Mythologies of the Gaddang Tribe

The Gaddang (an Indigenous Filipino people) are a linguistically identified ethnic group resident in the watershed of the Cagayan River in Northern Luzon, Philippines. Gaddang speakers were recently reported to number as many as 30,000, a number that may not include another 6,000 related Ga'dang speakers or other small linguistic-groups whose vocabularies are more than 75% identical. These proximate groups (speaking mutually intelligible dialects which include Gaddang, Ga'dang, Baliwon, Cauayeno, Majukayong, and Yogad, as well as historically documented tongues such as that once spoken by the Irray of Tuguegarao) are depicted in cultural history and official literature today as a single people. Other distinctions are asserted between (a) Christian residents of the Isabela plains and Nueva Vizcaya valleys, and (b) formerly non-Christian residents in the nearby Cordillera mountains. Some reporters may exaggerate any of the differences, while others may completely ignore or gloss them over. The Gaddang have also in the past implemented a variety of social mechanisms that incorporate individuals born to linguistically different peoples. The Gaddang are Indigenous to a compact geographic area; the theatre for their story is an area smaller than three-quarters of a million hectares (extreme distances: Bayombong to Ilagan=120 Km, Echague to Natonin=70 Km). The living population collectively comprises less than one-twentieth of one percent (.0005) of inhabitants of the Philippines, sharing one-quarter percent of the nation's land with Ifugao, Ilokano and others. As a people, Gaddang have no record of expansionism, they created no unique religion or set of beliefs, nor produced any notable government. The Gaddang identity is their language and their place.

The Gaddang language (also Cagayan) is spoken by up to 30,000 speakers (the Gaddang people) in the Philippines, particularly along the Magat and upper Cagayan rivers in the Region II provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela and by overseas migrants to countries in Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, in the Middle East, United Kingdom and the United States. Most Gaddang speakers also speak Ilocano, the lingua franca of Northern Luzon, as well as Tagalog and English. Gaddang is associated with the "Christianized Gaddang" people, and is closely related to the highland (non-Christian in local literature) tongues of Ga'dang with 6,000 speakers, Yogad, Cagayan Agta with less than 1,000 and Atta with 2,000 (although the Negrito Aeta and Atta are genetically unrelated to the Austronesian Gaddang), and more distantly to Ibanag, Itawis, Isneg and Malaweg. The Gaddang tongue has been vanishing from daily and public life over the past half-century. Public and church-sponsored education was historically conducted in Spanish (or later in English), and now in Filipino/Tagalog. The Dominicans tried to replace the multitude of Cagayan-valley languages with Ibanag, and later the plantations imported Ilocanos workers in such numbers that they outnumbered the valley natives. Once significantly-Gaddang communities grew exponentially after WWII due to in-migration of Tagalog, Igorot, and other ethnicities; Gaddang is now a minority language. In the 2000 Census, Gaddang was not even an identity option for residents of Nueva Vizcaya. Vocabulary and structural features of Gaddang among native Gaddang speakers have suffered as well, as usages from Ilokano and other languages affect their parole. Finally, many ethnic Gaddang have migrated to other countries, and their children are not learning the ancestral tongue.

Bayongyong Festival, officially held every Aug. 3 to 5 annually, has marked a vibrant revival of the vanishing Gaddang culture in this capital town inhabited by more than 60,000 people today. According to the town’s written history, “bayongyong” refers to the confluence of two rivers. The other meaning refers to a two-meter long bamboo tube used to carry water. Historians believed the town’s original name “Bayumbung” was derived from the word “bayongyong.” The Spanish friars spelled it as “Bayombong,” hence its name today. The Gaddang indigenous cultural community is widely spread in the Cagayan Valley. Other known Gaddang-dominated settlements are found in the eastern side of Mountain Province and Kalinga, Central Isabela, and some towns of Quirino and Cagayan. The Gaddangs of Bayombong are riverine folks who were known to traverse the Magat River from downstream to upstream. Articles found in the Nueva Vizcaya Museum trace the pattern of their movement from an old Gaddang settlement in Central Isabela, which is now Barangay Dalig-Kalinga in the town of Aurora, and then travelling upstream to the present town of Bayombong.

The word “Gaddang,” also known as “Gadang” or “Ga’dang,” may mean simply “skin” or the verb “to take a step” as in “gina’dang” (Wallace 2013, 7; Toquero 2009, 2). “Gaddang” may also derive from ga, meaning “heat” or “fire,” and dang or “burn,” and thus means “burned by heat.” A popular myth among the non-Gaddang, which the Gaddang hold with some amusement, is that “gaddang” is the word for “carabao,” which may be a way of likening its skin color to that of the Gaddang. The Gaddang pronounce the word with a glottal stop at the first syllable: Ga’dang. “Gaddang” is the way it is written, as established by the Spanish chroniclers and subsequently adopted by researchers and academics. The Gaddang are found in northern Nueva Vizcaya, particularly Bayombong, Solano, and Bagabag on the western bank of the Magat River; southwestern Isabela, particularly Santiago City, Angadanan, Cauayan City, and Reina Mercedes on the Cagayan River for Christianized groups; western Isabela, along the edges of Kalinga and Bontoc, in the towns of Antatet, Dalig, and the barrios of Gamu and Tumauini for the non-Christianized communities; and to a lesser extent, eastern parts of Ifugao and Mountain Province of the Cordillera Administrative Region. Related groups are the Yogad and Iraya. The 1960 census reports that there were 25,000 Gaddang and that 10% or about 2,500 of these were non-Christian. In 1979, the total population of the Gaddang increased to 43,150. In 2000, the Gaddang and Yogad had a combined population of 30,778 or 2.4% of the 1,286,515 total population of Isabela province. There were no records in the other provinces where they are known to reside.

Once stereotyped as “untamed” and “dangerous,” the Gaddang people are actually calmer compared to their neighboring tribes. Typically categorized between highlanders and lowlanders, Gaddangs occupy parts of the Cagayan Valley region, mostly in Central Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, and Cagayan. They used to be a very large group of people; however, during the Spanish occupation, the lowlanders intermingled with others in the valley, such as the Ilocanos and Ibanags, while others fled to the Cordillera and Sierra Madre Mountains to escape Spanish oppression. This has caused their population to decline, especially since many of them are actively intermarrying people from other ethnic groups and are thus getting absorbed by them. Identified as having darker complexions compared to other groups in the Cordilleras, it is assumed that Gaddangs have derived their name from this description, with its name a combination of ga meaning “heat,” and dang meaning “burned.” Colloquial names for them include Gadan, Gaddanes, Iraya, and Irraya, which all mean “upriver.” Gaddangs speak the language of the same name, Gaddang, while also communicating through the lingua franca of Northern Luzon, Ilocano. Their primary language is closely related to the Agta, Atta, Ibanag, Isneg, Itawis, Malaweg, and Yogad languages, with approximately 30,000 speakers. Their language distinction lies in its phonemes “F,” “V,” “Z,” and “J” sounds that are not often heard in other local languages, the use of doubled consonants, as well as notable differences in the distinction between their “R” and “L,” with the “F” sound being a voiceless bilabial fricative. The five recognized dialects of Gaddang by the Philippines National Commission for Culture and the Arts include Gaddang proper, Yogad, Maddukayang, Katalangan, and Iraya.

The Ga’dang are found in the central part of Cagayan Valley and the province of Isabela. The highest concentration is in Cauayan, Isabela; there are scattered populations in the highlands of southeastern Kalinga and Apayao, and eastern Bontoc, and northwestern Nueva Vizcaya, where they blend with the Ibanags and Christian Ilocanos. The Ga’dang are divided into five subgroups: Gaddang proper, Yogad, Maddukayang, Katalangan, and Iraya. Ga’dangs are famous for their very colorful dress adorned with numerous types of beads of semiprecious stones. They live in near streams. Each community and its cultivated fields are controlled by a leader, who is chosen for his bravery, skills, knowledge of custom law, and economic wealth. Subsistence is based on swidden cultivation of rice and sweet potato, supplemented by tobacco and corn cash crops.

The Gaddang (an indigenous Filipino people) are a linguistically-identified ethnic group resident in the watershed of the Cagayan River in Northern Luzon, Philippines. Gaddang speakers were recently reported to number as many as 30,000, a number that may not include another 6,000 related Ga'dang speakers or other small linguistic-groups whose vocabularies are more than 75% identical. These proximate groups (speaking mutually-intelligible dialects which include Gaddang, Ga'dang, Baliwon, Cauayeno, Majukayong, and Yogad, as well as historically-documented tongues such as that once spoken by the Irray of Tuguegarao) are depicted in cultural history and official literature today as a single people. Other distinctions are asserted between (a) Christian residents of the Isabela plains and Nueva Vizcaya valleys, and (b) formerly non-Christian residents in the nearby Cordillera mountains. Some reporters may exaggerate any of the differences, while others may completely ignore or gloss them over. The Gaddang have also in the past implemented a variety of social mechanisms that incorporate individuals born to linguistically-different peoples. The Gaddang are indigenous to a compact geographic area; the theatre for their story is an area smaller than three-quarters of a million hectares (extreme distances: Bayombong to Ilagan=120 Km, Echague to Natonin=70 Km). The living population collectively comprises less than one-twentieth of one percent (.0005) of inhabitants of the Philippines, sharing one-quarter percent of the nation's land with Ifugao, Ilokano and others. As a people, Gaddang have no record of expansionism, they created no unique religion or set of beliefs, nor produced any notable government. The Gaddang identity is their language and their place.

Given the threat of cultural homogenization, times have challenged the indigenous people to look for ways of preserving the rich cultural heritage embedded in their designs. But with the advent of social media and fleeting trends, how does culture and tradition stay relevant and survive the ever-changing currents of art and fashion? Quarantined, we talked to Margarita "Marge" Balansi, a native of Paracelis, Mt. Province, on how the Ga'dang weaving of the Cordilleras found its way to the world and how it withstands the all-consuming COVID-19 pandemic. The Paracelis Ga’dang are among the most isolated peoples of the Cordilleras, in contrast with the better-known Gaddang community in Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela. Both, however, share a common identity—their colorful and intricate weaving which is one of the most complex among the indigenous peoples in North Luzon. “Ga'dang and Gaddang came from the same roots… [However], the Gaddangs became Christianized during the Spanish period while the Ga'dang did not leave the mountains where [the Spaniards] cannot penetrate and thus, they remained in their old traditions,” Marge explains. Like other IP communities in the Cordilleras, the Ga’dangs are composed of different tribes, mostly evident in the differences in their words and accents. The term Ga'dang means "higher ground," Marge says, which some may find ironic for the better-known Gaddangs who settled near the great Magat River in Bayombong and Solano, Nueva Vizcaya.

The Gaddang (an indigenous Filipino people) are a linguistically-identified ethnic group resident in the watershed of the Cagayan River in Northern Luzon, Philippines. Gaddang speakers were recently reported to number as many as 30,000. This number may not include another 6,000 related Ga'dang speakers and other isolated linguistic-groups whose vocabulary is more than 75% identical. The members of several proximate groups speaking mutually-intelligible dialects (including Gaddang, Ga'dang, Baliwon, Cauayeno, Yogad, as well as now-lost historically-documented tongues such as that once spoken by the Irray of Tuguegarao) today are depicted as a single people in history and cultural literature, and in government documents. The language is very similar to that of the Itawes and Malaueg settled at the mouths of the Matalag and Chico rivers. Distinctions are asserted between (a) the Christianized "lowlanders" of Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya, and (b) the formerly non-Christian residents in the nearby Cordillera mountains. Some sources exaggerate these differences, which may be completely ignored or glossed-over by others. The Gaddang have in the past also used a variety of social mechanisms to incorporate individuals born to linguistically-different peoples. The Gaddang identity is their place and their language. The Gaddang are indigenous to a compact geographic area; the theatre for their history is an area smaller than one-half million hectares (extreme distances: Bayombong to Ilagan=120 Km, Echague to Natonin=70 Km). The population collectively comprises less than one-twentieth of one percent (.0005) of the Philippines' population.