Bugkalot

The Bugkalot, formerly called the Ilongot, are an Austronesian people of the Sierra Madre and the Caraballo Mountains in eastern Luzon. They settled along forest rivers and lived in stateless, kin-group communities without chiefs, with a tradition of headhunting raids tied to grief and proving young men.

Their mountains commanded the Spanish approaches from the lowlands: Dominican missionaries entered the upper Cagayan valley in 1607, and a convent followed in the Caraballo foothills in 1702. Conquest was slow: the highlanders refused Spanish rule and withdrew deeper into the mountains, forcing repeated expeditions generation after generation.

Long ruled as part of Cagayan province, the district became the separate politico-military province of Nueva Vizcaya only in the late 1830s. They kept their own Bugkalot language, though plains contact made most also speak Ilocano and Tagalog.