Note 6 — Chapter IV

29. All those whom the first Spaniards found in these islands with the command and lordship over the land are reduced to the first class, the civilized peoples. Another kind, totally opposed to the above, are the Negrillos, who live in the mountains and thick forests which abound in these islands. The latter are a barbarous race who live on the fruits and roots of the forests. They go naked, covering only the privies with some articles called bahaques, made from the bark of trees. They wear no other ornaments than armlets and anklets and bracelets, curiously wrought after their manner from small rattans of various colors, and garlands of branches and flowers on their heads and the fleshy parts of the arm; and at the most some cock or sparrow-hawk feather for a plume. They have no laws or letters, or other government or community than that of kinsfolk, all those of one line of family obeying their leader. In regard to religion and divine worship they have but little or none. The Spaniards call them Negrillos because many of them are as much negroes, as are the Ethiopians themselves, both in their black color and in their kinky hair. There are still a number of those people in the interior in the mountains. In one of the large islands there are so many of them, that it is for that reason called the island of Negros. Those blacks were apparently the first inhabitants of these islands, and they have been deprived of them by the civilized nations who came later by way of Samatra, the Javas, Borney, Macaçar, and other islands lying toward the west. If one should ask whence could come the Negros to these islands so distant from Africa and Ethiopias, where negroes live, I answer that it was from nearer India, or citra Gangem, which was formerly settled by Ethiopic negroes and was called Etiopia.6 From there, it is more probable, went out the settlers of African Etiopia, as we prove in another place. Moreover, even today does India have nations of the negro race. Also they could easily pass from the districts of the mainland of India to the nearest islands, and could come from one to the other even as far as these Filipinas. In Nueva Guinea, which is quite near Terrenate, the natives are negroes like those of Guinea, and on that account the first explorers gave them that name; and they could also pass from those to these districts.