The Bago tribe and its people

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

Dado Theory:

1. Migration. A group or bands of people from the old Mountain Provinces or from the low lands
migrated to the hilly places of present day Ilocos Sur and later move out to the peripheries of La
Union, Pangasinan and Abra.
2. Immigration. The Bagos could be a part of the waves of the Malay settlers that came by boat to
the coast of present day Ilocos places; and some of this groups have settled in the low lands
while others goes further in to the interior of Ilocos to settle along the hilly places and rivers of
Ilocos.
3. Intermarriages. The Bago people who dwell along the hilly places and rivers of the Ilocos land
inter marry with the people living in the low lands or the high lands and their offspring became
also Bago adding numbers to their tribe. This should be the main notion when one believe that
the Bago is a product of inter marriages. One parent must be a Bago. It should not be
understood that people of different tribes inter marries and with their off-springs form bands of
people calling it Bago tribe. But a product of inter-marriages of other non-Bago tribes or ethnic
race may become a Bago by personal ascription, like the child of a man from Bontoc marrying an
Ilocana and they lived among the Bagos; and this child later preferred to consider itself a Bago
as a personal ascription.

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

All the Igorot tribes in the Cordilleras have their distinct culture. The Igorots uses Baag(G-strings)
and the women their Wanes, their native dresses. The Bago male historically uses the Baag but
regrettably discarded it for the male attire of the lowlanders. However, the women retained
wearing their native dress, the Wanes, but to this day is use mostly for cultural activities. The Igorots
have their respective native dance and style of playing the gongs. The Igorots of Mountain Province,
and the Igorots of Benguet have similar way of playing the gongs and their tadek(way of dancing
with the gongs). The Bago have a distinctive way of playing their gongs and way of dancing with it
which has no similarities at all with that of the high land Igorots. But the Bagos knows also how to
play the takik(high land Igorot way of playing the gongs) in their own rhythmic style of playing it. As
to a distinct native dialect, the Bagos speak in the way the highland igorots but have many
distinctive words which are not Igorot , kakanaey or Ibaloy words- it is not even iloko. The Bago also
speak Ilocano that is intersperse with their own Bago words which are not Ilocano words. These
mixture of speaking of the Bago could be the fusion of the Igorot and Ilocano dialects that were
infused into the tribe’s language because of their centuries of mingling with highland igorots and
the lowland ilocanos. The settlements of the Bago tribes are sandwich by the Igorot lands of the
cordillera and the low land of the Ilocanos; and they have long time socio-economic mingling with
each other.
 Note: study the origin of the Igorot of the old Mountain Provinces because it could be the same as
the Bago. If Igorot refers to the native settlers of the old mountain provinces, the Bago could be one
Igorot sub-tribe that originally settled in the mountain provinces but later on migrated to the hilly
places of the lowlands; or one of the Igorot tribe that originally settled at the hilly places, abutting
cordillera ranges, of the of the lowlands of Ilocos.

Bago Migration.

Theory:

1. Seek better land for living. That is why many were settled along the Amburayan river.
2. Avoid the tribalism of their fellow highland Igorots.

Questions to search for answers.

Did the first Bago migrants settled below the old mountain province at the mountainous parts of the
lowlands; and then later transfer towards more to the lowland along the Amburayan river.
Did immigrants settled first along the Amburayan river and then some groups further settle deeper in to
the interior at the mountainous parts?