Ibaloi

The Ibaloi are an Igorot people of the southern Cordillera in northern Luzon, their name meaning people of the houses, in the southeastern Benguet valleys along the Agno and other rivers, holding Mount Pulag sacred. Austronesian speakers of Ibaloi, they also used Ilocano and Tagalog in trade.

The wealthy baknang, controlling terraced rice fields and gold workings, stood above cowhands, farmhands and slaves. Kabayan was famed for fire mummies, dried for months with salt water and herbs, laid in cave coffins. The highlands' gold was melted into cakes and carried to Pangasinan fairs, and community life centred on cañao feasts with gongs and sacrifices to ancestral and nature spirits, the anito.

Benguet gold drew Spanish expeditions from 1572, but fortified villages and mountains let the Ibaloi and Igorot kinsmen keep autonomy through the colonial period, accepting missionaries and trade while keeping their mines and rituals.