The Inhabitants of the Philippines Part 43

Needless to say that the worship of ancestors is with them piously performed.

They used to be head-hunters and made the death of any of their chief men an excuse to lie in ambush and ma.s.sacre any inoffensive pa.s.sers-by for the purpose of taking the heads to place round the corpse and afterwards bury them with it.

However, the steady pressure of the Spanish authority, during long terms of years, has nearly eradicated this detestable custom, and if practised at all, it is only in the remoter fastnesses of the mountains, where they cannot yet be controlled.

The Apayaos living in the plains are mostly reduced to obedience, and many pay the poll-tax.

It would seem that there is a prospect of these people being civilised and becoming useful cultivators.

Catalanganes and Irayas (30-31).

The Irayas live in scattered hamlets on the summits of the Sierra Madre, and on its western slopes right down to the Rio Grande. Their territory extends for about twenty geographical miles on each side of the 17th parallel. Amongst them live many Negritos who have renounced their nomadic life, and have adopted the manners and customs of their hosts. The tattooing of the Irayas and Negritos is similar. The Irayas are a Malay tribe amongst whom are found individuals of a Mongolian type, others are hybrid Negrito Malays.

They do a little slovenly agriculture, using buffaloes for ploughing. They catch an abundance of fish from the four considerable streams running through their territory. They consume a large quant.i.ty of fish with their rice, and salt and sell the surplus to their neighbours. They are characteristically light-hearted and hospitable, and readily receive remontados and other strangers. Their religion is the usual Anito worship. They build wretched houses, and are very dirty in their habits, throwing their refuse down in front of the house.

The Catalanganes take their name from the River Catalangan which runs into the Rio Grande near Ilagan. They are a branch of the Irayas, but show a more strongly marked Mongolian type.

They are cleaner than the Irayas, and more industrious, and provident, storing up provisions against a bad harvest.

Their fields are much better kept than those of the Irayas, and they employ their spare time in felling trees and hewing them into canoes, which find a ready sale at Ilagan.

They dress much like the Christian Malays, but are tattooed in patterns of Chinese or j.a.panese origin.

Their laws prescribe severe penalties for theft and other crimes. Their weapons are bows and arrows, and they are said to be very cowardly. Their choice of weapons confirms this statement.

They differ much from the Irayas in character, for they are inhospitable, avaricious and greedy, and of a gloomy disposition. On the other hand, they keep their houses cleaner.

They have temples for worship, and some roughly-made monuments. According to Semper, they have two pairs of G.o.ds which they specially worship in June: Tschichenan, with his wife Bebenaugan, and Sialo with his wife Binalinga. The usual ancestor-worship also prevails, and they show great respect for the Anitos according to seniority, providing special shelters and little benches near their houses for their convenience.

Both Irayas and Catalanganes have Gobernadorcillos appointed by the Spanish Military Governor of Isabela. They pay the poll-tax, called by the Spaniards "Acknowledgment of Va.s.salage," but are otherwise independent and administer their own laws and customs. They are quite peaceful, and will doubtless in time advance in civilisation.

CHAPTER x.x.x

Catubanganes (32).

A tribe of savages inhabiting the mountains of Guinayangan in Tayabas, from whence they raid the Christian villages and drive off cattle. Nothing is known about their origin or habits; they have some wandering Negritos as neighbours.

Vicols (33).

The Vicols inhabit the southern half of the province of Camarines Norte, the whole of Camarines Sur and Albay, the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and the northern sh.o.r.es of Masbate. They are civilised, and have been Christians for centuries.

They speak a dialect of their own, which, according to Jagor, is midway between Tagal and Visay, which dialect is spoken in its greatest purity by the inhabitants of the Isarog volcano and its immediate neighbourhood, and that thence towards the west the dialect becomes more and more like the Tagal, and towards the east like the Visay until by degrees, before reaching the ethnographical boundary, it merges into those kindred languages.

In manners and customs they appear to be half-bred between these two races, yet, according to F. Blumentritt, they preceded the Tagals, and were in fact the first Malays to arrive in Luzon. They show signs of intermixture with Polynesian or Papuan stock.

They are physically inferior to the Tagals, nor do they possess the proud warlike spirit of the dwellers in north Luzon. They are less cleanly, and live in poorer houses.

The men dress like the Tagals, but the women wear the patadion instead of a saya, and a shirt of guinara.

Blumentritt says the men carry the Malay kris instead of the bolo, but I did not see a kris carried by any one when I visited the province.

In fact, the regulations enforced at that time by the Guardia Civil were against carrying such a weapon. The bolo, on the other hand, is a necessary tool.

I visited the province of Camarines Sur, going from Manila to Pasacao by sea, and from there travelled by road to an affluent of the River Vicol, and then by canoe on a moonlit night to Nueva Caceres, the capital of the province.

Here I met a remarkable man, the late Bishop Gainza, and was much impressed by his keen intellect and great knowledge of the country.

He was said to be a man of great ambition, and I can quite believe it. Originally a Dominican monk, it was intended that he should have been made Archbishop of Manila, but, somehow, Father Pedro Paya, at that time Procurator of the Order in Madrid, got himself nominated instead, and Gainza had to content himself with the bishopric of Nueva Caceres.

He was a model of self-denial, living most frugally on a small part of his revenue, contributing a thousand dollars a year to the funds of the Holy Father, and spending the remainder in building or repairing churches and schools in his diocese, or in a.s.sisting undertakings he thought likely to benefit the province.

Amongst other works, I remember that he had tried to cut a ca.n.a.l from the River Vicol to the Bay of Ragay. He had excavated a portion of it, but either on his death, or from the difficulties raised by the Public Works Department, the work was abandoned.

The Franciscan friars, who held the benefices in that province, opposed him, and annoyed him in every possible way.

The present bishop, Father a.r.s.enio Ocampo, formerly an Augustinian monk, is a clever and enlightened man, with whom I had dealings when he was Procurator-General of his Order.

I have made this digression from my subject, because so much has been said against the clergy of the Philippines, that I feel impelled to bring before my readers this instance of a bishop who constantly endeavoured to promote the interests of his province.

Nueva Caceres possessed several schools, a hospital, a lepers'

hospital, and a training-college for school-mistresses had just been established by Bishop Gainza's initiative.

The shops were mostly in the hands of Chinese, who did a flourishing trade in Manchester goods, patadoins, and coloured handkerchiefs.

There were several Spanish and Mestizo merchants who dealt in hemp and rice.

From Nueva Caceres I travelled by a good road to Iriga, a town near the volcano of that name, pa.s.sing close to the Isarog on my way. From Iriga I visited the country round about, and Lake Bula.

Some years after I went from Manila by sea to Tabaco, on the Pacific coast of Albay, getting a fine night view of the Mayon volcano (8272 feet) in violent eruption.

From Tabaco I drove to Tivi and visited the celebrated boiling-well and hot-springs at that place, much frequented by the natives, and sometimes by Europeans, for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases.

Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East.

On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abaca (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the princ.i.p.al crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice.

The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are pa.s.sed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives dest.i.tute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future.

Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation.