Itneg

The Itneg, called Tingguian or mountain dwellers in Spanish records, are an Austronesian Cordilleran people of the Abra valley in northwestern Luzon; their name comes from Ilocano iti uneg, meaning interior. They once lived on the northern Luzon coast alongside the Ilocanos, but colonial pressure and Christian Ilocano settlement in the 1500s and 1600s drove them inland, where valley groups took up wet-rice farming and highland groups kept swidden cultivation.

A bishop's letter first mentions them in Spanish records in 1585, and in 1598 Spanish and Ilocano forces took Bangued and installed an Augustinian mission. A friar in 1626 baptized some three thousand people, yet many highland villages kept raiding mission towns.

Settlements were governed by panglakayen elder councils, headhunting feuds ended with kalon peace pacts, and their animist faith centered on the sky creator Kadaklan. By the early 1800s valley clans were being absorbed into Christian lowland society while mountain subgroups kept old rites.