Negritos of Zambales

by William Allan Reed

Thus it remains for future investigations to establish beyond doubt the identity of the Papuans.

De Quatrefages divides all other Eastern pygmies into two divisions—insular and continental—and no authors find fault with this classification. Only in fixing the distribution of the Negritos do the authorities differ. The islands admitted by everybody to contain Negritos to-day may be eliminated from the discussion. These are the Philippines and the Andamans. In the latter the name “Mincopies” has been given to the little blacks, though how this name originated no one seems to know. It is certain that the people do not apply the name to themselves. Extensive study of the Andamans has been made by Flower and Man.

The Moluccas and lesser Sunda Islands just west of New Guinea were stated by De Quatrefages in 1887 (Les Pygmées) to be inhabited by Negritos, although three years previously, as recorded in Hommes Fossiles, 1884, he had doubted their existence there. He gave no authority, and assigned no reason in his later work for this change of opinion. Meyer thinks this sufficient reason why one should not take De Quatrefages too seriously, and states that proofs of the existence of the Negritos in this locality are “so weak as not to be worth discussing them in detail.” From deductions based on the examination of a single skull Hamy inferred that pure Negritos were found on Timor, but the people of Timor were found by Meyer to be mixed Papuans and Malays, resembling the latter on the coasts and the former in the interior.

Likewise in Celebes, Borneo, and Java the French writers think that traces of an ancient Negrito population may be found, while Meyer holds that there is not sufficient evidence to warrant such an assumption. In Sumatra he admits that there is an element not Malayan, which on account of the nearness of Malacca may be Negritic, but that fact is so far by no means proved.

In regard to Formosa Meyer quotes Scheteleg (Trans. Ethn. Soc., n.s., 1869, vii): “I am convinced * * * that the Malay origin of most of the inhabitants of Formosa is incontestable.” But Hamy holds that the two skulls which Scheteleg brought were Negrito skulls, an assumption which Meyer (Distribution of Negritos, 1898, p. 52) disposes of as follows: “To conclude the occurrence of a race in a country from certain characters in two skulls, when this race has not been registered from that country, is, in the present embryonic state of craniology, an unwarrantable proceeding.”

In like manner Hamy has found that a certain Japanese skull in the Paris Museum resembles a Negrito skull, and he also finds traces of Negritos in Japan in the small stature, crisp hair, and darker color of the natives of the interior of the Island of Kiusiu. But Meyer holds that the facts brought forward up to the present time are far from being established, and objects to the acceptance of surmises and explanations more or less subjective as conclusive.

There is no doubt of the occurrence of Negritos in the peninsula of Malacca, where both pure and mixed people have been found. These are reported under a variety of names, of which Semang and Sakaí are perhaps the best known. Meyer (Distribution of Negritos, p. 62, footnote 2) says: “Stevens divides the Negritos of Malacca into two principal tribes—the Belendas, who with the Tumiors branched off from the Kenis tribe, and the Meniks, who consist of the Panggans of Kelantan and Petani and the Semangs of the west coast. Only the Panggans * * * and the Tumiors are pure Negritos. A name often recurring for the Belendas is Sakeis (Malay: ‘bondman,’ ‘servant’), a designation given them in the first instance by the Malays but which they often also apply to themselves when addressing strangers.”

In their efforts to find Negrito traces in the Mao-tse, the aboriginal peoples of the Chinese Empire, De Lacouperie and De Quatrefages have, in the opinion of Meyer, even less to stand on than had Hamy in the case of Japan. In like manner it remains to be proved whether the Moií of Annam are related to Negritos, as the two French writers have stated, but whose opinions have been vigorously opposed by Meyer and others.

The question of the aboriginal inhabitants of India is one of even greater importance and presents greater difficulties. If it can be shown that this aboriginal population was Negrito, and if the relations which researches, especially in philology, have indicated between the peoples of India and those of Australia can be proved, a range of possibilities of startling importance, affecting the race question of Oceania in general and the origin and distribution of the Negritos in particular, will be opened up. In regard to the Indian question there is much diversity of opinion. De Quatrefages and Hamy, as usual, regard the Negritos as established in India, but Topinard and Virchow are opposed to this belief. Meyer holds that “this part of the Negrito question is in no way ripe for decision, and how much less the question as to a possible relationship of this hypothetical primitive population with the Negroes of Africa.” (Distribution of Negritos, 1899, p. 70.)

In anthropology a statement may be regarded as proved for the time being so long as no opposition to it exists. With the exception of the Philippine and the Andaman Islands and the Malay Peninsula, as we have seen, the presence of traces of Negritos is an open question. The evidence at hand is incomplete and insufficient, and we must therefore be content to let future investigators work out these unsolved problems.