academy of soences] CLASSIFICATION AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 5 



The statements of this slave girl correspond in every particular with the report that I 

 received on the upper Salug, except that the Salug people called these Negritos Tugmaya and 

 said that they live beyond a mountain that is at the headwaters of the Libaganon River. 



Putting together these three reports and assuming the truth of them, the habitat of these 

 Negritos must be the slopes of Mount Panombaian, which is situated between, and is probably 

 the source of, the Rivers Tigwa (an important tributary of the Rio Grande de Kotabato), Sabud 

 (the main western tributary of the Ihawan River), and Libaganon (the great western influent 

 of the Tagum River). 



Montano states that during his visit to the Philippines (1880-81) there were on the island of 

 Samal a class of half-blood Ata' with distinctly Negroid physical characteristics. Treating of 

 Ata' he says that it is a term applied in the south of Mindanao by Bisayas to Negritos "that 

 exist (or existed not long ago) in the interior toward the northwest of the gulf of Davao." 18 

 A careful distinction must be made between the term Atas 19 and the racial designation Ata', for 

 the former are, according to Doctor Montano, a tribe of a superior type, of advanced culture, and 

 of great reputation as warriors. They dwell on the northwestern slope of Mount Apo, hence 

 their name Atas, hatdas, or atdas, being a very common word in Mindanao for " high." They are, 

 therefore, the people that dwell on the heights. I heard of one branch of them called Tugawa- 

 nons, but this is probably only a local name like Agusanons, etc. 



I found reports of the former existence of Negritos in the Karaga River Valley at a place 

 called Sukipin, where the river has worn its way through the Cordillera. An old man there told 

 me that his grandfather used to hunt the Negritos. The Mandayas both of that region and of 

 Tagdaiuig-dufig, a district situated on the Karaga River, five days' march from the mouth, on the 

 western side of the Cordillera, show here and there characteristics, physical and cultural, that 

 they could have inherited only from Negrito ancestors. One interesting trait of this particular 

 group is the use of blowpipes for killing small birds. In the use of the bow and arrow, too, they 

 are quite expert. These people are called taga-bvidi — that is, mountain dwellers — and live in 

 places on the slopes of high mountains difficult of access, their watering-place being frequently 

 a little hole on the side of the mountain. 



THE BANUAONS 



The Banuaons, 20 probably an extension of the Bukidnons of the Bukidnon subprovince. 

 They occupy the upper parts of the Rivers Lamifiga, Kandiisan, Hawilian, and Ohut, and the 

 whole of the River Maasam, together with the mountainous region beyond the headwaters of 

 these rivers, and probably extend over to the Bukidnons. 



THE MANGGUANGANS 



This tribe occupies the towns of Tagusab and Pilar on the upper Agusan, the range between 

 the Salug and the Agusan, the headwaters of the Manat River, and the water-shed between the 

 Manat and the Mawab. The physical type of many of them bespeaks an admixture of Negrito 

 blood, and their timidity and, on occasions, their utter lack of good judgment, brand them as the 

 lowest people, after the M'amanuas, in eastern Mindanao. One authority, a Jesuit missionary, 

 I think, estimated their number at 30,000. An estimate, based on the reports of the people of 

 Compostela, places their number at 10,000 just before my departure from the Agusan Valley in 

 1910. The decrease, if the two estimates are correct, is probably due to intertribal and interclan 

 wars. 



18 Une Mission am Philippines, 346, 1887. 



'» Called also Itas. 



10 Also called Uigaunon or Higagaun, probably "the Hadgaguanes — a people untamed and ferocious" — to whom the Jesuits preached shortly 

 after the year 1596. (Jesuit Mission, Blair and Robertson, 44: 60, 1906.) These may be the people whom Pigaffetta, in his First Voyage Around the 

 World (1519-1522) calls Benaian (Banuaon ?) and whom he describes as "shaggy and living at a cape near a river in the islands of Butuan and 

 Karaga— great fighters and archers — eating only raw human hearts with the juice of oranges or lemons " (Blair and Robertson, 30: 243, 1906) . 



