1610 1453 89 100
1583 1450 87 98
1582 1441 86 95
1580 1422 85.9 95
1570 1412 85 94
1544 84 93
1532 83.7 90
1503 83.3 89
1486 83 89
1467 81 88
1439 81 87.8
81 87
1240 (a boy) 80 87
80 83
79 82
79 82
76 76
The height of these men presents a wider variation, as would be
expected in the larger number (1601 to 1437), but the mean and the
general results are the same. The head index is brachycephalic except
in the case of three, and all are platyrhinian, or nearly so, except
one. Thus in these Ilongot we have a short race, even shorter than the
Igorot, brachycephalic and platyrhinian. Their hair is wavy, except
when it is curly. It is usually worn long. The face is occasionally
hairy; a few individuals have been seen with sparse but quite long,
curly beards. Their eyes are larger, finer, and more open than is usual
in the Igorot and the Malay. One peculiarity of the face is noticeable:
it narrows rapidly from the cheek bones to the chin, giving the face a
pentagonal shape. The color may be a little lighter than in the Igorot,
who is more exposed to sunlight than the Ilongot of the forest, and
it is much lighter than in the Negrito, but by no means light enough
to justify any likeness to either white or Mongol races.
In these people we have, I am quite sure, a mixture of primitive
Malayan and Negrito, with more Negrito than in the case of the
Igorot. Stature, curly hair, short head, and broad, flat nose--these
are all negritic characters, as is also the hairiness of the face
and body. In fact there can be no doubt of the presence of Negrito
blood in the Ilongot, for the process of assimilation can be seen
going on. The Negrito of a comparatively pure type is a neighbor
of the Ilongot on both the south and the north. Usually they are
at enmity, but this does not, and certainly has not in the past,
prevented commingling. The culture of the Ilongot is intermediate,
or a composite of Malayan and Negrito elements. He uses the bow and
arrow of the Negrito and the spear of the Malayan as well. There are
few things in the ethnography of the Ilongot that seem unusual and
for which the culture of neither Malay nor Negrito does not provide
an explanation. One curious peculiarity, however, is an aptitude and
taste for decorative carving, applied to the door posts, lintels,
and other parts of his house, to the planting sticks of the woman,
to the rattan frame of his deer-hide rain-hat, etc. But except for
this there seems little that is not an inheritance from the two above
strains or a development due to isolation in these mountainous forests
that have long been his home.
In concluding this account of the Ilongot I cannot forbear calling
attention to what appears to me a striking resemblance between
them and the "Sakay" of the Malay peninsula as these latter are
photographed and described in Skeat and Blagden's Pagan Races of the
Malay Peninsula. There, as in the Philippines, we have a wavy-haired
people (the Sakay) located in between, and obviously mingling with,
the Negrito ("Semang") on the north and the primitive ("Jakun")
Malayan on the south. The type is clearly intermediate between these
two races, and every Sakay community seems to contain individuals
that exhibit both pronounced Negrito and Malayan characters. There
seem to be no culture elements in the ethnography of the Sakay that
are not found in the life of Semang, Jakun, or allied peoples. And
yet, in the face of what would seem to be the obvious and natural
supposition that the Sakay is a half-breed of the Semang and Jakun,
our authors, following Professor Rudolf Martin (Die Inlandstämme der
malayischen Halbinsel), discover in the Sakay a distinct race of wholly
different origin from the Semang and Jakun--but allied to the Veddahs
of Ceylon! This seems to me to be creating a far-fetched theory where
none is necessary. While I have not had an opportunity of studying
the Sakay at first hand, I am tolerably familiar with Negrito and
primitive Malayan, and the results of their intermarriage, and every
fresh examination of the texts and illustrations above referred to
increases my belief that the Sakay, like so many of the types of the
Philippines, is an exhibit to the widely diffused Negrito element in
Malayan peoples.
University of California, Berkeley.