The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 40]

I690-169I] NATIVES OF SOUTHERN ISLANDS

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placing their domestic affairs in safety without risking it for foreign [gains].
There are black negroes in this island, who pay
tribute to no one. They resemble those of the island
of Negros, and of the uplands about Manila, called
Aetas. They live more like brute beasts than like
men, and they flee from the sight of all, doing ill
to whomever they can. They recognize no village,
nor in a land of so many inclemencies do they have
any other shelter than that of the trees. They can
be seen daily in the bay of Pangil. In the village
of Layauan, where I was making the visitation, there
appeared to be many of them. They have no other
adornments than those which they inherited from
nature; and pay so scant respect to decency that
they do not secure even what is requisite. Their
arms are the bow and arrows dipped in poisons,
which they know and with which they prepare the
arrows. It appears probable, from what we know
of other islands, where these people are found gathered in the most inaccessible mountains, that these
are the first ones that occupied all these islands; but,
as they are more ancient and are so shut in, nothing
more is known of their origin than what is evident
from this land, connected by its islands in a chain
with those of Burney, Macasar, and Great Maluco.
This nation maintains only one excellence - at the
cost, [however,] of its brutal condition and
wretched mode of life-namely, its liberty. No
power, not even that of our Spaniards, has been able
to subjugate them. They are so free in their indomitable barbarism that they will not suffer any
subordination among them, not even that which
fraternal feeling for their own people might bring