[1] Montano, Mission aux Philippines, p. 316.
[2] MS. Coll. of The Ethnological Survey.
[3] Voyage aux Philippines, p. 71; Mission aux Philippines, p. 315.
[4] MS. Coll. of The Ethnological Survey.
[5] In the footnote on page 29 is given an extract from Careri’s Voyages, in which the following occurs: “True it is, that by means of the heathen Chinese who deal with them in the mountains, some deformed statues have been found in their huts.”
Chapter VII
Spanish Attempts to Organize Negritos
The attention of the Spanish Government was early attracted to the Negritos and other savages in the Philippines, and their subjection and conversion was the subject of many royal orders, though unfortunately little was accomplished. One of the first decrees of the Gobierno Superior relating especially to the Negritos was that of June 12, 1846. It runs substantially as follows:
In my visits to the provinces of these Islands, having noticed, with the sympathy that they must inspire in all sensitive souls, the kind of life and the privations that many of the infidel tribes, and especially the Negritos who inhabit the mountains, are forced to endure; and persuaded that it is a duty of all civilized Governments and of humanity itself to better the condition of men, who, hidden thus from society, will in time become extinct, victims of their customs, of the unhealthfulness of the rugged places where they live, and of our negligence in helping them; and desirous of making them useful, that some day, influenced by the benefits of social life, they may enter the consoling pale of our Holy Mother, the Catholic Church, I hereby decree the following:
ARTICLE 1. The alcaldes and military and political governors of provinces in whose district there may be tribes or rancherias of the aforesaid Negritos or of other infidels shall proceed with the consent of the devoted curas parrocos, whose charity I implore for them, through their head men or capitanes, to induce them to take the necessary steps to assemble in villages, lands being given for that purpose, in places not very near to Christian pueblos, and seeds of grains and vegetables being furnished that they may cultivate the land.