THE USEFULNESS OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN TRIBES 

 FOR FOREST WORK. 



By Domingo L. Diaz, Head Ranger, Philippine Bureau of 



Forestry. 



In our mountains and wild lands are found not only heavy- 

 forests and luxuriant vegetation, but their intricate labyrinths and 

 steep hillsides provide a shelter for a strange race of beings, 

 utterly lacking in all that we prize, but very happy and contented 

 in the face of all the vicissitudes and accidents of an unfortunate 

 existence. These are the Negritos, members of one of the so- 

 called non-Christian tribes of the Philippine Islands and commonly 

 known among the Filipinos as "aetas," "itas" or "balugas." 



It is the popular belief that these Negritos were the first in- 

 habitants of the Philippine Archipelago and the theory is sup- 

 ported by modern historians, who argue that as the Negritos have 

 doubtless always lived much as they do at present they were 

 forced to retreat to the more inaccessible portions of the Islands 

 before the advance of the stronger and relatively more civilized 

 inhabitants of the plains who also greatly exceed the Negritos in 

 numbers. The Negritos must have been here before the Malay 

 invasions, for, say the historians, it is not logical to suppose that a 

 weaker race could have invaded the territory already held by a 

 stronger people. 



The pressure of other work and the limited space which the 

 Editor of the Forest Quarterly has so kindly allotted do not permit 

 a detailed discussion of other important ethnological data on these 

 tribes, and I will confine myself to their usefulness and im- 

 portance in forest work in one part of the territory they occupy, 

 the forests of the Province of Bataan. 



According to a census taken by the writer with the assistance of 

 the "Comisarios de Aetas," there are scattered throughout the 

 forests of Bataan Province, situated some thirty miles north-west 

 of Manila, about 1,200 Negritos of both sexes and of all ages. 

 For the most part they live apart in groups or families on the edge 

 of their caingins or forest clearings and remain in a fixed abode 



