Negritos of Zambales | Page 3

of dwarfs just as it would be in
a race of giants, no matter what the color or social state; and scientists
have long been concerned with trying to fix the position of the pygmies
in the history of the human race. That they have played an important
ethnologic rôle can not be doubted; and although to-day they are so
scattered and so modified by surrounding people as largely to have
disappeared as a pure type, yet they have everywhere left their imprint

on the peoples who have absorbed them.
The Negritos of the Philippines constitute one branch of the Eastern
division of the pygmy race as opposed to the African division, it being
generally recognized that the blacks of short stature may be so grouped
in two large and comprehensive divisions. Other well-known branches
of the Eastern group are the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands and
perhaps also the Papuans of New Guinea, very similar in many
particulars to the Negritos of the Philippines, although authorities differ
in grouping the Papuans with the Negritos. The Asiatic continent is also
not without its representatives of the black dwarfs, having the Sakai of
the Malay Peninsula. The presence of Negritos over so large an area
has especially attracted the attention of anthropologists who have taken
generally one or the other of two theories advanced to explain it: First,
that the entire oceanic region is a partly submerged continent, once
connected with the Asiatic mainland and over which this aboriginal
race spread prior to the subsidence. The second theory is that the
peopling of the several archipelagoes by the Negritos has been a
gradual spread from island to island. This latter theory, advanced by De
Quatrefages, [1] is the generally accepted one, although it is somewhat
difficult to believe that the ancestors of weak and scattered tribes such
as to-day are found in the Philippines could ever have been the sea
rovers that such a belief would imply. It is a well-known fact, however,
that the Malays have spread in this manner, and, while it is hardly
possible that the Negritos have ever been as bold seafarers as the
Malays, yet where they have been left in undisputed possession of their
shores they have remained reckless fishermen. The statement that they
are now nearly always found in impenetrable mountain forests is not an
argument against the migration-by-sea theory, because they have been
surrounded by stronger races and have been compelled to flee to the
forests or suffer extermination. The fact that they live farther inland
than the stronger peoples is also evidence that they were the first
inhabitants, for it is not natural to suppose that a weaker race could
enter territory occupied by a stronger and gain a permanent foothold
there. [2]
The attention of the first Europeans who visited the Philippines was

attracted by people with frizzly hair and with a skin darker in color than
that of the ruling tribes. Pigafetta, to whom we are indebted for an
account of Magellan's voyage of discovery in 1521, mentions Negritos
as living in the Island of Panglao, southwest of Bohol and east of Cebu.
[3] If we are to believe later historians the shores of some of the islands
fairly swarmed with Negritos when the Spaniards arrived. Meyer gives
an interesting extract from an old account by Galvano, The Discoveries
of the World (ed. Bethune, Hakluyt Soc., 1862, p. 234): [4]
In the same yeere 1543, and in moneth of August, the generall Rui
Lopez sent one Bartholomew de la torre in a smal ship into new Spaine
to acquaint the vizeroy don Antonio de Mendoça, with all things. They
went to the Islands of Siria, Gaonata, Bisaia and many others, standing
in 11 and 12 degrees towards the north, where Magellan had beene. * *
* They found also an Archepelagus of Islands well inhabited with
people, lying in 15 or 16 degrees: * * * There came vnto them certaine
barkes or boates handsomely decked, wherein the master and principall
men sate on high, and vnderneath were very blacke moores with frizled
haire * * *: and being demanded where they had these blacke moores,
they answered, that they had them from certaine islands standing fast
by Sebut, where there were many of them.
Zúñiga [5] quotes the Franciscan history [6] as follows:
The Negritos which our first conquerors found were, according to
tradition, the first possessors of the islands of this Archipelago, and,
having been conquered by the political nations of other kingdoms, they
fled to the mountains and populated them, whence no one has been able
to accomplish their extermination on account of the inaccessibility of
the places where they live. In the past they were so proud of their
primitive dominion that, although they did not have strength