Ifugao

The Ifugao are an Austronesian mountain people of the Cordillera range in northern Luzon, divided into the Ayangan, Kalanguya and Tuwali subgroups. Their origins are debated, with theories tracing them to the Lingayen coast, the Magat valley or the western Cordillera.

As Spain conquered the Magat lowlands, the Ifugao withdrew deeper into the mountains between 1600 and 1700 and, giving up taro for wet rice, carved their famous irrigated terraces into the hillsides. Spanish troops first entered Kiangan in the 1750s and described the terraces in 1801, but never subdued the highlands.

Ifugao society rested on kinship and councils of elders, with animist baki rites led by mumbaki priests, the chanted hudhud epics and carved wooden bulul figures that guarded the rice granaries as ancestral spirits.