We were on our way to Sagada, Mountain Province when we stumbled upon the Bontoc Village Museum. We have our hired jeepney driver from Banaue to thank for. While other jeepneys-for-hire in Banaue lead travelers straight to Sagada, he gave us an extra treat and took us to several stopovers in between – the strategic view points of the Banaue Rice Terraces, a truly refreshing unknown river at the side of the highway, and finally, the Bontoc Village Museum.

Located within the Catholic Sisters’ Convent and the St. Vincent Elementary Compound in Poblacion, Bontoc, the museum is run by ICM missionaries.

It was post Holy Week when we went on this Mountain Province expedition, so it is not surprising that there weren’t so many travelers in Bontoc at the time. In fact, while the Bontoc Village Museum was open, we were the first visitors at 2:30 pm. We paid P40 at the entrance and as we started going around, indigenous instruments played in the background. It definitely made our sight-seeing more interesting.

Small as it is, the Bontoc Village Museum may be one of the best kept local museums in the country. It houses many different artifacts and indigenous, centuries-old items of the Ifugao tribes. The museum also showcases the intricacies of the Ifugao weaving as it displays the woven costumes as well as bags and other accessories.

Creatively shot black-and-white photographs dating back to the early 1900s were all over the two-storey museum. There are pictures taken by Eduardo Masferre – the father of Philippine photography – that dramatically depict the natives’ way of life. There were many portrait shots – for portrait photography was Masferre’s passion – of Ifugao men and women that showed emotions unique to the natives, having gone through life toiling to grow rice in order to live.

There were other pictures by other photographers, of course, showing the different facets of the Ifugao culture – the headhunting practices of the tribes in the olden days, the old Ifugao custom of placing dead bodies on chairs in front of the house for a period of time, and other interesting shots.
Just beside the museum are replicas of traditional Ifugao houses. The modern-day houses in the province do not make use of the traditional materials anymore. This is why seeing these models was a real treat for us.

The Bontoc Village Museum provides a good backgrounder for anyone who plans on discovering the rest of the Mountain Province region. We were glad we made this spontaneous stopover.