A number of smaller neighboring villages, however, retained notable craft specialties, including basketry and woodplatter carving.

The Prewar Vegetable Industry

Vegetables in Benguet

The Spanish introduced cabbages and potatoes to the Cordillera well before they had established political control. Potts (1983) argues for two separate potato disseminations, the first in the late 1600s or early 1700s, and the second, linked to Benguet's first Spanish governor, Bias de Bafios, in the nineteenth century. The southern Cordillerans readily adopted both cabbages and potatoes for their door-yard gardens. Both crops were casually traded among Igorot communities and some produce was sold in nearby lowland

market towns (Perez 1902:118); as early as the 1860s, Benguet potatoes appeared in the Manila market (Scott 1974:239).

American Encouragement

When the Americans occupied the Philippines, the demand for temperate vegetables grew. Chinese and Japanese laborers, brought to southern Benguet to build Baguio City and its connecting roads, soon began cultivating a variety of market-garden crops. Trinidad Valley, near Baguio and endowed with fertile and easily irrigated soils, formed the center of the emergent vegetable industry. Japanese capital dominated until independence, and local Ibaloi villagers eventually supplied most of the labor. A second cradle of vegetable culture emerged on the high plateau of Paoay (in Atok Municipality, north of Bagio), where an American soldier, Guy Haight, established a residence and rest house while recovering from tuberculosis (Davis 1973:58). Despite his distance from Baguio, Haight managed to deliver vegetables to the city, and he also supplied the travelers who lodged at his place. Through their association with Haight, many of Atok's residents learned the techniques of market gardening.

American officials encouraged vegetable culture among the Benguet people. As early as 1901, they distributed seeds from an agricultural office (Fry 1983:216), and not long afterward they established an experimental station largely devoted to temperate vegetables in La Trinidad. The Catholic Church also fostered vegetable growing in the districts it missionized (Russell 1983: 192).

With such encouragement, the market-garden frontier began to advance. In Baguio and environs, vegetable growing spread among the local Ibaloi; by 1907 they were reported to be abandoning their mining works in favor of the more profitable truck gardens (Philippine Commission 1907, v. 1: 282). By 1908, nearly 4,000 baskets of potatoes were sold annually in the Baguio market—but demand was still not satisfied (Philippine Commission 1908, v. 1:245).

Vegetables in Buguias

This commercial frontier reached Buguias in the last decade of American rule. In earlier times, transport to Baguio had been too

costly to justify the enterprise on any scale. Only a handful of individuals had grown unimproved cabbages and potatoes for sale to the Japanese workers and American managers employed in the large sawmills to the north and west of Buguias. Local vegetable growing first took hold when the Mountain Trail, snaking along the ridgetop west of Buguias, was made passable to vehicular traffic in the 1930s. Bus service, organized by the Kankana-ey entrepreneur Bado Dangwa, soon provided ready market access. By 1940, the Dangwa Company ran some 173 vehicles, traversing much of the Cordillera (Fry 1983: 130). Even so, Buguias vegetables first had to be ported up to the ridge, a grueling 800-meter climb.

The residents of the small village of Nabalicong, located a few miles southwest of Buguias, soon discovered that dry fields cleared in the oak scrub along the new road produced prime tight-headed cabbages while enjoying easy road access. An American roadconstruction foreman, one "Mr. Clark," also experimented with vegetables in the same area. The Buguias baknang Paran envisaged profit here, and he soon engaged several of his clients to clear new plots in the area. At roughly the same time, two of Paran's sons returned from the agricultural school in Trinidad, seeds in hand, and set about growing cabbage in Buguias proper, first in fallowed rice fields and later in dry fields.

These early vegetable gardens demanded more labor than did subsistence crops. To supply the necessary nutrients, gardeners had to haul ashes and sometimes even composted manure to their garden plots. The Buguias people had long known that such materials would enhance soil fertility, but they judged the effort worthwhile only for the remunerative vegetables. Insects also plagued the new crops much more than the old. Growers dispatched caterpillars and other large insects by hand; fortunately, thrips and other pests too small for manual removal had not yet emerged as serious problems.

While temperate vegetables presented a lucrative trade opportunity, production in the prewar was dominated by the Paran family. Paran's wife, Albina, developed her own specialty in trading peas. A garden pea with a nonedible pod had long been grown in the higher elevation zone immediately east of Buguias. Albina purchased peas from the growers and arranged to have them trucked to Baguio. Pokol, son-in-law of the baknang couple, organized the

Baguio trade. As operator of the village's only store, Pokol frequently traveled to Baguio to purchase supplies; on these trips he began dealing in vegetables as well, acquiring produce both from his family in Buguias and from a few gardeners along the Mountain Trail and selling it in Baguio to Chinese agents.

The vegetable trade was in its infancy when war broke out. The movement to the Mountain Trail, which would become a torrent after the war, was still a trickle. In Buguias, only one family engaged substantially in vegetable growing and trading. Yet only a few years after the return of peace virtually the entire village would be occupied in the vegetable enterprise.

Imperial Power

Throughout the prewar period, Buguias was subjugated territory. Not since the mid-1800s had it been a truly autonomous community. Colonial designs and exactions impinged on the village in several important areas. We have already examined the effects of American land-tenure policy and have noted the role of the colonialists in fostering the vegetable industry. Imperial administrators also influenced—or at least attempted to influence—other aspects of local life, most importantly by funneling highland resources toward the nascent enterprises of American residents.

Even though well-meaning colonial authorities devised plans that were potentially destructive, few of their designs came to fruition. Colonial policy often proved feckless, and in comparison with many other colonized places, the imperial tread fell lightly here. What the Americans did accomplish, to some extent inadvertently, was to enhance the position of the indigenous elite.

The Spaniards

All Spanish attempts to gain control of Benguet ended in failure until the middle of the nineteenth century, when a series of wellequipped military expeditions subdued virtually every village. Although the inhabitants of the Amburayan Valley continued to resist until the 1880s, Buguias and its neighbors resigned themselves to paying tribute shortly after mid-century (Scott 1974:306).

Evidently, the Spaniards maintained their position in Benguet

partly by scaling down their usual tribute demands: highlanders paid only one-seventh the dues exacted from lowlanders (Scott 1974:238). Yet even these relatively light demands heavily burdened the majority of Benguet's people. Commoners could not easily afford these "tokens of non-Christian vassalage," while the additional labor duties, purportedly for public works, were much abused and universally despised. It was mainly the elite who found advantages in Spanish hegemony, gaining further leverage over their subordinates as their political power was formalized, and encountering safer conditions for their trading endeavors (Scott 1974: 239; Wiber 1986: 17).

The American Regime

When American imperialists replaced the Spanish at the turn of the twentieth century, the Ibaloi of southern Benguet put up some resistance, and several local baknangs even sent cash to the independent Philippine government (Scott 1986:82). Benguet as a whole, however, was quickly brought under American rule.

The early American administrators, availing themselves of the stable political structure they had inherited, undertook a selfconscious "experiment with civil government" in Benguet as early as 1900 (see Philippine Commission 1901, v. 1:33,34). Although Dean Worcester (n.d.:4) assumed credit for "[establishing] a provincial government in Benguet and . . . small autonomous township governments," in actuality his office had simply recognized the existing local governments. Since official correspondents found the local presidentes able administrators (Philippine Commission 1901, v. 1:34), this was simply the most effective and least troublesome mode of administration.

American tax policy, in contrast to that of the Spaniards, was intended less to demonstrate vassalage than to finance local government and public projects. Yet the Benguet region continued to run chronic deficits—a situation tersely justified by Governor Pack's relegating of the Igorots to the status of "governmental wards" (Philippine Commission 1906, v. 1:199). The colonial government's overall fiscal design in Benguet was to facilitate resource exploitation by Americans and to foster economic "modernization." Local public works, such as bridges and trails, were financed by poll

taxes and through corvée requirements (two pesos or ten days annually [Worcester 1930:44]). Governor Pack insisted that labor dues, the earlier regime's greatest curse, were instituted by the Igorots themselves (Philippine Commission 1904, v. 1:410); one can only wonder what coercive tactics may have been employed to enforce them.

In theory, the municipal governments were autonomous. Local councils passed their own ordinances, subject to the provincial governor's approval. But present-day Cordilleran scholars argue that the municipal governments held no real legislative power, functioning merely to rubber-stamp American orders (HamadaPawid and Bagamaspad 1985:192). But aside from the critical areas of land and resource policy, the Americans interfered relatively little.

Such noninterference reflected the limits of colonial power more than a lack of interest. Benguet funeral ceremonies, for example, appalled the hygiene-obsessed American functionaries (Philippine Commission 1903, v. 2:225), yet villagers easily tricked the sanitary inspectors sent to stop them. The Benguet colonial government was similarly frustrated in trying to limit interest rates on local loans (Moss 1920a :225), and in proscribing range fires (Philippine Commission 1906, v. 1:178). Overall, the most concerted police actions were directed against gamblers and "unemployed Americans" (Philippine Commission 1906, v. 1:265; Lehlbach 1907:11). Few civil or criminal cases internal to Benguet society ever reached colonial courts; Governor Pack reported in 1903 that he had served as Justice of the Peace on only eight occasions, as he could rely instead on the tong tongan system (Philippine Commission 1903, v. 1: 795).

The American authorities, like the Spaniards before them, did encounter one persistent military challenge in Benguet: the busols , or bandits, of the Palatang region northeast of Buguias. The busols ("enemies"), according to Buguias lore, were less a distinct community of people than a gang of thugs who plundered and terrorized their Southern Kankana-ey, Ibaloi, and Kalanguya neighbors. The American bureaucrats totally misunderstood the "busol problem," yet by the second decade of the century the brigands had been dispersed and pacified. Whether this was owing to the steadfast actions and conciliatory negotiations of the American

military, as its chroniclers would have it (see Philippine Commission 1906, v. 2:265), or to the unyielding opposition of Benguet citizens, newly fortified with a few shotguns, is another matter. Benguet elders insist that the busols disbanded only after one Carbonel, treasurer of Atok, dispatched their leader, Samiclay, with a well-aimed blast.

Education, Religion, and Economics

Hampered as they may have been in other policy areas, American officials directed considerable attention toward public education. The Spaniards had constructed a few schools, but because the graduates—automatically regarded as nuevo Christianos —became subject to full taxation (Philippine Commission 1901, FF:545), education had not been popular with the highlanders (see also Russell 1983:271). American secular schools, by contrast, were accepted in almost every Benguet district; the leaders of Buguias even offered to build a schoolhouse without state assistance (Philippine Commission 1901, FF:547–548). Within a decade, local residents educated in village schools began to replace Ilocanos as teachers and municipal secretary-treasurers throughout the Cordillera (Fry 1983:68).

American missionary activity largely bypassed northern Benguet, ensuring religious continuity and concord throughout the prewar period. Buguias Christians today argue that missionaries neglected their region because it was too peaceful; the bellicose central Cordillerans presented a more urgent target. But whatever the motives behind it, this bypassing of Buguias by church agents was to have significant consequences for subsequent cultural change.

American capitalists were a more potent force in the area. They excavated several gold mines in southern Benguet, inherited a Spanish copper mine at Mankayan, and for a period mined gold at Suyoc. They also claimed vast stands of pine to supply supports and headworks for their many mining operations. These actions were to have damaging repercussions on the indigenous peoples in the postwar period, but before the war their effects in Buguias proper were relatively benign. Most mine workers were immigrants from the more densely populated central Cordillera, and they presented a good market for Buguias traders during their periodic trips home. American mineral operations in the Suyoc/Mankayan

area simply bolstered the Buguias economy; the indigenous diggings were left to their rightful owners, and the laborers brought in to work the deeper American mines formed a new set of customers.

The American rulers also sought to "create new wants" among the Benguet people to spur development, but it is uncertain how they hoped to accomplish this (Fry 1983:100). If Buguias prospered during the American period it was because of local initiative rather than American agency. Overall, the generally well-meaning administrators had poor understandings of the local economy; Governor Pack, for instance, hopefully proclaimed in 1907 that the cattle industry was "only in its infancy" (Philippine Commission 1907, v. 1:278), evidently unaware that most suitable pasture areas had long since been developed.

The Geography of Imperial Rule

The remote Kallahan/Kalanguya-speaking areas of the southeast Cordillera were for the most part ignored by American officials, and the local residents, largely unsubdued by the Spaniards, had no desire to submit to the new authorities. Some efforts were made in the early years to bring the relatively accessible village of Kayapa into the imperial fold, but the de facto American policy was to leave the entire area alone. In 1934, J. W. Light reported that the Kayapa people were peaceful and industrious, and although they paid no taxes and did not want a school, they presented no problem for the state. The northern Kalanguya (many of whom lived within the Buguias economic sphere) were even less bothered by colonial interference. The American hope was that these "wild" people would be gradually "civilized" through contact with their Benguet neighbors.

The American policy makers hoped to encourage both economic development and social integration in the Cordillera by constructing an extensive system of graded trails (Fry 1983:77). (A trailbuilding program had been initiated by the Spaniards, but as late as 1906, S. C. Simms (1906b) found it necessary to take a detour through Cervantes when traveling from Baguio to Kiangan.) The rationale behind the transportation program was given dramatic expression by Governor Early in 1931 (Early 1931:41): "[to coalesce] the warring mountain tribes into a homogenous society which will have solidarity of interests in the next generation as it has found peace and mutual understanding in this."

Colonial Visions

To appreciate why colonial policy worked as it did one must examine imperial agents' assessments of their own roles and of the highlanders they presumed to rule. Most American administrators saw themselves as protectors and guides, bearers of civilization to a benighted land. As Benguet's Governor Pack saw it, the first Americans in the Cordillera found a group of "poor, timid and oppressed barbarians" (Philippine Commission 1907, v. 1:277). But officials stationed in the Cordillera, especially those in Benguet, quickly developed a deep respect for their hard-working "subjects." This—combined with a strong sense of frugality—contributed to the general policy of minimal interference, just as it led to prognostications of rapid economic development. At the same time, most Western observers thought that an unfortunate but inevitable concomitant of material progress was the destruction of indigenous culture—a forecast that turned out to be less prescient.

Many Spanish observers had regarded the Igorots as lowly beings indeed: filthy, vicious, scheming idolaters was the typical picture (see Scott 1974, especially p. 70). With the occupation of Benguet in the mid-nineteenth century, however—their dismal failure to missionize the area notwithstanding—local administrators began to report highly positive qualities. One Benguet governor praised the highlanders in quite extraordinary terms: "The character of the Benguet person is loyal, honorable, humble, and, above all, very respectful. His intelligence is lively, and his natural talent is superior to that of the lowlander [quoted in Perez 1902:317; translation by the author]."

Most American commentators also considered the highlanders superior in many respects to the lowland Filipinos. This reflected at once a racist disdain for Filipinos, compounded by scorn for Hispanicized culture and a "rough rider" respect for the rugged, disciplined, and sometimes belligerent highlanders (see Jenista 1978). In the early years of their rule, the Americans' tone was set by Dean Worcester, Secretary of the Philippine Interior. All the mountain people needed, Worcester was convinced, was American tutelage and protection from the lowland Filipinos.

The American administrators' admiration of the Benguet peoples is well expressed in an official report of the era: "In their town government the Igorrotes are considerate and just, and on the whole

conduct the business of the town intelligently and wisely [Philippine Commission 1904, v. 1:410]."

In part, Americans attributed the virtues of the Benguet people to a perceived meritocracy in their class stratification. Governor Pack reported that "[above the common Igorot there is at higher, richer, cleaner class—whose individuals think and study and somehow and from somewhere glean valuable information, and to this class all other classes render implicit faith and obedience [Philippine Commission 1904, v. 1:410]." It is thus hardly surprising that American policy bolstered the position of the indigenous elite.

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.