Pre-Hispanic Taguima
Basilan's earliest settlers was traditionally believed to be the Orang Dampuans originating from the islands of Eastern Indonesia, who are supposed to be the ancestors of the native Yakans. They are variously called the Orang Dyaks or the Tagihamas.
The Yakans, an inland pagan tribe, inhabited the Sulu Archipelago together with the indigenous Sama and Bajau before the Malayan Tausug from Sumatra and Borneo gained control of the area starting 300BCE-200BCE.
Historians have scant knowledge of the pre-Spanish history of the indigenous Yakans simply because they have had little contact with other ethnic groups. Basilan's nearness to Borneo led to the theory that the Yakan originated from the Dyak. Although it is fairly safe to say that Basilan's history is related to that of the Sulu archipelago, it is by no means right to suppose that Basilan's first inhabitants came from Indonesia.
Recent anthropological and archaeological findings actually point to a reverse pattern of human migration and subsequent habitation. Originating from the region we know now as Southern China, some of the earliest human communities constituting the northernmost dark-skinned branches of the first or "southern" wave of human migrations from Africa, ancestors of modern-day Aetas and Negritos, were forced to leave the area in the wake of the arrival of the second wave of human migrants out of Africa, the "northern" wave or the ancestors of present-day Chinese aboriginal tribes. These short, dark-skinned and kinky-haired humans first found a home in the relatively isolated island of Taiwan.
At about 5,000BCE, just as Earth was about to exit its most recent ice age, a virtual explosion of human migration again ensued, this time from Taiwan, traveling via land-bridges to Luzon in the Philippines, and farther south. The first wave of these Austronesian migrants proceeded to populate the greater and lesser Sunda islands of Borneo, Sulawesi, the Moluccas, Java and Sumatra in Maritime Southeast Asia and make up the Malayo-Austronesian branch of this population grouping. A more recent sub-branch traveled across the Indian Ocean and populated the previously uninhabited island of Madagascar off the southeast coast of Africa. The second wave of Austronesians traveled eastwards from the Philippines, populating the Western Pacific islands of New Guinea (Papua), Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
Most of these negrito populations were eventually assimilated through inter-racial mingling with Thai-Khmer populations moving southwards from the Thai-Indochinese peninsula, the result being the Malayan race that now inhabit Malaysia, Indonesia (Nusantara), and the Philippines. The negrito populations of the western Pacific however, far removed from racial inter-mingling from the Asian mainland, eventually evolved into the present populations of New Guinea, Fiji, Hawai'i and other Pacific island groups.
If Basilan itself was previously inhabited by these ancient Negrito peoples, they were eventually driven farther south by the arrival at around 1500BCE-500BCE of the same ancient Chinese-Annamese aboriginals who drove away the Negritos from Southern China in the first place. Philippine historians from the Spanish-era mistakenly called these new arrivals "Indones" (Indian islanders) exhibiting physical features closer to the ancient Chinese and Annamese. The lighter-skinned and relatively slimmer and taller "Indones" communities eventually became the ancestors of modern-day indigenous Philippine tribes populating nearly the entire Philippine archipelago, the modern-day Lumads of the Philippines, and it is likewise believed that the Yakans were descended from this same population grouping.
The general migratory pattern therefore of the original inhabitants of the Philippine Archipelago follows a north-south path, contrary to widely held beliefs based primarily on the more recent cultural counter-migration which started from 300BCE-200BCE.
This third and final wave of human migration came from the general direction of Maritime Southeast Asia, albeit this time by full-fledged Malays (from Borneo) who then promptly displaced indigenous tribes from their coastal communities, driving the Indones or the Lumads farther inland, or south and east into the eastern Indonesian islands. This particular migratory pattern is seen in the pre-Hispanic legends of the 10 Datus from Borneo colonizing the island of Panay, where a much older "Ati" (Aeta or Negrito) kingdom graciously met them at their arrival. The migration of Malays into the Philippines was accelerated by the development of the ancient thalassocratic empires of the Malayo-Indian Sri Vijaya (from whom the name of the Visayas islands are derived) and the Javanese Majapahit in the 12th-14th centuries.
Two main branches of this Malay invasion entered the Philippine Archipelago via two separate routes. One, believed to have originated from Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, passed via the northern coast of Borneo, and through Palawan and eventually settled by the banks of the river Pasig in Luzon. These settlers soon branched into two tribes, the first became known as the "people of the river" (or 'taga-ilog'/ Tagalog), which developed a more sedentary, agricultural society built on the fertile plains fed by the Pasig and around the area of Laguna Lake; while the second hugged the shores of Manila Bay and therefore called the "people of the coast" ('ka-pampang-an'/ Pampanga), primarily engaged in fishing. Kapampangans eventually moved northwards into the interior of Luzon, and, inter-marrying with indigenous 'highlanders' and visiting Chinese traders, eventually produced the Iloko tribe. Tagalogs on the other hand, moved further into the southeastern peninsula of Luzon, meeting up with the indigenous communities there, as well as the "sea peoples of Visayas and Mindanao". This produced the Bikol tribe.
The second and more recent main branch of Malays, believed to come from Java and the Banjarmasin kingdom of southern Borneo, came by way of the Sulu Archipelago, into Mindanao and up into the Visayas. These "sea peoples" (so-called because they arrived to colonize the islands in their various sea crafts, i.e. balotos, tilibaos, balasias, balangais, vireys, paraos and caracoas), eventually branched further into two tribes: the Tau-Sug, which settled in the Sulu Archipelago; and the Sug-bu-hanon which proceeded to colonize Cebu (Sug-bo). A variety of intermingling between these two main tribes, as well as indigenous tribes and aetas (as in the case of Iloilo and the 10 Datus of Borneo), produced a plethora of other smaller tribes, i.e. Hiligaynon, Waray in the Visayas, and the Maguindanao, Maranaw in Mindanao.
The Ifugao (of the Mountain provinces) and the Cuyunon (Palawan), Mangyan (Mindoro) tribes are indigenous survivors of the northern branch invasion. On the other hand, the Subanen (Zamboanga), Caraga (Agusan/Surigao), Manobo (Cotabato), Higaonon (Lanao/Misamis), Sama/Bajau (Sulu/Tawi-Tawi), and Yakan (Basilan) survived the southern branch invasion.
This pattern of initial habitation and subsequent displacement by newer arrivals is clearly seen in the case of Basilan, where the slim, tall, aquiline-nosed, and slit-eyed Lumad (Yakan) communities were driven far inland and towards the eastern and northeastern coasts of the island by the shorter, stockier and darker-skinned Malays (Tausugs) who proceeded to occupy the island's western and northwestern coasts. (The same pattern was repeated at the arrival of the Spanish and the Christian Malay "Indios" from the Visayas and Luzon who were considerably taller and lighter-skinned than the Muslim Malay "Moros", removing the latter to the island's southeast enclave that they now dominate.)
Because the Philippine archipelago was successively populated by two waves of negrito and ancient Chinese peoples before the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia and the western Pacific were, it is widely presumed that instead of the Yakans having descended from eastern Indonesian Dyaks, the more logical conclusion would be that these eastern Indonesian Dyaks were remnants of the "Indones" tribes fleeing from the Malays, some of whom may even have been descended from the Yakan themselves.
Read more about this topic: History Of Basilan