United States or Bahamas ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Many people have been brought together and induced to settle in villages, wherein they are instructed. At the time when I am writing this, we are in a village on the coast, whither there came down to us yesterday two other villages of the Tinguianes, or mountaineers, asking us, of their own accord, to allow them to live here.
It seems, however, that they have transmitted to, or received from, the Tinguianes, the practice of adoring, during one day, a rock or a trunk of any tree on which they find any resemblance whatever of an animal; they then abandon it, and think no more of an idol until they meet with a strange form, which, for a short time, constitutes the object of their frivolous worship.
Among the wild tribes of the light-colored population tattooing is not less diffused, but the patterns are not alike in the different tribes. Isabelo de los Reyes reports that the Tinguianes, who inhabit the mountain forests of the northern cordilleras of Luzon, produce figures of stars, snakes, birds, etc., on children 7 to 9 years old. Hans Meyer describes the pattern of the Igorots.
A similar reluctance to mention the names of the dead is reported of peoples so widely separated from each other as the Samoyeds of Siberia and the Todas of Southern India; the Mongols of Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara; the Ainos of Japan and the Akamba and Nandi of Eastern Africa; the Tinguianes of the Philippines and the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands, of Borneo, of Madagascar, and of Tasmania.
In the mountains of Ilocos Sur, the missionaries met with somewhat better success, and in 1704 Olarte states that in the two preceding years one hundred and fifty-six "infidel Tinguianes" had been converted and baptized. Again, in 1760, four hundred and fifty-four converts are reported to have been formed into the villages of Santiago, Magsingal, and Batak.
The natives generally gather in districts or settlements where they sow their rice, and possess their palm trees, nipa and banana groves, and other trees, and implements for their fishing and sailing. A small number inhabit the interior, and are called tinguianes; they also seek sites on rivers and creeks, on which they settle for the same reasons. Their rooms are small and the roofs low.
To the second half he assigns the Tinguianes, Catalanganes, and Irayas, who are not head-hunters, but Semper says they appear to have a mixture of Chinese and Japanese blood.
Besides the above distinctions, various infidel and independent nations or tribes exist, more or less savage and ferocious, who have their dwellings in the woods and glens, and are distinguished by the respective names of Aetas, Ingolots, Negrillos, Igorots, Tinguianes, etc., nor is there scarcely a province in Luzon, that does not give shelter to some of those isolated tribes, who inhabit and possess many of the mountainous ranges, which ramificate and divide the wide and extended plains of that beautiful island.
Ilokos Sur has nearly 8,000, half of whom are known to history as "Tinguianes" and half as "Igorrotes." The Province of Ilokos Norte has nearly 9,000, which number is divided quite evenly between "Igorrotes," "Tinguianes," and "Infieles." Abra Province has in round numbers 13,500 pagan Malayans, most of whom are historically known as "Alzados" and "Tinguianes."
To these mountaineers was applied the name Tinguianes a term at first used to designate the mountain dwellers throughout the Islands, but later usually restricted to his tribe. The Tinguian themselves do not use or know the appellation, but call themselves Itneg, a name which should be used for them but for the fact that they are already established in literature under the former term.
Word Of The Day