Philippine progress prior to 1898 : $b a source book of Philippine history to supply a fairer view of Filipino participation and supplement the defective Spanish accounts — John Shaqi
Philippine progress prior to 1898 : $b a source book of Philippine history to supply a fairer view of Filipino participation and supplement the defective Spanish accountsCraig, Austin
History
Philippine progress prior to 1898 : $b a source book of Philippine history to supply a fairer view of Filipino participation and supplement the defective Spanish accounts
Craig, Austin
Philippines
The old question of a lost white tribe, attributed so often to
Mindoro, is raised by mention of "some males and females," being
"white." Perhaps the breeding principle that a second cross sometimes
reverts to the original type may be the explanation. Chinese mestizos
have seemed to me whiter here than European blends with Filipinas
where no Chinese strain was present. Their delicate beauty suggests
the Caucasians from whom the earliest Chinese may have taken wives
in the remote past before they came to the "eighteen provinces." The
first Spaniards comment also on exceedingly fair Filipinas and as
the Caucasian type is the European ideal of beauty it probably
resulted that such mixed marriages as occurred were with these
Chinese mestizas. The prejudice of new converts against pagans,
linked with the humiliation to which the Chinese residents in the
Philippines were subject during Spain's rule here, led to covering
up and ignoring all Chinese relations and is a very good reason why
even where known there is today reluctance to admit descent from the
oldest of civilized races. Yet before the Spaniards came both in the
Philippines and in the lands from which successive immigrations of
Filipinos have come, the Chinese traders ranked with the aristocracy
and Chinese wives were sought by royalty.
A trait by no means died out was a fondness for jewelry shown by
stowaways on board junks for Chinchew. When their money was all
expended on personal adornments they returned home, there to be
honored as travelled personages, the distinction of having visited
China raising them above even their own fathers and the older men.
The 1349 account of Mai, or Manila, credits the people with "customs
chaste and good." Both men and women wore their hair done up in a
knot and clothed themselves in blue cotton shirts. Since the earlier
notice, within the century and a quarter interval, Hindu influence
had become manifest for a sort of suttee is related. New widows with
shaven heads would lie fasting beside their husband's corpses for seven
days. Then if still alive they could eat but were never permitted to
remarry and many when the husband's body was placed on the funeral pyre
accompanied it into the flames. The region must have been populous for
on the burial of a chief of renown two or three thousand slaves would
be buried in his tomb. The imports show more luxuries; red taffetas,
ivory and trade silver figuring in the later list.
Sulu comes in for mention with fields losing their fertility in the
third year of cultivation. Sago, fish, shrimps and shell fish made up
the diet and the people, with cut hair, wore black turbans as may now
be seen in parts of Borneo, and dressed in sarongs. Boiling seawater
for salt, making rum and weaving were their occupations ashore, and
dyewoods of middling quality, beeswax, tortoise-shell and pearls,
surpassing in roundness and whiteness, were their exports.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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