Kalinga

The Kalinga are an Austronesian people of the central Cordillera in northern Luzon, whose villages line the Chico River and Tabuk and Rizal floodplains; their name is an Ibanag and Gaddang exonym meaning headhunter. Tabuk was settled in the 1100s, and from there the Kalinga spread into valleys like Balbalan, Lubuagan and Tanudan, building irrigated rice terraces and working local gold and copper.

Society divided into poor kapos and landowning baknang, led in war by mingol head-takers and later by papangat elders; their distinctive institution was the bodong, a peace pact sealing alliances and closing feuds between villages, later taken up by neighbors.

They fought with the sinawit head axe, wore batok centipede and fern tattoos, and honored the creator Kabuniyan through mandadawak priestesses. Into the 1830s Spanish administration never reached their valleys, so the Kalinga kept self-rule by pact and custom.