In northern Luzon is the Igorot, a typical primitive Malayan.  He is a muscular, smooth-faced, brown man of a type between the delicate and the coarse.  In Mindoro the Mangiyan is found, an especially lowly Malayan, who may prove to be a true savage in culture.  In Mindanao is the slender, delicate, smooth-faced brown man of which the Subano, in the western part, is typical.  There are the Bagobo and the extensive Manobo of eastern Mindanao in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Davao, the latter people following the Agusan River practically to the north coast of Mindanao.  In southeastern Mindanao, in the vicinity of Mount Apo and also north of the Gulf of Davao, are the Ata.  They are a scattered people and evidently a Negrito and primitive Malayan mixture.  In Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, Isabela, and perhaps Principe, of Luzon, are the Ibilao.  They are a slender, delicate, bearded people, with an artistic nature quite different from any other now known in the island, but somewhat like that of the Ata of Mindanao.  Their artistic wood productions suggest the incised work of distant dwellers of the Pacific, as that of the people of New Guinea, Fiji Islands, or Hervey Islands.  The seven so-called Christian tribes,[3] occupying considerable areas in the coastwise lands and low plains of most of the larger islands of the Archipelago, represent migrations to the Archipelago subsequent to those of the Igorot and comparable tribes.

The last migrations of brown men into the Archipelago are historic.  The Spaniard discovered the inward flow of the large Samal Moro group —­ after his arrival in the sixteenth century.  The movement of this nomadic “Sea Gipsy” Samal has not ceased to-day, but continues to flow in and out among the small southern islands.

Besides the peoples here cited there are a score of others scattered about the Archipelago, representing many grades of primitive culture, but those mentioned are sufficient to suggest that the Islands have been very effective in gathering up and holding divers groups of primitive men.[4]

PART 1

The Igorot Culture Group

Igorot land

Northern Luzon, or Igorot land, is by far the largest area in the Philippine Archipelago having any semblance of regularity.  It is roughly rectangular in form, extending two and one-half degrees north and south and two degrees east and west.

There are two prominent geographic features in northern Luzon.  One is the beautifully picturesque mountain system, the Caraballos, the most important range of which is the Caraballos Occidentales, extending north and south throughout the western part of the territory.  This range is the famous “Cordillera Central” for about three-quarters of its extent northward, beyond which it is known as “Cordillera del Norte.”  The other prominent feature is the extensive drainage system of the eastern part, the Rio Grande de Cagayan draining northward into the China Sea about two-thirds of the territory of northern Luzon.  It is the largest drainage system and the largest river in the Archipelago.