Roy Franklin Barton: His Contributions to Cordillera Ethnographic and Cultural Studies
This paper looks at the ethnographic contributions of Roy Franklin Barton who studied the Ifugao and Kalinga of Mountain Province. The paper focuses particularly on Barton's major publications on Ifugao which include Ifugao Law, Ifugao Religion, Philippine Pagans: The autobiography of Three Ifugaos, Ifugao Economics, and The Halfway Sun . Ifugao Law was Barton's first publication which has been described by Fred Eggan as “a classic in Philippine ethnology and law of primitive peoples, and a contribution to the study of primitive legal systems.” Barton distinguished the religious variations in the different villages including linguistic differences in Ifugao Religion. Philippine Pagans deal with collected life histories, including the autobiography of an Ifugao woman. In Ifugao Economics, he observed the division of labor between men and women, where tasks considered dominated by men or women were interchangeable. Barton provided an account of his life experiences, and the problems encountered during the early American administration in The Halfway Sun.