prehistoric civilization in the philippine
PRE-HISTORIC CIVILISATION IN THE PHILIPPINES.
By Elsdon Best.
THE TAGALO-BISAYA TRIBES.—I.
WHEN a powerful and highly civilised nation comes in contact with a barbaric and isolated people, who have nevertheless advanced many steps on the road of progress, it would naturally be thought that the superior and conquering race would endeavour to collect and place on record information concerning such people: their manners, customs, language, religion, and traditions. Unfortunately, in the case of the Spanish conquests of the sixteenth century, that nation appears never to have considered it a duty to hand down to posterity any detailed description of the singularly interesting races they had vanquished. As it was with the Guanches of the Canaries, the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Quichuas of Peru, so was it with the Chamorro of the Ladrones, and the Tagalo-Bisaya tribes of the Philippines. The same Vandal spirit that prompted the conquistadores to destroy the Maya and Aztec literature also moved them to demolish the written records of the Philippine natives, and but few attempts were made to preserve relics or information concerning them. The Spanish priests, as the lettered men of those times, were the persons we should look to for such a work, but in their religious ardour they thought only of the subjugation and conversion of the natives, and so, with the sword in one hand, and crucifix in the other, they marched through that fair land, ignoring and destroying the evidences of a strange semi-civilisation which should have been to them a study of the deepest interest. Fortunately, however, there were a few in that period who were interested in such matters, and who wrote accounts of the state of culture of the islanders of that early date. Some of these MSS. have been preserved in the archives of Manila, and have lately attracted the attention of Spanish scholars.
Such is the article from which the greater part of these notes are taken. In the volume for 1891 of
By Elsdon Best.
THE TAGALO-BISAYA TRIBES.—I.
WHEN a powerful and highly civilised nation comes in contact with a barbaric and isolated people, who have nevertheless advanced many steps on the road of progress, it would naturally be thought that the superior and conquering race would endeavour to collect and place on record information concerning such people: their manners, customs, language, religion, and traditions. Unfortunately, in the case of the Spanish conquests of the sixteenth century, that nation appears never to have considered it a duty to hand down to posterity any detailed description of the singularly interesting races they had vanquished. As it was with the Guanches of the Canaries, the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Quichuas of Peru, so was it with the Chamorro of the Ladrones, and the Tagalo-Bisaya tribes of the Philippines. The same Vandal spirit that prompted the conquistadores to destroy the Maya and Aztec literature also moved them to demolish the written records of the Philippine natives, and but few attempts were made to preserve relics or information concerning them. The Spanish priests, as the lettered men of those times, were the persons we should look to for such a work, but in their religious ardour they thought only of the subjugation and conversion of the natives, and so, with the sword in one hand, and crucifix in the other, they marched through that fair land, ignoring and destroying the evidences of a strange semi-civilisation which should have been to them a study of the deepest interest. Fortunately, however, there were a few in that period who were interested in such matters, and who wrote accounts of the state of culture of the islanders of that early date. Some of these MSS. have been preserved in the archives of Manila, and have lately attracted the attention of Spanish scholars.
Such is the article from which the greater part of these notes are taken. In the volume for 1891 of