Gaddang

The Gaddang are Austronesian people of the upper Cagayan watershed in northern Luzon, their villages on tributaries including the Magat in modern Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino, hemmed by the Cordillera and Sierra Madre. Related tongues are usually treated as dialects of one Gaddang language, identity defined first by speech.

They farmed by swidden in the isolated valley until Spanish soldiers and missionaries arrived: Juan de Salcedo passed through in 1572; Dominicans forced a mission there in 1598. In 1621 Felipe Catabay led the Gaddang Revolt out of Bolo, burning the church and withdrawing beyond the Mallig River; Spanish records call the first Bayombong mass of 1639 the rising's end. The split between Christianized lowlanders and mountain Gaddang keeping the old rites dates from this war.

In 1785 Dabo's revolt against the tobacco monopoly was crushed from Ilagan; the tobacco boom drew Ilocano and Pangasinan laborers in until they outnumbered old Gaddang families.