The Negrito can not by any stretch of imagination be called a
worker. His life for generations has not been such as to teach
habits of industry. But for the fact that he has to do some work
or starve, he would spend all his days in idleness except that time
which he devoted to the chase. Yet when under pressure or urged on by
anticipation of gain from the white man, whose wealth and munificence
appear boundless, he is tireless. He will clear ground for a camp,
cut and split bamboo, and make tables and sleeping platforms, which
he would never think of doing for himself. He can get along without
such things, and why waste the time? Yet when the camp is abandoned
he will carry these things to his house. Most Negritos have seen the
better style of living followed by the more civilized Filipinos in
the outlying barrios; yet they seem to have no desire to emulate it,
and I believe that the lack of such desire is due to a disinclination
to perform the necessary manual labor.
By far the greater part of the Negrito's energies are directed to
the growing of tobacco, maize, and vegetables. He does not plant rice
to any extent. All planting is done in cleared spots in the forest,
because the soil is loose and needs no plowing as in the case of
the lowland. The small trees and underbrush are cut away and burned
and the large trees are killed, for the Negrito has learned the two
important things in primitive farming--first, that the crops will not
thrive in the shade, and second, that a tree too large to cut may be
killed by cutting a ring around it to prevent the flow of sap. The
clearings are never large.
Usually each family has its clearing in a separate place, though
sometimes two or more families may cultivate adjoining clearings. The
places are selected with a view to richness of soil and ease in
clearing. In addition to preparing the ground it is necessary to build
a fence around the clearing in order to keep out wild hogs. A brush
fence is constructed by thrusting sticks in the ground a few inches
apart and twining brush between them.
All work of digging up the soil, planting, and cultivating is done
with sharpened sticks of hard wood, sometimes, but not always, pointed
with iron, for iron is scarce. This instrument is called "ti-ad',"
the only other tool they possess being the bolo, with which they do
all the cutting.
Men, women, and children work in these clearings, but I did not see
any division of labor, except that the men, being more adept with
the bolo, do whatever cutting there is to be done. Once planted, the
weeding and care of the crops falls largely on the women and children,
while the men take their ease or hunt and fish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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