Ifugao people

The Ifugao people are the ethnic group inhabiting Ifugao Province. They reside in the municipalities of Lagawe (capital of Ifugao), Aguinaldo, Alfonso Lista, Asipulo, Banaue, Hingyon, Hungduan, Kiangan, Lamut, Mayoyao, and Tinoc. The province is one of the smallest provinces in the Philippines with an area of only 251,778 hectares, or about 0.8% of the total Philippine land area. As of 1995, the population of the Ifugaos was counted to be 131,635. Although the majority of them are still in Ifugao province, some of them have moved to Baguio, where they work as woodcarvers, and to other parts of the Cordillera Region. The term Ifugao is derived from ipugo, which means "earth people", "mortals" or "humans", as distinguished from spirits and deities. It also means "from the hill", as pugo means hill. The term Igorot or Ygolote was the term used by the Spanish for mountain people. The Ifugaos, however, prefer the name Ifugao. Henry Otley Beyer thought that the Ifugaos originated from southern China 2,000 years ago and migrated to Lingayen Gulf and the west coast of northern Luzon, upon which they migrated to the Agno and Kayapa river valleys and into the Ifugao valleys. A theory by Felix Keesing was based on old Spanish sources and proposed that the ancestors of the Ifugao came from the Magat area only after the arrival of the Spanish in Magat. Hence the rice terraces are only a few hundred years old. The Ifugao popular epic The Hudhud of Dinulawan and Bugan of Gonhadan supports this interpretation. A more recent theory by Manuel Dulawan assumes that the Ifugaos came from the western Mountain Province, due to striking similarities with Kankanaey language, architecture, clothing manufacturing and design and the many names and places that originate from this region and feature in Ifugao myths and songs. According to studies, the Ifugao succeeded multiple times resisting against the Spanish at conquest. The groups that migrated to the Cordilleran highlands were believed to be those that resisted the Spanish colonial control, which became prevalent in the lowlands.