Bontoc

The Bontoc are Austronesian mountain people of the central Cordillera in northern Luzon, in the upper Chico valley. Their name combines words for heap and top, meaning mountain people. They lived in compact wards with dormitories for unmarried men and women, beneath a hereditary kadangyan elite.

Rice terraces, gold panning and headhunting shaped life: warriors marked each taken head with a chaklag chest tattoo and fought with pin-nang axes and spears to gangsa gong rhythms. Their faith centred on supreme god Intutungcho and his son Lumawig, a sky-born hero who married a Bontoc girl and taught irrigation and crafts; seers placated the anito dead.

Spanish expeditions against the Cordillera from 1566 to 1665 failed to subdue them, the major 1785 campaign leaving their valleys unconquered; through the 1830s they kept dormitories, pacts and rites without colonial rule.