Boholano

The Boholano are the Visayan inhabitants of the island province of Bohol, speaking a distinctive Cebuano dialect. Their ancestors were the pintados, tattooed Visayans whose artifacts have been dug up at Mansasa, Dauis and Panglao, and the island takes its name from the pre-colonial polity of Bo-ol.

On 16 March 1565 their chieftain Datu Sikatuna sealed a blood compact, the Sandugo, with Miguel López de Legazpi, the first treaty of friendship between Spaniards and Filipinos.

Spanish rule and missionary Christianity provoked fierce resistance: in 1621 the babaylan Tamblot roused the island's villages in a native diwata's name before Cebu troops crushed the rising, and in 1744 Francisco Dagohoy began a rebellion that held the Bohol interior until 1829, the longest revolt in Philippine colonial history. Most Boholanos became Roman Catholic, while older animist customs persisted beneath the new faith.