IDO not like the historical maps in which the entire territory of the Philippines is colored as if it was entirely occupied by Spain. Not all of the Philippine archipelago came to be de facto dominated by Spain, even in 1898, even though it was nominally and legally a Spanish possession. Among the territories that most courageously and stubbornly resisted Spanish jurisdiction is part of what is now known as the Cordillera Administrative Region, an extensive rugged and mountainous area that occupies the entire center and north of Luzon, inhabited, even today, by a large number of Indigenous peoples, exonymously called Igorrotes/Igorots (inhabitants of the mountains).

Three reasons can be adduced for the Spanish failure: the lack of troops to materialize the domination, the extraordinary orographic difficulty of the territory, and the resistance capacity and tenacity of the Igorots. The region then housed the only known gold mines in the archipelago, more than enough motivation to promote military and religious intervention — euphemistically called pacification and reduction — especially considering that the domain of the Philippines was unprofitable for Spain and subsisted economically thanks to that periodic subsidy that arrived from New Spain through the Manila galleon: the “situado.”

Among the groups that caused the most havoc among the neighboring Christian populations were the Mayoyaos, who practiced the custom of decapitating the dead enemy and taking the head back to the village as a trophy. The Dominican Francisco Gaínza, a missionary in Isabela, in his Memoria de Nueva Vizcaya (Report from Nueva Vizcaya, Manila, 1849), describes them thus:

“They suddenly rose from the undergrowth at the same time as they fired a multitude of lances, the horses recoil at the presence of their strange visages and frightful howls, and as all this happens in a moment, they knock down some wounded and no matter how calm, the rest were so quick that they fell from the horses as soon as they were headless.”

The Dominicans tried unsuccessfully since 1740 and, especially from the second half of the 19th century, to evangelize the indomitable Mayoyao people. Brave and courageous Dominican missionaries such as Remigio Rodríguez del Álamo, Ruperto Alarcón, Tomás Vilanova or Buenaventura Campa have bequeathed us numerous writings of high ethno-historical value that inform us about the way of life and customs of the Mayoyaos during that period. There were not a few missionaries, Spanish soldiers and Christianized Filipinos whose heads ended up as trophies in the huts of these seasoned fighters. A list of these adventures and misadventures can be read in a book that balances entertainment and erudition: The Discovery of the Igorots (1974), by W. H. Scott.

Mayoyao, itself divided into several districts, is now part of the Ifugao province and its rice