How did tribes of Native Americans end up in the Philippines (macabebe)? And is it still possible which tribes they originated from today?

by 567fgh
KippyPowers

Hm. I have never really heard a question like this. Macabebe is just an old town in Pampanga. When someone is referred to as a "Macabebe" in English, it means "taga-Macabebe", from/native of Macabebe; not "lahing Macabebe", Macabebe race/ethnicity. Lahing Macabebe doesn't exist. I think you may be misunderstanding this history a bit. There are no Native American tribes in the Philippines. What did happen, though, was that during the Spanish colonial period, Mexicans (who are indigenous people of the Americas) came to the Philippines in small numbers. We can actually see this reflected in the Philippines today, where many Filipinos do have a very small amount of Amerindian admixture (obviously this trend is focused in areas the Spanish controlled more directly, such as Maynila or Pampanga, for example). Similarly, many Mexicans have Southeast Asian admixture for the opposite reason. However, whole tribes didn't come to the Philippines and obviously there are no Native American tribes in the Philippines today. All Filipinos speak Philippine languages and, with the exception of Chinese migrants during the colonial period, which happened throughout Southeast Asia, all are indigenous people of the islands.

Reedstilt

I'm curious where you got the idea that the Macabebe are Native Americans. I did a cursory search and didn't turn up anything on that front at all. Is it possible that you came across some older usage of the word indios, which - while mostly associated with the indigenous peoples of the Americas these days- was more all-encompassing in the past?

drylaw

To add some more to KippyPowers and /u/Reedstilt 's points for this slightly confusing question: I wrote an earlier answer on Aztecs from central Mexico brought to the Philippines , here. As /u/KippyPowers said these were in small numbers from the late 16th century onwards, mostly for enslaved and forced labor.
Again, for anything else it would be helpful to provide more infos or a source on this, but as the others said it seems highly unlikely we'll find something on Native Americans from the modern-day US on this.