Subanon

The Subanon, whose name means people of the river from suba, are the indigenous inhabitants of the Zamboanga peninsula of western Mindanao. Settled there before 500 BC, most communities moved from the lowlands into the hills under pressure from Moro slavers and Visayan migrants.

They traded across the Sulu and Celebes seas before Islam; peninsula caves have yielded burial jars and Chinese celadons of the Yuan and Ming periods. In the early 1500s they entered the Maguindanao protectorate, supplying fighters and forest produce for a share of war spoils. Coastal converts to Islam became the Kalibugan and Kolibugan, still speaking Subanon.

Hill communities kept order under thimuay leaders, with shamans' rituals, carved omen birds and recited epics. In the late nineteenth century the Spanish governor built forts across the Tukuran isthmus, but highlanders remained beyond colonial administration until the American years.