Note 21 — Letters from Father Mateo Gisbert to the Reverend Fathers and Brothers of Veruela

Dr. Barrows (Census of Philippines, i, pp. 462, 463), says in speaking of the tribes of Mindanao that the term Indonesian has been applied to some of them to explain their higher stature and finer physique, which means that they are connected with people of mixed Caucasian blood, who were in primitive times distributed across the Malay Archipelago, and who find their purest living type in the Polynesians. He does not accept the evidence, as the perceptible gain in height among such peoples is not apparently accompanied by the other distinguishing marks of the Caucasian or Polynesian, and consequently regards them as Malayan. See also Le Roy’s Philippine Life (New York, 1905), p. 20.