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Bago Tribe

The document discusses the origins and history of the Bago tribe in Ilocos Sur, Philippines. It presents three potential theories for how the Bago tribe was formed: 1) They were part of early Malay immigrant groups who settled in mountainous areas of Ilocos. 2) A group migrated from the Cordillera mountain range further south. 3) They resulted from intermarriage between highland Igorot tribes and lowland groups, taking aspects of both cultures. While sharing some cultural similarities with highland Igorot tribes, the Bago have developed their own distinct language, musical and dance traditions, suggesting they are a unique ethnic group that settled in the mountainous lowland border regions.

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Deodato Camias
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194 views

Bago Tribe

The document discusses the origins and history of the Bago tribe in Ilocos Sur, Philippines. It presents three potential theories for how the Bago tribe was formed: 1) They were part of early Malay immigrant groups who settled in mountainous areas of Ilocos. 2) A group migrated from the Cordillera mountain range further south. 3) They resulted from intermarriage between highland Igorot tribes and lowland groups, taking aspects of both cultures. While sharing some cultural similarities with highland Igorot tribes, the Bago have developed their own distinct language, musical and dance traditions, suggesting they are a unique ethnic group that settled in the mountainous lowland border regions.

Uploaded by

Deodato Camias
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Bago tribe and its people

How did they evolved in the mountainous part of Ilocos Sur and their other present settlements.

Theory:

Considering historians’ claim that after the land bridges were gone, all other settlers, the Malays
and the Indonesians came to this country in different waves, in barangays, and settled the country
before its rediscovery. The kalinga and Apayao province, later separated, accordingly was settled by two
waves of Indonesians: the darker skinned settled the lower kalinga and the fairer skinned the upper
kalinga. On the other hand, the other parts of the Cordillera and the low lands were settled by Malay
settlers as they speak the austronesian or malayo-polynesian language.

1. Immigration. The Bagos could be a part of the waves of Malay settlers that speak the
austronesian or malayo-polynesian language that came by boat to the coast of Ilocos. Some of
these Malay groups settled in the low lands while others goes further in to the interior of Ilocos
and settled in its mountainous places and along its rivers. They later spread out in the
peripheries of the neighboring provinces. Other Malay groups goes further in to the higher
terrains of the Cordillera. The settlers of the Cordillera could have first landed on the shores of
Ilocos region and further inroad to the Cordillera ranges. On the process some settlers preferred
to settle along the lower mountains abutting the foot of the Cordillera, and these were the
Bagos, the Igorots who live in the mountains of Ilocos along the foot of the Cordillera.
2. Migration. A group or bands of people from the old Mountain Provinces, now Cordillera,
migrated lower to the hilly places of present day Ilocos Sur and to the peripheries of La Union,
Pangasinan and Abra.

3. Intermarriages. The Bago people who dwell along the mountainous places and rivers of the
Ilocos land inter marries with the people of the low lands or the high lands, and their offspring
became also Bago adding numbers to their tribe. This should be the notion when saying that the
Bago is a product of inter marriages. One parent must be a Bago. It should not be understood
that people of different non- Bago tribes inter marries and with their off-springs form bands of
people calling it Bago. But a product of inter-marriages of other non-Bago tribes may become a
Bago by personal ascription, like the child of a man from Bontoc marrying an Ilocana and they
live among the Bagos; and this child later preferred to consider itself Bago.

Are the Bago, a distinct tribe of Igorots that settled in the mountainous places of the low lands?

All the Igorot tribes in the Cordilleras have their distinct culture. The Igorots uses Baag(G-strings)
and the women their “Tapis” or “Wanes”, their native dresses. The Bago male could have historically
uses the loin cloth or “Baag” but regrettably discarded it for the male attire of the lowlanders.
However, the women retained wearing their native dress, the tapis or Wanes, but to this day is use
mostly for cultural activities. The Igorots have their respective native dance and style of playing the
gongs. The Igorots of Mountain Province and of Benguet have similar ways of playing the gongs and
their tadek(way of dancing the gongs play). The Bago have a distinctive way of playing their gongs
and way of dancing with it, which has no similarities at all with that of the high land Igorots. But the
Bagos knows also how to play the takik(high land Igorot way of playing the gongs) in their own
rhythmic style of playing it. As to a distinct native dialect, the Bagos speak in the way the highland
igorots but have many distinctive words which are not of higland Igorots like the Bontoc, kankanaey
or Ibaloy words- it is not even Ilocano or iloko. The Bago also speak Ilocano that is intersperse with
their own Bago words which are not Ilocano words. These mixture of speaking of the Bago could be
the fusion of the Igorot and Ilocano dialects that were infused into the tribe’s language because of
their centuries of mingling with the highland igorots and the lowlander Ilocanos. The settlements of
the Bago tribes are sandwiched by the Igorot lands of the cordillera and the low land of the Ilocanos.

Deodato Saipa

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