Man, Past and Present Part 18

We suffer yet a little s.p.a.ce Until we pa.s.s away, The relics of an ancient race That ne'er has had its day.

In physical features they in many respects resemble the Andamanese.

Their hair is short, universally woolly and black, the skin colour dark chocolate brown approximating to glossy black[349], sometimes with a reddish tinge[350]. There is very little evidence for the stature but the 17 males measured by Annandale and Robinson[351] averaged 1.52 m. (5 ft. 0-1/4 in.). The average cephalic index is about 78 to 79, extremes ranging from 74 to 84. The face is round, the forehead rounded, narrow and projecting, or as it were "swollen." The nose is short and flattened, with remarkable breadth and distended nostrils. The nasal index of five adult males was 101.2[352]. The cheekbones are broad and the jaws often protrude slightly; the lips are as a rule thick. Martin remarks that characteristic both of Semang and Sakai[353] is the great thickening of the integumental part of the upper lip, the whole mouth region projecting from the lower edge of the nose. This convexity occurs in 79 per cent., and is well shown in his photographs[354].

Hugh Clifford, who has been intimately a.s.sociated with the "Orang-utan"

(Wild-men) as the Malays often call them, describes those of the Plus River valley as "like African Negroes seen through the reverse end of a field-gla.s.s. They are sooty-black in colour; their hair is short and woolly, clinging to the scalp in little crisp curls; their noses are flat, their lips protrude, and their features are those of the pure negroid type. They are st.u.r.dily built and well set upon their legs, but in stature little better than dwarfs. They live by hunting, and have no permanent dwellings, camping in little family groups wherever, for the moment, game is most plentiful[355]."

Their shelters--huts they cannot be called--are exactly like the frailest of the Andamanese, mere lean-to's of matted palm-leaves crazily propped on rough uprights; clothes they have next to none, and their food is chiefly yams and other jungle roots, fish from the stream, and sun-dried monkey, venison and other game, this term having an elastic meaning. Salt, being rarely obtainable, is a great luxury, as amongst almost all wild tribes. They are a nomadic people living by collecting and hunting; the wilder ones will often not remain longer than three days in one place. Very few have taken to agriculture. They make use of bamboo rafts for drifting down stream but have no canoes. All men are on an equal footing, but each tribe has a head, who exercises authority.

Division of labour is fairly even between men and women. The men hunt, and the women build the shelters and cook the food. They are strictly monogamous and faithful.

All the faculties are sharpened mainly in the quest of food and of means to elude the enemy now closing round their farthest retreats in the upland forests. When hard pressed and escape seems impossible, they will climb trees and stretch rattan ropes from branch to branch where these are too wide apart to be reached at a bound, and along such frail aerial bridges women and all will pa.s.s with their cooking-pots and other effects, with their babies also at the breast, and the little ones clinging to their mother's heels. For like the Andamanese they love their women-folk and children, and in this way rescue them from the Malay raiders and slavers. But unless the British raj soon intervenes their fate is sealed. They may slip from the Malays, but not from their own traitorous kinsmen, who often lead the hunt, and squat all night long on the tree tops, calling one to another and signalling from these look-outs when the leaves rustle and the rattans are heaved across, so that nothing can be done, and another family group is swept away into bondage.

From their physical resemblance, undoubted common descent, and geographical proximity, one might also expect to find some affinity in the speech of the Andaman and Malay Negritoes. But H. Clifford, who made a special study of the dialects on the mainland, discovered no points of contact between them and any other linguistic group[356]. This, however, need cause no surprise, being in no discordance with recognised principles. As in the Andamans, stone implements have been found in the Peninsula, and specimens are now in the Pitt-Rivers collection at Oxford[357]. But the present aborigines do not make or use such tools, and there is good reason for thinking that they were the work of their ancestors, arriving, as in the Andamans, in the remote past. Hence the two groups have been separated for many thousands of years, and their speech has diverged too widely to be now traced back to a common source.

With the Negritoes of the Philippines we enter a region of almost hopeless ethnical complications[358], amid which, however, the dark dwarfish _Aeta_ peoples crop out almost everywhere as the indigenous element. The Aeta live in the mountainous districts of the larger islands, and in some of the smaller islands of the Philippines, and the name is conveniently extended to the various groups of Philippine Negritoes, many of whom show the results of mixture with other peoples.

Their hair is universally woolly, usually of a dirty black colour, often sun-burnt on the top to a reddish brown. The skin is dark chocolate brown rather than black, sometimes with a yellowish tinge. The average stature of 48 men was 1.46 m. (4 ft. 9 in.), but showed considerable range. The typical nose is broad, flat, and bridgeless, with prominent arched nostrils, the average nasal index for males being 102, and for females 105[359]. The lips are thick, but not protruding, sometimes showing a p.r.o.nounced convexity between the upper lip and the nose.

John Foreman[360] noted the curious fact that the Aeta were recognised as the owners of the soil long after the arrival of the Malayan intruders.

"For a long time they were the sole masters of Luzon Island, where they exercised seignorial rights over the Tagalogs and other immigrants, until these arrived in such numbers, that the Negritoes were forced to the highlands.

"The taxes imposed upon the primitive Malay settlers by the Negritoes were levied in kind, and, when payment was refused, they swooped down in a posse, and carried off the head of the defaulter. Since the arrival of the Spaniards terror of the white man has made them take definitely to the mountains, where they appear to be very gradually decreasing[361]."

At first sight it may seem unaccountable that a race of such extremely low intellect should be able to a.s.sert their supremacy in this way over the intruding Malayans, a.s.sumed to be so much their superiors in physical and mental qualities. But it has to be considered that the invasions took place in very remote times, ages before the appearance on the scene of the semi-civilised Muhammadan Malays of history. Whether of Indonesian or of what is called "Malay" stock, the intruders were rude Oceanic peoples, who in the prehistoric period, prior to the spread of civilising Hindu or Moslem influences in Malaysia, had scarcely advanced in general culture much beyond the indigenous Papuan and Negrito populations of that region. Even at present the Gaddanes, Itaves, Igorrotes, and others of Luzon are mere savages, at the head-hunting stage, quite as wild as, and perhaps even more ferocious than any of the Aetas. Indeed we are told that in some districts the Negrito and Igorrote tribes keep a regular Debtor and Creditor account of heads.

Wherever the vendetta still prevails, all alike live in a chronic state of tribal warfare; periodical head-hunting expeditions are organised by the young men, to present the bride's father with as many grim trophies as possible in proof of their prowess, the victims being usually taken by surprise and stricken down with barbarous weapons, such as a long spear with tridented tips, or darts and arrows carrying at the point two rows of teeth made of flint or sea-sh.e.l.ls. To avoid these attacks some, like the Central Sudanese Negroes, live in cabins on high posts or trees 60 to 70 feet from the ground, and defend themselves by showering stones on the marauders.

A physical peculiarity of the full-blood Negritoes, noticed by J.

Montano[362], is the large, clumsy foot, turned slightly inwards, a trait characteristic also of the African Negrilloes; but in the Aeta the effect is exaggerated by the abnormal divergence of the great toe, as amongst the Annamese.

The presence of a pygmy element in the population of New Guinea had long been suspected, but the actual existence of a pygmy people was first discovered by the British Ornithologists' Union Expedition, 1910, at the source of the Mimika river in the Na.s.sau range[363].

The description of these people, the Tapiro, is as follows. Their stature averages 1.449 m. (4 ft. 9 in.) ranging from 1.326 m. (4 ft.

4-1/2 in.) to 1.529 (5 ft. 0-1/4 in.). The skull is very variable giving indices from 66.9 to 85.1. The skin colour is lighter than that of the neighbouring Papuans, some individuals being almost yellow. The nose is straight, and though described as "very wide at the nostrils," the mean of the indices is only 83, the extremes being 65.5 and 94. The eyes are noticeably larger and rounder than those of Papuans, and the upper lip of many of the men is long and curiously convex. A Negrito element has also been recognised in the Mafulu people investigated by R. W.

Williamson in the Mekeo District[364], here mixed with Papuan and Papuo-Melanesian. Their stature ranges from 1.47 m. (4 ft. 10 in.) to 1.63 m. (5 ft. 4 in.). The average cephalic index is 80 ranging from 74.7 to 86.8. The skin colour is dark sooty brown and the hair, though usually brown or black, is often very much lighter, "not what we in Europe should call dark." The average nasal index is 84 with extremes of 71.4 and 100. Also partly of Negrito origin are the P[)e]s[)e]g[)e]m of the upper waters of the Lorentz river[365].

All these Negrito peoples, as has been pointed out, show considerable diversity in physical characters, none of the existing groups, with the exception of the Andamanese, appearing to be h.o.m.ogeneous as regards cephalic or nasal index, while the stature, though always low, shows considerable range. They have certain cultural features in common[366], and these as a rule differentiate them from their neighbours. They seldom practise any deformation of the person, such as tattooing or scarification, though the Tapiro and Mafulu wear a nose-stick. They are invariably collectors and hunters, never, unless modified by contact with other peoples, undertaking any cultivation of the soil. Their huts are simple, the pile dwellings of the Tapiro being evidently copied from their neighbours. All possess the bow and arrow, though only the Semang and Aeta use poison. The Andamanese appear to be one of the very few peoples who possess fire but do not know how to make it afresh. There seems a certain amount of evidence that the Negrito method of making fire was that of splitting a dry stick, keeping the ends open by a piece of wood or stone placed in the cleft, stuffing some tinder into the narrow part of the slit and then drawing a strip of rattan to and fro across the spot until a spark sets fire to the tinder[367]. The social structure is everywhere very simple. The social unit appears to be the family and the power of the headman is very limited. Strict monogamy seems to prevail even where, as among the Aeta, polygyny is not prohibited. The dead are buried, but the bodies of those whom it is wished to honour are placed on platforms or on trees.

Related in certain physical characters to the pygmy Negritoes, although not of pygmy proportions[368], were the aborigines of Tasmania, but their racial affinities are much disputed. Huxley thought they showed some resemblance to the inhabitants of New Caledonia and the Andaman Islands, but Flower was disposed to bring them into closer connection with the Papuans or Melanesians. The leading anthropologists in France do not accept either of these views. Topinard states that there is no close alliance between the New Caledonians and the Tasmanians, while Quatref.a.ges and Hamy remark that "from whatever point of view we look at it, the Tasmanian race presents special characters, so that it is quite impossible to discover any well-defined affinities with any other existing race." Sollas, reviewing these conflicting opinions, concludes that "this probably represents the prevailing opinion of the present day[369]."

The Tasmanians were of medium height, the average for the men being 1.661 m. (5 ft. 5-1/2 in.) with a range from 1.548 m. to 1.732 m. (5 ft.

1 in. to 5 ft. 8 in.); the average height for women being 1.503 m. (4 ft. 11 in.) with a range from 1.295 m. to 1.630 m. (4 ft. 3 in. to 5 ft.

4-1/4 in.). The skin colour was almost black with a brown tinge. The eyes were small and deep set beneath prominent overhanging brow-ridges.

The nose was short and broad, with a deep notch at the root and widely distended nostrils. The skull was dolichocephalic or low mesaticephalic, with an average index of 75, of peculiar outline when viewed from above.

Other peculiarities were the possession of the largest teeth, especially noticeable in comparison with the small jaw, and the smallest known cranial capacity (averaging 1199 c.c. for both s.e.xes, falling in the women to 1093 c.c.).

The aboriginal Tasmanians stood even at a lower level of culture than the Australians. At the occupation the scattered bands, with no hereditary chiefs or social organisation, numbered altogether 2000 souls at most, speaking several distinct dialects, whether of one or more stock languages is uncertain. In the absence of sibilants and some other features they resembled the Australian, but were of ruder or less developed structure, and so imperfect that according to Joseph Milligan, our best authority on the subject, "they observed no settled order or arrangement of words in the construction of their sentences, but conveyed in a supplementary fashion by tone, manner, and gesture those modifications of meaning which we express by mood, tense, number, etc.[370]" Abstract terms were rare, and for every variety of gum-tree or wattle-tree there was a name, but no word for "tree" in general, or for qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round, etc.

Anything hard was "like a stone," round "like the moon," and so on, "usually suiting the action to the word, and confirming by some sign the meaning to be understood."

They made fire by the stick and groove method, but their acquaintance with the fire-drill is uncertain[371]. The stone implements are the subject of much discussion. A great number are so rude and uncouth that, taken alone, we should have little reason to suspect that they had been chipped by man: some, on the other hand, show signs of skilful working.

They were formerly cla.s.sed as "eoliths" and compared to the plateau implements of Kent and Suss.e.x, but the comparison cannot be sustained[372]. Sollas ill.u.s.trates an implement "delusively similar to the head of an axe" and notes its resemblance to a Levallois flake (Acheulean). J. P. Johnson[373] points out the general likeness to pre-Aurignacian forms and there is a remarkable similarity of certain examples to Mousterian types. Weapons were of wood, and consisted of spears pointed and hardened in the fire, and a club or waddy, about two feet long, sometimes k.n.o.bbed at one end; the range is said to have been about 40 yards.

In the native diet were included "snakes, lizards, grubs and worms,"

besides the opossum, wombat, kangaroo, birds and fishes, roots, seeds and fruits, but not human flesh, at least normally. Like the Bushmen, they were gross feeders, consuming enormous quant.i.ties of food when they could get it, and the case is mentioned of a woman who was seen to eat from 50 to 60 eggs of the sooty petrel (larger than a duck's), besides a double allowance of bread, at the station on Flinders Island. They had frail bundles of bark made fast with thongs or rushes, half float, half boat, to serve as canoes, but no permanent abodes or huts, beyond branches of trees lashed together, supported by stakes, and disposed crescent-shape with the convex side to windward. On the uplands and along the sea-sh.o.r.e they took refuge in caves, rock-shelters and natural hollows. Usually the men went naked, the women wore a loose covering of skins, and personal ornamentation was limited to cosmetics of red ochre, plumbago, and powdered charcoal, with occasionally a necklace of sh.e.l.ls strung on a fibrous twine.

Being merely hunters and collectors, with the arrival of English colonists their doom was sealed. "Only in rare instances can a race of hunters contrive to co-exist with an agricultural people. When the hunting ground of a tribe is restricted owing to its partial occupation by the new arrivals, the tribe affected is compelled to infringe on the boundaries of its neighbours: this is to break the most sacred 'law of the Jungle,' and inevitably leads to war: the pressure on one boundary is propagated to the next, the ancient state of equilibrium is profoundly disturbed, and inter-tribal feuds become increasingly frequent. A bitter feeling is naturally aroused against the original offenders, the alien colonists; misunderstandings of all kinds inevitably arise, leading too often to bloodshed, and ending in a general conflict between natives and colonists, in which the former, already weakened by disagreements among themselves, must soon succ.u.mb.

So it was in Tasmania." After the war of 1825 to 1831 the few wretched survivors, numbering about 200, were gathered together into a settlement, and from 1834 onwards every effort was made for their welfare, "but 'the white man's civilisation proved scarcely less fatal than the white man's bullet,' and in 1877, with the death of Truganini, the last survivor, the race became extinct[374]."

FOOTNOTES:

[319] Cf. S. H. Ray, _Reports Camb. Anthrop. Exp. Torres Sts._ Vol. III.

1907, pp. 287, 528. For Melanesian linguistic affinities see also W.

Schmidt, _Die Mon-Khmer Volker_, 1906.

[320] C. G. Seligman limits the use of the term _Papuasian_ to the inhabitants of New Guinea and its islands, and following a suggestion of A. C. Haddon's (_Geograph. Journ._ XVI. 1900, pp. 265, 414), recognises therein three great divisions, the _Papuans_, the _Western Papuo-Melanesians_, and the _Eastern Papuo-Melanesians_, or _Ma.s.sim_.

Cf. C. G. Seligman, "A Cla.s.sification of the Natives of British New Guinea," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ Vol. x.x.xIX. 1902, and _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, 1910.

[321] That is, the indigenous Papuans, who appear to form the great bulk of the New Guinea populations, in contradistinction to the immigrant Melanesians (Motu and others), who are numerous especially along the south-east coast of the mainland and in the neighbouring Louisiade and D'Entrecasteaux Archipelagoes (_Eth._ Ch. XI.).

[322] _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, 1910, pp. 2, 27.

[323] The curly or wavy hair appears more commonly among women than among men.

[324] _Kanaka_ is a Polynesian word meaning "man," and should therefore be restricted to the brown Indonesian group, but it is indiscriminately applied by French writers to all South Sea Islanders, whether black or brown. This misuse of the term has found its way into some English books of travel even in the corrupt French form "canaque."

[325] _L'Archipel de la Nouvelle Caledonie_, Paris, 1895.

[326] Lifu, Mare, Uvea, and Isle of Pines. These Polynesians appear to have all come originally from Tonga, first to Uvea Island (Wallis), and thence in the eighteenth century to Uvea in the Loyalties, cradle of all the New Caledonian Polynesian settlements. Cf. C. M. Woodford, "On some Little-known Polynesian Settlements in the Neighbourhood of the Solomon Islands," _Geog. Journ._ XLVIII. 1916.

[327] This low index is characteristic of most Papuasians, and reaches the extreme of dolichocephaly in the extinct Kai-Colos of Fiji (65), and amongst some coast Papuans of New Guinea measured by Miklukho-Maclay. But this observer found the characters so variable in New Guinea that he was unable to use it as a racial test. In the New Hebrides, Louisiades, and Bismarck group also he found many of the natives to be broad-headed, with indices as high as 80 and 85; and even in the Solomon Islands Guppy records cephalic indices ranging from 69 to 86, but dolichocephaly predominates (_The Solomon Islands_, 1887, pp.

112, 114). Thus this feature is no more constant amongst the Oceanic than it is amongst the African Negroes. (See also M.-Maclay's paper in _Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales_, 1882, p. 171 sq.)

[328] _Eth._ Ch. VIII.

[329] Bernard, p. 262.

[330] A. C. Haddon, _The Wanderings of Peoples_, 1911, p. 33.

[331] A. C. Haddon, _The Races of Man_, 1909, p. 21.

[332] _Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse einer amtlichen Forschungsreise nach dem Bismarck-Archipel im Jahre 1908_; _Untersuchungen uber eine Melanesische Wanderstra.s.se, 1913_; and _Mitt. aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten, Erganzungsheft_, Nr 5, 1912, Nr 7, 1913. See also S. H.

Ray, _Nature_, CLXXII. 1913, and _Man_, XIV. 34, 1914.

[333] _Zeitschr. f. Ethnol._ x.x.xVII. p. 26, 1905. His later writings should also be consulted, _Anthropos_, IV. 1909, pp. 726, 998; _Ethnologie_, 1914, p. 13.

[334] _The History of Melanesian Society_, 1914.

[335] A. C. Haddon, _The Races of Man_, 1909, pp. 24-8, and _Handbook to the Ethnographical Collections British Museum_, 1910, pp. 119-139.