They are said to intermarry indiscriminately, without regard to kinship. Their number was computed at 1500 in the year 1888, and they are probably not much more numerous now.
These people are, like the Negritos, whom they resemble, a hopeless race, not capable of advancing in civilisation.
Manguianes and Negritos of Palawan.
These people have been described under the heading Aetas or Negritos, in Part I. The first-named inhabit the interior of that part of the island occupied by the Moros who jealously prevent them from holding any intercourse with strangers.
Moros of Southern Palawan.—These people do not differ in any essential particular from the Moros of Mindanao. They look back with regret on the good old days before the advent of the steam gun-boats, and the establishment of the fortified posts along their shores when they could make their annual raids and massacre, plunder, and enslave, the wretched Tagbanúas without interference. They will doubtless take full advantage of any negligence of the United States authorities to keep up the gun-boat flotilla, and to maintain the military posts.
They now live by agriculture, all the labour being performed by slaves, and by trading with the savages of the mountains, vying with the Christians in usurious rapacity.
John Chinaman in Palawan is just the same as his brother in Mindanao—a remorseless usurer, and a skilful manipulator of false weights and measures, but no worse in the treatment of the unhappy aboriginal than the Christian native or half-caste.
Puerto Princesa, the capital, had a population at the time of my visit in 1890 of about 1500, of which number 1200 were males and 300 females. About half the males were soldiers and sailors, one-fourth convicts, and the remainder civilians. Most of the women had been deported from Manila as undesirable characters in that decorous city. Notwithstanding their unsavoury antecedents, they found new husbands or protectors in Puerto Princesa the moment they landed. Such was the competition for these very soiled doves, that most of them had made their new arrangements before leaving the jetty alongside which the steamer they arrived in lay.
There was some little cultivation round about the capital, but as usual trading with the aborigines for gum, rattans, balate, green snail-shells, and other jungle produce was the most entrancing pursuit.