Negritos

“ It is possible that they are an ancient and primitive type which once inhabited much wider stretches of territory than now in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. On account of their inoffensiveness and backwardness, the Negritos, according to this theory, were gradually crowded to the wall by the larger, more energetic populations with which they came in contact, until only a few scattered fragments of them now remain. ”

“ Beyond all doubt those Negritos are the first settlers of these islands, and retired to the mountains when the Indians came hither. The latter inhabit the coasts, and formerly the Negritos waged continual war with them, and would not permit them to cut wood in the mountains unless they paid tribute to them. Today they have but little power, and yet they are feared; for whenever any Negrito is killed, or when any one dies suddenly, another Negrito generally offers himself among his companions and takes an oath not to return to his own people until he kills three or four Indians. ”

“ The Negritos which our first conquerors found were, according to tradition, the first possessors of the islands of this Archipelago, and, having been conquered by the political nations of other kingdoms, they fled to the mountains and populated them, whence no one has been able to accomplish their extermination on account of the inaccessibility of the places where they live. In the past they were so proud of their primitive dominion that, although they did not have strength to resist the strangers in the open, in the woods and mountains and mouths of the rivers they were very powerful. ”

“ A few of the Negritos near the coast, however, have been touched by civilizing influences. They inhabit towns of small huts built on poles, which they abandon on the death of any one within. The house wherein a death occurs is generally burned. They plant a little corn and rice, but often move away before the crop is harvested. They are too lazy to raise anything; too weak to capture slaves. During the heavy rains, when the great woods are saturated, they protect themselves against the cold by wrapping blankets around their bodies. ”

“ In the same sense I wish also my remarks concerning the Negritos to be taken. Not one fact is in evidence from which we may conclude that a single neighboring people known to us has been Negritized. We are therefore justified when we see in the Negritos a truly primitive people. As they are now, they were more than three hundred and fifty years ago when the first European navigators visited these islands. About older relationships nothing is known. ”

“ This view has found much acceptance among ethnologists. The result of Quatrefages’s theory would be to place the negrito races closest to the primitive human type, a conclusion apparently justified by their physical characteristics. The true negritos are always of little stature (the majority under 5 ft.) , have rounded forms and their skull is brachycephalic or subbrachycephalic, that is to say, it is relatively short and broad and of little height. ”

“ These tribes have always been, and always will be, mere barbarians [99] and savages. In the pure type of Negritos, spindle legs, large turned-in feet, weak bodies, and large heads are noticeable. Shifting eyes, flat noses, kinky hair, and teeth irregularly set,—these are Negrito characteristics, though they frequently occur in the mestizo types. The Igorrotes of Luzon, whose ancestors were possibly the aborigines and the worst element of the invaders, are to-day the cannibals and the head-hunters of the north. ”

“ The bride was still firm in her opinion that the amount offered was insufficient. I had supplied myself with some cheap jewelry, and a few trinkets satisfied her desires; so the “music” again started. Louder it became—wilder—resounding with a thousand echoes, and as the nude bodies of the Negritos glided at lightning speed from the glare of one torchlight to the other, with no word uttered but a continual clangor of the metal gongs, one thought that here was a dance of devils. ”

“ At the time of their discovery the Philippine Islands were inhabited by a very large number of distinct tribes the civilization of which was directly comparable with that of the Negritos, the Igorots and the Moros as they exist to-day. Do not understand me to imply that the Negritos, the Igorots and the Moros have attained to the same stage of civilization.
The Negritos belong to a distinct race. They are woolly-headed, nearly black, and of almost dwarfish stature. They seem to be incapable of any considerable progress and cannot be civilized. ”

“ These little men would therefore seem to have occupied the whole of the ancient continent, scattering from a central point, which, if we may trust certain indications, was the valley of the Euphrates. That which is certain, however, is that the Negritos appear in Africa as a primitive population, which was scattered by the stronger and better organized tribes who came after them. This, moreover, is exactly the notion they have formed concerning themselves, and which has been formed of them by the blacks ”

“ While one can not speak authoritatively in regard to relation of the sexes without a long and close study of their customs, yet all the evidence at band goes to show that the Negritos as a race are virtuous, especially when compared with the Christianized natives. ”

“ However, while individuals may retain in some cases purity of blood, nowhere are whole groups free from mixture with the Malayan. The Negritos of Panay, Negros, and Mindanao are also to be regarded as pure to a large extent. On the east side of Luzon and in the Island of Paragua, as we have just seen, there is marked evidence of mixture.
The social state of the Negritos is everywhere practically the same. They maintain their half-starved lives by the fruits of the chase and forest products, and at best cultivate only small patches of maize and other vegetables. ”

“ If we assume, first, that the immigrants brought their peculiarities with them, which were fixed already when they came, we must also accept as self-evident that the Negritos of the Philippines do not belong to the same stock as the more powerful, bright-colored Indios. As long as these islands have been known, more than three centuries, the skin of the Negritos has been dark brown, almost black, their hair short and spirally twisted, and just as long has the skin of the Indios been brownish, in various shades, relatively clear, and the hair has been long and arranged in wavy locks. ”

“ The primitive Negritos, living in these parts, as those also living on the island of Negros and in Mindanao, are of unknown origin—unless they are allied with similar types of pigmies, such as the Sakais of the Malay Peninsula, or the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. Some anthropologists would even associate them with the black dwarfs in the interior of Africa. These savages live a nomadic life, and seldom come down near the villages. But the mixed tribes, the Negrito-Malay, or the Malay-Japanese, are bolder and more enterprising. ”

“ At only two places in the western half of northern Luzon have Negritos been observed. There is a small group near Piddig, Ilokos Norte, and a wandering band of about thirty-five in the mountains between Villavieja, Abra Province, and Santa Maria, Ilokos Sur Province, from both of which towns they have been reported. It is but a question of time until no trace of them will be left in this region so thickly populated with stronger mountain peoples. ”

“ These may be indigenous. The hypothetical presence of Negritos may account also for certain peculiarities of the Polynesian of the Tonga Islands. There are traces of them in the Navigator's Archipelago. Crozet (see Pritchard's Phys. Hist.) mentions Negritos in New Zealand, and Cook speaks to a tradition of aboriginal Negritos in Tahiti.
Such are the notices of the Oceanic Negritos in respect to their distribution and the amount of evidence afforded by the specimens of their language. The current opinion is, that over a certain area Blacks of a certain race or races were aborigines. ”

“ However, it must be said here that the theory of a truly African origin of the Negritos has been advanced but seldom, and then in a very hesitating manner. The idea that with the present configuration of the eastern island world, especially with their great distances apart, a variety of mankind that had never manifested any aptitude for maritime enterprises should have spread themselves over this vast ocean area, in order to settle down on this island and on that, is so unreasonable that it has found scarcely a defender worth naming. ”

“ This paper concerns itself chiefly with the Zambales Negritos whose distribution in Zambales and the contiguous Provinces of Bataan, Pampanga, and Tarlac is treated in detail in the following chapter. But Negritos of more or less pure blood, known variously as Aeta, Agta, Baluga, Dumagat, etc., are found in at least eleven other provinces of Luzon. Beginning with the southern end of the island there are a very few Negritos in the Province of Sorsogon. They are found generally living among the Bicol population and do not run wild in the woods ”

“ The most scintillating Flash-light of Faith that I saw in the Orient was in the Philippine Islands. We were traveling the jungle trail to visit a tribe of naked Negritos. These are diminutive people who look like American negroes only they are much smaller; much more underfed, and who live in trees very much like the Orangutans of Borneo. They eat roots and nuts. They hunt with bows and arrows.
They are the lowest tribe in mentality on the Islands.
It was a terribly hot, tropical day and I had a sunstroke on the way up the mountainside to this Negrito village. ”

“ If it can be shown that this aboriginal population was Negrito, and if the relations which researches, especially in philology, have indicated between the peoples of India and those of Australia can be proved, a range of possibilities of startling importance, affecting the race question of Oceania in general and the origin and distribution of the Negritos in particular, will be opened up. ”

“ Those Negritos still living in a wild state have very simple government. They simply gather around the most powerful man, whom they recognize as a sort of chief and whom they follow into raids on the plains or neighboring tribes of Negritos. But when living peaceably scattered through their mountains each head of a family is a small autocrat and rules his family and those of his sons who elect to remain with him. When he dies the oldest son becomes the head of the family. Usually, however, a group of families living in one locality recognizes one man as a capitán. ”

“ Forrester asked.
"No man knows, but I will tell you, sahibs, some conclusions I have come to. The negritos, the original inhabitants of this plateau, are a dwindling race. Fresh blood is required in order to maintain a sufficient population for the cultivation of the soil. Prisoners are brought here for that purpose, and for another which I know not. At irregular intervals men are taken down the steps yonder: we never see them again. The strange thing is that no Indians are thus removed, but only Chinese and negritos. ”

“ Guinea, Rawak, Boni, the Island of Toud, and Amberbaki, has allowed the authors to recognize in those different points the existence of an intermediate race between the Negritos and the Papuans, which they have, therefore, designated as the Negrito-Papuan race. The skulls of this intermediate type (Fig. 4) are slightly elongated, with their mean index descending to 80·15, while the facial index rises to 67·17, and the maxillary prognathism is much more sharply defined than among the Negritos. Some of these heads have been artificially deformed. ”

“ In the Philippines, the Negritos are tound mainly in Luzón and Panay, and in northeastern Mindanao; in smaller numbers they also inhabit districts in Palawan and Negros, and in some small islands besides. As in our text, they are, in Luzón, often mentioned in connection with the Zambals—who “were the most indolent and backward of the Malayan peoples,” and “who, in the days before the arrival of the Europeans, were in such close contact with the Negritos as to impose on them their language, and they have done it so thoroughly that no trace of an original Negrito dialect remains.” ”

“ The Negritos are of very low mentality and are incapable of any considerable degree of civilization. Many of them are kept in a state of abject peonage, and not a few are held in actual slavery, by their Christian Filipino neighbours. In revenge for the abuses which they suffer they are prone to commit criminal acts, and the problem which they present resolves itself into protecting them from their neighbours and their neighbours from them. ”

“ De Quatrefages divides all other Eastern pygmies into two divisions—insular and continental—and no authors find fault with this classification. Only in fixing the distribution of the Negritos do the authorities differ. The islands admitted by everybody to contain Negritos to-day may be eliminated from the discussion. These are the Philippines and the Andamans. In the latter the name “Mincopies” has been given to the little blacks, though how this name originated no one seems to know. It is certain that the people do not apply the name to themselves. ”

“ They have been described by natives of Baggao as being very similar to the ordinary Filipinos in physical characteristics except that they are darker in color and have bushy hair. Their only weapons are the bow and arrow. Their social status is in every way like that of the Negritos as distinguished from the industrious mountain. Malayans of northern Luzon. Yet future investigations may not associate these robust and warlike tribes with the weak, shirking Negritos. ”