It seems that there exists among some of the tribes a belief that a reincarnation of a former “Great White Chief”—presumably Father Candidius, a Dutch priest, who devoted his life to the care, spiritual and temporal, of the aboriginal people—will return and help them throw off the yoke of their Chinese and Japanese conquerors.[47] Hence the welcome which a fair-haired, blue-eyed person receives from them, and the reverence with which he—or she—is treated: their appreciation of such a one being in rather marked contrast with the point of view of both Chinese and Japanese, who speak of a fair-haired—or even brown-haired—blue-eyed man or woman as a “red-haired, green-eyed barbarian.”
PART II
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES
CHAPTER V
RACIAL STOCK
Physical Appearance pointing to Indoneso-Malay Origin—Linguistic Evidence and Evidence of Handicraft—Tribal Divisions of the Aborigines—Moot Question as to the Existence of a Pigmy People in the Interior of the Island.
While the aborigines are divided into a number of tribes, and are also grouped—by the Chinese—according to the “greenness” or “ripeness” of their barbarity, yet they may, collectively speaking, be regarded as belonging to the Indoneso-Malay stock, many tribes being strikingly similar in appearance to certain tribes in the Philippine Islands. Hamay, writing under the head of “Les Races Malaïques” in L’Anthropologie for 1896, says that the aborigines of Formosa recalled to him the Igorotes of Northern Luzon (Philippines) as well as the Malays of Singapore.
Regarding the Malays of Singapore, I cannot speak from personal observation, as I have not been in Singapore; but as I spent six months in the Philippines, shortly before going to Formosa,[48] I am able to confirm Hamay’s statement as to the resemblance between Filipinos and Formosan aborigines. As regards the tribe of Igorotes, this resemblance extends also, to a certain degree, to social customs and religious beliefs. Considering physical resemblance alone, however, I should say that this is more striking between the Formosan aborigines and the Tagalogs of Luzon than between the former and the Igorotes—that is, where the Tagalogs are unmixed with Spanish blood. The resemblance between the Tagalogs and the Taiyal[49] tribe of northern Formosa is particularly striking as regards physical characteristics. The resemblance, however, ends here. The Tagalogs, as the result of Spanish influence, are so-called “Christians”; the Taiyal are not. The latter (Taiyal of Formosa) are a singularly chaste, honest, and fair-dealing people; the former (Tagalogs) are singularly—otherwise.