Note 16 — Decade Fourth

Cimarrón is an American word meaning “wild” or “unruly,” and is also applied to a runaway slave. O.T. Mason, in his translation of Blumentritt’s Native Tribes of the Philippines [225n] (Washington, 1901), says (p. 536) that “this characterization is given to heathen tribes of most varied affiliation, living without attachment and in poverty, chiefly posterity of the Remontados.” Buzeta and Bravo (Diccionario) say that these people are “collections or tribes of infidels known by this name in the island of Luzón and others of the archipelago. There is at present a tribe living in the dense forests of the mountain Isaroc in the province of Camarines Sur. There are also some collections of these and some hostiles in the mountains of the island and province of Samar. They are descendants of the Negrito race, who seem to become differentiated from their own species because of their extraordinarily wild and mountainous life.” Hence the name seems to have been given these people in Mindanao simply to distinguish them as especially barbarous and difficult to establish relations among. They were probably one of the numerous tribes of Negritos such as inhabit Mindanao today.