The Manóbos of Mindanáo | Page 7

the upper Karága during my last trip and received from her my third and most convincing report of the existence of Negritos other than the Mamánuas of the eastern Cordillera. She had been captured, she said, by the Manóbos of Libagánon and sold to the Debabáons (upper Sálug people). She could not describe the place where her people live, but she gave me the following information about them. They are all like herself, and they have no houses nor crops, because they are afraid of the Manóbos that surround them. Their food is the core[16] of the green rattan and of fishtail palm,[17] the flesh of wild boar, deer, and python, and such fish and grubs, etc., as they find in their wanderings. They sleep anywhere; sometimes even in trees, if they have seen strange footprints.
[15] The Tugawanons were described by my Sálug authorities as a people that lived at the headwaters of the River Libagánon on a tributary called Tugawan. They were described as a people of medium stature, as fair as the Mansákas, very warlike, enemies of the reported Negritos, very numerous, and speaking an Atás dialect. Perhaps the term Tugawanon is only a local name for a branch of the Atás tribe.
[16] O-bud.
[17] Ba-hi (Caryota sp.).
Their weapons are bows and arrows, lances, daggers, and bolos. According to her description, the bolos are long and thin, straight on one side and curved on the other. The men purchase them from the Atás in exchange for beeswax. The people are numerous, but they live far apart, roaming through the forests and mountains, and meeting one another only occasionally.
The statements of this slave girl correspond in every particular with the report that I received on the upper Sálug, except that the Sálug people called these Negritos Tugmaya and said that they live beyond a mountain that is at the headwaters of the Libagánon River.
Putting together these three reports and assuming the truth of them, the habitat of these Negritos must be the slopes of Mount Panombaian, which is situated between, and is probably the source of, the Rivers Tigwa (an important tributary of the Rio Grande de Kotabáto), Sábud (the main western tributary of the Ihawán River), and Libagánon (the great western influent of the Tágum River).
Montano states that during his visit to the Philippines (1880-81) there were on the island of Samal a class of half-blood Ata' with distinctly Negroid physical characteristics. Treating of Ata' he says that it is a term applied in the south of Mindanáo by Bisáyas to Negritos "that exist (or existed not long ago) in the interior toward the northwest of the gulf of Davao."[18] A careful distinction must be made between the term Atás[19] and the racial designation Ata', for the former are, according to Doctor Montano, a tribe of a superior type, of advanced culture, and of great reputation as warriors. They dwell on the northwestern slope of Mount Apo, hence their name Atás, hatáas, or atáas, being a very common word in Mindanáo for "high." They are, therefore, the people that dwell on the heights. I heard of one branch of them called Tugawanons, but this is probably only a local name like Agúsanons, etc.
[18] Une Mission aux Philippines, 346, 1887.
[19] Called also Itás.
I found reports of the former existence of Negritos in the Karága River Valley at a place called Sukipin, where the river has worn its way through the Cordillera. An old man there told me that his grandfather used to hunt the Negritos. The Mandáyas both of that region and of Tagdau?g-du?g, a district situated on the Karága River, five days' march from the mouth, on the western side of the Cordillera, show here and there characteristics, physical and cultural, that they could have inherited only from Negrito ancestors. One interesting trait of this particular group is the use of blowpipes for killing small birds. In the use of the bow and arrow, too, they are quite expert. These people are called taga-butái--that is, mountain dwellers--and live in places on the slopes of high mountains difficult of access, their watering-place being frequently a little hole on the side of the mountain.
THE BANUáONS
The Banuáons,[20] probably an extension of the Bukídnons of the Bukídnon subprovince. They occupy the upper parts of the Rivers Lami?ga, Kandiisan, Hawilian, and óhut, and the whole of the River Maásam, together with the mountainous region beyond the headwaters of these rivers, and probably extend over to the Bukídnons.
[20] Also called Higaunon or Higagaun, probably "the Hadgaguanes--a people untamed and ferocious"--to whom the Jesuits preached shortly after the year 1596. (Jesuit Mission, Blair and Robertson, 44:60, 1906.) These may be the people whom Pigaffetta, in his First Voyage Around the World (1519-1522) calls Benaian (Banuáon ?) and whom he describes as "shaggy and living at a