Mangyan

Mangyan is the collective name for the eight indigenous peoples of Mindoro, each speaking its own Austronesian language. They were once the sole inhabitants of the island Chinese traders called Ma-i, whose trade with the Song court is recorded as early as 972: coastal Mangyan exchanged beeswax, pearls, cotton and tortoiseshell for Chinese porcelain and iron.

Originally shore dwellers, they moved into the mountains to escape Tagalog settlers, Spanish conquest and conversion, and Moro slaving raids. The southern groups, present on the island by about 900, developed the surat Mangyan, a syllabic script of Indic origin carved on bamboo, and the ambahan, a seven-syllable recited poetry.

Most Mangyan lived by swidden fields, hunting and gathering, with an animist religion of rice spirits and ancestor souls. Wars between Spaniards and Moros depopulated the coasts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.