In the early 1600s European explorers shipwrecked off the coast of the Batangan homeland on the Philippine island of Mindoro. These explorers were the first foreigners the Batangan had ever seen, aside from the six other tribes with which they shared the island.

At first, the Batangan accepted the strange people with caution, but soon a steady stream of explorers, entrepreneurs and immigrants from other over-populated Philippine islands began to pour in. With them came new religions, cultures and technologies, which the foreigners imposed on the Batangan. Unable to fight the superior technology, the Batangan faced a choice—stay and assimilate, or flee to the isolation of the rugged interior.

The vast majority of the Batangan chose to stay in their homeland on the coast and in the foothills of central Mindoro. In later years, these Batangan were reached with the Gospel by various Evangelical missionaries. A small portion of the tribe, however, decided they didn’t want anything to do with the rest of the world, and they fled as deep into the mountains as they could go—so far, in fact, that today, centuries later, the furthest edge of their territory is still a two-day hike from the nearest trailhead. Fearing the outside world would contaminate them, these people, sometimes referred to as the Highland Batangan or True Batangan, hired men to guard these trailheads so no one could reach them, not even the rest of their tribe who chose not to flee the foreign influences.

And so they have remained for several hundred years, completely untouched and unreached, until one day in the summer of 2003 when God stepped in. But that is another story, for another day.

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