FROM SESSION ROAD and Leonard Wood Drive to Governor Pack and Harrison Roads, many of Baguio City?s streets have been named after American colonial officials who became the icons of a history still dominantly written and taught from the colonizers? viewpoint.

But a few street names in Ibaloi reveal something else.

Before it was transformed into a hill station for colonial officials to escape the heat, humidity and dust of Manila, Baguio was home to the indigenous Ibaloi with their herds of cattle.

Many parts of what is now the business district used to ooze with springs where carabaos (water buffaloes) wallowed. Just a few meters from City Hall, a street was thus named Chanum (water).

Intersecting Chanum are Chugum (Wind) and Chuntug (Mountain) streets. These names may appear simple, but water, wind and mountain (or earth), besides fire, are considered among the essential elements of life.

So it was not surprising that Ibaloi and other Igorot peoples would build their homes near springs where they could have access to water.

Also near City Hall and behind Abanao (Wide) Street is a narrow street called Otek (Small). A street that goes uphill from Abanao is also called Kayang (High).

Other streets or roads and villages with Ibaloi names include Kisad (a condition when a priestess is possessed by a spirit during a religious rite), Bokawkan (wherever something has been removed), Lucban (orange), and Guisad (the same as Kisad and the name of a valley at the head of which the early Filipinos lived).

Some Ibaloi place names, however, have been replaced by colonial names and no longer evoke memories of the old topography and Ibaloi past, says Laurence Wilson, a former Presbyterian minister who moved to Baguio and became a mining prospector in the 1930s.

The market site used to be called Javjavan (native blacksmith shop); Cathedral Hill was called Kampaw (a social gathering place reminiscent of the Bontoc ato or Sagada?s dap-ay, a place where elders meet for dialogues and meetings); Teachers? Camp used to be called Urengao (oily water); and below City Camp was Oliveg (whirlpool where rainwater runs out through a channel in the limestone).

Only a few Ibaloi street and place names have been retained. But Wilson?s study of these names, including those already replaced, shows that the Ibaloi knew and understood well every nook and cranny of their abode like the palm of their hands, something that got blurred as a result of colonization and urbanization. Maurice Malanes