Introduction

The readers of this monograph are familiar with the geographic location of the Philippine Archipelago. However, to have the facts clearly in mind, it will be stated that the group lies entirely within the north torrid zone, extending from 4° 40′ northward to 21° 3′ and from 116° 40′ to 126° 34′ east longitude. It is thus about 1,000 miles from north to south and 550 miles from east to west. The Pacific Ocean washes its eastern shores, the Sea of Celebes its southern, and the China Sea its western and northern shores. It is about 630 kilometers, or 400 miles, from the China coast, and lies due east from French Indo-China. The Batanes group of islands, stretching north of Luzon, has members nearer Formosa than Luzon. On the southwest Borneo is sighted from Philippine territory.

Briefly, it may be said the Archipelago belongs to Asia—geologically, zoölogically, and botanically—rather than to Oceania, and that, apparently, the entire Archipelago has shared a common origin and existence. There is evidence that it was connected with the mainland by solid earth in the early or Middle Tertiary. For a long geologic time the land was low and swampy. At the end of the Eocene a great upheaval occurred; there were foldings and crumplings, igneous rock was thrust into the distorted mass, and the islands were considerably elevated above the sea. During the latter part of the Tertiary period the lands seem to have subsided and to have been separated from the mainland.

About the close of the subsidence eruptions began which are continued to the present by such volcanoes as Taal and Mayon in Luzon and Apo in Mindanao. No further subsidence appears to have occurred after the close of the Tertiary, though the gradual elevation beginning then had many lapses, as is evidenced by the numerous sea beaches often seen one above the other in horizontal tiers. The elevation continues to-day in an almost invisible way. The Islands have been greatly enlarged during the elevation by the constant building of coral around the submerged shores.

It is believed that man had appeared in the great Malay Archipelago before this elevation began. It is thought by some that he was in the Page 18Philippines in the later Tertiary, but there are no data as yet throwing light on this question.

To-day the Archipelago lies like a large net in the natural pathway of people fleeing themselves from the supposed birthplace of the primitive Malayan stock, namely, from Java, Sumatra, and the adjacent Malay Peninsula, or, more likely, the larger mainland. It spreads over a large area, and is well fitted by its numerous islands—some 3,100—and its innumerable bays and coastal pockets to catch up and hold a primitive, seafaring people.

Primitive man is represented in the Philippines to-day not alone by one of the lowest natural types of savage man the historic world has looked upon—the small, dark-brown, bearded, “crisp-woolly”-haired Negritos—but by some thirty distinct primitive Malayan tribes or dialect groups, among which are believed to be some of the lowest of the stock in existence.

The last migrations of brown men into the Archipelago are historic. The Spaniard discovered the inward flow of the large Samal Moro group—after his arrival in the sixteenth century. The movement of this nomadic “Sea Gipsy” Samal has not ceased to-day, but continues to flow in and out among the small southern islands.

“In 1696, two canoes were driven from Ancarso to one of the Philippine Islands, a distance of eight hundred miles. They had run before the wind for seventy days together, sailing from east to west. Thirty-five had embarked, but five had died from the effects of privation and fatigue during the voyage, and one shortly after their arrival. In 1720, two canoes were drifted from a remote distance to one of the Marian Islands. Captain Cook found, in the island of Wateo Atiu, inhabitants of Tahiti, who had been drifted by contrary wind in a canoe, from some islands to the eastward, unknown to the natives. Several parties have, within the last few years, (prior to 1834), reached the Tahitian shores from islands to the eastward, of which the Society Islands had never before heard. In 1820, a canoe arrived at Maurua, about thirty miles west of Borabora, which had come from Rurutu, one of the Austral Islands. This vessel had been at sea between a fortnight and three weeks; and, considering its route, must have sailed seven or eight hundred miles. A more recent instance occurred in 1824: a boat belonging to Mr. Williams of Raiatea left that island with a westerly wind for Tahiti. The wind changed after the boat was out of sight of land. They were driven to the island of Atiu, a distance of nearly eight hundred miles in a south-westerly direction, where they were discovered several months afterwards. Another boat, belonging to Mr. Barff of Huahine, was passing between that island and Tahiti about the same time, and has never since been heard of; and subsequent instances of equally distant and perilous voyages in canoes or open boats might be cited.”—(Ellis) Polynesian Researches, vol. I, p. 125.

“In the year 1799, when Finow, a Friendly Island chief, acquired the supreme power in that most interesting group of islands, after a bloody and calamitous civil war, in which his enemies were completely overpowered, the barbarian forced a number of the vanquished to embark in their canoes and put to sea; and during the revolution that issued in the subversion of paganism in Otaheite, the rebel chiefs threatened to treat the English missionaries and their families in a similar way. In short, the atrocious practice is, agreeably to the Scotch law phrase, “use and wont,” in the South Sea Islands.”—John Dunmore Lang, View of the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation, London, 1834, pp. 62, 63.

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