HOUSES OF THE ABORIGINES. 97 



teeth were stained black for the sake of ornament and they bleached 

 their hair "with divers washes." 



HOUSES. According to the testimony of early writers their houses 

 were high and neatly made and better constructed than those of any 

 aboriginal race hitherto discovered in the Indies. They were rectan- 

 gular in shape, with walls and roofs of palm leaves curiously woven. 

 They were made of coconut wood and palo maria (Calophyllum in- 

 ophyllum) and were raised from the ground on wooden posts or pillars 

 of stone. In one of the narratives of the Legazpi expedition it is said 

 that some of the houses supported on stone pillars served as sleeping 

 apartments; others built on the ground were used for cooking and 

 other work. Besides these there were large buildings that served as 

 storehouses for all in common, wherein the large boats and covered 

 canoes were kept. "These were very spacious, broad, and high, and 

 worth seeing."" As described by the missionaries some of the houses 

 had four rooms or compartments with doors or curtains of mats, one 

 serving as a sleeping room, another as a storeroom for fruits, a third 

 for cooking, and a fourth as a workshop and boathouse.^ Gaspar and 

 Grijalva described one boathouse near the watering place as being 

 supported on strong stone pillars and sheltering four of the largest 

 canoes of the natives. Many of these stone or masonry pillars are 

 still standing arranged in double rows. They are called " latde" or 

 " casas de los antiguos" by the natives, who regard them with super- 

 stitious dread. Much has been made of the pillars on the island of 

 Tinian, shaped like the rest in the form of a truncated pyramid and 

 capped by hemispherical stones, but in all probability they are nothing 

 more than the remains of large houses which served the same purposes 

 as the "arsenals," described in the narratives of the Legazpi expedi- 

 tion. These large houses may be compared with the kiala of Florida 

 and Isabel islands in the Solomon group, one of which is described as 

 100 feet long by 50 feet wide and 50 feet high. In these great houses 

 "the large canoes are kept, men congregate and young men sleep, 

 strangers are entertained," and in some islands the skulls of the dead, 

 called "mangiti" (in all probability corresponding to the word 

 "aniti" of the Chamorros) were suspended/' The dwelling houses of 

 Guam also resembled those of Isabel and Florida islands, which differ 

 from typical Melanesian houses in being raised on piles, and in their 

 neater construction. They are excellent dwellings, square in shape, 

 with the side walls and the floor formed of split bamboos flattened and 

 interlaced and the roof thatched with coconut leaves. 



The houses were grouped in villages located either on the beach in 



Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands, vol. 2, p. 113, 1903. 

 & Garcia, Vida y Martyrio de Ranvitores, p. 197, 1685. 

 cCodrington, The Melanesians, p. 299, 1891. 

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