Palawan

The Palawan, also called Palaw'an, are the principal indigenous people of Palawan, the island between Mindoro and Borneo, which takes its name from them. They traditionally followed animist anito beliefs and form four Palawanic-speaking subgroups, divided between coastal Panimusan and highland Kunoy communities; the latter include the Tau't Bato, who shelter in caves during the rainy season.

Originally shifting cultivators of the southern interior, they built hillside houses on posts, hunted with poison-tipped spears and stunned fish with tuba root sap. When Muslim traders and settlers from Mindanao reached the coast, many lowland Palawan adopted Islam while highlanders kept their old rites.

Chinese sources of the 1200s record the islands as Sandao, a vassal of Ma-i, and they later passed under Brunei and Sulu. Spanish friars opened missions at Taytay in the early seventeenth century, and in 1749 the Sultan of Brunei ceded southern Palawan to Spain.