The Philippines: Past and Present Volume II Part 2

No account of education would be complete without mention of the University of the Philippines. Higher education is the great conscious goal of Filipino desire; and to meet the growing need for it, an act pa.s.sed June 18, 1908, established this inst.i.tution. Subsequent amendments authorized, when practicable, colleges of liberal arts, law, social and political science, medicine and surgery, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary science, engineering, mines, agriculture and fine arts. At present there are in actual operation the colleges of liberal arts, veterinary science, engineering, medicine and surgery, law, agriculture and the school of fine arts. Instruction in pharmacy is given in the College of Liberal Arts, and instruction in forestry is given in the College of Agriculture. By special acts of the Philippine legislature, several scholarships have been provided, but for the most part the university is open only to those who can afford to live in Manila during their period of attendance.

The opening of some of these colleges has served sharply to call attention to one of the present weaknesses of the Filipino people. It is but a few years since agriculture was well-nigh prostrated as a result of the decimation of cattle and horses throughout the islands by contagious diseases. The need for well-trained veterinarians was, and is, imperative. Filipinos properly qualified to undertake veterinary work would be certain of profitable employment. A good veterinary course was offered in 1909. At the same time the School of Fine Arts was opened. No one took the veterinary course the first year. Admissions to the School of Fine Arts were closed when they reached seven hundred fourteen. At the end of the school year 1912-1913 the students in the Veterinary College numbered twenty-seven as compared with six hundred ninety-four in the School of Fine Arts. The grand total enrolment of this latter inst.i.tution since its organization is thirty-two hundred twenty-nine, while that of the Veterinary College during the same period is forty-seven. It is necessary to restrict attendance at the School of Fine Arts. Until there is a livelier and more general interest in saving carabaos than in painting them, the country will not attain to a high degree of material prosperity through the efforts of its own people.

I take genuine pleasure and pride in briefly describing the work of the Philippine Training School for Nurses. I have always believed that young Filipina women would make excellent trained nurses, and I earnestly endeavoured to have a certain number of them included among the first government students sent to the United States for education soon after the establishment of civil government. In this effort I rather ignominiously failed. The prejudices of the Filipino people were then radically opposed to such a course, and my colleagues of the commission were not convinced that it would lead to useful practical results.

To the Bureau of Education must be given credit for inaugurating the movement which has resulted in the firm establishment of the profession of nursing in the Philippine Islands as an honourable avocation for women. At an early date it employed an American trained nurse to give instruction, and inaugurated a preparatory course at its Normal School dormitory. The work at the outset could not be made of a very practical nature, but after a number of bright and well-trained young women had become interested in it arrangements were perfected for giving them actual training at the government inst.i.tution then known as the Civil Hospital. Here strong racial prejudices of the Filipinos were gradually overcome, and the student nurses soon showed themselves to be unexpectedly practical, faithful and efficient.

Later when the great Philippine General Hospital was established it became possible for the Bureau of Health to open a school under the immediate control of the chief nurse, and to take over all the work of training nurses. Students at this school are supported at government expense while in training. Its opportunities and advantages are open to young men, as well as to young women, and may be extended to a number not exceeding one hundred six of each s.e.x at a given time.

The training of young women began sooner, and thus far has resulted more satisfactorily, than has that of young men, although many of the latter are now making good progress.

The work is popular, and as there are more candidates than places only the more promising are admitted. They have shown that they possessed common-sense by avoiding the traps set for them by Filipino politicians and newspaper reporters. Their tact and self-respect have brought them safely through many embarra.s.sing, and a few cruelly trying, situations forced upon them by the unkindness or brutality of those whom they have sought to serve. Their gentleness and kindness have endeared them to their patients, and it is now a common thing for Americans to request the services of Filipina nurses. Their faithfulness and efficiency have won the confidence of patients and physicians alike. Their courage has enabled them to triumph over the prejudices of their own people, and to perform many hard, disagreeable tasks, and meet some very real dangers, without faltering. The gratefulness which they have shown for the opportunity to help their people, no less than for the interest taken in them by Americans, has won them many friends. The training of Filipina nurses has pa.s.sed far beyond the experimental stage; it is a great success.

Instruction in the Philippine Nurses' Training School is now largely given by members of the university faculty and the graduates of this school must certainly be numbered among the most highly educated women of the Philippines. More of them are sadly needed, not only in government inst.i.tutions, but in private hospitals, and especially in the provincial towns, where a few of them are already engaging in district nursing with unqualified success. The country might well get on for the present with fewer lawyers, and fewer artists, if the number of nurses could be increased.

Equally praiseworthy is the work of the students and graduates of the College of Medicine and Surgery, which is housed in a commodious and adequate building. Their theoretical instruction is of a very high character, and they have almost unrivalled facilities for practical clinical work in the Philippine General Hospital. Entrance requirements are high and the course of study is severe. A number of the best students do post-graduate work in the hospital, where they are employed as internes and a.s.sistants. As a result, the college is turning out graduates admirably qualified for the great work which awaits them among their own people.

The other colleges of the university are, for the most part, doing their work efficiently and well, and as a rule their students are showing appreciation of the opportunities afforded them, and are utilizing them to good advantage.

Important educational work is being carried on by various bureaus of the government. The Bureau of Lands has an excellent school for surveyors. The Bureau of Printing is in itself a great industrial school, and ninety-five per cent of its work is now done by Filipinos trained within its walls, while many others who have had practical instruction there have found profitable private employment.

An excellent school is conducted in Bilibid Prison with convicts as teachers. A very large proportion of the prisoners receive practical instruction in manual training and are fitted to earn honest livings when their sentences expire. Furthermore, they readily secure employment, as the men discharged from this inst.i.tution have in many cases earned well-deserved reputations for honesty and industry.

All the women confined at Bilibid are taught to make pillow lace.

At the Bontoc Prison, the non-Christian tribe convicts of the islands are taught useful industries, and so satisfactory are the results that I have formed the habit of calling the inst.i.tution my "university."

At the Iwahig agricultural penal colony convicts are taught modern agricultural methods under a system such that they gradually become owners of houses, land and agricultural implements and may in the end have their families with them so that they are well settled for life when their sentences expire, if they take advantage of the opportunities given them.

The educational policy which the United States has adopted in dealing with the Filipinos is without a parallel in history. I am glad to have a.s.sisted in its inauguration, and I am proud of its results, which will make themselves felt more and more as the years go by. Even now English is far more widely spoken in the Philippine Islands than Spanish ever was, and this is a boon the magnitude of which cannot be appreciated by those who have not had brought home to them by experience the disadvantages incident to the existence of very numerous dialects among the inhabitants of one country.

When it is remembered that in the present instance each of these dialects is very poor in literature, and that its use is limited to a million or two of human beings at the most, the enormous value of instruction in English will be realized, to some extent at least.

CHAPTER XX

THE EXPLORATION OF NON-CHRISTIAN TERRITORY

At the time of their discovery the Philippine Islands were inhabited by a very large number of distinct tribes the civilization of which was directly comparable with that of the Negritos, the Igorots and the Moros as they exist to-day. Do not understand me to imply that the Negritos, the Igorots and the Moros have attained to the same stage of civilization.

The Negritos belong to a distinct race. They are woolly-headed, nearly black, and of almost dwarfish stature. They seem to be incapable of any considerable progress and cannot be civilized. Intellectually they stand close to the bottom of the human series, being about on a par with the South African bushmen and the Australian blacks.

The Igorots are of Malayan origin. They are undoubtedly the descendants of the earlier, if not the earliest, of the Malay invaders of the Philippines, and up to the time of the American occupation had retained their primitive characteristics.

The Moros, or Mohammedan Malays of the southern Philippines, exemplify what may be considered the highest stage of civilization to which Malays have ever attained unaided. They are the descendants of the latest Malay invaders and were, at the time of the discovery of the islands, rapidly prosecuting an effective campaign for their mohammedanization.

At the outset the Spaniards made extraordinary progress in subduing, with comparatively little bloodshed, many of these different peoples, but the Moros at first successfully resisted them, were not brought under anything approaching control until the day of steam gun-boats and modern firearms, and were still causing serious trouble when Spanish sovereignty ended.

As time elapsed the political and military establishments of Spain in the Philippines seem to have lost much of their virility. At all events the campaign for the control and advancement of even the non-Mohammedan wild peoples was never pushed to a successful termination, and there to-day remains a very extensive territory, amounting to about one-half of the total land area, which is populated by non-Christian peoples so far as it is populated at all. Such peoples make up approximately an eighth of the entire population.

When civil government was established I was put in general executive control of matters pertaining to the non-Christian tribes. Incidentally, a word about that rather unsatisfactory term "non-Christian." It has been found excessively difficult to find a single word which would satisfactorily designate the peoples, other than the civilized and Christianized peoples commonly known as Filipinos, which inhabit the Philippines. They cannot be called pagan because some of them are Mohammedan, while others seem to have no form of religious worship. They cannot be called wild, for some of them are quite as gentle, and as highly civilized, as are their Christian neighbours. The one characteristic which they have in common is their refusal to accept the Christian faith, and their adherence to their ancient religious beliefs, or their lack of such beliefs as the case may be. I am therefore forced to employ the term "non-Christian"

in designating them, although I fully recognize its awkwardness.

While serving with the First Philippine Commission I was charged with the duty of writing up the non-Christian tribes for its report, and tried to exhaust all available sources of information. The result of my investigations was most unsatisfactory to me. I could neither find out how many wild tribes there were, nor could I learn with any degree of accuracy the territory which the known tribes occupied, much less obtain accurate information relative to their physical characteristics, their customs or their beliefs.

The most satisfactory source of information was the work of Blumentritt, an Austrian ethnological writer; but Blumentritt had never set foot in the Philippines, and I suspected at the outset what later proved to be the case, that his statements were very inaccurate. He recognized more than eighty tribes of which thirty-six were said by him to be found in northern Luzon.

As it was obviously impossible to draft adequate legislation for the control and civilization of numerous savage or barbarous peoples without reliable data on which to base it, and as such data were not available, I had to get them for myself, and undertook a series of explorations, carried out during the dry seasons so far as possible, in order to gather my information on the ground.

I first visited Benguet in July and August, 1900.

On my second northern trip I traversed the province of Benguet from south to north, arrived at Cervantes in Lepanto, and was about to leave for the territory of the Bontoc head-hunters when I received a telegraphic summons to return to Manila for the inauguration of Governor Taft on July 4, 1901.

The following year such time as could be spared from my duties at Manila was necessarily devoted to the search for a suitable island for the site of a proposed leper colony; but in 1903 I was able to make a somewhat extended exploring trip, traversing the country of the Tingians in Abra, pa.s.sing through the mountains which separate that province from Lepanto, visiting the numerous settlements of the Lepanto Igorots and continuing my journey to Cayan, Bagnin, Sagada and Bontoc; and thence through various settlements of the Bontoc Igorots to Banaue in the territory of the Ifugaos.

The latter portion of the trip was not unattended with excitement. A few weeks before a fairly strong constabulary detachment, armed with carbines, had been driven to the top of a conical hill in the Ifugao country and besieged there until a runner made his way out at night and brought a.s.sistance. We felt that there was some uncertainty as to the reception which would be accorded us. The Bontoc Igorots who accompanied us did not feel that there was any uncertainty whatever as to what awaited them, but were more than anxious to go along with us, as they were spoiling for a fight with their ancient enemies.

We had to use them for carriers to transport our baggage, and each carrier insisted on having an armed companion to lug his lance and shield. As a precautionary measure we took with us twenty-five Bontoc Igorot constabulary soldiers armed with carbines, while each of the five American members of the party carried a heavy six-shooter. We also had with us a dog which was supposed to be especially clever at seasonably discovering ambushes and giving warning.

We were able to use horses more or less as far as the top of the Polis range, but the trail down its eastern slopes was impracticable for horses and dangerous for pedestrians.

We shivered for a night on a chilly mountain crest, and the next day continued our journey to Banaue. When still several miles from the town, we were met by an old Ifugao chief with two companions. They marched boldly up to us and inquired whether we were planning to visit Banaue. On receiving an affirmative reply, the chief asked if our visit was friendly or hostile. I a.s.sured him that we were friends who had come to get acquainted with the Ifugaos. He said he was glad to hear this, but that after all it did not really matter. If we wished to be friends, they were willing to be friendly; but if we wanted to fight, they would be glad to give us a chance. As he and his companions were facing a column of eighty-seven armed men I rather admired his courage.

He next presented me with what I now know to be an Ifugao gift of friendship, to wit, a white rooster and six eggs, after which he took from one of his companions a bottle filled with bubud, [16]

and having first taken a drink to show me that it was not poisoned, handed it to me. I did my duty, and we were friends.

We then proceeded on our way to Banaue, being obliged to plunge down through the rice terraces to the bottom of a deep canon and then climb two almost perpendicular earthen walls before reaching the house of the chief.

I was completely exhausted when I began this climb, and did not feel comfortable clinging like a tree frog to the face of a clay bank with nothing to support me except rather shallow holes which could be better negotiated by Ifugaos, possessed of prehensile toes, than by men wearing shoes. Seeing my predicament, an Ifugao climbed down from above, pulled my coat-tails up over my head and hung on to them, while another came up behind me, put his hands on my heels and carefully placed my toes in the holes prepared for their reception. Thus aided, I finally reached the top.

The Ifugaos did not invite us to enter their houses, but allowed us to camp under them. I was a.s.signed quarters under the house of the chief. It was tastefully ornamented, at the height of the floor, with a very striking frieze of alternating human skulls and carabao skulls.

One of my reasons for coming to Banaue at this time was that I had heard that the people of seven other towns had recently formed a confederation and attacked it, losing about a hundred and fifty heads before they were driven off. I therefore thought that there might be a favourable opportunity to learn something of head-hunting, and to secure some photographs ill.u.s.trating customs which I hoped would become rare in the near future, as indeed they did.

Trouble promptly arose between our Bontoc friends and the Ifugaos. The Bontocs wanted to purchase food. Some baskets of camotes were brought and thrown down before them and they were told that they were welcome to camotes, which were suitable food for Bontoc Igorots and pigs, but that if they wanted rice they would have to come out and get it. As twenty-five of them were armed with carbines and all the rest had lances, shields and head-axes, they were more than anxious to go, but this we could hardly permit! So we put them in a stockade under guard, and subsisted them ourselves, a thing which necessarily rendered our stay brief, as provisions soon ran low.

The Ifugaos of Banaue showed themselves most friendly, but warned us that a large hostile party was waiting to attack us at Kababuyan, a short distance down the trail. My mission to the Ifugao country was to establish kindly relations with the people rather than kill them, so I did my best to get on good terms with the inhabitants of the more friendly settlements.

The day before we left, people came in haste from a neighbouring village to advise us that one of their men had lost his head to the Ifugaos of Cambulo, and begged us to join them in a punitive expedition, a.s.suring us that there were numerous pigs and chickens at Cambulo and that our combined forces would have no difficulty in whipping the people of that place, after which we could have a most enjoyable time plundering the town, while they would secure a goodly toll of heads which might be advantageously employed in further ornamenting their Banaue homes. They were greatly disgusted when we declined to join them, and said they would do the job anyhow, as no doubt they did.

First, however, they insisted that we come with them to see that the story they had told us was true. We soon overtook a procession carrying a very much beheaded man who was being borne out for burial on his shield, and were readily granted permission to attend his funeral. It was an interesting and weird affair. After it was over we hastened back to Banaue, in constant fear of breaking our necks by falling down the high, nearly perpendicular, walls of the rice terraces, on the tops of which we had to walk. Most of us discarded our shoes, in order to minimize the danger of a fall. One member of the party, who insisted on wearing his, glissaded down a steep wall and had to be pulled out of the mud and water at the bottom. Fortunately he was not injured.

Having succeeded beyond our expectations in establishing friendly relations with the Ifugaos of Banaue we took our departure, requesting them to tell their neighbours about us and promising to visit them again. I returned to Bontoc and made my way to Baguio in Benguet through the Agno River valley, stopping at numerous settlements of the Benguet Igorots on the way.