Origin of the Kalinga Axe

[migueldiaz]

Some more early-1900s observations on the Cordillera battle axe --

From The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon, by Lt. Col.
Cornélis De Witt Willcox (USMA):

"[In Bontok] Of weapons there was almost none visible, no shields or spears, but here and there a head-ax.

"[In between Bontok and Kalinga] ... were met by Mr. Hale, the Governor, with two warriors, tall and slender, broad of chest and thin of flank, with red and yellow gee-strings, tufts of brilliant feathers in their hair, and highly polished head-axes on their hips.

"[In Kalinga] ... we saw a man coming towards us accompanied by thirty or forty boys not more than ten or eleven years of age, all gee-stringed, and eight of them carrying head-axes on their hips.

[Nonoy, please take note. It really looks like there is a children's version of the head axe? Quite interesting.]

"[Still in Kalinga] But the finest thing of all was the head-ax, a beautiful and cruel-looking weapon, the head having on one side an edge curving back toward the shaft, and on the other a point. To keep the weapon from slipping out of the hand, a stud is left in the hard wood shaft, about two-thirds of the way from the head, the shaft itself being protected by a steel sheathing half way down; the remainder being ornamented with decorative brass plates and strips, and the end shod in a ferrule of silver. The top of the ax is not straight, but curved, both edge and point taking, as it were, their origin in this curve; the edge is formed by a double chamfer, the ax-blade being of uniform thickness. All together, this weapon is perhaps more original and characteristic than any other native to the Philippine Archipelago."

I think Col. Willcox's last sentence in the previous paragraph is pregnant with meaning.

Hopefully, we can later on definitively establish that the Cordillera axe is indeed the truly original ethnic Filipino weapon-and-tool.