The Insular Government "Chinese Exclusion Act," at present in operation, permits those Chinese who are already in the Islands to remain conditionally, but rigidly debars fresh immigration. The corollary is that, in the course of a few years, there will be no Chinese in the Philippines. The working of the above Act is alluded to in Chapter xxxi.
Under a native Government their lot is not likely to be a happy one. One of the aims of the Tagálog Revolutionists was to exclude the Chinese entirely from the Islands.
The population of the Philippines does not consist of one homogeneous race; there are Mahometans, Pagans, and Christians, the last being in the majority. The one tribe is just as much "Filipino" as the other, and, from the point of view of nationality, they are all equally fellow-countrymen. [53] So far as tradition serves to elucidate the problem of their origin, it would appear that the Filipinos are a mixed people, descendants of Papuan, Arabian, Hindoo, Malay, Japanese, Chinese, and European forefathers. [54]
According to the last census (1903), the uncivilized population amounted to 8 1/2 per cent. of the whole.
The chief of these tribes are the _Aetas_, or _Negritos_, the _Gaddanes_, _Itavis, Igorrotes, Igorrote-Chinese, Tinguianes, Tagbunuas, Batacs, Manobos_, etc. Also among the southern races of Mindanao Island, referred to in Chapters x. and xxix., there are several pagan tribes interspersed between the Mahometan clans.
I have used only the generic denominations, for whilst these tribes are sub-divided (for instance, the _Buquils_ of Zambales, a section of the _Negritos_; the _Guinaanes_, a sanguinary people inhabiting the mountains of the Igorrote district, etc.), the fractions denote no material physical or moral difference, and the local names adopted by the different clans of the same race are of no interest to the general reader. The expression _Bukidnon_, so commonly heard, does not signify any particular caste, but, in a general sense, the people of the mountain (_bukid_).
_Aetas_, or _Negritos_, numbering 22,000 to 24,000, inhabit the mountain regions of Luzon, Panay, Negros, and some smaller islands. They are dark, some of them being as black as African negroes. Their general appearance resembles that of the Alfoor Papuan of New Guinea. They have curly matted hair, like Astrakhan fur. The men cover only their loins, and the women dress from the waist to the knees. They are a spiritless and cowardly race. They would not deliberately face white men in anything like equal numbers with warlike intentions, although they would perhaps spend a quiverful of arrows from behind a tree at a retreating foe.