Note 18 — Chapter XI

The owners of these islands are those who people the mountains. They, enamored with their peaceful mode of living, and fed with the happy returns of their cultivation, built their nests there and lost their liking for the coast and love for its occupations. Thereupon, as they were reared in so deep retirement, which is especially great and unconquerable in these natives, because of their slothfulness and because they are so dead to curiosity, by which they have grown old in their gloomy retreats, they gradually became mountaineers; and, their intercourse with other peoples ceasing, they became less alert and more barbarous, allowing the foreign traders to seize the coasts, harbor-bars, and rivers which they found deserted. Since by their trade, and in every way, the latter were making themselves masters of all things, the aborigines, being less valiant, yielded to the foreigners, as these were more civilized. Consequently, on the south coast the rulers of those peoples are the Lutaos, who bear themselves among these nations as princes. In some parts those peoples are called Subanos, as in the jurisdiction of Iligan and Samboangan; in Mindanao, they are called Manobos18 and Mananapes19 which is equivalent to “brutes.” In Jolo, they are Guinuanos [i.e., Guimbanos], and in Basilan they are called Sameacas,20 and they are subject in all places equally to the fortune of the Lutaos. No other origin to these peoples can be conjectured than one general to these islands—whose language, since its structure is founded on Malayan roots, shows by its origin the origin of its natives. To this testimony corresponds the arrangement of these islands, which are strung out in a series from Burney and Macaçar, so that there is scarcely any considerable break, and there is no such correspondence in any other part.