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14 15ReligionThe Ati practice a form of animism that involves good and evil spirits.These spirits are nature spirits that often guard rivers, the sea, thesky, as well as the mountains. Sometimes, they may cause disease orcomfort. The Ati from Negros refer to them as taglugar or tagapuyo,which literally means “inhabiting a place.” Christianity has also beenadopted due to less isolation and more contact with “outsiders”.HistoryIn the Philippines the Aetas or Ati ancestors were the ‘aboriginals’ orthe ‘first’ inhabitants of this Archipelago. They most probably arrivedfrom Borneo (perhaps departing from the ethnic group ‘Sepang’) 20-30,000 years ago, through what is thought to be an isthmus (todaywhat remains of that is the island of Palawan) that in the prehistoricepoch connected the Philippine archipelago to that malay land, via aland bridge covered 5000 years ago by sea waters.According to some oral traditions, they also pre-date the Bisaya,who now inhabit most of the Visayas. Legends, such as thoseinvolving the Ten Bornean Datus and the Binirayan Festival, telltales about how, at the beginning of the XII century, the ancestorsof the Bisaya fled from Borneo from the persecution of RajahMakatunaw. Led by Datu Puti and Datu Sumakwel and sailingwith boats called balangay, they landed near a river calledSuaragan, on the southwest coast of Panay, (the place thenknown as Aninipay), and bartered the land from an Ati headmannamed Polpolan and his son Marikudo for the price of a necklaceand one golden salakot. The hills were left to the Atis while theplains and rivers to the Malays. This meeting is commemoratedthrough the Ati-atihan festival. This legend, though, is challengedby some historians.During the Spanish colonization, the tribe made contact with theconquistador Legazpi and were made useful in his colonization of Panay.LanguageUnlike the Aeta of the north, who speak Sambalic languages, the Atispeak a Visayan language known as Inati. As of 1980, the speakersof Inati number at about 1,500. Today few of them know how tospeak Inati and Visaya and Kinary-a are commonly used.FestivalsThe Ati are the central attraction in the Ati-atihan festival, a festivalnamed in their honor. It is said that the festival is held to commemoratethe first appearance of the Roman Catholic Church and the Spaniardsin the province of Aklan. According to oral tradition, the Ati helpedthe Spaniards conquer the native Bisaya and, as a reward, the tribewas given a statue of the Santo Niño.In the Dinagyang festival of Iloilo City, also on Panay, performersare also painted to look supposedly like Ati and are organized into“tribes”, called “tribus”, to perform dances with drums, as the Atisare supposed to have done when the Malay arrived and boughtPanay from the Ati. Dinagyang is held to celebrate this purchase aswell as the arrival in Iloilo of the Santo Niño statue. When the statuefirst arrived in 1967, a tribe from the Ati-atihan festival was invitedto Iloilo to mark the occasion.