Primitive man is represented in the Philippines to-day not alone by one of the lowest natural types of savage man the historic world has looked upon—the small, dark-brown, bearded, “crisp-woolly”-haired Negritos—but by some thirty distinct primitive Malayan tribes or dialect groups, among which are believed to be some of the lowest of the stock in existence.
In northern Luzon is the Igorot, a typical primitive Malayan. He is a muscular, smooth-faced, brown man of a type between the delicate and the coarse. In Mindoro the Mangiyan is found, an especially lowly Malayan, who may prove to be a true savage in culture. In Mindanao is the slender, delicate, smooth-faced brown man of which the Subano, in the western part, is typical. There are the Bagobo and the extensive Manobo of eastern Mindanao in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Davao, the latter people following the Agusan River practically to the north coast of Mindanao. In southeastern Mindanao, in the vicinity of Mount Apo and also north of the Gulf of Davao, are the Ata. They are a scattered people and evidently a Negrito and primitive Malayan mixture. In Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, Isabela, and perhaps Principe, of Luzon, are the Ibilao. They are a slender, delicate, bearded people, with an artistic nature quite different from any other now known in the island, but somewhat like that of the Ata of Mindanao. Their artistic wood productions suggest the incised work of distant dwellers of the Pacific, as that of the people of New Guinea, Fiji Islands, or Hervey Islands. The seven so-called Christian tribes,[2] occupying considerable areas in the coastwise lands and low plains of most of the larger islands of the Archipelago, represent migrations to the Archipelago subsequent to those of the Igorot and comparable tribes.
The last migrations of brown men into the Archipelago are historic. The Spaniard discovered the inward flow of the large Samal Moro group—after his arrival in the sixteenth century. The movement of this nomadic “Sea Gipsy” Samal has not ceased to-day, but continues to flow in and out among the small southern islands.
Besides the peoples here cited there are a score of others scattered about the Archipelago, representing many grades of primitive culture, but those mentioned are sufficient to suggest that the Islands have been very effective in gathering up and holding divers groups of primitive men.[3]
[1] There are many instances on record showing that people have been planted on Pacific shores many hundred miles from their native land. It seems that the primitive Pacific Islanders have sent people adrift from their shores, thus adding a rational cause to those many fortuitous causes for the interisland migration of small groups of individuals.
“In 1696, two canoes were driven from Ancarso to one of the Philippine Islands, a distance of eight hundred miles. They had run before the wind for seventy days together, sailing from east to west. Thirty-five had embarked, but five had died from the effects of privation and fatigue during the voyage, and one shortly after their arrival. In 1720, two canoes were drifted from a remote distance to one of the Marian Islands. Captain Cook found, in the island of Wateo Atiu, inhabitants of Tahiti, who had been drifted by contrary wind in a canoe, from some islands to the eastward, unknown to the natives. Several parties have, within the last few years, (prior to 1834), reached the Tahitian shores from islands to the eastward, of which the Society Islands had never before heard. In 1820, a canoe arrived at Maurua, about thirty miles west of Borabora, which had come from Rurutu, one of the Austral Islands. This vessel had been at sea between a fortnight and three weeks; and, considering its route, must have sailed seven or eight hundred miles. A more recent instance occurred in 1824: a boat belonging to Mr. Williams of Raiatea left that island with a westerly wind for Tahiti. The wind changed after the boat was out of sight of land. They were driven to the island of Atiu, a distance of nearly eight hundred miles in a south-westerly direction, where they were discovered several months afterwards. Another boat, belonging to Mr. Barff of Huahine, was passing between that island and Tahiti about the same time, and has never since been heard of; and subsequent instances of equally distant and perilous voyages in canoes or open boats might be cited.”—(Ellis) Polynesian Researches, vol. I, p. 125.
“In the year 1799, when Finow, a Friendly Island chief, acquired the supreme power in that most interesting group of islands, after a bloody and calamitous civil war, in which his enemies were completely overpowered, the barbarian forced a number of the vanquished to embark in their canoes and put to sea; and during the revolution that issued in the subversion of paganism in Otaheite, the rebel chiefs threatened to treat the English missionaries and their families in a similar way. In short, the atrocious practice is, agreeably to the Scotch law phrase, “use and wont,” in the South Sea Islands.”—John Dunmore Lang, View of the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation, London, 1834, pp. 62, 63.
[2] The Christianized dialect groups are: Bikol, of southern Luzon and adjacent islands; Cagayan, of the Cagayan Valley of Luzon; Ilokano, of the west coast of northern Luzon; Pampango and Pangasinan, of the central plain of Luzon; Tagalog, of the central area South of the two preceding; and the Visayan, of the central islands and northern Mindanao.
[3] No pretense is now made for permanency either in the classification of the many groups of primitive people in the Philippines or for the nomenclature of these various groups; but the groups of non-Christian people in the Archipelago, as they are to-day styled in a more or less permanent way by The Ethnological Survey, are as follows: Ata, north and west of Gulf of Davao in southeastern Mindanao; Batak, of Paragua; Bilan, in the southern highlands west of Gulf of Davao, Mindanao; Bagobo, of west coast of Gulf of Davao, Mindanao; Bukidnon, of Negros; Ibilao or Ilongot, of eastern central Luzon; Igorot, of northern Luzon; the Lanao Moro, occupying the central territory of Mindanao between the Bays of Iligan and Illana, including Lake Lanao; Maguindanao Moro, extending in a band southeast from Cotabato, Mindanao, toward Sarangani Bay, including Lakes Liguasan and Buluan; Mandaya, of southeastern Mindanao east of Gulf of Davao; Mangiyan, of Mindoro: Manobo, probably the most numerous tribe in Mindanao, occupying the valley of the Agusan River draining northward into Butuan Bay and the extensive table-land west of that river, besides in isolated territories extending to both the east and west coasts of the large body of land between Gulf of Davao and Illana Bay; Negrito, of several areas of wild mountains in Luzon, Negros, Mindanao, and other smaller islands; the Sama, of the islands in Gulf of Davao, Mindanao; Samal Moro, of scattered coastal areas in southern Mindanao, besides the eastern and southern islands of the Sulu or Jolo Archipelago; the Subano, probably the second largest tribal group in Mindanao, occupying all the mountain territory west of the narrow neck of land between Illana Bay and Pangul Bay; the Sulu Moro, of Jolo Island; the Tagabili, on the southern coast of Mindanao northwest of Sarangani Bay; the Tagakola, along the central part of the west coast of Gulf of Davao, Mindanao; Tagbanua, of Paragua; Tinguian, of western northern Luzon; Tiruray, south of Cotabato, Mindanao; Yakan Moro, in the mountainous interior of Basilan Island, off the Mindanao coast at Zamboanga. Under the names of these large groups must be included many more smaller dialect groups whose precise relationship may not now be confidently stated. For instance, the large Igorot group is composed of many smaller groups of different dialects besides that of the Bontoc Igorot of which this paper treats.