Timicheg was one of about 50 Igorots brought together by an American impresario to tour the world and show off their tribal ways. Ghent's exposition on their tour, which had already taken them to Paris, Brussels, London and Amsterdam. For Timicheg, it was the last.

The Filipino Exhibition Company was described last week as "a colonial freak show" by Andre Capiteyn of the Ghent city archive. "Their self-made Igorot village was a major attraction: the Indians sat there half-naked weaving baskets, pounding rice, carving woodcuts and playing gong music, and once in a while they would perform war dances or hold competitions in spear throwing or tree climbing. If they got cold, they would make a fire by rubbing bamboo sticks together."

But for Timicheg, exposure to the West was to prove fatal. In August of that year he died of tuberculosis, then a common disease in Europe, but unknown in his native region. His fellow villagers keened and wailed to keep evil spirits from troubling his departed soul.

Timicheg was buried in a cemetery in Ghent, and there he remained forgotten until last week, when the Street Names Committee of the city archive decided to name a new passageway after him - the Timicheg Tunnel, which joins Sint-Denijslaan and Koningin Fabiolalaan as part of the Gent- Sint-Pieters redevelopment project.

The tunnel allows pedestrians and cyclists to pass under the railway tracks near Gent-Sint-Pieters station (cars will be allowed from 2015). Ghent mayor Daniel Termont and others were said to have opposed the naming, but the committee held firm. "Several street names in the area refer to prominent Gentenaars who made fortunes out of the world exposition in 1913," said Capiteyn. "Can we be allowed therefore to give one of the streets the name of a little man who lost his life there in miserable circumstances?"

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