The Negritos are diminutive and uncivilized black people who live to-day in a few mountain areas. They are the aborigines of the islands in this part of the world, and are as primitive as the Australian blacks, having no social or political organization but that of the family. They live in hollow trees or under little lean-tos of grass and brush, and subsist principally by hunting and fishing, at which they are very expert. Their weapons are poisoned arrows and the blow gun. The poison, which is made either from the leaf of a tree or from decomposed meat, is placed in the arrow-head of hollow bone. On striking, it injects the poison into the flesh as a hypodermic needle would do, quickly resulting in death.
The only agricultural implement of the Negritos is a pointed stick hardened in the fire. To prepare the ground for cultivation, on the space they wish to clear they girdle the trees, which will soon die. They are then set on fire and the ashes distributed over the soil. Later, holes are made with the pointed sticks, and camotes, sugar-cane and tobacco are planted.
These people are very timid, and if their suspicions are aroused in the slightest manner, they immediately disappear into the forest. Very little success has attended any effort to civilize them. Their religion is nature worship with many local divinities and good and bad spirits of all sorts.
They ornament their bodies with scar patterns, made by cutting the skin with sharp pieces of bamboo and then rubbing dirt into the wounds. In this respect they are like no other tribes in the Islands but resemble the most primitive of the native Africans, who also make scar patterns. The men often shave the crowns of their heads in order, they say, "to let the heat out." The Negritos, like the Bagobos of the south, sometimes point their front teeth, but not by filing them as one might suppose. They are chopped off with a bolo.
Worcester says the Negritos "believe that each family must take at least one head per year or suffer misfortune in the form of sickness, wounds, starvation or death." Heads are buried in the ground under the "houses" of the men who take them.
In regard to the Tingians of northern Luzon I also quote from Worcester, who has given us the most reliable account of them:
"The women of this tribe ornament their arms with a series of bracelets and armlets, which often extend from wrist to shoulder. They constrict the middle of the forearm during early girlhood and continue to wear tight armlets on the constricted portion throughout life, so that their forearms become somewhat hourglass-shaped, this being considered a mark of great beauty in spite of the unsightly swelling of the wrists which results....
"Their cooking utensils are taken to the river and scrubbed with sand after every meal. If a wife offers her husband dirty or soggy rice to eat, the offense is said to afford ground for divorce....
ILONGOT IN RAIN-COAT AND HAT OF DEERSKIN.