BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 257 



of the natives themselves, that an attitude of hostility between 

 many of the pagan peoples has been very common, and that along- 

 with this hostility has flourished the practice of slave-taking and 

 the other accompaniments of intertribal warfare. Nevertheless, 

 there is always much communication even between hostile tribes, 

 with innumerable opportunities for the transmission of folklore 

 and myth, particularly through the wide distribution of slaves. 

 Hostile or friendly, these mountain tribes of Mindanao must have 

 borrowed much from one another. Yet, while the opportunities for 

 the spreading of myth, either by direct grafting or through gradual 

 dissemination, cannot be emphasized too strongly, there need not be 

 excluded the hypothesis of a premigration development of the basal 

 structure of that ceremonial which prevails throughout the mountains 

 of Mindanao to-day ; and the probability for such a common basis 

 is the stronger in view of the similarity we find in groups separated 

 by natural barriers difficult to cross. The question can be consid- 

 ered only in the light of ceremonial material from the other is- 

 lands of the Philippines. 



Turning from the wild tribes of the south to the now Christian 

 races of the Visayas and of Luzon, we are at once confronted by 

 the problem as to whether the pagan peoples of Mindanao form, 

 in any sense, a cultural unit composed of similar ceremonial groups 

 that show essential differences to the Filipino of three centuries ago. 

 What material do we find among Tagal and Visayan tribes to favor 

 a hypothesis for such a religious isolation? So far from discovering 

 ceremonial evidence that would corroborate this view, a comparison 

 of the rites and beliefs of the Bagobo, say, as typical pagans of 

 the south, with the rites and beliefs of the early Filipino shows a 

 close parallel at almost every point. 



Here in the north and in the west there is much more available 

 material than in the south, for the Spaniard came into immediate 

 contact with the Tagal, the Pintados, the Bikol, the Ilokano and 

 the other peoples that now compose the Christian population of the 

 Islands; and, from the Relation of Pigafetta, 4l3 who was the chron- 

 icler of the Magellan voyage, in 1519 — 1522, down to the sketch by 

 Jose Nunez 414 of vestigial superstitions among the Filipino in 1905, 



413 "First voyage round the world ... 1519 — 1522. m$. ca. 1525. Blair and Robert- 

 son: op. cit., vol. 33; vol. 34, pp. 1— ISO. 1906. 

 " 1 " Op. cit., vol. 43, pp. 310—319. 1906. 



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