Note 1 — Introduction

Philippine ethnologists generally agree to the hypothesis that the Negritos, a race of little blacks, remnants of which now inhabit mountain regions of many of the larger islands, were the original inhabitants of the Philippine Archipelago. They advance the hypothesis that these little blacks were driven by Malay immigrants from their former homes in the fertile plains to the mountains; and that these first Malay invaders were driven from the lowlands into the mountain regions by succeeding immigrations of Malays superior to them in organization and weapons.1 By and by, no one cares to hazard how long afterward, the Spaniards came. They christianized the lowlanders, except the Mohammedan populations of Mindanao and Sulu. But at the time of the American occupation the mountaineer descendants of the first immigration, for the most part, had not received the spiritual ministrations of Her Most Catholic Majesty’s missionaries, on account of the inaccessible character of their habitat. True, garrisons and missions had been established in a few localities among them; but owing to the scattered character of the population, the independent spirit of the people, their natural conservatism, and the lack of tact and consideration on the part of the Spanish officials and missionaries, practically no progress had been made in christianizing or civilizing them.