[13] The pangolin or Manis, commonly known as ant-eater. The preceding sentence probably refers to the flying lemur (note 44, ante.)
[14] Cf. account of the weapons used by the Mindanaos, given by Retana and Pastells in their edition of Combés’s Historia de Mindanao, cols. 782 and 783. Also cf. weapons of North American Indians, as described in Jesuit Relations—see Index, vol. lxxii, pp. 337, 338.
[15] Referring to Sìargao Island, off northeast coast of Mindanao; about twenty-one miles long and fourteen wide.
[16] Cimarrón is an American word meaning “wild” or “unruly,” and is also applied to a runaway slave. O.T. Mason, in his translation of Blumentritt’s Native Tribes of the Philippines (Washington, 1901), says (p. 536) that “this characterization is given to heathen tribes of most varied affiliation, living without attachment and in poverty, chiefly posterity of the Remontados.” Buzeta and Bravo (Diccionario) say that these people are “collections or tribes of infidels known by this name in the island of Luzón and others of the archipelago. There is at present a tribe living in the dense forests of the mountain Isaroc in the province of Camarines Sur. There are also some collections of these and some hostiles in the mountains of the island and province of Samar. They are descendants of the Negrito race, who seem to become differentiated from their own species because of their extraordinarily wild and mountainous life.” Hence the name seems to have been given these people in Mindanao simply to distinguish them as especially barbarous and difficult to establish relations among. They were probably one of the numerous tribes of Negritos such as inhabit Mindanao today.
[17] In a brief description of the Philippine Islands which occurs in a geographical work by the Chinese writer Chao-Yu-Kua (who flourished in the thirteenth century)—which account will appear later in this series—is an interesting mention of “nests” built in trees by the Aetas or Negritos, who live therein in single families. Professor Friedrich Ratzel (History of Mankind, Butler’s translation, London and New York, 1896) says (i, p. 111) that the Battaks in Sumatra, and many Melanesians lived in trees; and on p. 422, he says: “Among the Battaks safe dwelling-places are also found at the point where a tree-stem forks or throws off branches; the central shoot is lopped off, and the surrounding branches remain.” Continuing he speaks of the huts built by the Ilongotes of Luzón on tree stems, which are made from leaves of the nipa-palm and bamboo. “The Orang-Sakei and the Lubus of Sumatra also live to some extent in trees” (p. 423). There are also tree-dwellers in Africa and India.
[18] “In older works are so named [Caragas] the warlike and Christian inhabitants of the localities subdued by the Spaniards on the east coast of Mindanao, and, indeed, after their principal city, Caraga. It has been called, if not a peculiar language, a Visaya dialect, while now only Visaya (near Manobo and Mandaya) is spoken, and an especial Caraga nation is no longer known.” (Blumentritt’s “Native Tribes of the Philippines,” in Smithsonian Report, 1899, p. 535.)