Philippine Islanders. The natives of the Philippines belong to three distinct races—Negritoes, Indonesians and Malays. The Negritoes are known as [Aetas] (q.v.). The Indonesians are confined to the island of Mindanao; they are light-skinned, tall and well-developed physically. Their chief tribe is that of the Igorrotes. The Malays are brown-skinned, with black hair and flat noses, being crossed with Negrito blood. Their chief tribes are the Visayans, Tagalogs, Bicols, Ilocanos, Cayagans, Pangasinans and Pampangas. These are all Christianised and fairly civilised. The interior is occupied by wild and savage tribes of similar race, and by the dwarfish and nomadic Negritoes. Many of these tribes practise head-hunting, cannibalism, and human sacrifices. The more civilised tribes, with the Spanish-Indian half-breeds, known as Filipinos, are turbulent and lawless, the source of much trouble to the new American as to the old Spanish rulers.
Philistines. An ancient race inhabiting the Mediterranean seaboard to the south-west of Judæa, who warred much with the Israelites, and were finally subdued by them. They were probably a Canaanitish people, belonging to the Semitic family; but some regard them as an immigrant Hamitic race, perhaps related to the Cretans or Pelasgians. The assumed inferiority of their culture to that of the Israelites has given rise to the modern use of “Philistine” as a term of reproach.
Phœnicians. The greatest seafaring and trading nation of ancient times, and the earliest of Mediterranean sea-powers. A branch of the Canaanite stock of the Semitic family, they inhabited the Mediterranean coast between Latakia and Acre, their chief cities being Tyre and Sidon. They possessed a remarkable polytheistic religion, disfigured by human sacrifices. They were an inventive race, to whom we owe glass and Tyrian purple. They seem to have entered Phœnicia from the direction of the Red Sea in prehistoric times, and were at first subject to Egypt, but about 1300 B.C. reared a great maritime empire, which endured for nearly a thousand years and was destroyed by Alexander the Great. They were the great traders of the ancient world, and carried on a commerce which ranged from Cornwall to Ceylon and Senegal. The [Carthaginians] (q.v.) were a colony of Phœnicians.
Phrygians. An ancient pastoral people of Asia Minor, closely related to the [Armenians] (q.v.), who were absorbed by the Persians in the sixth century B.C.
Picts. The aborigines of ancient Scotland, a short, round-headed, dark race, probably a branch of the Iberian stock of the Western Hamitic family, and thus closely related to the [Basques] (q.v.). The Picts were a wild and warlike race, who harassed the Roman province of Britain, and were exterminated by the invading Scots from Ireland in the early part of the Christian era. The whole Pictish problem is still unsolved by ethnologists, some of whom hold that the Picts were a Celtic race, allied to the modern Welsh or to the Scottish Highlanders of to-day.
Picuris. See [PUEBLO INDIANS].
Pipils. See [NAHUANS].
Pitcairn Islanders. Half-breed descendants of Englishmen (the mutineers of the “Bounty”) and Tahitian women. A peaceful and idyllic race.
Pocomans, Poconches. See [MAYA-QUICHÉ].
Poles. A stock of the Western Slavonic family, originally dwelling between the Vistula and the Oder. In the tenth century Poland became an independent European Power, and remained an elective kingdom down to its partition in the eighteenth century between Russia, Austria and Prussia. The Polish peasantry have always been industrious and successful agriculturists, whilst the nobility were turbulent and warlike. The Poles who live under Austrian and German rule are fairly contented, but those of Russian Poland have carried on a long and often bloody series of struggles for liberty. Of late years, Russian Poland has become a manufacturing country, under German influence. The Poles have a considerable literature, and are eminently musical.