152 MILLER. 



happen to need it, cloth, cooking vessels, and bolos are the most 

 common forms of payment. 



The Mangyans near Abra de Hog are less prosperous than 

 those near Bulalakao. The consequence of this condition and, 

 perhaps also, to some extent the reason for it is that they have 

 come to be more dependent on their Christian neighbors by 

 whom they are often employed. Their labor consists in making 

 clearings, planting and harvesting crops, and getting out logs 

 for timber. 



For cutting down trees and hewing out logs I was told that 

 3 Mangyans for two days' work received an American ax and 

 a bolo. If this information was correct, the Mangyans were 

 being paid about 50 centavos per day each. Even if in a few 

 cases they were paid so much, it is extremely doubtful if as a 

 rule they receive more than the equivalent of one-half this 

 amount. 



DIVISIONS AMONG THE MANGYANS. 



I have referred already to the Bangons and the Bukils. The 

 former are said to live in the interior of Mindoro, the latter 

 between the Bangons and the coast Mangyans. It is reported 

 that some of the Bangons live during certain months of the 

 year in holes in the mountain side and that they keep young 

 pythons until they have grown to a suitable size, when they 

 kill and eat them. They are said also to eat lizards and rats. 

 All this information about a people in the interior, who are 

 rarely seen and of whom the coast people are afraid, has to 

 be accepted with many reservations. On the two trips I have 

 made across Mindoro, I have seen no signs of cave dwellings 

 nor of any people who differ in any marked details of dress 

 or mode of life from the coast Mangyans. 



The fact that there is a considerable difference between the 

 dialects of the interior and of the coast people indicates that 

 even if the two are fundamentally one they have had little to do 

 with each other for so long that their dialects present marked 

 divergences. There is a slight difference of speech between 

 places as near together as Mamburao on the west and Abra de 

 Hog on the north coast. The fear which the people of the 

 interior have of strangers shows that they rarely, if ever, leave 

 the hills where they live. 



I think it is more probable than otherwise that all the pagan 

 people of Mindoro belong to one tribe, with customs much alike 

 everywhere, but with dialectic variations from one section to 

 another due to long separation and lack of intercourse. 



