
38 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
renders it justifiable to consider Negrito culture as it 
survives today as in no sense representative of a very 
old and primitive culture, but as being essentially para- 
sitic. 
The relation of the black and brown men in the Philip- 
pines is well illustrated by a passage written by Father 
Domingo Perez in 1680. Speaking of the customs of 
the Sambal, a Malaysian people now Christians, he 
describes how murders were compounded by payments. 
If the slayer had nothing ‘‘with which to redeem the 
murder that he committed, he goes to the mountain 
and deceives some black, or steals him and drags him 
to his rancheria, and delivers him to the relatives 
of the murdered man so that they may slay the said 
black. There is [no] great difficulty in this, for in moun- 
tains there they have many acquaintances among the 
blacks. Those blacks are not without their enemies in 
some rancherias of the blacks themselves, where they 
go to make the seizure. And since the blacks are very 
revengeful in taking vengeance on their enemies, they 
aid the Zambals to capture them. The Zambal gives 
the black, whose service he has used for that purpose, 
some arrows or machetes.” 
The house which is most frequently encountered 
among the Negrito is a rude lean-to of banana leaves 
fastened to a frame that rests on a pole laid on two 
forked sticks some four or five feet high. This is little 
more than a windbreak made to overhang sufficiently 
to shed the rain. Four or five people can get some pro- 
tection from the weather underneath. A little structure 
of this kind is of course put up in a few minutes, and 
agrees well with the necessities of a more or less wander- 
ing life. In other parts, the Negritos build houses of the 
usual Filipino type, namely, structures with a thatched 
roof and a floor raised above the ground on posts, 

