Geographical Features

This little-known and comparatively unimportant province stretches along the western coast of Luzon for more than 120 miles. Its average width does not exceed 25 miles and is so out of proportion to its length that it merits the title which it bears of the “shoestring province.”1

The Zambales range of mountains, of which the southern half is known as the Cordillera de Cabusilan and which is second in importance to the Caraballos system of northern Luzon, forms the entire eastern boundary of Zambales and separates it from the Provinces of Pangasinan, Tarlac, and Pampanga. A number of peaks rise along this chain, of which Mount Pinatubo, 6,040 feet in height, is the highest. All of the rivers of Zambales rise on the western slope of these mountains and carry turbulent floods through the narrow plains. Still unbridged, they are an important factor in preventing communication and traffic between towns, and hence in retarding the development of the province. Another important factor in this connection is the lack of safe anchorages. The Zambales coast is a stormy one, and vessels frequently come to grief on its reefs. At only one point, Subig Bay, can larger vessels find anchorage safe from the typhoons which sweep the coast. The soil of the well-watered plain is fertile and seems adapted to the cultivation of nearly all the products of the Archipelago. The forests are especially valuable, and besides fine timbers for constructional purposes they supply large quantities of pitch, resin, bejuco, and beeswax. There are no industries worth mentioning, there being only primitive agriculture and stock raising.

The following opinions of Zambales set forth by a Spanish writer in 1880 still hold good:2

Historical Sketch

According to Buzeta, another Spanish historian, it was Juan de Salcedo who discovered Zambales.3

It seems that nothing further was done toward settling or evangelizing the region for twelve years, although the chronicler goes on to say that three years after the discovery of Bolinao a sergeant of Salcedo’s traversed the Bolinao region, receiving everywhere the homage of the natives, and a Franciscan missionary, Sebastian Baeza, preached the gospel there. But in 1584 the Augustinians established themselves at the extreme ends of the mountain range, Bolinao and Mariveles. One of them, the friar Esteban Martin, was the first to learn the Zambal dialect. The Augustinians were succeeded by the Recollets, who, during the period from 1607 to 1680, founded missions at Agno, Balincaguin, Bolinao, Cabangan, Iba, Masinloc, and Santa Cruz. Then in 1680, more than a hundred years after Salcedo landed at Bolinao, the Dominicans undertook the active evangelization of the district.

Of course it is impossible to tell how much of this is the product of the writer’s imagination, or at least of the imagination of those earlier chroniclers from whom he got his information, but it can very well be believed that the natives had a religion of their own and that the work of the missionaries was exceedingly difficult. It was necessary to get them into villages, to show them how to prepare and till the soil and harvest the crops. And the writer concludes that “little by little the apathetic and indolent natives began to recognize the advantages of social life constituted under the shield of authority and law, and the deplorable effects of savage life, offering no guarantee of individual or collective security.”

A fortress had been built at Paynaven, in what is now the Province of Pangasinan, from which the work of the missionaries spread southward, so that the northern towns were all organized before those in the south. It is not likely that this had anything to do with causing the Negritos to leave the northern part of the province, if indeed they ever occupied it, but it is true that to-day they inhabit only the mountainous region south of a line drawn through the middle of the province from east to west.

The friar Martinez ZÚÑiga, speaking of the fortress at Paynaven, said that in that day, the beginning of the last century, there was little need of it as a protection against the “infidel Indians” and blacks who were very few in number, and against whom a stockade of bamboo was sufficient.

Everything in the history of the Zambal people and their present comparative unimportance goes to show that they were the most indolent and backward of the Malayan peoples. While they have never given the governing powers much trouble, yet they have not kept pace with the agricultural and commercial progress of the other people, and their territory has been so steadily encroached on from all sides by their more aggressive neighbors that their separate identity is seriously threatened. The rich valleys of Zambales have long attracted Ilokano immigrants, who have founded several important towns. The Zambal themselves, owing to lack of communication between their towns, have developed three separate dialects, none of which has ever been deemed worthy of study and publication, as have the other native dialects of the Philippines. A glance at the list of towns of Zambales with the prevailing dialect spoken in each, and in case of nearly equal division also the second most important dialect, will show to what extent Zambal as a distinct dialect is gradually disappearing:

Of twenty-five towns Zambal is the prevailing dialect of less than half. As will be seen, the Ilokano have been the most aggressive immigrants. As a prominent Ilokano in the town of San Marcelino expressed it, when they first came they worked for the Zambals, who held all the good land. But the Zambal landowners, perhaps wanting money for a cockfight, would sell a small piece of land to some Ilokano who had saved a little money, and when he ran out of money he would sell a little more land, until finally the Ilokano owned it all.

This somewhat lengthy and seemingly irrelevant sketch of the early history of Zambales and of the character of its inhabitants to-day is given to show the former state of savagery and the apathetic nature of the people who, in the days before the arrival of the Europeans, were in such close contact with the Negritos as to impose on them their language, and they have done it so thoroughly that no trace of an original Negrito dialect remains. Relations such as to-day exist between the people of the plains and those of the mountains would not change a dialect in a thousand years. Another evidence of a former close contact may be found in the fact that the Negritos of southern Zambales who have never personally come in contact with the Zambal but only with the Tagalog also speak Zambal with some slight variations, showing, too, that the movement of the Negritos has been southward away from the Zambal territory.

Close study and special investigation into the linguistics of this region, carried also into Bataan and across the mountain into Pampanga and Tarlac, may throw more light on this very interesting and important subject and may reveal traces of an original Negrito dialect. Prominent natives of Zambales, whom I have questioned, and who are familiar with the subject, affirm that the Negritos know only the dialect of the Zambal. Indeed those are not lacking who believe in a blood relationship between the Negritos and the Zambal, but this belief can not be taken seriously.6

Very little mention is made by the early writers of the Negritos. In fact they knew nothing of them except that they were small blacks who roamed in the mountains, living on roots and game which they killed with the bow and arrow. They were reported to be fierce little savages from whom no danger could come, since they did not leave their mountain fastnesses, but whose territory none dared enter.

Habitat of the Negritos

As has been stated, the present range of the Negritos of this territory embraces the mountainous portion of the lower half of Zambales and the contiguous Provinces of Tarlac and Pampanga, extending southward even to the very extremity of the peninsula of Bataan.

This region, although exceedingly broken and rough, has not the high-ridged, deep-canyoned aspect of the Cordillera Central of northern Luzon. It consists for the most part of rolling tablelands, broken by low, forest-covered ridges and dotted here and there by a few gigantic peaks. The largest and highest of these, Mount Pinatubo, situated due east from the town of Cabangan, holds on its broad slopes the largest part of the Negritos of Zambales. Many tiny streams have their sources in this mountain and rush down the slopes, growing in volume and furnishing water supply to the Negrito villages situated along their banks. Some of the larger of these streams have made deep cuts on the lower reaches of the mountain slopes, but they are generally too small to have great powers of erosion. The unwooded portions of the table-lands are covered with cogon and similar wild grasses.

Here is enough fertile land to support thousands of people. The Negritos occupy practically none of it. Their villages and mountain farms are very scattered. The villages are built for the most part on the table-land above some stream, and the little clearings are found on the slope of the ridge at the base of which the stream runs. No use whatever is made of the grass-covered table-land, save that it offers a high and dry site for a rancheria, free from fevers.

Practically all of the Negrito rancherias are within the jurisdiction of the two towns of Botolan and San Marcelino. Following the winding course of the Bucao River, 15 miles southeast from Botolan, one comes to the barrio of San Fernando de Riviera, as it is on the maps, or Pombato, as the natives call it. This is a small Filipino village, the farthest out, a half-way place between the people of the plains and those of the uplands. Here a ravine is crossed, a hill climbed, and the traveler stands on a plateau not more than half a mile wide but winding for miles toward the big peak Pinatubo and almost imperceptibly increasing in elevation. Low, barren ridges flank it on either side, at the base of each of which flows a good-sized stream. Seven miles of beaten winding path through the cogon grass bring the traveler to the first Negrito rancheria, Tagiltil, one year old, lying sun baked on a southern slope of the plateau. Here the plateau widens out, is crossed and cut up by streams and hills, and the forests gradually become thicker. In the wide reach of territory of which this narrow plateau is the western apex, including Mount Pinatubo and reaching to the Tarlac and Pampanga boundaries, there are situated no less than thirty rancherias of Negritos, having an average population of 40 persons or a total of more than 1,200. Besides these there are probably many scattered families, especially in the higher and less easily accessible forests of Mount Pinatubo, who live in no fixed spot but lead a wandering existence. And so uncertain are the habits of the more settled Negritos that one of the thirty rancherias known to-day may to-morrow be nothing more than a name, and some miles away a new rancheria may spring up. The tendency to remain in one place seems, however, to be growing.

The mountainous portions of the jurisdictions of the two towns of Botolan and San Marcelino, themselves many miles apart with three or more towns between, are contiguous, the one extending southeast, the other northeast, until they meet. The San Marcelino region contains about the same number of Negritos, grouped in many small communities around five large centers—Santa FÉ, Aglao, Cabayan, PaÑibutan, and Timao—each of which numbers some 300 Negritos. They are of the same type and culture plane as those nearer PiÑatubo, and their habitat is practically the same, a continuation of the more or less rugged Cordillera. They are in constant communication with the Negritos north of them and with those across the Pampanga line east of them. The Negritos of Aglao are also in communication with those of Subig, where there is a single rancheria numbering 45 souls. Still farther south in the jurisdiction of Olongapo are two rancherias, numbering about 100 people, who partake more of the characteristics of the Negritos of Bataan just across the provincial line than they do of those of the north.

Here mention may be made also of the location of rancherias and numbers of Negritos in the provinces adjoining Zambales, as attention is frequently called to them later, especially those of Bataan, for the sake of comparison. Negritos are reported from all of the towns of Bataan, and there are estimated to be 1,500 of them, or about half as many as in Zambales. They are more numerous on the side toward Manila Bay, in the mountains back of Balanga, Orion, and Pilar. Moron and Bagac on the opposite coast each report more than a hundred. There is a colony of about thirty near Mariveles. Owing to repeated visits of tourists to their village and to the fact that they were sent to the Hanoi Exposition in 1903, this group has lost many of the customs peculiar to Negritos in a wild state and has donned the ordinary Filipino attire.

Cabcabe, also in the jurisdiction of Mariveles, has more than a hundred Negritos, and from here to Dinalupijan, the northernmost town of the province, there are from 50 to 200 scattered in small groups around each town and within easy distance. Sometimes, as at Balanga, they are employed on the sugar plantations and make fairly good laborers.

The Negritos of Bataan as a whole seem less mixed with the Malayan than any other group, and fewer mixed bloods are seen among them. Their average stature is also somewhat lower. They speak corrupt Tagalog, though careful study may reveal traces of an original tongue. (See Appendix B for a vocabulary.)

In the section of Pampanga lying near Zambales Province more than a thousand Negritos have been reported from the towns of Florida Blanca, Porac, Angeles, and Mabalacat. There are estimated to be about 1,200 in Tarlac, in the jurisdiction of the towns of O’Donnell, Moriones, Capas, Bamban, and Camiling. There are two or three good trails leading from this province into Zambales by which the Negritos of the two provinces communicate with each other. It is proposed to convert the one from O’Donnell to Botolan into a wagon road, which will have the effect of opening up a little-known territory. Across the line into Pangasinan near the town of Mangataren there is a colony of mixed Negritos somewhat more advanced in civilization than is usually the case with these forest dwellers. According to Dr. D. P. Barrows, who visited their rancherias in December, 1901, it seems to have been the intention of the Spanish authorities to form a reservation at that place which should be a center from which to reach the wilder bands in the hills and to induce them to adopt a more settled life. A Filipino was sent to the rancheria as a “maestro” and remained among the people six years. But the scheme fell through there as elsewhere in the failure of the authorities to provide homes and occupations for the Negritos. The Ilokano came in and occupied all the available territory, and the Negritos now hang around the Ilokano homes, doing a little work and picking up the little food thrown to them. Dr. Barrows states that the group contains no pure types characterized by wide, flat noses and kinky hair. In addition to the bow and arrows they carry a knife called “kampilan” having a wide-curving blade. They use this weapon in a dance called “baluk,” brandishing it, snapping their fingers, and whirling about with knees close to the ground. This is farther north than Negritos are found in Zambales but is in territory contiguous to that of the Tarlac Negritos. The entire region contains about 6,000 souls. The groups are so scattered, however, that the territory may be said to be practically unoccupied.