Conclusion
This rapid survey leaves much to be desired, but it contains about all that is definitely known to-day concerning the whereabouts of the Negritos in the Philippines. No attempt has been made to state numbers. The Philippine census will probably have more exact information in this particular, but it must be borne in mind that even the figures given by the census can be no more than estimates in most instances. The habits of the Negritos do not lend themselves to modern methods of census taking.
After all, Blumentritt’s opinion of several years ago is not far from right. Including all mixed breeds having a preponderance of Negrito blood, it is safe to say that the Negrito population of the Philippines probably will not exceed 25,000. Of these the group largest in numbers and probably purest in type is that in the Zambales mountain range, western Luzon. 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. Only occasionally do they live in settled, self-supporting communities, but wander for the most part in scattered families from one place to another.
[1] Les Pygmées, 1887.
[2] However, when one attempts to fathom the mysteries surrounding the origin and migrations of the Negrito race he becomes hopelessly involved in a labyrinth of conjecture. Did the Negritos come from somewhere in Asia, some island like New Guinea, or is their original home now sunk beneath the sea? In the present state of our knowledge we can not hope to know. We find them in certain places to-day; we may believe that they once lived in certain other places, because the people now living there have characteristics peculiar to the little black men. But the Negrito has left behind no archaeological remains to guide the investigator, and he who attempts seriously to consider this question is laying up for himself a store of perplexing problems.
It may be of interest to present here the leading facts in connection with the distribution of the Negrito race and to summarize the views set forth by various leading anthropologists who have given the subject most study.
The deduction of the French scientists De Quatrefages and Hamy have been based almost entirely on craniological and osteological observations, and these authors argue a much wider distribution of the Negritos than other writers hold. In fact, according to these writers, traces of Negritos are found practically everywhere from India to Japan and New Guinea.
De Quatrefages in Les Pygmées, 1887, divides what he calls the “Eastern pygmies,” as opposed to the African pygmies, into two divisions—the Negrito-Papuans and the Negritos proper. The former, he says, have New Guinea as a center of population and extend as far as Gilolo and the Moluccas. They are distinguished from the true Papuans who inhabit New Guinea and who are not classed by that writer as belonging to the Negrito race.
On the other hand, Wallace and Earl, supported by Meyer, all of whom have made some investigations in the region occupied by the Papuans, affirm that there is but a single race and that its identity with the Negritos is unmistakable. Meyer (Distribution of Negritos, 1898, p. 77) says that he and Von Maclay in 1873 saw a number of Papuans in Tidore. He had just come from the Philippines and Von Maclay had then come from Astrolabe Bay, in New Guinea. With these Papuans before them they discussed the question of the unity of the races, and Von Maclay could see no difference between these Papuans and those of Astrolabe Bay, while Meyer declared that the similarities between them and the Negritos of the Philippines was most striking. He says: “That was my standpoint then regarding the question, neither can I relinquish it at present.”
Although they defended the unity of the Negritos and the Papuans they recognized that the Papuans were diversified and presented a variety of types, but Meyer regards this not as pointing to a crossing of different elements but as revealing simply the variability of the race. He continues (p. 80): “As the external habitus of the Negritos must be declared as almost identical with that of the Papuans, differences in form of the skull, the size of the body, and such like have the less weight in opposition to the great uniformity, as strong contrasts do not even come into play here, and if the Negritos do not show such great amount of variation in their physical characters as the Papuans—which, however, is by no means sufficiently attested—it is no wonder in the case Of a people which has been driven back and deprived of the opportunity of developing itself freely.”
Thus it remains for future investigations to establish beyond doubt the identity of the Papuans.
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. Extensive study of the Andamans has been made by Flower and Man.
The Moluccas and lesser Sunda Islands just west of New Guinea were stated by De Quatrefages in 1887 (Les Pygmées) to be inhabited by Negritos, although three years previously, as recorded in Hommes Fossiles, 1884, he had doubted their existence there. He gave no authority, and assigned no reason in his later work for this change of opinion. Meyer thinks this sufficient reason why one should not take De Quatrefages too seriously, and states that proofs of the existence of the Negritos in this locality are “so weak as not to be worth discussing them in detail.” From deductions based on the examination of a single skull Hamy inferred that pure Negritos were found on Timor, but the people of Timor were found by Meyer to be mixed Papuans and Malays, resembling the latter on the coasts and the former in the interior.
Likewise in Celebes, Borneo, and Java the French writers think that traces of an ancient Negrito population may be found, while Meyer holds that there is not sufficient evidence to warrant such an assumption. In Sumatra he admits that there is an element not Malayan, which on account of the nearness of Malacca may be Negritic, but that fact is so far by no means proved.
In regard to Formosa Meyer quotes Scheteleg (Trans. Ethn. Soc., n.s., 1869, vii): “I am convinced * * * that the Malay origin of most of the inhabitants of Formosa is incontestable.” But Hamy holds that the two skulls which Scheteleg brought were Negrito skulls, an assumption which Meyer (Distribution of Negritos, 1898, p. 52) disposes of as follows: “To conclude the occurrence of a race in a country from certain characters in two skulls, when this race has not been registered from that country, is, in the present embryonic state of craniology, an unwarrantable proceeding.”
In like manner Hamy has found that a certain Japanese skull in the Paris Museum resembles a Negrito skull, and he also finds traces of Negritos in Japan in the small stature, crisp hair, and darker color of the natives of the interior of the Island of Kiusiu. But Meyer holds that the facts brought forward up to the present time are far from being established, and objects to the acceptance of surmises and explanations more or less subjective as conclusive.
There is no doubt of the occurrence of Negritos in the peninsula of Malacca, where both pure and mixed people have been found. These are reported under a variety of names, of which Semang and Sakaí are perhaps the best known. Meyer (Distribution of Negritos, p. 62, footnote 2) says: “Stevens divides the Negritos of Malacca into two principal tribes—the Belendas, who with the Tumiors branched off from the Kenis tribe, and the Meniks, who consist of the Panggans of Kelantan and Petani and the Semangs of the west coast. Only the Panggans * * * and the Tumiors are pure Negritos. A name often recurring for the Belendas is Sakeis (Malay: ‘bondman,’ ‘servant’), a designation given them in the first instance by the Malays but which they often also apply to themselves when addressing strangers.”
In their efforts to find Negrito traces in the Mao-tse, the aboriginal peoples of the Chinese Empire, De Lacouperie and De Quatrefages have, in the opinion of Meyer, even less to stand on than had Hamy in the case of Japan. In like manner it remains to be proved whether the Moií of Annam are related to Negritos, as the two French writers have stated, but whose opinions have been vigorously opposed by Meyer and others.
The question of the aboriginal inhabitants of India is one of even greater importance and presents greater difficulties. 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. In regard to the Indian question there is much diversity of opinion. De Quatrefages and Hamy, as usual, regard the Negritos as established in India, but Topinard and Virchow are opposed to this belief. Meyer holds that “this part of the Negrito question is in no way ripe for decision, and how much less the question as to a possible relationship of this hypothetical primitive population with the Negroes of Africa.” (Distribution of Negritos, 1899, p. 70.)
In anthropology a statement may be regarded as proved for the time being so long as no opposition to it exists. With the exception of the Philippine and the Andaman Islands and the Malay Peninsula, as we have seen, the presence of traces of Negritos is an open question. The evidence at hand is incomplete and insufficient, and we must therefore be content to let future investigators work out these unsolved problems.
[3] English edition of Stanley, 1874, p. 106.
[4] Distribution of Negritos, 1899, p. 6, footnote.
[5] Zúñiga, Estadismo de las Islas Filipinas. Reprint by Retana, vol. I, p. 422.
[6] By this is meant Fr. San Antonio’s Chronicas de la Apostolica, Provincia de San Gregorio, etc., 1738–1744.
[7] Relación de las Islas Filipinas, 1604; 2d ed., 1890, p. 38.
[8] Meyer, Distribution of Negritos, 1899, p. 4.
[10] Estadismo de las Islas Filipinas. Ed. Retana, 1893, I, p. 421.
[11] Ca-ĭng-ĭn is a Malayan word for cultivated clearing.