Relation of Papuas and Negritos

On the Southern Islands the inhabitants are better developed than in the north; on Tanna they are handsomer, bolder, and of finer character than elsewhere; on Api they are lean, ugly, and very tall; on Erromango they are very short. Even in maps of the sixteenth century there appear off the coast of New Guinea Islas de Mala Gente side by side with Islas de Hombres Blancos. Thus it is impossible to speak of a geographical division of these dark races into one group of eastern dolichocephalic Papuas and one of western brachycephalic Negritos, for the conditions under which the latter dwell are even less favourable to the production of unalloyed characteristics.

Fijian lady. (From Godeffroy Album.)

With their widespread distribution we shall expect to find them dividing up into sub-races. Here we are justified in inquiring into the relation which they hold towards the Australians. Certain points of agreement are obvious - dark skins, pronounced hairiness, beards; besides this we have relationship of language. We may admit the variety of the Australian race, and that Australia has probably been invaded by elements from New Guinea and Polynesia. It is not the case that the woolly-haired Australians are confined to the north or north-east; there are many Australians who come nearer than the Papuas to the mixed Polynesian breed. Independently of the differences and transitions called into existence by Polynesian immigration, leanness of the arms and legs, bad proportions, an ill-nourished condition, are noticed as approximations to the Australian type. Besides this we find also physiognomies reminding us of Indians, Jews, or Europeans.

Great confusion has arisen from the application of the name Negritos, especially to the inhabitants of the Philippines, a mixed dark race with straight hair. One view with regard to these Negritos may be summarised in the statement that they are for the most part brown men, with curly (seldom woolly) or even straight hair - a race of the mountains, the forests, and the chase and departing from the Malayan race-type in respect more of their social and geographical position than of any anthropological marks.^[1] When the Spaniards came to the Philippines they found Malays on the coast, Tagals more inland; and in the mountains, the Aetas, who were driven back and decaying. Considering the wide diffusion of Negroid elements, it is not astonishing if they have mingled in this socially inferior group of races; they are found also in other regions in which both Malayoid and Negroid elements are included.

A Tagal Village: Luzon in the Philippines. (From a photograph.)
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Misunderstanding of the name Alfurs

The darker population in the east of the Malay Archipelago at least reminds us, in a certain hybrid character, of the Negritos, as found in Halmahera or Gilolo, and the interior of Great Nicobar. In the Malay Peninsula the Negroid element reappears more clearly. On other islands of this region, too, we meet with a race, swarthier than the other inhabitants, slim and tall, with woolly or crisp hair, living in the mountain districts of the interior. They were known as Harafara or Alfurs. But if the distinctions between the tribes who have been driven back into the interior and those who live on the coast are often, even in small islands, as great as those between Bushmen and Hottentots, the effects of social and political distinctions take precedence of distinction of race. The Orang Panggang and Orang Semang in the interior of Malacca are described as little men, mostly dark, with crisp hair. Maclay compares them with the Negritos of the Philippines, and speaks of "men of pure Melanesian blood among them."

A claim to form a group by themselves is made also by the small races diverging in many respects from the Papuan type, who live in the western part of this area of diffusion. The Andamanese may pass as their typical form. The face has a benevolent, gentle expression; the forehead is arched; the eyes are round, and set horizontally; the nose is small and straight; the lips not strikingly prominent.

In India dark men are numerous, extending far to the north. The assumption that we have here to do with a great racial struggle in former times has been strengthened by the poetical exaggerations of tradition, which draws a sharp contrast between the combatant races, as black and white; deriding the flat and noseless countenances of the dark foe; and even depicting them as apes. But thorough research has always tended to lighten the dark colour of this race, and raise their level of culture. Indeed, the important and talented race called Tamils belong to this group. Some have thought fit to reckon the blended little race known as the Veddahs of Ceylon among the most degraded of the earth; but the more evidence comes to hand, the clearer it becomes that they are not even so dark as many Tamils; that, as regards the face, the distinction is small between them and the highly-civilized Cingalese; that their hair is not at all the woolly hair of the Negro; and that their language is an Indian dialect full of Sanscrit words, and alloyed with Dravidian elements.

Alleged race of dwarfs

Must we then perhaps look for the real negro element in the small crisp-haired men or black dwarfs who are said to live in trees in the Athrumalli mountains of South India? Jagor has drawn these tree dwellings , but they only serve as places of refuge, otherwise these ill - famed people live in regular villages. If in the descriptions of them it has been again and again pointed out that they live on products of the jungle, eat mice, dwell among the branches, worship demons ; nevertheless social debasement and anthropological degradation remain quite distinct things, and if the Kaders, the Nairs, and other mountain tribes of South India are depicted as thick-lipped dwarfs, the example of the Veddahs shows us how much these random descriptions can be depended on.

Even the fact that some of these tribes file their teeth to a point, while others live in polyandry, and observe the Tamil custom of inheritance through the mother, or that men and youths live separately in one great house, need not give them any lower a place in our eyes. Traces of these customs run through all mankind, even the traces of cannibalism in the mountain tribes of Assam are not astonishing. A more important fact is that some of them have used stone weapons and utensils even to our own time, and in connection with this we remember that traces of the Stone Age, probably recent, are found in the whole region of the eastern Indian ocean, where iron now has the upper hand.

Some of the dark races of India have quite recently made advances which are still compatible with relics of their former savage forest life. The Santals of Lower Bengal have not only learnt to till the ground, but have adopted the plough, and in the course of a century have from hunters and brigands become a peaceful people of more than a million souls. The Khonds, who dwell farther to the south, no doubt carry on their agriculture still in a semi-nomadic fashion, some communities migrating every fourteen years; but they have become peaceable and have abandoned their human sacrifices. The 46 million Dravidians of South India include, beside some poor nomadic tribes, a great majority of races who may be reckoned as props of Indian civilization in the same sense as the Aryans.

¹ [Dr. Meyer, the most recent authority on the subject, holds a totally different view. See his Die Negritos der Philippinen]