I am in the middle of my research, which is the revisiting of Frank Lynch's universe. His field site was in Canaman, a small town where he witnessed inequality that was part of the society. The sociologists of that period talked about structured inequality. It was, however, an inequality that has a sweet component to it: a seeming acceptance of the world in that unequal world.
Frank Lynch (or Fr. Frank Lynch) was into the gritty social aspects of Bikol society, talking about the "saradit na tawo" and "darakulang tawo" to describe the harmonious inequality in that town. This unequal relation played too in the nation as a whole. But it was in Canaman where Lynch saw those with wealth share their homes with those who did not, and those who did not own anything provide labor in the farm of those who owned lands. This framework worked in the functionalist analysis of society. In this framework, societies are composed of elements that worked harmoniously to form a totality.
For those whose idea of an anthropologist is that of Indiana Jones, they would not be disappointed because Lynch also went into the more exotic studies, like the Agta communities on Mt. Iriga.
The Agta, which we cluster with the Negritoes, is a problematic label among the so-called indigenous communities of the country.
One of the major contributions of Lynch to the literature of the Agta is his idea that the Agta are different from the other so-called Negroid (a name that is not anymore favored in anthropology) groups in the Philippines. Lynch notes of the significant intermarriages that occurred between the Remontados and escaping criminals who fled to the hills or the mountains. This explanation is not fully explored and should inspire students of culture to go in those communities and get to know them more.
Lynch offers this term: semi-negroid hill people. In fact, he produced a paper bearing the title "Some Notes on a Brief Field Survey of the Hill People of Mt. Iriga" in 1944. His interpreter was a student from Ateneo de Naga, Jose Reyes. Is this the same Jose Calleja Reyes who wrote historical papers on Kabikolan?
Lynch described Reyes as "having graduated with highest honors from Ateneo de Naga high school" and "speaks and understands English perfectly, and is equally at home in Bikol, he was the perfect middle man for our countless questions with all their shades of meaning and stress."
In the paper, Lynch belabored several points about the dialect of the Agta. Literatures about this aspect of the Agta indicate that where they are, the Agta communities borrow the language of the neighboring communities. The Agta during this fieldwork spoke in Bikol but showed the "upward inflection at sentence endings and stress of all final syllables. These characteristics made the dialect, according to Lynch, distinguishable from other languages. I particularly love the description about the lilt because whenever my father told us tales of Agta living with them in Buhi, near the lake, he would imitate the inflection that goes upward and we would laugh no end, as children listening to those fantastic tales about hunting and wild deer and boar.
Lynch described to great length the hunting done by the Agta. The technique was called the "surround method," where the hunters practically surround the prey. All those who participate in the bush-beating and in the slaying of the animal had a share in the hunt. There are certain rules to follow. The man who delivered the fatal blow was given the choice cut and, not only that, a piece for his dog. A woman who has a baby gets two parts.
The notion of the "original affluent society" used to describe the hunter-gatherers was certainly applicable to the Agta witnessed by these fieldworkers. In that community in Mt. Iriga, any person - stranger or outsider - who came upon the hunt must partake of the share.
Jose Reyes also described a ritual that happened after the hunting: "The pig was dispatched in short order. What followed is the custom common among this people. The four limbs of the beast were severed from the body. Next the liver was removed and roasted; the four limbs were crossed over the body, the liver laid on top, and the entire carcass "offered" (the quotation marks were from Reyes) to the spirits who preside over that particular tract of land on which the animal was caught." It is interesting that Reyes put quotation marks around the word "offered." Even as a young researcher, he knew that a loaded term like offer must be always clarified. He was trying hard not to impose his categories.
At the end of the ritual, a prayer was said, and Reyes again offered the "gist" of the prayer. "We thank you for letting us have this pig from your land; we offer it now to you and ask you to partake of it, so you will not be angry or deny us in the future." To this prayer, Reyes, the young man teased the Agta that the spirits may not have liked the offering because they did not partake of the offering, that "nothing was taken." Reyes said the Agta laughed and offered him some part of the bounty.
The article appeared in the July-October 1948 of Primitive Man of the George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research.