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The Casiguran Dumagats Today and In 1936

Article in Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society · January 1975

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THE CASIGURAN DUMAGATS TODAY
AND IN 1936*
Thomas N. Headland
Summer Institute of Linguistics
The scholarly publications of Father Morice
Vanoverbergh have for many years steadily
enriched the study of Pliilippine languages and
cultures. Some of his works have become a
valuable source of information to those of us
who are interested in the Negrito cultures and
languages of Southeast Asia. Early in this cen-
tury, when the science of anthropology was,
in some respects, still in its infancy, Vanover-
bergh was traveling throughout the northern
Philippines gathering linguistic and etlmo-
graphic data on several ethnic groups. His
published materials are of great value to scholars
and students of Philippine societies today. Most
of the etlmic groups he has studied have under-
gone rapid culture change subsequent to his
early field work; in many cases his writings are
the only window through which we can view
these societies as they lived many years ago.
One such society is the Casiguran Dumagats
(or Casiguran Agta), a Negrito band society
concentrated in the foothills surrounding the
Casiguran valley in northern a e z o n Province.
The main concentration of Casiguran Dumagats
reside in the forested foothills on the east side of
the Sierra Madre mountain range, near the municipal
towns of Casiguran, Dinalongan and Dilasag. How-
ever, many of them can be found far beyond this
area; in Dinapigi, as far south as Dipaculao, Quezon;
and on the west side of the Sierra Madre, near
Madella, Nueva Viscaya. Several of them have also
married, and are living with, Palanan Dumagats in
Palanan, Isabela.
Iil 1936 Vanoverbergh spent two months in
Casiguran (1937-38:908). In that length of
time he was able to gather sufficient data on
the Casiguran Dumagat culture and language
*Material upon which this paper is based was gathered during fieldwork in and around the municipality
of Casiguran, Quezon, from 1962 to 1975, under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. I am
indebted to my colleague Richard Gieser for his assistance in the preparation of this paper for publication.
Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society
-
3 (1975) 245 257
MANILA LIBRARY
for two long articles, which total some 260
pages (1937, 1937-38). These articles, with
their wealth of accurate information, reveal an
ability in research that is beyond the ordinary.
To our knowledge, these two articles are the
only materials ever published on the Durnagats
until the 1960s. Thus they are the only
available sources for learning how the Negritos
around Casiguran lived forty years ago.
See the references at the end of this paper. For a
complete bibliography of materials on the Casiguran
Dumagats, published and unpublished, see the biblie
graphy in Headland and Headland (1974:lvii-lxii).
Eight photographs and some notes appear in
Coddard (l930)A study of these photos show that
the Dumagat clothing, hair style, body decorations
and shelters of 1930 were essentially the same as
they were in the 1960s.
The purpose of this paper is to present some
notes to show how the present-day Casiguran
Dumagats compare in culture and language
with what Vanoverbergh found in 1936. We
will discuss the acculturation that has occurred
since the 1930s, make some remarks about the
language, and briefly mention the findings re-
ported in recent publications on the Negritos
of eastern Luzon. We will also make some com-
ments on Vanoverbergh's hypotheses and
linguistic descriptions, as they appear in his
two articles.
Population Decline
Blair and Robertson make only brief mention
of the Casiguran area. They state that the
population of Casiguran was five hundred in
1582 (vol. 5:99), and 1,560 persons in 1649
246 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY

MAP OF EASTERN WON

 Headland / THE CASI(3URAN DUMAGATS
(vol. 35:287). This was probably a rough count
of the Cliristianized Malays living "under the
bells," and did not include Negritos who, we
presume, were even more widely scattered
throughout the heavily forested foothills of the
Sierra Madre mountains than they are today.
"Under the bells," a term used in Philippine hi*
I
tory books, refers to the early Spanish process of
colonial town making, which required that all Fili-
pinos live within hearing of the Church bells of their
localpueblo. The town of Casiguran was founded on
June 13, 1609. The term "Malay" is used in this
j paper to refer to non-Negrito Filipinos. That is, it
-). refers to people who are racially Mongoloid rather
'
! than Negroid.
The 1960 population of the Casiguran-
Dilasag-Dinalongan area totaled 9,113. The
1970 population of the same area totaled
22,684, a population increase of 149% in ten
years! mese figures are taken from Special
Bulletin No. 1 (1960) and Advanced Report
No. 54 (1971).
The overall Philippine population growth, at least
until recently, was 3.3 per cent per annum. This
population explosion has, in the last decade, pushed
large numbers of landless Filipinos over the rim of
the Sierra Mad+ mountains and down into the
Casiguran valley, thus resulting in a population in-
crease four and a half times higher than the national
average (World PopulationData Sheet 1973).
Against the background of this increase of
the general population in Casiguran, let us look
at the picture as it concerns the Dumagats. In
1936 Vanoverbergh made the following count
t
of the Dumagats: "787 indiviudals (small child-
/ ren not included)" (1 49; page references in this
i section of the paper refer t o Vanoverbergh
1 1937-38).
By "small children" we presume that Vanover-
.1 bergh means anyone who has not reached puberty,
since in the breakdown of his census figures for each
barrio he gives the figures for "men" and for "wo-
men" only. In effect, it appears that children were
.t not counted at all (149-50).
/
j
Since he lists the barrios where he took counts,
w e know that he did not include the Dumagats
living in the municipal areas of Dilasag, Dipa-
1
I
culao, Dinapigi, and Madella. If the Dumagats
in those areas (who speak the same dialect) had
fI
247
been counted, and if he had counted children,
his figure of 787 would surely have been
doubled. There must have been at least 1600
Casigur* Dumagats in 1936.
Mr. Thomas Casala, former agent for the
Commission of National Integration in
Casiguran, has provided this writer with two
lists of names of Dumagats formerly under his
jurisdiction. The first list, dated June 1963,
records 508 individuals. These lists include
people from the same barrios where
Vanoverbergh took counts, plus Dilasag. They
exclude the municipalities of Dipaculao,
Dinapigi and Madella.
From the above census figures we can esti-
mate that there are between 650 and 8 0 0
Casiguran Dumagats today, including children.
It would appear, therefore, that although the
general population of the area is increasing
rapidly, the population of the Dumagats is
declining, and is now approximately half of
what it was in 1936.
Physical Characteristics
The physical characteristics of the Dumagats
today arejust as Vanoverbergh described them.
There is still very little intermarriage between
the Dumagats and the Malays. Between two
and three per cent of the Dumagat women are
married t o or living with Malay men. We know
of n o Dumagat men cohabiting with Malay wo-
men. There are many Dumagats with light skin
or straight hair-the result of children fathered
by Malay men over the past several generations.
The Negritos living in Palanan, Isabela are
noticeably darker than the Casiguran Dumagats,
and are closer t o what one might call "pure
Negroid".
Vanoverbergh observed among the children
a feature that is common today: "a crop of dis-
colored hair, more or less brownish . . . never
observed among adults" (910). We at first
thought this was caused by the sun bleaching
the hair. Our conclusion now is that this is a
symptom of kwashiorkor, a disease of young
children caused by insufficient intake of.pro-
tein.
The average weight of the women ranges
from seventy to ninety pounds, and from eighty
248 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY
to one hundred pounds for the men. Chronic
malnutrition is prevalent today throughout the
tribe. The infant mortality rate is 60%. The
number one cause of death among adults is
tuberculosis. The average life expectancy, for
those who survive infancy, is about forty years.
Circumcision. The Dumagats practice partial
male circumcision (bugit) at puberty, exactly
as Vanoverbergh reports it (9 12), except that
the operation is performed by older teenage
boys or young men, rather than by an old man.
A single cut is made across the top of the fore-
skin, leaving the foreskin to hang loose.
Dress. During the 1960s, the men and boys
almost always wore a cloth G-string (beg) and
the women a tapis o r wrap-around skirt (ken).
Single girls usually wear the tapis up under the
armpits, thus covering the breasts. Married wo-
men are usually bare from the waist up. Small
children are usually naked. This is exactly as
Vanoverbergh reports their dress. Until recent-
ly it was the near-universal dress, even when
they went t o town.
-
It is interesting- to note that Vanoverbergh
"never met Negritos. . . who wore clothes made
of the bark of trees" (9 12). We also have never
seen Dumagats wearing bark 'loth (age). Wo-
men commonly use a small patch of bark cloth
as part of the decoration (subknd worn in the
ear lobe. Once we saw an old man with a betel
nut bag (kmanan) made of bark cloth.However,
their vocabulary gives evidence that bark cloth
was once a part of their material culture. And
all informants say that bark cloth was univer-
sally worn during World War 11, when manu-
factured cloth was unavailable.
In the late 1960s, women began to wear
used, machine-sewed dresses, rather than tapis.
And today this is the usual dress. Beginning in
1972, we noticed that men were beginning
to wear long or short pants more and more
often, especially when in town. The G-string
(usually worn with a shirt nowadays) is still
the more usual men's dress, but there appears
to be a definite, gradual shift to the wearing
of pants.
Modesty. The Dumagats are at least as
modest as Vanoverbergh describes. Men, even
more than women, are very careful, even in
front of their own sex, to avoid exposing their
genitals. When undressing to bathe or to cross
a river, they always keep one or both hands
cupped over the genital area. Women keep
themselves well covered with a blanket during
childbirth; and not even the women assisting
in a birth look under the blanket.
Filing of teeth. Today about ten per cent of
the Dumagats under age thirty, and about 25
.per cent of those over age thirty, have their
upper teeth filed @&pgkp).This filing is done
after the individual has reached puberty, but
before marriage. It is done for aesthetic reasons.
As Vanoverbergh states, the six upper front
teeth are filed or cut down even with the gums.
Vanoverbergh is probably correct in saying
that this custom is not indigenous with the
Dumagats, but was borrowed from the Ilongot
people. The fact that few of the Negritos in
Palanan file their teeth would tend to strengthen
that hypothesis.
The geographical boundaries of the llongots and
the Casiguran Dumagats overlap, and there is social
interaction between the two groups. The Palanan
Dumagats, who live a hundred kilometers north of
Casiguran, have of course no contact with the
Ilongots. These two Negrito groups (Casiguran and
Palanan) are very close, both culturally and linguis-
tically.Their dialects are 87 per cent cognate and are
mutually intelligible (Headland ms). Contrast this
with the lack of similarity between the Casiguran
Dumagats and the Umiray Dumagats to the south:
although close geographically, these two languages
are only 36 per cent cognate, and are mutually un-
intelligible. Further information on the Negrito
dialects o f southeastern Luzon may be gleaned from
Macleod 1972:43 f.
Scarification. The cutting of geometric de-
signs onto the back and outer arms (padit) is
still widely practiced by the Casiguran Dumagats
as well as the Palanan Dumagats. It is another
custom practiced for aesthetic reasons, and
it is performed on both sexes after puberty.
Vanoverbergh has several of the scar patterns
sketched in his article (9 17-920). The usual
cutting instrument for this operation is a small
piece of broken glass. When the cutting is done
properly and deep enough, the scars are per-
manent. The back and arms become smeared
 Headland / THE CASIGURAN DUMAGATS
with blood during the operation. No coloring
is ever rubbed into the cuts.
Dwellings
House types and shelters today appear to be
exactly as they were in 1936. Vanoverbergh
described three types of houses, the same three
which are common today: "the wind shield,
the low, unwalled shed, and the imitation Fili-
pino house" (92 1).
The Palanan Dumagats to the north, during
the dry season, live primarily in small "wind
shields" (pinanahang), a simple, one-sided lean-
to with the ground as the floor. The Casiguran
Dumagats, however, live only temporarily in
these lean-to's, both today and in 1936 (922).
Tlie low, unwalled shed is the most usual type
o f h u t today, as it was in 1936. The floor space
of the lean-to is about six by six feet, while
that of the shed seldom exceeds fifty square
feet.
The so-called "imitation Filipino house" is
just that: built like the thatch houses of the
Malays, but much smaller. A Dumagat, how-
ever, seldom builds this type of house unless
he is being supervised or assisted by a Malay
(who may have invited the Dumagat, as one of
his guards or laborers, t o build and live on his
land).
Food
The staple food of the Dumagat today is
rice and, to a lesser extent, cultivated and wild
tubers. They occasionally process and eat a
starch extracted from the soft inner pulp of
the caryota palm (Caryota cumingii), called
age'l. It is seldom eaten today, but they d o
serve it at weddings, as a tradition, and they
eat it when no other food is available. They
have a rich vocabulary of nouns and verbs
having to d o wit11 tlie palm, however, and it
plays a prominent part in their folklore. This
indicates that the caryota palm was evidently
an important part of the Dumagat diet in the
past. One would, however, have t o go back
farther than 1936 to find it in regular use, since
Vanoverbergh reports that rice was already the
staple food by the time he arrived (922).
Vanoverbergh does mention that he saw caryota
prepared and eaten in one bamo in Casiguran. His
description of the processing and cooking of the
starch is essentially correct, except that the starch
is extracted from the inner pulp of the trunk, not
from the fruit (923). Yen and Gutierrez report that
Caryota cumingii is used by the Tasaday and other
forest people of South Cotabato (1974: 103).
Fernandez and Lynch briefly described the pro-
cessing method used by the Tasaday. The tools
shown in the photographs of their article (1972:
plate 5 ) appear to be identical to those of the
Dumagats.
Dumagats do make swiddens; however, it
does not appear that swidden agriculture is an
indigenous practice. Most Dumagat families
make swiddens, but few d o it every year.
Further, it has been noted that, unless a
Dumagat is working in cooperation with a
Malay Filipino, his efforts in making swiddens
are only half-hearted and his work is inferior.
The result is often a poor crop.
More often the Dumagats obtain rice from
the Malays, either by trading deer or wild pig
for it, or by working for the Malays as laborers
on their farms, where the usual pay is six liters
of unhusked rice per day.
The Dumagats normally eat three times a
day, and they have some proteinaceous viand
with about fifty percent of their meals. This
viand is not enough, however, t o prevent the
chronic malnutrition prevalent among them.
For those living along the beaches, this protein
is provided by fish, shellfish, and octopus, in
addition t o deer and wild pig and monkey.
Those living inland have deer, wild pig, and
monkey, plus such fresh water life as shrimp,
fresh water fish, and snails.
The Problem of Drinking
Vanoverbergh briefly mentions the drinking
of alcoholic beverages among the Dumagats
(924). In 1936 it was common among the men
and "a few Negrito women." Today, drunken-
ness is a chronic problem among the Casiguran
Dumagats. There is only one man that we know
of that has never been a heavy drinker. If there
were just "a few women" that drank in 1936,
the case is changed today, for roughly 75 per
cent of the women over thirty get intoxicated
 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY O F CULTURE AND SOCIETY
at least once a week. Intoxication is more pre-
valent among the men, however.
Today, as it was in the 1930s, the common
beverage is tuba, made from the fermented sap
of the nipa palm (Nypa fruticans) or, less often,
the coconut palm. Distilled wine (alak), made
from tuba, is also common, and commercially
produced liquors are likewise readily available.
Dumagats themselves d o not produce any type
of fermented drink but acquire it from the
Malays.
Drinking is without doubt the number one
form of relaxation and stimulus for enjoyment
among the Dumagats.
The writer is not prepared to give an opinion of
the opposing hypotheses o f Horten (1945) and
Evangelista (1973). Suffice it to say that tuba drink-
ing among the Dumagats has deep sociological im-
plications which are similar to what Evangelista
found in a Tagalog Community. Drinking has some
good side effects in the society but many bad effects
which will, in this writer's opinion, along with
chronic malnutrition and the decrease in game and
fish, eventually result in the disintegration of the
Casiguran Dumagats as a countable ethnic unit.
I
,
Among many negative consequences of this
custom, we may count the following: First,
men and women often prefer t o be paid in
1 In addition, incidentally, he has obtained the
I liquor for their day's labor. This results in
their arriving home drunk and without food for
I their children. Second, heavy drinking usually
1 results in quarreling, which often leads to actual
fighting, both between husbands and wives and
among neighbors. Bloodshed sometimes results,
and occasionally death. Third, cheap liquor has
1 a debilitating effect on the chronic drinker's
! health.
Occupations
Hunting. In 1936 Vanoverbergh found that
"hunting and fishing [were] the chief pursuits
of the Negritos" (924). This was still generally
the case in the early 1960s, although by then
the Dumagats had begun often to work as
laborers for the Malay farmers in the .area.
In 1962 we found, in the settlement where
we lived, that ninety percent of the hunting
was with bow and arrow, and ten percent with
llomemade shotguns. (For the rich and detailed
vocabulary having to d o with the bow and
arrow complex and a componential analysis
and drawing of the twenty-one types of.
arrows distinguished by the Dumagats, see
Headland and Headland 1974: liv, 178). At
that time deer and wild pig were brought
into the settlement on an average of ten days
a month.
The number of nuclear families in this Negrito
settlement usually ranged from five to eight. Certain
portions of the meat brought in were shared with
every family, but most of it was taken downriver
and sold or traded to the Malays. Details on their
hunting complex, with a description of the fourteen
types of hunting, have been written up elsewhere
(Headland 1967).
By 1971 ninety per cent of the hunting was
done with homemade shotguns, and the game
had become so depleted that meat was brought
into the settlement only two or three times a
month. The Dumagats today spend more and
more of their time working as laborers for the
Malay farmers, because it has become almost
impossible to make a living by hunting.
Fishing. Men and women are both skilled
in the numerous ways of fishing. The writer
has recorded tlirty-one separate verbs, each'
of which refers to a distinct method of fishing.
names of twentyeight species of saltwater fish.
(See the Dumagat dictionary for descriptions
of these terms, Headland and Headland 1974:
194). Fishing is an almost daily occupation of
everyone, adults and children, and in-tlis they
use hooks, nets, traps, poisons, and spears.
Socioeconomics and the Malay Filipinos
It was mentioned above that Dumagats are
increasingly obtaining their livelihood by
working for Malay farmers. III this connection,
we now discuss briefly the "ahibay system,"
the intricate system of socioeconomic trade
relationships that Negritos in eastern Luzon
have with Malay Filipinos, and an institution
around which much of Dumagat culture re-
volves.
The ahibay system existed long before
Vanoverbergh's visit in 1936. It is a major
"theme" in Dumagat culture, with many "ex-
 Headland / THE CASIGURAN DUMAGATS
I pressions."
- The terms "theme" and "expression" are taken
I from an anthropological theory of Morris Opler's:
"In every culture are found a limited number of
- 8
I -
dynamic affirmations, called themes, which control
behavior or stimulate activity. The activities . . .
1 which result from the acceptance of a theme are its
I expressions"(1946: 198).
I The Dumagats depend on the system for many
) socioeconomic functions. For example, Malays
1 usually act as the go-betweens, or spokesmen,
1
I
for their Dumagat ahibay at marriage palavers.
In fact, we submit that the Dumagat culture as
I it stands today could not continue without the
ahibay system. Thisinstitution is the "cement"
which holds Dumagat society together in its
' present form.
, Vanoverbergh glossed the ahibay as meaning
;, 'friend'. Although that is a minor semantic
component of the word, its meaning is really
i much more complex, and there is no single,
equivalent term in English. Perhaps the English
words 'lord', 'patron', and 'serf, come closest
j to conveying the meaning of ahibay.
I Ahibay is a reciprocal term of reference and
1 address used between a Dumagat and a Malay
/ who have a special socioeconomic trade relatiort
ship to each other. Use of the term may signal
any one or more of the following: ( I ) that a
Dumagat and aMalay, as individuals or families,
have debt obligations with each other; (2) they
i are in an utang no loob relationship (for a dis-
cussion of this common Pliilippine value, utang
no loob, or 'debt of gratitude', wllicll controls
behavior in many Philippine social groups, see
i Kaut 196 1); (3) the Dumagat is d tenant f m e r
on the Malay's land; (4) the Dumagat frequent-
ly works for the Malay; or (5) they have an
institutionalized trading relationsllip with each
other.
All Dumagats have at least one Malay
'patron' with whom they are in an ahibay
, relationship, and many have several such patrons
This is not necessarily bad for the Dumagat,
for there are favors and obligations expect-
ed of both parties The Malay often calls on his
Dumagat 'serf' for help with manual labor, or
to obtain rattan or wild meat from him. In
return, the Dumagat can go to his Malay ahibay
when he is in need of rice, wants to borrow an
axe, etc. He may also have his Malay ahibay
serve as a go-between in securing help from
some town official. For example, the Dumagat
may need t o obtain a residence certificate from
the municipal secretary, o r medical treatment
from the two doctor.
This is not t o say that the ahibay system is
never abused. It often is, by both Dumagats
and Malays. There are unscrupulous Malays
who oppress their Dumagat ahibays, and also
Dumagats who, after getting deeply into debt
to their Malay ahibays, move t o a distant area
so as t o escape having to fulfill their obligations.
At the same time, there are many Dumagats
and Malays who are known t o abide faithfully
by the system, and who have remained in good
ahibay relationships with the same people for
decades.
Malays who are not indigenous t o Casiguran
(immigrant homesteaders from other areas of
the country) are especially prone t o misunder-
stand the ahibay system. This often results
in an ethnocentric bias, on their part, against
the Dumagats. Some Dumagats are also quick
to take advantage of these naive Filipino out-
siders. Thus, the misuse of the system often
leads to unfortunate repercussions between the
two races, as was noted by Vanoverbergh
(155-57).
It sllould be pointed out here that a modi-
fication of this institution is found elsewhere in
the Philippines. Lynch describes a more general
symbiotic union found between the rich and
the poor. He states that
We find . . . an enduring but conditional [patron-
client relationship]. One side offers an assurance of
subsistence, help in times of crisis, protection from
danger, mediating influence with the powers that
be, and occasional good times. The price for all this
is labor on the farm or elsewhere and a multitude of
varied services, rendered with proper deference and
loyalty to the patron-partner (1975: 187).
Marriage and Sex
Marriage. It took us several years to realize
how slowly Dumagat children mature. Dumagats
keep no track of their age, and at first we
thought girls were being married before they
were teenagers. We now realize that these girls
252 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY O F CULTURE AND SOCIETY
are much older than they appear. Dumagat
teenagers d o n o t reach puberty until their late
teens. Girls began menstruating, o n the average,
at age seventeen, and that is the age they usually
marry. Men, o n the other hand, are usually
older, in their early o r middle twenties, when
they marry.
Vanoverbergh reported that of "real marriage
ceremonies there seem t o be none" (137). This
is because the wedding ( k a s d ) is not the im-
portant rite in a marriage. Rather, the binding
rite of a marriage is the sakad, a series of usually
three formal meetings between the two kinsllip
groups.There are formal speeches made at these
meetings by the go-betweens (bukabli), who
are, as already mentioned, usually Malay men.
If the girl's family accepts the proposal, con-
tractual arrangements are made and a bride
price is agreed upon.
The Malays in Casiguran also practice the sakad
marriage arrangement system, and Jocano describes
a custom almost identical for an ethnic group in
Panay (1969:69-73); [see also Rahmann et al. 1973:
158, there: saka - Editor]
The prospective groom begins living with the
girl's kinship group after the second or third
sakad, a form of bride service called sehebi.
During this time he lives and sleeps in the
house of tlle girl, with her parents and siblings.
He eventually begins sleeping next t o the girl,
and the marriage is consummated sometime
during this "trial" period. If all goes well, the
wedding (kasal) will be arranged after several
weeks. Except for the delivering of the bride
price by the groom's extended kinship group,
this kasal involves only feasting and drinking.
The traditional bride price consists of kettles,
cloth, nipa wine, bolos and dried meat. These are
distributed to all the adult kinsmen of the bride.
Monogamy. Vanoverbergh makes the general
statement that all Luzon Negritos are "strictly
monogamous" (134). This is true in Casiguran
and Palanan. Among the Negritos living in
southeastern Cagayan, however, there are
exceptions. In 1974 the writer spent three days
in the home of a man who was married t o two
sisters. This was in a Negrito settlement on the
coast fifteen kilometers north of Maconacon.
The man's name was Iding. The sisters' names
were Odim and Paning. There are also reports
of two other polygynous marriages in that area.
(Personal conversation with Dr. Bion Griffin o f
the University o f Hawaii, presently doing field
work among the Palanan Dumagats).
Divorce. We d o not know o f a single divorce
among couples who married in the socially
approved manner of formal contract arrange-
ments between the two kinsllip groups. A signi-
ficant minority of young people elope (lep-
wanx), and these marriages often end in divorce.
Among the older people, only a few men are
known t o have deserted tlleir wives and run
away with other women, usually widows.
Sexual deviation. There is little t o report in
thisregard. Vanoverbergh tells of a few cases of
attempted o r reported rape (gapang) by Malay
men. In our experience we know of n o case of
rape. Homosexuality is completely unknown.
We know o f n o cases o f premarital sex among
the Dumagats. We have never known of a
young single girl t o have an illegitimate child.
There are some extra-marital sexual liaisons,
but this is not frequent, except among widows
and widowers.
Religion
Tlle Casiguran Dumagats are animists. They
show little inclination t o adapt t o the dominant
religions of the Malay Filipinos in Casiguran
(Folk Catllolic), and we find little syncretism
between Christianity and tlleir type of animism.
They have, of course, adopted some o f the
beliefs of tlieir Christian neighbors, and much
of their world view regarding the supernatural
is similar t o that of many other rural areas of
the Philippines.
The Dumagats today hold t o a universal be-
lief in a single God (Diyos), as Vanoverbergll
also found in 1936. This writer believes this t o
be a result of Cliristian influence. Vanoverbergll
implies that this "monotlieism" is indigenous
(1 60-6 1 ).
Vanoverbergh was a student of Father Wilhelm
Schmidt. His statements thus occasionally reflect
some o f Schmidt's hypotheses-in this case his "pri-
mitive high god" theory (193 1).
 Headland / THE CASIGURAN DUMAGATS
Elsewhere, Vanoverbergh states that he
- found among the Negritos an "absence of
animism" (909), and a people "knowing al-
most nothing about religion" (161). He quali-
. . fied tliese statements, however by saying that
"tlie Negritos are either grossly ignorant of
any kind of religious belief or unable t o give
the inquirer any definite information" (160).
We know today that every society has a
religion, and the Dumagats are no exception.
Vanoverbergh is correct, however, in stating
that their "practices or beliefs . . . are . . spo-
radic and they differ from person to person
[and that] explanations differ from individual
to individual" (158). When one compares the
Negrito animism with the highly developed
religious systems of other Pliilippine animistic
societies, he sees how simple and uncomplicated
Negrito religion is.
Dumagat animism has less control over the
people's daily lives than, say, the Ifugao animis-
tic system has on the Ifugaos, and it is less
complex than most other animistic systems.
There is, however, a universal belief in a spirit
world and, especially, a nightly preoccupation
with ghosts (be'let) (see Headland 197 1).
There are many shamans (Lunogen) among
the Dumagats. Tliese are practitioners of white
magic, tlieir primary role being tliat of treating
tlie sick.
We have found no evidence of the practice of
sorcery among the Durnagats. All informants deny
the existence of Dumagat sorcerers. They are cogni-
zant of sorcery, and describeseveral types, the most
well known of which is barmg, said to be practiced
by Malays, and described in essentially the same
way as that described by Lieban for a Cebuano
society (1967).
I Besides making use of herbs and simple prayers
to tlie "forest," they perform seances for diffi-
! cult cases. At such times, the shaman goes into
i a trance and chants. These chants arc not in
=the normal language, but in some type of
glossolalia.
This glossolalia is probably what Carlyle calls
"sacerdotal language: ancient talk by priests of a
forgotten language, preserved by a priestly class
through the yearsW(1956:75).Carlyle's paper classi-
fies eight types of glossolalia.
The Public Schools
Before World War 11, there was a boarding
school in Calabgan, Casiguran, established es-
pecially for Dumagat children. Approximately
twenty percent of the people living today, who
were children during the late 1930s, attended
that school. Many were forcibly rounded up
and kept in the school by soldiers. Most child-
ren attended for one or two years, although a
few completed all six grades.
In 1962 we found three Dumagat men who
could speak simple Enghsh, and one other who
could read in Tagalog. All four of these men
had been pupils in the school. Many other
Dumagats are bilingual in simple Tagalog.
Since the war, the government has established
many schools in the valley, and has encouraged
the Dumagats to send their children to school,
however, few Dumagat children attend. The
few who do start school each year usually all
drop out within a few weeks. In order to try to
counteract this tendency, the 55th Philippine
Constabulary Battalion has initiated a project
. to encourage Dumagat children to go to school.
In July 1975, as a result of this encouragement,
forty-seven Dumagat children enrolled in the
elementary school at Calabgan. All but seven
are in grade one. Since the parents live nearby,
and have a positive attitude, it is hoped that
this project will succeed.
Although the Dumagats have shown little
interest in having their children attend school,
the influence of these schools, both now and
before the war, should not be minimized as a
cause of Dumagat culture change.
The Language Situation
In 1937 Vanoverbergh published a long
article, approximately half of which was
devoted to a grammatical description and word
list of Casiguran Dumagat. His work is ex-
cellent-all the more remarkable in view of the
relatively sliort time he had for research in
Casiguran. In the list of 313 Durnagat words
and expressions which he compiled, there were
only nine items with which we, after our study
of the language, d o not agree.
Vanoverbergh recognized that the vowel
system was complex, and he actually described
254 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY O F CULTURE AND SOCIETY
ten vowels. It has been found that Casiguran
Dumagat has eight vowel phonemes (Headland
and Healey 1974:6-19), the only Philippine
language known to have that many vowels.
Thus, it has the most intricate vowel system of
any Philippine language described to date.
Vanoverbergh's description of the morpho-
phonemics, accent, and pronoun system, and
most of his other notes on the grammar are
good. He was not able to analyze verb mor-
phology to any depth, but most of what he
says fits the language. Perhaps his weakest
notes are those regarding the noun-marking
particles (l937:24-26). There are more of these
particles than he describes. Whereas Tagalog
has six such particles (ang, nang, sa, etc.), Casi-
guran Dumagat has n o less than thirteen (see
Headland and Healey 1974: 22, and J. Head-
land 1966). Also, V-anoverbergh failed to dif-
ferentiate between two similar sounding par-
ticles, tu and to, and this skewed his analysis.
Folklore. The Dumagats have a rich folk-
lore, which is manifested in both stories and
songs. Vanoverbergh recorded several of these
(1 937: 7G9 1), with both interlinear and free
translations in English. These tales are well
transcribed-no small feat since he had to work
without a tape recorder-and they accurately
show the typical folklore of the Dumagats t e
day.
Two booklets of Dumagat folktales and riddles
have been written and published by a Negrito and
native speaker of Casiguran Dumagat (Aduanan
1974a and 1974b).
Dumagat folklore reflects the people's values
and world view, and gives hints of their past
way of life. For example, there are frequent
references to ghosts and spirit being$ raiding
and fear of raiders, food gathering (especially
of the caryota palm starch), hunting and fish-
ing, and courtship. There is almost no reference
in the folklore to agriculture.
Hypotheses. One purpose of Vanoverbergh's
field trip in 1936 was to see if he could find
any evidence of an original proto-Negrito
language of the Philippines. We now know that
neither he nor anyone else has ever found such
evidence, and Vanoverbergh concluded from
his research that "their original speech is irre-
trievably lost or, at least, has become a dead
language" (10).
Robert Fox states that "one of the most
challenging problems in Philippine ethnology"
is the search for some common cultural or
linguistic elements peculiar to the scattered
Negrito groups, which might define basic ele-
ments of an earlier Negrito culture (1953: 173).
The present writer has recently written con-
cerning this question. He has submitted that
"there are at least no linguistic elements held in
common among the Negrito groups which are
distinct from other Philippine groups
(Headland ms).
The reader may wonder whether Negrito kinship
structure has any unique traits not found in other
Philippine ethnic groups. It does not. The Dumagat
kinship map follows the same general pattern as
other Philippine language groups (Headland 1965).
Maceda (1975) is one anthropologist who has
searched for common elements among Negrito
groups of Southeast Asia. His scholarly monograph
is an attempt to compare the culture o f the
Marnanua with other Negrito groups. Maceda failed,
however, to answer Fox's question. The cultural
traits which he found shared by Negrito groups in
common are also found widely in other non-Negrito
groups in the Philippines. Maceda was thus unable
to present convincing evidence to indicate a genetic
link between Philippine Negrito groups (cf. Reid
1966:244).
It was one of Vanoverbergh's theories that
all of the Negrito languages of Luzon, together
with Ibanag, Isneg and the Malay language
spoken in the town of Casiguran "show definite
similarities . . .many words and expressions . . .
have absolutely nothing to do with any of the
other languages in the north or center of the
island" (1 937: 11). The findings, however, that
we have made do not agree with that theory.
Our report hypothesizes that there is a group
of five dialects along the northeastern coast of
Luzon which probably forms a major sub-
division within the languages of the Philippines.
One basis of this grouping is the high cognate
counts between word lists taken in the five
dialects. (The five dialects, whose word lists
average 74 per cent cognate with each other,
are: Casiguran Dumagat, Palanan Dumagat,
i Headland / THE CASIGURAN DUMAGATS
Paranan, Kasiguranin or Casiguran, and South-
eastern Cagayan Negrito).
It is noteworthy that, although these five
ethnic groups are closely related linguistically,
they are racially not the same. Three of the
'groups are Negrito, and the other two are r,
Malay. This militates against any theory that
Negrito languages might form a separate
division in the Austronesian language family.
From our present-day vantage point, it is
difficult to see how Vanoverbergh could have
thought that the Negrito languages "without
exception point t o kinship with Ibanag . . . and
Isneg" (1937: 11). While some of the Negrito
languages in northern Luzon are linguistically
close to Ibanag and Isneg (cf. Healey 1960 and
Wluttle 197 l), Casiguran Dumagat shows no
evidence of this. Casiguran Dumagat is only 3 8
per cent cognate with Isneg (of Kabugao,
Apayao), and 42 per cent cognate with Ibanag
(of Parnplona). (For cognate comparisons bet-
ween Casiguran Dumagat and sixteen other
languages of Luzon, see Headland and Head-
land 1 9 7 4 : ~ )In
. addition, the Casiguran Duma-
gat pronoun system and noun-marking particles
do not show an affinity t o Isneg and Ibanag
any closer than to any other languages of
Luzon.
Bilingualism. Vanoverbergh reported that
"Negritos have very little difficulty in picking
up new languages. All of them without ex-
ception speak perfectly a t least two languages,
and many of them three" (1937: 119).
The Summer Institute of Linguistics has re-
cently completed a dialect intelligibility survey
cC an area of eastern Luzon. One of the pur-
poses of the survey was to find out how well
the Casiguran Dumagats understand the six
dialects and trade languages spoken in northern
Quezon and eastern Isabela. The procedure fol-
lowed is a methodology described by Eugene
Casad (1974), and briefly explained in the sur-
vey report (Headland ms). A shorter and less
tecllnical description of tile methodology is also
given in Brichoux ( 1973:92-94).
The findings of the survey were that the
Casiguran Dumagats scored well on the four
dialects closely related t o their own, but they
scored below the threshold of intelligibility in
255
their understanding of Tagalog and Ilocano.
Their score on Tagalog was 73 per cent, which
is relatively high, but not high enough for
them t o be considered as being able t o under-
stand Tagalog. On Ilocano, their score was so
low that tests in that language could not be
completed.
This does not mean that there are no Dumagats
who understand Tagalog or Ilocano. There are many.
But the average scores of those tested indicate that
Dumagats generally should not be considered as
understanding Tagalog or Ilocano.
Conclusion
This paper has attempted to compare the
culture and language of the Casiguran Duma-
gats today with the way they lived when Vano-
verbergh visited them in 1936. Such topics as
population decline, physical characteristics,
house types, food, occupations, sex, religion,
and the language have been discussed. Through-
out, we have tried t o describe the culture
change that has taken place over the last forty
years.
The accuracy and painstaking care with
which Vanoverbergh recorded ethnographic
and linguistic detail has been noted. Some of
his theories have been critically discussed. His
findings have been found to be accurate. Ex-
ception, however, has been taken with his
hypotheses that there was once a single pan-
Negrito language in Luzon, and that the Negrito
dialects today have words and expressions in
common with Ibanag and Isneg which have
nothing to do with any of the other Malay
languages of Luzon.
Regarding Negrito acculturation, it appears
that the Casiguran Dumagats have undergone
much less culture change than have most other
Philippine minority groups. One reason for
this may be that the Dumagats have not
attended the public schools, which are one of
the main catalysts of culture change in the
Philippines.
There has been culture change over the last
forty years, of course. But most of tlus change,
interestingly enough, has occurred since 1962,
after this writer began his field work in
Casiguran. That is,it appears that in the Dumagat
 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY
culture, more change has occurred between
1962 and today than had occurred between
1936 and 1962. One example of the change
observed during this period is that twelve years
ago Dumagat men spent most of their time
fishing and hunting with bow and arrow. To-
day these same men work most of the time for
the Malay Filipinos on their farms downriver.
Some factors that have contributed to this
change are: (1) the influx of transistor radios
during the late 1960s; (2) the introduction of
such industries as logging, mining, and lumber-
ing; (3)' the introduction of modem medicines;
and (4) the population explosion in the
Casiguran valley, which resulted in an increase
of 149 per cent in ten years.
We can be almost certain that the accul-
turation of the Dumagats will be even greater
in the next decade as settlers seeking land con-
tinue topour into the area, where there are still
vast areas of virgin rain forest to homestead.
In addition, the government has nearly com-
pleted the construction of the first road into
Casiguran. The opening of this road will un-
doubtedly result in many additional changes in
the valley.
We have suggested in this paper that the
future of the Dumagats looks bleak indeed.
The serious problem of drunkenness among the
majority of the adults, coupled with the
approaching decimation of wild game, chronic
malnutrition, and loss of land to Malay home-
steaders are probably going t o bring about an
ethnic disintegration of the Dumagats. The
popul'ation has already decreased to approxi-
mately half of what it was in 1936.
Unfortunately, the Dumagats are not chang-
ing from hunters and gatherers t o independent
farmers. Instead they are becoming unskilled
laborers for, and landless serfs of, the many
Malays, who now outnumber them in Casiguran
by more than twenty-three to one.
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1974 A Dumagat (Casiguran) -English Dictionary.
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Headland, Thomas W. and Alan Healey
1974 "Grammatical Sketch of Casiguran Duma-
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 University of San Carlos
Cebu City
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