Gaddang people

The Cagayan Valley (including the watersheds of its tributaries the Chico, Ilagan, Mallig, and Magat) 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 then 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 a 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.

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 the church, state, and business. They entirely fail to reflect any native organizational concepts. In 1902, the US Commissioner for Non-Christian Tribes wrote:

One impression that has gained a foothold in regard to tribes of the Philippines I believe to be erroneous, and that is as to the number of distinct types or races and multiplicity of tribes. Owing to the fact that nowhere in the Philippines do we encounter large political bodies or units, we have a superlative number of designations for what are practically identical people...For example, among the powerful and numerous Igorot of Northern Luzon, the sole political body is in the independent community. Under normal conditions, the town across the valley is an enemy and seeks the heads of its neighbors...Sometimes three or four different terms have been applied by different towns to identical peoples.[3]

We may, therefore, claim there were 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 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 (living and dead) computes to around a half-million.

The pink-shaded area has been occupied by Gaddang-speakers throughout recorded history.

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,[4] 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 ("civilized and enjoying complete self-government") and 12,480 Pagan Gaddang ("semi-sedentary agricultural groups enjoying partial self-government).[5] He broke the Christian group into 16,240 Gaddang-speakers and 5,000 Yogad-speakers. Some Pagan Gaddang spoke Maddukayang (or Kalibungan) - a group totalling 8,480 souls. There were also 2,000 whose language was Katalangan (likely an Aeta but possibly a now unidentifiable Igorot language),[6] and another 2,000 speaking Iraya (not to be confused with the language of the Mangyans of Mindoro, but probably intended to refer to the Irray[7]).

A 1959 article by Fr. Godfrey Lambrecht, CICM is prefaced:

(The Gaddang) are the naturales of the towns of Bayombong, Solano, and Bagabag, towns built near the western bank of the Magat river (a tributary of...the Cagayan River) and of the towns of Santiago (Carig), Angadanan, Cauayan, and Reyna Mercedes... According to the census of 1939, the pagan Gadang numbered approximately 2,000, of whom some 1,400 lived in the outskirts of Kalinga and Bontok subprovinces... and some 600 were residing in the municipal districts of Antatet, Dalig, and the barrios of Gamu and Tumauini, Dalig is ordinarily said to be the place of origin of the Christianized Gadang. The same census records 14,964 Christians who spoke the Gadang language. Of these 6,790 were in Nueva Vizcaya, and 8,174 in Isabela. Among these, there were certainly some 3,000 to 4,000 who were not naturales but Ilocano, Ibanag, or Yogad who, because of infiltration, intermarriage, and daily contact with the Gadang, learned the language of the aborigines.[8]

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.[9] Using this data, Mary Christine Abriza wrote:

The Gaddang are found in northern Nueva Vizcaya, especially Bayombong, Solano, and Bagabag on the western bank of the Magat River, and Santiago, Angadanan, Cauayan, and Reina Mercedes on the Cagayan River for Christianed groups; and 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-Christian communities. The 1960 census reports that there were 25,000 Gaddang and that 10% or about 2,500 of these were non-Christian.[10]

The International Fund for Agricultural Development published its study on Indigenous People's Issues in the Philippines in 2012;[11] 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 (Chapter II, Section 3h) by this definition:

Indigenous Cultural Communities/indigenous peoples shall likewise include peoples who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from populations which inhabited the country, at the time of conquest or colonization, or at the time of inroads of non-indigenous religions and cultures, or the establishment of present state boundaries, who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, but who may have been displaced from their traditional domains or who may have resettled outside the ancestral domains

There is a rural barangay named Gaddang in the municipality of Aparri (formerly Faru) where the Cagayan reaches the sea.[12]

The evidence[13] is that Gaddang occupied this vast protected valley jointly with similar Ibanag, Itawis, Isneg, and Malaueg peoples for many hundreds of years;[14] all the Cagayan Valley peoples share cultural similarities. And, like the biblical Hebrews, it is their history that has made them who they are.

Mapa del itinerario de la expedición de Miguel López de Legazpi en la Islas Filipinas (1560s)

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 Encomienda-ranching introduced concepts of land tenure sophisticated beyond the usufruct system of barely organized barangay communities farming temporary patches in the forest.[28] 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 (who in 1580 drove away the Japanese pirates infesting the Cagayan coast[29]) 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-government revolts, which flared up from the 1580s through the 1640s.

Nonetheless, by 1591 Spanish military forces established encomienda grants as far south as Tubigarao; while Luis Pérez Dasmariñas led an expedition north over the Caraballo mountains into present-day Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela.[30] In 1595-6 the Diocese of Nueva Segovia was decreed, and Dominican missionaries arrived.[31] The Catholic Church forcefully proselytized the Cagayan Valley from two directions, with Dominican missionaries from Pangasinan and pushing from the south over the Caraballos, resulting in a mission founded at Ituy by 1609.[32] This placed the homeland of the Gaddang in the sights of the Spanish advance for land and mineral wealth.[33]

The Gaddang entered written history in 1608 when the Dominican order founded the mission of St. Ferdinand in the Gaddang community of Abuatan, Bolo (now the rural barangay of Bangag, Ilagan City), nearly forty years (and thirty leagues away) from the first Spanish settlements in the Cagayan region.[34] 1621 saw the Gaddang (or Irray) Revolt, led by Felipe Catabay and Gabriel Dayag.[35] The Gaddang Revolt was against Church requirements, as Magalat's rebellion was against Crown tribute at Tuguegarao a generation earlier.[36] 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 (several days' journey). 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.[37] Bolo-area Gaddang sought refuge with mountain tribes who had consistently refused to abandon traditional beliefs and practices for Catholicism. The Igorots of the Cordilleras killed Father Esteban Marin in 1601; subsequently, they waged a guerrilla resistance[38] 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 (preferring to continue their swidden economy), 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 (southern Isabela) by 1702. Letters from the Dominican Provincial Jose Herrera to Ferdinand VI make explicit that military activity was financed by the missions.[39] 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 encomienda organization (and the military force that accompanied it) of the Cagayan valley. By the 1747 census, however, a reestablished mission of Paniqui enumerated 470 native residents (meaning adult male Christians) in Bayombong and 213 from Bagabag, all said to be Gaddang or Yogad.[40] With more than 600 households (2,500–3,000 people), 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 Cordilleran 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.[41] 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 Ilocos and Pangasinan were imported for the work. Today, descendants of those 18th and 19th-century immigrants (notably the Ilokano) 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 these new provincial governments was dealing with head-hunting incursions that started in the early 1830s and continued into the early years of American rule. 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.[30] 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 to convert 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 (and so avenues to national identity as well as individual social and political power) among rural natives. The Education Decree of 1863 changed this, requiring primary education (and establishment of schools in each municipality) while requiring the use of Spanish language for instruction.[42] Implementation in remote areas of Northern Luzon, however, was not fully begun by the revolution of 1898.

Gaddang and Ilokano Teachers in best native dress circa 1902

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.[43] 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 (and eliminating communal ancestral holdings as well). What Filipino nationalists regarded as continuing their struggle for independence, the U.S. government considered as insurrection.[44] President Aguinaldo's forces were driven out of Manila in February 1899 and retreated through Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, and eventually (in October) to Bayombong. After a month, though, Republic headquarters left Nueva Vizcaya on its final journey which would end in Palanan, Isabela, (captured by Philippine Scouts recruited from Pampanga) in March 1901. Gaddangs made few of the principales and none of the Manila oligarchy, but the 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".[45] The writers said of the "non-Christian" mountain tribes:

Under the Igorot, we may recognize various subgroup designations, such as Gaddang, Dadayag, or Mayoyao. These groups are not separated by tribal organization... since tribal organization does not exist among these people. but they are divided solely by slight differences of dialect.[46]

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:

Ilokano have also migrated still further south into the secluded valley of the upper Magat, which constitutes the beautiful but isolated province of Nueva Vizcaya. The bulk of the population here, however, differs very decidedly from nearly all of the Christian population of the rest of the Archipelago. It is made up of converts from two of the mountain Igorot tribes, who still have numerous pagan representative in this province and Isabela. These are the Isnay and Gaddang. In 1632 the Spaniard] established a mission in this valley, named Ituy and led to the establishment of Aritao, Dupax, and Bambang, inhabited by the Christianized Isnay, and of Bayombong, Bagabag, and Ibung, inhabited by the Christianized Gaddang. The population, however, has not greatly multiplied, the remainder of the Christianized population being made up of Ilocano immigrants.[47]

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;[48] he collects "Calauas, Catanganes, Dadayags, Iraya, Kalibugan, Nabayuganes, and Yogades" into a single group of non-Christian "Kalingas" (an Ibanag term for 'wild men' - not the present ethnic group) with whom the lowland ("Christian") 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".[49] 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.[50] Most importantly, 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 (although they assuredly had a much smaller effect on the Gaddang in the mountains). The 1902 Land Act and the government purchase of 166,000 hectares of Catholic church holdings also affected 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.[51] A practical decision was made to immediately 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 several 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.[52] The regular sale of "non-Christian" Cordilleran and Negrito tribes to work as farm labor in Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya was documented, and several Gaddang were listed as purchasers.[53][54] In 1903 the Senior Inspector of Constabulary for Isabela wrote to his superiors in Manila

"In this province a common practice to own slaves... Young boys and girls are bought at around 100 pesos, men (over) 30 years and old women cheaper. When bought (they) are generally christened and put to work on a ranch or in the house... Governor has bought three. Shall I investigate further?"[55]

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 (now the municipality) of Paracelis on the upper reaches of the Mallig River, as well the Ifugao municipality of Alfonso Lista uphill 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 the suppression of head-hunting.[50]

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 (more than 30 Gaddang joined the original force of 5,000 Scouts), and continued to do so through the late 1930s. The Scouts were deployed at the Battle of Bataan,[56] 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.

The Japanese began implementing a policy of economic penetration of the Philippines immediately after the American occupation began, concentrating particularly on agriculturally under-developed areas in Mindanao[57] and providing labor for construction in the mountains of northern Luzon.[58] The construction of Baguio, beginning in 1904, attracted more than 1,000 Japanese nationals who eventually owned farms, retail businesses, and transport.[59] Land ownership under the Public Land act of 1903 (P.L. 926) by Japanese nationals in the Philippines exploded to more than 200,000 hectares; by 1919 the Commonwealth government was concerned enough about Japanese corporate land-ownership to initiate the Land-Act of 1919 (P.L. 926) which restricted land ownership to situations where 61% of ownership was Philippine or United States citizen.[60] By the 1930s, most municipalities in northern Luzon housed at least one Japanese-owned business, whose proprietor's primary loyalty was to his homeland.

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 (PA) 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 (which included butchering of more than half of farmers' carabao for meat to feed their army[61]). By late 1942 food and other commodities for native residents of the Cagayan Valley region had become very scarce.[62] Meanwhile, the Manila-based Second Philippine Republic of President Laurel encouraged collaboration with the Japanese. In these hard times for North Luzon, many individual Japanese soldiers established relationships with Filipino residents, married local women, and fathered children - demonstrating their expectation of becoming permanent (if superior) residents.

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 coordinated Northern Luzon guerrilla action; communications failed, however, and the attacks were unsuccessful.[63] Nonetheless, the 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. "(Local) leaders were killed or captured, civilians were robbed, tortured, and massacred, their towns and barrios were destroyed."[63]

Surviving American Capt. Volckmann re-organized Moses and Noble's guerilla operation into the United States Army Forces in the Philippines – Northern Luzon (USAFIP-NL) in 1943 with a new focus on gathering intelligence. Based in the Cordilleras, his native forces (including a number of Gaddang) were effective, even though they ran great risks,[64] 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,[65] even successfully attacking Japanese installations at Tuguegarao.

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 (now Dalton 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.[66]

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,[67] even after losing large numbers of Filipino permanent emigrants to other countries.

Accelerated population growth has had two effects on lowland Gaddang communities: (a) enormous numbers of people have relocated to the relatively uncrowded Magat/Cagayan valleys from other parts of the country,[68] overwhelming original populations and regionally available resources to accommodate and integrate them; while (b) educated Gaddang have continued to emigrate and become permanent residents of Canada, the US (especially in California, Washington, and the Midwest), 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 (NCIP) recognizes the Gaddang as one of the protected groups.[69] Initially, there was uncertainty about which peoples were included,[70] 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.[71] 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".[72] 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 an agreement with agencies developing irrigation projects in Bayombong and Solano.[73] The organization is also actively pursuing cultural expositions.[74]

The Gaddang language is related to Ibanag, Yogad, Itawis, Malaueg, and others.[75] It is distinct in that it features phonemes (the "F", "V", "Z", and "J" sounds) 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 (but not much closer to the English voiceless labiodental fricative, either). The Spanish-derived "J" sound (not the "j") has become a plosive. Gaddang is noteworthy for the common use of doubled consonants (e.g.: Gad-dang instead of Ga-dang).

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 context surrounding these agglutinated nouns or verbs.[76]

The Gaddang language is identified in Ethnologue,[1] Glottolog,[77] and is incorporated into the Cagayan language group in the system of linguistic ethnologist Lawrence Reid.[78] The Dominican fathers assigned to Nueva Viscaya parishes produced a vocabulary in 1850 (transcribed by Pedro Sierra) and copied in 1919 for the library of the University of Santo Tomas by H. Otley Beyer.[79] In 1965 Estrella de Lara Calimag produced a word-list of more than 3,200 Gaddang words included in her dissertation at Columbia.[80][81] The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database lists translations of more than two hundred English terms on its Gaddang page.[82]

Daily use of Gaddang as a primary language has been declining during the last seventy years;[83] recent lexical studies have confirmed it.[84] During the first years of the American occupation, residents of Nueva Vizcaya towns used to schedule community events (eg: plays or meetings) to be held in Gaddang and the next day in Ilokano, in order to ensure everyone could participate and enjoy them.[85] Teachers in the new American schools had to develop a curriculum for pupils who spoke entirely different languages:

Ilocanos, Gaddanesaa (sic), and Isanays; the latter coming from the Dupax section. There was no one language that all could understand. A few spoke, read, and wrote Spanish fluently...to the others Spanish was as strange a tongue as English.[86]

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.[87][88] 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.

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.[89] 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."[90] 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, the rector of St. Mary's High School & College 1934-56, documented a number of linguistic and cultural behaviors in published articles.

Many writers on tourism and cultural artifacts appear enamoured of the more-exotic cultural appurtenances of the highlands Gaddang (Ga'dang), and consequently pay little attention to the more-numerous "assimilated" Christianized families.[91] 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.[92]

This is not the case with Professor of Anthropology Ben J. Wallace (Dedman College, Southern Methodist University) who has lived among and written extensively about highland Gaddang since the 1960s.[93][94] His recent book (Weeds, Roads, and God, 2013) explores the transition these traditional 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 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 the Japanese seems to have been less satisfactory than from a personal enemy. Both men and women lead and participate in religious and social rituals.[95]

Interviews in the mid-20th century identified a pair of Gaddang hereditary social classes: kammeranan and aripan.[80] 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 class distinctions remain active. The writer's Gaddang correspondents inform him that aripan is similar in meaning to the Tagalog word alipin ("slave" or "serf"); Edilberto K. Tiempo addressed issues surrounding the aripan heritage in his 1962 short story To Be Free.[96]

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 (although often with lesser status) among all the Cagayan Valley peoples. Present-day Gaddang doesn'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, as well as in positions of civic leadership.[97] The Catholic church also offered career opportunities. Gaddang residents of Bayombong, Siudad ng 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 (the U.S. Army Philippine Scouts being considered far superior to the Philippine Army).

During the late 1990s, a UST student attempted an "ethnobotanical" study, interviewing Isabela-area Gaddang about economically useful flora;[98] this included notes on etymologic history and folk-beliefs.

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[99] 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.

As has been documented with other Indo-Malay peoples,[100] Gaddang kin relationships are highly ramified and recognize a variety of prestige markers based on both personal accomplishment and obligation (frequently transcending generations).[101]

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.[102] 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.[37]

Modern Christian Gaddang funerals are most commonly entombed in a public or private cemetery, following a Mass celebration and a procession (with a band if possible). 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.

Main street of Solano, NV - circa 1904

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.[103] A review of Maria Lumicao-Lorca's 1984 book Gaddang Literature states that "documentation and research on minority languages and literature of the Philippines are meager"[104] That understood, however, there does exist a considerable record of Gaddang interest and participation in Luzon-wide colonial traditions, examples being Pandanggo sa ilaw, cumparsasa, and Pasyon;[95] while the rise of interest in a cultural patrimony has manifested in an annual Nueva Vizcaya Ammungan (Gaddang for 'gather') festival adopted in 2014 to replace the Ilokano Panagyaman rice-festival.[105] The festival has included an Indigenous Peoples Summer Workshop, which has provincial recognition and status.[106]

Some early 20th-century travelers report the use of gungsa[107] in Isabela as well as among Paracelis Gaddang. This instrument was likely 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 gungsa.[108]

(The article's author draws on over 40 years of close experience with Magat-valley Gaddang for the following:) Most Gaddang seem fond of riddles, proverbs, and puns, and keep their dialect alive with traditional songs (including many harana composed in the early parts of the 20th century). Stories of ghosts and witchcraft are also popular, with the tellers most often relating them as if these were events in which they (or close friends/family) had participated.

A well-known Gaddang language song from the early 20th century:

Finally, although assertively Christian, lowland Gaddang retains 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.[110] These include the shamanistic practices of the mailan, both mahimunu (who function as augurs and intermediaries), and the maingal ("sacrificers" or community leaders–whom Lambrecht identifies with ancestral head-hunters). The spirits that cause such diseases are carangat (cognates of which term are found in Yogad, Ibanag, and Ifugao): each is associated with a physical locality; they are not revenants; they are believed to cause fevers, but not abdominal distress. It is believed as well that Caralua na pinatay (ghosts) may cause illness to punish Gaddang who diverge from custom or can visit those facing their impending demise.

The Gaddang mythology includes a variety of deities:

• Nanolay - Is both creator of all things and a cultural hero. In the latter role, he is a beneficent deity. Nanolay is described in myth as a fully benevolent deity, never inflicting pain or punishment on the people. He is responsible for the origin and development of the world.
• Ofag - Nanolay's cousin.
• Dasal - To whom the epic warriors Biwag and Malana prayed for strength and courage before going off to their final battle.
• Bunag - The god of the earth.
• Limat - The god of the sea.[111]