After all, Blumentritt’s opinion of several years ago is not far from right. Including all mixed breeds having a preponderance of Negrito blood, it is safe to say that the Negrito population of the Philippines probably will not exceed 25,000. Of these the group largest in numbers and probably purest in type is that in the Zambales mountain range, western Luzon. However, while individuals may retain in some cases purity of blood, nowhere are whole groups free from mixture with the Malayan. The Negritos of Panay, Negros, and Mindanao are also to be regarded as pure to a large extent. On the east side of Luzon and in the Island of Paragua, as we have just seen, there is marked evidence of mixture.
The social state of the Negritos is everywhere practically the same. They maintain their half-starved lives by the fruits of the chase and forest products, and at best cultivate only small patches of maize and other vegetables. Only occasionally do they live in settled, self-supporting communities, but wander for the most part in scattered families from one place to another.
[1] Les Pygmées, 1887.
[2] However, when one attempts to fathom the mysteries surrounding the origin and migrations of the Negrito race he becomes hopelessly involved in a labyrinth of conjecture. Did the Negritos come from somewhere in Asia, some island like New Guinea, or is their original home now sunk beneath the sea? In the present state of our knowledge we can not hope to know. We find them in certain places to-day; we may believe that they once lived in certain other places, because the people now living there have characteristics peculiar to the little black men. But the Negrito has left behind no archaeological remains to guide the investigator, and he who attempts seriously to consider this question is laying up for himself a store of perplexing problems.
It may be of interest to present here the leading facts in connection with the distribution of the Negrito race and to summarize the views set forth by various leading anthropologists who have given the subject most study.
The deduction of the French scientists De Quatrefages and Hamy have been based almost entirely on craniological and osteological observations, and these authors argue a much wider distribution of the Negritos than other writers hold. In fact, according to these writers, traces of Negritos are found practically everywhere from India to Japan and New Guinea.
De Quatrefages in Les Pygmées, 1887, divides what he calls the “Eastern pygmies,” as opposed to the African pygmies, into two divisions—the Negrito-Papuans and the Negritos proper. The former, he says, have New Guinea as a center of population and extend as far as Gilolo and the Moluccas. They are distinguished from the true Papuans who inhabit New Guinea and who are not classed by that writer as belonging to the Negrito race.
On the other hand, Wallace and Earl, supported by Meyer, all of whom have made some investigations in the region occupied by the Papuans, affirm that there is but a single race and that its identity with the Negritos is unmistakable. Meyer (Distribution of Negritos, 1898, p. 77) says that he and Von Maclay in 1873 saw a number of Papuans in Tidore. He had just come from the Philippines and Von Maclay had then come from Astrolabe Bay, in New Guinea. With these Papuans before them they discussed the question of the unity of the races, and Von Maclay could see no difference between these Papuans and those of Astrolabe Bay, while Meyer declared that the similarities between them and the Negritos of the Philippines was most striking. He says: “That was my standpoint then regarding the question, neither can I relinquish it at present.”
Although they defended the unity of the Negritos and the Papuans they recognized that the Papuans were diversified and presented a variety of types, but Meyer regards this not as pointing to a crossing of different elements but as revealing simply the variability of the race. He continues (p. 80): “As the external habitus of the Negritos must be declared as almost identical with that of the Papuans, differences in form of the skull, the size of the body, and such like have the less weight in opposition to the great uniformity, as strong contrasts do not even come into play here, and if the Negritos do not show such great amount of variation in their physical characters as the Papuans—which, however, is by no means sufficiently attested—it is no wonder in the case Of a people which has been driven back and deprived of the opportunity of developing itself freely.”