Gaddang people


The Gaddang are an indigenous Filipino people; a linguistically identified ethnic group sharing centuries of residence in the watershed of the Cagayan River in Northern Luzon, Philippines. Gaddang speakers were recently reported to number 30,000. This doesn't include another 6,000 related Ga'dang speakers whose vocabulary is more than 80% identical. As a group, they comprise less than one-twentieth of one percent of the population of the Philippines.
The various members of several proximate groups speaking mutually-intelligible dialects are now regularly depicted as a single people in government documents, histories, and cultural literature. Distinctions may be asserted between the Christianized "lowlanders" and the formerly non-Christian residents in the mountains; these get ignored or glossed-over by some sources, and exaggerated by others. The identity is solely their language; the Gaddang have historically incorporated individuals from many surrounding but linguistically-different people.

The Gaddang in Their Homelands

The Land

The Cagayan Valley is cut-off from the rest of Luzon by mile-high, heavily-forested mountain ranges that join at Balete Pass near Baguio. Head south from the mouth of the Cagayan river and along its tributary, the Magat River; they become a dominant presence. The terraced Cordilleras close in from the west, then the darker reaches of northern Sierra Madre rise to the east, joining in the Caraballo Mountains at the river sources.
Once shrouded in continuous rainforest, the valley floor today is a patchwork of intensive agriculture and mid-size civic centers, surrounded by hamlets and small villages. Even the remote mountains now have permanent farms, all-weather roads, cell-towers, mines, and markets. Most native forest flora has vanished, and today any uncultivated areas sprout invasive cogon or foreign weeds.

The Idea of A Folk

Early Spanish depictions of Philippine peoples were written for military or evangelical purposes. They ignored what we consider scientific evidence, and can be unreliable about conditions. There were no native reporters.
So, demographic and linguistic distinctions of this period are, like settlements and roads, a cultural overlay imposed by foreign invaders on an extant population; new features intended to support aims and interests of church, state, and business. They entirely fail to reflect any native organizational concepts. In 1902, the US Commissioner for Non-Christian Tribes wrote:
We may therefore claim there was no "Gaddang people" prior to the Spanish incursion; merely inhabitants of forest hamlets with extremely tenuous relationships to inhabitants of other proto-villages. Languages and customs might be shared with nearby peoples, or not. The government and church denominated certain villages as a combined people.
If we assume the number of Gaddang to have been fairly stable over the twenty generations since the Spanish arrived, the entire Gaddang population ever computes to around a half-million.

An Evolving Identity

American businessman Frederic H. Sawyer lived in Central Luzon beginning in 1886. He compiled The Inhabitants of the Philippines from official, religious, and mercantile sources during the last years of the Spanish administration. Published in 1900, it was a resource for incoming Americans. His descriptions are meager and at best secondhand. In his section titled Gaddanes we recognize the pagan residents of the highlands. The residents of Bayombong, Bambang, Dupax, and Aritao, however, are called Italones, while their like in Isabela are the Irayas and the Catalanganes.
In 1917, respected University of the Philippines anthropologist H. Otley Beyer reported 21,240 Christian Gaddang and 12,480 Pagan Gaddang. He broke the Christian group into 16,240 Gaddang-speakers and 5,000 Yogad-speakers. Some Pagan Gaddang spoke Maddukayang - a group totalling 8,480 souls. There were also 2,000 whose language was Katalangan, and another 2,000 speaking Iraya.
A 1959 article by Fr. Godfrey Lambrecht, CICM is prefaced:
The 1960 Philippine Census reported 6,086 Gaddang in the province of Isabela, 1,907 in what was then Mountain Province, and 5,299 in Nueva Vizcaya. Using this data, Mary Christine Abriza wrote:
The International Fund for Agricultural Development published its' study on Indigenous People's Issues in the Philippines in 2012; the study identifies Gaddang in Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, and Mountain Provinces. The Gaddang are included under the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997 by this defintion:
There is a rural barangay named Gaddang in the municipality of Aparri where the Cagayan reaches the sea.
The evidence is that Gaddang occupied this vast protected valley jointly with similar Ibanag, Itawis, Isneg, and Malaueg peoples for many hundreds of years; all the Cagayan Valley peoples share cultural similarities. And, like the biblical Hebrews, it is their history that has made them who they are.

Pre-history

Archeologic sites in Penablanca establish the presence of humans in riparian Northern Luzon as early as the Pleistocene era. The subsequent human prehistory of Luzon is currently subject to significant disagreements on in-migration, and genetic studies have been inconclusive.
and its tributaries on Luzon, Philippines. Prehistoric peoples spread along the rivers from the mouth in the north
Archaeologists generally agree that - between 200 B.C. and 300 A.D. - colonizing expeditions of Austronesian peoples arrived along the northern coasts of Luzon. They found the Cagayan River watershed sparsely occupied by long-established Negrito Aeta peoples, while the hills were already home to more-recently arrived Cordilleran people and possibly the fierce, mysterious Ilongot in the Caraballos. The valleys of the Cagayan and its tributaries were covered with dense old-growth rain-forest with an extraordinarily diverse flora and fauna.
Unlike either the Aeta hunter-gatherer or Cordilleran terrace-farmers, these Indo-Malay colonists primarily practiced swidden farming, and some were involved in primitive littoral and riparian economies; all societies which favor low population density and depend on frequent relocations. Social structure accompanying these practices is rarely developed beyond an extended family group, and is often confined to a single settlement. Such societies frequently feature suspicion of - even hostility towards - outsiders and a stubborn resistance to change. So, conservatism forces members to move frequently in the face of population pressure.
The Indo-Malay arrived in separate small groups during this half-millennium, undoubtedly speaking varying dialects; time and separation have indubitably promoted further linguistic fragmentation. Over generations they moved inland into valleys along the Cagayan River and its tributaries, pushing up into the foothills. Gaddang occupy lands more remote from the mouth of the river than do most other Indo-Malay groups, so they are likely to have been among the earliest to arrive. All descendent-members of this 500-year-long migration, however, share elements of language, genetics, practices, and beliefs. Ethnologists have recorded versions of a shared "epic" depicting describing the arrival of the heroes Biwag and Malana, their adventures with magic bukarot and depictions of riverside life, among the Cagayan Valley populations including the Gaddang. Other cultural similarities include familial collectivism, dearth of endogamous practices, and marked indifference to intergenerational conservation of assets. These socially flexible behaviors tend to foster a high individual survival rate, but do relatively little to establish and maintain a strong continuity for each small group.

Historic records

The initial census of Filipinos is based on tribute collections from Luzon all the way to Mindinao, conducted by the Spanish in 1591 ; it found nearly 630,000 native individuals.
Prior to Legazpi, the islands had been visited by Magellan's 1521 expedition, and the 1543 expedition of Villalobos. Using their reports, augmented by archeological data, scientific estimates of the archipeligan population at the time of Legazpi's arrival run from slightly more than one million to nearly 1.7 million. Even allowing for inefficiencies in early Spanish census methodologies, this data supports claims of a 40%-70% decline among Filipino population due to disease and military action over a mere quarter-century, and makes it obvious the arrival of the Spanish was a cataclysmic event for all the islands. Similar cultural dislocations of modern roads and agricultural technology on the uplands Gaddang are described in Dr. Ben Wallace's 2012 book Weeds, Roads, and God.

Spain Arrives in the Cagayan Valley

There is no doubt the Spanish occupation imposed a very different social and economic order from that which existed in the Cagayan valley. Missions and encomida-ranching introduced concepts of land tenure sophisticated beyond the usufruct system of barely organized communities farming temporary patches in the forest. The Church and Crown demanded regular tribute of goods and service; they viewed the elusive lowlands natives as property and a resource. Evanescent woodland hamlets and tiny, exclusive societies got in the way of Spanish plans for economic exploitation of their new acquisition. Trails through the forest became roads, towns and churches came into existence, new skills and social distinctions sprang into being, while old ones fell into disuse within a single generation.
In the Cagayan Valley and the nearby areas that most immediately affected the Gaddang, early expeditions led by Juan de Salcedo in 1572, and Juan Pablo Carrión brought Spanish rule into the valley. Carrión established the alcalderia of Nueva Segovia in 1585, and the natives immediately commenced what the Spanish considered anti-conquest revolts, which flared up from 1580s through the 1640s.
Nonetheless, by 1591 Spanish military forces established encomida grants as far south as Tubigarao; and Luis Pérez Dasmariñas led an expedition north over the Caraballo mountains into present-day Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela. In 1595-6 the Diocese of Nueva Segovia was decreed, and Dominican missionaries arrived. The Catholic Church forcefully proselytized the Cagayan Valley from two directions, with the southern push founding a mission at Ituy by 1609.

Gaddang During the Spanish Occupation

The Gaddang enter written history in 1608 when the Dominican order founded the mission of St. Ferdinand in the Gaddang community of Abuatan, Bolo, nearly forty years from the first Spanish settlements in the Cagayan region. 1621 saw the Gaddang Revolt, led by Felipe Catabay and Gabriel Dayag. The Gaddang Revolt was against Church requirements, as Magalat's rebellion was against Crown tribute at Tuguegarao a generation earlier. Forced introduction of new crops and farming practices surely alienated the indigenes as well.
Records left by Spanish religious and military say residents burned the village and the church, and removed to the foothills west of the Mallig River. A generation later, Gaddang returnees - at the invitation of Fray Pedro De Santo Tomas - reestablished a Bolo community, though the location was changed to the opposite side of the Cagayan from the original village. The authorities claimed the Gaddang Revolt effectively ended with the first mass held by the Augustinians on 12 April 1639 in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, the supposed "final-stronghold" of the Gaddangs.
This history suggests the protests began the distinction between the "Christianized" and "non-Christian" Gaddang. Bolo-area Gaddang sought refuge with mountain tribes who had consistently refused to abandon traditional beliefs and practices for Catholicism. The Igorots of the Cordillaeras killed Father Esteban Marin in 1601, subsequently they waged a guerrilla resistance after Captain Mateo de Aranada burned their villages. It appears the mountaineers accepted the Gaddang as allies against the Spanish. While the Gaddang refused to grow rice in terraces, they learned to build tree-homes and hunt in the local style. Many Gaddang eventually returned to the valley, however, accepting Spain and the Church to follow the developing lowlands-farming lifestyle, which offered social collectivism and material benefits not available to residents of the hills.
Missions sent from Nueva Segovia continued to prosper and expand southward, reaching the Diffun area by 1702. Letters from the Dominican Provincial Jose Herrera to Ferdinand VI make explicit that military activity was financed by the missions. Meanwhile, the Ituy mission initially baptized Isinay and Ilongot; thirty years later services were also being held for Gaddang in Bayombong. By the 1640s, though, that mission was defunct - the Magat valley lacked the comprehensive encomida organzation of the Cagayan valley. By the 1747 census, however, a reestablished mission of Paniqui enumerated 470 native residents in Bayombong and 213 from Bagabag, all said to be Gaddang or Yogad. With more than 600 households, the substantial size of these Magat Valley Gaddang towns - more than 170 kilometers from present day Ilagan City - argues that a major native settlement had existed longer than the 120+ years since the Irray revolt. By 1789, the Dominican Fr. Francisco Antolin made estimates of the Cordillaran population; his numbers of Paniqui Gaddang are ten thousand, with another four thousand in the Cauayan region.
The Gaddang are mentioned in Spanish records again in connection with the late-1700s rebellion of Dabo against the royal tobacco monopoly; Ilagan City was by then the tobacco industry's financing and warehousing center for the Valley. Tobacco requires intense cultivation, and Cagayan natives were considered too few and too primitive to provide the needed labor. Workers from the western coastal provinces of Ilokos and Pangasinan were imported for the work. Today, descendants of those 18th and 19th-century immigrants outnumber by 7:1 descendants of the aboriginal Gaddang, Ibanag, and other Cagayan valley peoples.
In the final years of Spain's rule, royal reform and re-organization of the Cagayan government and economy began with the creation of Nueva Vizcaya province in 1839. In 1865, Isabela province was created from parts of Cagayan and Nueva Vizcaya. The new administrations further opened Cagayan Valley lands to large-scale agricultural concerns funded by Spanish, Chinese, and wealthy Central Luzon investors, attracting more workers from all over Luzon.
But the initial business of the new government was dealing with a series of head-hunting incursions that started in the early 1830s. Tribesmen from Mayoyao, Silipan, and Kiangan ambushed travellers and even attacked towns from Ilagan to Bayombong, taking nearly 300 lives. More than 100 of the victims were Gaddang residents of Bagabag, Lumabang, and Bayombong. After Dominican Fr. Juan Rubio was decapitated on his way to Camarag, Governor Oscariz of Nueva Vizcaya led a force of more than 340 soldiers and armed civilians against the Mayoyao, burning crops and three of their villages. The Mayoyao sued for peace, and afterward Oscariz led his troops through the hills as far as Angadanan. By 1868, however, the governors of Lepanto, Bontoc, and Isabela provinces repeated the expedition through the Cordilleran highlands to suppress a new wave of headhunting.
During the Spanish period, education was entirely a function of the Church for the purpose of converting indigenes to Catholicism. Although the throne decreed instruction was to be in Spanish, most friars found it easier to work in local tongues. This practice had the dual effect of maintaining local dialects/languages, while suppressing Spanish literacy among rural natives. The Education Decree of 1863 changed this, requiring primary education while reqiring use of Spanish language for instruction. Implementation in remote areas of Northern Luzon, however, was not fully begun by the revolution of 1898.

During the American Ocupation

The First Philippine Republic, primarily Manila-based illustrados and the principales who supported them, objected to the Treaty of Paris which ended the Spanish–American War, and gave the United States possession of the Philippines. Among the issues was the U.S. claim to dispose of all Philippine land-holdings, voiding grants made to Spain and the church by indigenes. What Filipino nationalists regarded as continuing their struggle for independence, the U.S. government considered as insurrection. President Aguinaldo's forces were driven out of Manila in February, 1899 and retreated through Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, and eventually to Bayombong. After a month, though, Republic headquarters left Nueva Vizcaya on its final journey which would end in Palanan, Isabela, in March, 1901. Gaddangs made few of the principales and none of the Manila oligarchy, but action in Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela made them proximate to the agonies of the rebellion.
Perhaps the earliest official reference to the Gaddang during the American Occupation directs the reader to "Igorot". The writers said of the "non-Christian" mountain tribes: Among the practices of these Igorot peoples was headhunting.
The Census also catalogues populations of the Cagayan lowlands; with theories about the origins of the inhabitants, saying:
The problematic but influential D. C. Worcester arrived in the Philippines as a zoology student in 1887, he was subsequently the only member of both the Schurman Commission and the Taft Commission. He travelled extensively in Benguet, Bontoc, Isabela, and Nueva Viscaya, and reviewed early attempts to catalogue the indigenous peoples in The Non-Christian Tribes of Northern Luzon; he collects "Calauas, Catanganes, Dadayags, Iraya, Kalibugan, Nabayuganes,and Yogades" into a single group of non-Christian "Kalingas" with whom the lowland Gaddang are identified.
When the U.S. took the Philippines from the Spanish in 1899, they instituted what President McKinley promised would be a "benign assimilation". Governance by the U.S. military energetically promoted physical improvements, many of which remain relevant today. The Army built roads, bridges, hospitals, and public buildings, improved irrigation and farm production, constructed and staffed schools on the U.S. model, and invited missionary organizations to establish colleges. Most important, these improvements affected the entire country, not just primarily the environs of the capital. The infrastructure improvements made great changes in the lives of the "Christianized" Gaddang in Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela. The 1902 Land Act and the government purchase of 166,000 hectares of Catholic church holdings also had effect on the Cagayan Valley peoples.
In addition, the passage in 1916 of the Jones Act redirected almost all U.S. efforts in the Philippines, making them focus on the near-term eventuality that Filipinos would be in charge of their own destinies. This initiated promotion of social reforms from the Spanish traditions. Food safety regulations and inspection, programs to eradicate malaria and hookworm, and expanded public education were particular American projects that affected provincial Northern Luzon. A practical decision was made to innediately conduct education in English, a practice which was finally discontinued only twenty-five years after independence.
During the first years of the 20th century, American administrators documented a number of cases throughout the islands of Filipino individuals being involved in the sale or purchase of Ifugao or Igorot women and girls to be domestic servants. The regular sale of "non-Christian" Cordilleran and Negrito tribes to work as farm labor in Isabela and Nueva Viscaya was documented, and several Gaddang were listed as purchasers. In 1903 the Senior Inspector of Constabulary for Isabela wrote to his superiors in Manila While household slaves often were treated as lesser members of Filipino families, the situation was exacerbated by the sale of slaves to Chinese residents doing business in the Philippines. When Governor George Curry arrived in Isabela in 1904, he endeavored to enforce the Congressional Act prohibiting slavery in the Philippines, but complained the Commission provided no penalties. The practice - considered to be of centuries-long standing - was effectively discouraged de jure by 1920.
In 1908, the Mountain Province administrative district was formed, incorporating the municipality of Natonin, and its barangay of Paracelis on the upper reaches of the Mallig River, as well the Ifugao municipality of Alfonso Lista up hill from San Mateo, Isabela. These areas were the home of the Ga'dang-speaking Irray and Baliwon peoples, mentioned in the early Census as "non-Christian" Gaddang. A particular charge of the new province's administration was suppression of head-hunting.
In 1901, the U. S. Army began to recruit counter-insurgency troops in the Philippines. Many Gaddang took advantage of this opportunity, and joined the Philippine Scouts as early as 1901, and continued to do so through the late 1930s. The Scouts were deployed at the Battle of Bataan, most were not in their homelands during the Japanese Occupation. One Gaddang 26th Cavalry private, Jose P. Tugab, is said to have fought in Bataan, escaped to China on a Japanese ship, was with Chiang Kai-shek at Chunking and US/Anzac forces in New Guinea, then returned to help free his own Philippine home.

Japanese occupation and WWII

On December 10, 1941, elements of the Japanese 14th Army landed at Aparri, Cagayan and marched inland to take Tugueguarao by the 12th. Hapless regular Philippine Army units of the 11th Division surrendered or fled. While Gen.Homma's main force proceeded to Ilocos Norte along the coast, troops were also deployed to administer the agriculturally rich Cagayan Valley and facilitate Japanese expropriation of the food supplies. By late 1942 food and other commodities for native residents had become very scarce.
Still, the Manila government of President Laurel encouraged collaboration with the Japanese. In these hard times for North Luzon, many individual Japanese befriended Filipino residents, they married local women, and left behind children.
Philippine and U.S. Army escapees hid in the mountains or valley villages; some engaged in small-scale guerrilla actions against the Japanese. In October 1942, Americans Lt.Col. Martin Moses, & Lt.Col. Arthur Noble attempted to organize a co-ordinated Northern Luzon guerrilla action; communications failed, however, and the attacks were unsuccessful. Nonetheless, Japanese occupying the Cagayan Valley perceived a serious threat - they brought thousands of troops from the capture of Manila and Bataan to discourage any resistance in a fierce and indiscriminate manner. " leaders were killed or captured, civilians were robbed, tortured, and massacred, their towns and barrios were destroyed."
Surviving American Capt. Volckmann re-organized Moses and Noble's guerilla operation into the United States Army Forces in the Philippines – Northern Luzon in 1943 with a new focus on gathering intelligence. Based in the Cordilleras, his native forces were effective, even though they ran great risks, and provided General MacArthur with important information about Japanese troop dispositions. Capt. Ralph Praeger operated semi-independently in the Cagayan Valley, supported by Cagayan Governor Marcelo Adduru, even successfully attacking Japanese installations at Tuguegaro.
In 1945, resistance forces also coordinated activity with the American invasion. Gaddang homelands actions in which local guerillas had a recognized impact include: the flank actions at Balete Pass to open the Magat valley, destroying bridges on the Bagabag-Bontoc Road to cut off supplies for General Yamashita's 14th Army forces in the mountains, and the drive from Cervantes to Mankayan that reduced the final Japanese stronghold at Kiangan.

Post-WWII

The Commonwealth of the Philippines was established as an independent nation by the Treaty of Manila on July 4, 1946. The population of the Philippines at independence was less than 18 million. By 2014, the Philippine Census passed 100 million, and is forecast to grow to 200 million in the next forty years, even after losing large numbers of Filipino permanent emigrants to other countries.
Accelerated population growth has had two effects on lowland Gaddang communities: enormous numbers of people have relocated to the relatively uncrowded Magat/Cagayan valleys from other parts of the country, overwhelming original populations and regionally available resources to accommodate and integrate them; while educated Gaddang have continued to emigrate and become permanent residents of Canada, the US, the EU, and other countries in South-East Asia.
In October 1997, the national legislature passed the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act; the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples recognizes the Gaddang as one of the protected groups. Initially there was uncertainty about which peoples were included, however in May 2014 the Gaddang were recognized as "an indigenous people with political structure" with a certification of "Ancestral Domain Title" presented by NCIP commissioner Leonor Quintayo. Starting in 2014 the process of 'delineation and titling the ancestral domains" was begun; the claims are expected to "cover parts of the municipalities of Bambang, Bayombong, Bagabag, Solano, Diadi, Quezon and Villaverde". In addition, under the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act, certified indigenous peoples have a right to education in their mother-tongue; this education is as yet unimplemented by any organization.
At present, a Nueva Vizcaya Gaddang Indigenous People’s Organization has been formed, and by 2019 this group has been involved with coming to agreement with agencies developing irrigation projects in Bayombong and Solano. The organization is also actively pursuing cultural expositions.

Gaddang Culture

Language

The Gaddang language is related to Ibanag, Yogad, Itawis, Malaueg and others. It is distinct in that it features phonemes not present in many neighboring Philippine languages. There are also notable differences from other languages in the distinction between "r" and "l", and the "f" sound is a voiceless bilabial fricative, and not the fortified "p" sound common in many Philippine languages. The Spanish-derived "J" sound has become a plosive. Gaddang is noteworthy for common use of doubled consonants.
Gaddang is declensionally, conjugationally and morphologically agglutinative, and is characterized by a dearth of positional/directional adpositional adjunct words. Temporal references are usually accomplished using contex surrounding these agglutinated nouns or verbs.
The Gaddang language is identified in Ethnologue, Glottolog, and is incorporated into the Cagayan language group in the system of linguistic ethnologist Lawrence Reid. The Dominican fathers assigned to Nueva Viscaya parishes produced a vocabulary in 1850, and copied in 1919 for the library of the University of Santo Tomas by H. Otley Beyer. In 1965 Estrella de Lara Calimag produced a word-list of more than 3,200 Gaddang words included in her dissertation at Columbia. The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database lists translations of more than two hundred English terms on its Gaddang page.
Daily use of Gaddang as a primary language has been declining during the last seventy years; recent lexical studies have confirmed it. During the first years of the American occupation, residents of Nueva Vizcaya towns used to schedule community events to be held in Gaddang and the next day in Ilokano, in order to ensure everyone could participate and enjoy them. Teachers in the new American schools had to develop curriculum for pupils who spoke entirely different languages: The use of English in the schools of Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya, as well as in community functions, was only discouraged with the adoption of the 1973 Constitution and its 1976 amendments. A more urgent push to nationalize language was made in the 1987 Constitution, which had the unanticipated effect of marginalizing local languages even further. Television and official communications have almost entirely used the national Filipino language for nearly a generation.

Ethnography & Linguistic Research

While consistently identifying the Gaddang as a distinct group, historic sources have done a poor job of recording specific cultural practices, and material available on the language has been difficult to access.
Early Spanish records made little mention of customs of the Ibanagic and Igaddangic peoples, being almost entirely concerned by economic events, and Government/Church efforts at replacing the chthonic cultures with a colonial model. The 1901 Philippine Commission Report states: "From Nueva Vizcaya the towns make the common statement that there are no papers preserved which relate to the period of the Spanish government, as they were all destroyed by the revolutionary government." American occupation records, while often more descriptive and more readily available, perform only cursory discovery of existing behaviors and historic customs, since most correspondents were pursuing an agenda for change.
Father Godfrey Lambrecht, rector of St. Mary's High School & College 1934-56, documented a number of linguistic and cultural behaviors in published articles.

Highlands culture

Many writers on tourism and cultural artifacts appear enamoured of the more-exotic cultural appurtenances of the highlands Gaddang, and consequently pay little attention to the more-numerous "assimilated" Christianized families. This narrative follows from the initial American assumption that lowland Gaddang originated with the highlands groups who subsequently became Christianized, then settled in established valley communities, acquiring the culture and customs of the Spanish, Chinese, and the other lowlands peoples. Many of them also distinguish the Gaddang residents of Ifugao and Apayo from other mountain tribes primarily by dress customs without considering language issues.
This is not the case with Professor of Anthropology Ben J. Wallace who has lived among and written extensively about highland Gaddang since the 1960s. His recent book explores the transition these peoples are making into the modern rural Philippines, taking on more customs and habits of their lowlands relatives, and discarding some colorful former behaviors.
Some traditional highlands Gaddang men used to practice a ritual similar to potlatch in order to bring prestige to their family. The tradition of taking heads for status and/or redressing a wrong appears to have ended after WWII, when taking heads from Japanese seems to have been less satisfactory than from a personal enemy. Both men and women lead and participate in religious and social rituals.

Class & Economy

Interviews in the mid-20th century identified a pair of Gaddang hereditary social classes: kammeranan and aripan. These terms have long fallen into disuse, but comparing old parish records with landholdings in desirable locations in Bagabag, Bayombobg, and Solano indicates that some real effects of these class distinctions remains active. Edilberto K. Tiempo addressed issues surrounding the aripan heritage in his 1962 short story To Be Free.
During the first decades of the American occupation, a major effort to eradicate slavery terminated the widespread practice of purchasing Igorot and other uplands children and youths for household and farm labor. Many of the individuals so acquired were accepted as members of the owner-families among all ths Cagayan Valley peoples. Present-day Gaddang don't continue to frequently import highland people as a dependent-class as often as they did until a generation ago. There remains the strong tradition of bringing unfortunate relatives into a household, which includes a reciprocal geas on beneficiaries to "earn their keep".
There does not seem to have been a Cagayan Valley analogue of the wealthy Central Luzon landowner class until the agricultural expansion of the very late nineteenth century; most of those wealthy Filipinos were of Ilokano or Chinese ancestry.
Records over the last two centuries do show many Gaddang names as land and business owners. The Catholic church also offered career opportunities. Gaddang residents of Bayombong, Siudad na Santiago and Bagabag enthusiastically availed themselves of the expanded education opportunities available since the early 20th century, producing a number of doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers and other professionals by the mid-1930s. A number also enlisted in the U.S. military service as a career.
During the late 1990s, a UST student attempted an "ethnobotanical" study, interviewing Isabela-area Gaddang about economically useful flora; this included notes on etymologic history and folk-beliefs.

Status of women and minor children

Lowlands Gaddang women regularly own and inherit property, they run businesses, pursue educational attainment, and often serve in public elected leadership roles. Well-known and celebrated writer Edith Lopez Tiempo was born in Bayombong of Gaddang descent.
As mentioned above, there appear to be no prevailing rules of exogamy or endogamy which affect women's status or treatment. Both men and women acquire status by marriage, but there are acceptable pathways to prestige for single women in the Church, government, and business.

Kinship

As has been documented with other Indo-Malay peoples, Gaddang kin relationships are highly ramified and recognize a variety of prestige markers based on both personal accomplishment and obligation.
The Gaddang as a people have lacked a defined and organized political apparatus; in consequence their kinship-system is the means of ordering their world. Although linguistically there appears to be no distinction beyond the second degree of consanguinity, tracing common lineal descent is important, and the ability to do so is traditionally admired and encouraged.

Funerary practice

Modern Christian Gaddang are most commonly entombed in a public or private cemetery, following a Mass celebration and a procession. A wake is held for several days before the services, allowing family members and friends travel-time to view the deceased in the coffin. Mummification is not usually practiced.

Other Folk traditions

Three hundred years of Spanish/Catholic cultural dominion - followed by a nearly effective revolution - have almost completely eradicated any useful pre-colonial artistic or musical legacy of the lowland Cagayan peoples, including the Gaddang. Although the less-affected arts of the Cordillerans and some of the islanders south of Luzon are well-researched, even sixty years of strong national and academic interest has failed to uncover much tangible knowledge about pre-Spanish Cagayan valley traditions in music, plastic, or performing arts. A review of Maria Lumicao-Lorca's 1984 book Gaddang Literature states that "documentation and research on minority languages and literatures of the Philippines is meager" That understood, however, there does exist a considerable record of Gaddang interest and participation in Luzon-wide colonial traditions, examples being pandango si ilaw, cumparsasa, and pasyon; while the rise of interest in a cultural patrimony has manifested in an annual Nueva Vizcaya Ammungan festival adopted in 2014 to replace the Ilokano Panagyaman rice-festival. The festival has included an Indigenous Peoples Summer Workshop, which has provincial regognition and status.
Some early 20th century travelers report the use of gungsa in Isabela as well as among Paracelis Gaddang. It is likely that this instrument was adopted from Cordilleran peoples, but provenance has not been established. The highlands Gaddang are also associated with the Turayen dance which is typically accompanied by gangsa.
Most Gaddang seem fond of riddles, proverbs and puns, and keep their dialect alive with traditional songs. Stories of ghosts and witchcraft are also popular, with the tellers most often relating them as if these were events in which they themselves had participated.
A well-known Gaddang language song from the early 20th century:
Finally, although assertively Christian, lowland Gaddang retain strong traditions of illness with a supernatural origin; some families continue to practice healing traditions which were documented by Father Godfrey Lambrecht, CICM, in Santiago during the 1950s. These include the shamanistic practices of the mailan, both mahimunu, and the maingal. The spirits that cause such diseases are carangat : each is associated with a physical locality; they are not revenants; they are believed to cause fevers, but not abdominal distress. It is believd as well tha Caralua na pinatay may cause illness to punish Gaddang who diverge from custom, or can visit those facing their own impending demise.

Indigenous mythology

The Gaddang mythology includes a variety of deities: