Note 18 — Chapter XL
Reading edition
These “Hay-tan” are the Aetas, Itas, or Negritos of modern authors. The antiquity of this ethnographical name surprises us. The description of the Negritos seems to have been written yesterday. The Chinese author, in speaking of the nests of the Negritos, seems to have confused them with the houses that are built today in the forking of the branches of trees by some heathen tribes of Mindanao.—B.
Mr. James A. LeRoy, in a letter dated March 14, 1905, says that it is at least doubtful that the Negritos were ever tree-dwellers in the true sense of the word, i.e., building solid, defensible structures like those of the typical tree-dwellers. The Negritos do indeed spend a portion of their time in the treetops and often hunt their game in that way. It is probable that the tree-dwellers of the Philippines are Malays, although some of them may have a strain of Negrito blood. ↑