Bukidnon

The Bukidnon, whose Visayan name means highlanders and who call themselves Higaonon, are Austronesian people of the north-central Mindanao plateau, around the Pulangi river and Kitanglad range. Their Binukid language belongs to the Manobo group. Villages under datu leaders farmed rice fields and forest clearings and kept animist rituals honouring ancestor and nature spirits.

For centuries the plateau stayed apart from the coasts, where Moro fleets raided for slaves through the 1750s, burning villages and selling captives south. In reply the Spanish built the stone fort of La Concepcion at Misamis in 1756.

In 1818 Manila divided Mindanao into politico-military districts, the Second District of Misamis nominally covering the plateau. Spanish authority stopped at coastal garrisons, however, and the highlanders kept their datus, fields and beliefs, real colonial administration reaching them only afterward.