The Philippines: Past and Present Volume II Part 7

The first time I climbed Polis Mountain, on my way from the Bontoc country to the land of the Ifugaos, four Igorots went ahead of me, armed with head-axes and lances, carrying their shields in position. At each turn in the steep, worn-out trail, they drew back their lances ready to throw. I had eighty-six armed men with me, and knew that I might need them. To-day I travel through the length and breadth of the Mountain Province unescorted and unarmed. Furthermore, I usually take my wife with me.

Prior to 1903, if an Ifugao showed himself on the north side of the Polis range he lost his head. Now people of this tribe stroll into the town of Bontoc almost daily. They travel north through the Bontoc Igorot country to Lubuagan, in Kalinga, and west to Cervantes, in Lepanto, or even to Tagudin on the coast, crossing three subprovinces on the latter trip. They also go south to Baguio.

All freight was formerly packed in from the coast on men's backs a distance of eighty odd miles over steep, narrow, stony trails which were really foot-paths. Now it comes in carts over a good road which has a maximum grade of six per cent.

The people of the settlement had to get their water from the river. Now it is piped into town.

There was not a shop in the place, and every one had to go to the coast to make the smallest purchases. There are at present half a dozen good stores, beside the provincial exchange, a store where the government sells the Igorots what they want at reasonable prices, thus preventing shopkeepers from overcharging them.

Commodious quarters for visiting Igorots and Ifugaos have been provided, and there is a fine market where they may display and sell their products. This market is a busy place.

The population is rapidly increasing, now that head-hunting has practically ceased. The area of cultivated lands steadily grows larger, for the men are freed from the necessity of being constantly under arms, and we are helping them to get more irrigation water, so that they can extend their rice fields.

There are a thousand or so Bontoc Igorots in Benguet to-day, contracting for railroad excavation work. Times have changed.

When Nueva Vizcaya was first organized, its non-Christian inhabitants greatly outnumbered its Filipino population, as there were at least one hundred fifteen thousand Ifugaos in addition to several thousand Ilongots and a few Benguet Igorots, locally known as Isinayes, who had strayed over the boundary line. With the transfer of the Ifugao territory to the Mountain Province, the Filipinos were left in the decided majority. Later all of the Ilongot territory which had previously belonged to the provinces of Isabela, Tayabas, Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan was added to Nueva Vizcaya, in order that the members of this wild and primitive tribe might be brought under one provincial administration.

The Ilongots are a strictly forest-inhabiting people. Many of them have a considerable admixture of Negrito blood and live a semi-nomadic life. Their settlements, which are small and more or less transient, are usually situated in remote and inaccessible places surrounded by the densest jungle. It is at present impracticable to open up horse trails through their country, for the number of inhabitants is so small, in comparison with the area occupied, that such trails could not be built with Ilongot labour, nor indeed could they be maintained even if built. One main trail is, however, being constructed, and it is planned to build foot trails from this to the more important of the settlements which it does not reach.

A special a.s.sistant to the Provincial Governor of Nueva Vizcaya for work among the Ilongots has been appointed and a.s.signed to duty at Baler, on the Pacific coast of Luzon, from which place he can more conveniently reach the Ilongots east of the coast range. These people were very wild at the outset, and it proved difficult to establish friendly relations with them, but this has now been successfully accomplished, and their fear of the white man is largely a thing of the past.

There is a school for Ilongot children at Campote. They prove to be bright, capable pupils.

At the same place there has been established a government exchange, where the Ilongots can sell such articles of their own manufacture as they wish to market, and can purchase what they need at moderate cost.

They still fight more or less with each other, but depredations by them upon Filipinos have ceased.

CHAPTER XXII

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN TRIBES (continued)

The province of Mindoro includes numerous small islands, all peopled by Tagalogs, and the main island of Mindoro, which has a narrow broken fringe of Tagalog settlements along its coast. Its whole interior is populated, so far as it is inhabited at all, by the Mangyans, a primitive semi-nomadic tribe which is of Malayan origin but has considerable Negrito blood. No one knows even approximately how many of them there are, for although the island has been crossed in several different places, much of it is still quite unexplored. In most of the interior regions thus far visited the population is very spa.r.s.e, but one quite thickly settled district has been found. It is believed that the Mangyans number something like 15,000.

The Filipino settlements were so disorderly, filthy, and unhealthy that the energies of the first governor, Captain R. G. Offley, and those of his successor, Captain Louis G. Van Schaick, were to a large extent expended in efforts for the betterment of the Tagalogs. It is a pleasure to record the fact that these efforts met with a very large degree of success.

The condition of most of the Tagalog towns is now good. Mangarin is the chief exception to this statement. Its surroundings are such as to make it impossible successfully to combat malaria, from which every one of its inhabitants suffers. We are still endeavouring to persuade its unfortunate people to move to a healthy site!

Governor Offley did some work for the Mangyans. They have advanced but slightly beyond the Negritos in civilization. Many of them live under shelters not worthy of the name of huts, and in the vicinity of Mt. Halcon even the women are clad only in clouts. Houses are placed singly in the dense forests, or at the most are gathered in very small groups. It proved a most difficult undertaking to persuade any considerable number of Mangyans to gather together and construct decent dwellings. It had been their custom to abandon their forest homes whenever a death occurred, leaving behind all their belongings, and perhaps even changing their names on the theory that their old names were unlucky and new ones might prove advantageous.

With admirable patience Governor Offley organized a little village called Lalauigan on the south coast of Mindoro. Lalauigan has prospered. It is very clean; the houses of its Mangyan residents are quite presentable. The neighbouring fields are planted with corn and rice. It has a school, and the children prove to be apt pupils.

Another Mangyan village, organized near the west coast, was short-lived. The Tagalog Filipinos look with great disfavour on the gathering of the Mangyans into settlements where they can be protected, as this renders it difficult to hold them in a state of peonage. Whenever Governor Offley got a little group together, they did their best to scatter it. In this instance they pa.s.sed the word that smallpox had broken out in a neighbouring Tagalog village. All Mangyans are deathly afraid of this disease, and this particular set built a great fire, jumped through the flames to purify themselves from contagion, took to the hills, and have not been seen since!

While in hearty sympathy with the admirable work which was being done among the Tagalogs, I was dissatisfied with the failure to push explorations in the interior more actively and to get more closely in touch with the wild inhabitants. When the Tagalog settlements had at last been put in really good condition, I gave Governor Van Schaick, who had succeeded Governor Offley, positive instructions that more attention must be paid to the Mangyans. He then began active explorations, and pushed them with considerable success up to the time when he was compelled to tender his resignation by the terms of the Army Appropriation Bill for 1913, which necessitated his return to his regiment. Prior to his departure he succeeded in establishing a new Mangyan village which has continued to prosper up to the present time. His successor, Governor R. E. Walters, was kept from actively pushing exploration work during the past "dry" season, by unprecedented rains.

Road and trail construction began several years ago and is going forward as rapidly as limited funds will permit.

The great trouble with the Tagalogs of Mindoro is that nature has been too kind to them. They have only to plough a bit of ground at the beginning of the rainy season, scatter a little rice on it, and harvest the crop when ripe, to be able to live idly the rest of the year, and too many of them adopt this course. However, some good towns, like Pinamalayan, are waking up as the result of immigration from Marinduque.

Two great services have been rendered to the more orderly of the inhabitants of Mindoro, which was, in Spanish days, a rendezvous for evil-doers from Luzon. Indeed, it was the most disorderly province north of Mindanao. An excellent state of public order has been established, and there has not been an armed ladrone [27] in the province for years. It was famous for its "bad climate." We have shown that its climate is good, making its towns really healthful by merely cleaning them up.

The establishment of a great modern sugar estate on the southwest coast has doubled the daily wage, and given profitable employment to all who wanted to work, and the people are beginning to bestir themselves. The public schools, of which every town has one, are materially a.s.sisting the awakening now in progress.

Palawan, like Mindoro, is made up of one large island, which bears the name of the province, and a number of smaller ones. Indeed, it includes more small islands than does any other province, with the possible exception of Moro.

The bulk of its Christian population are found on the smaller islands, several of which are very thickly settled.

The non-Christian inhabitants are divided between three tribes,--the Moros, Tagbanuas and Bataks. The latter are Negritos of very pure blood. Their number is quite limited. They extend across the island from the east coast to the west in the region north of Bahia Honda.

Until within a short time there have been Moro settlements scattered along both east and west coasts of the southern third of the main island. The Moro population of Palawan is largely composed of renegades who have been driven out of Jolo, Tawi Tawi, Cagayan de Jolo, British North Borneo and Banguey by their own people because of infractions of the laws of their tribe. When the province was organized, they were not cultivating a hectare of land amongst them. They lived in part by fishing, but chiefly on what they stole, or on the products of the labour of the hill people in the interior, many of whom they enslaved or held in a state of peonage, taking their rice and other agricultural products with or without giving compensation, as seemed to them good.

The hill people, who occupy the higher mountains in the interior of southern Palawan, and who in the central and northern portions of the island extend down to the very coast, are known as Paluanes in the south and as Tagbanuas elsewhere. Tagbanuas are also found on Dumaran and Linapacan, and quite generally throughout the Calamianes Islands, especially on Culion and Busuanga. I have failed to discover any real tribal differences between the Paluanes and the Tagbanuas and believe that they should be cla.s.sed as one people, although the Paluanes are more inclined to stand up for their rights than are the Tagbanuas, and by using blow guns and poisoned arrows have succeeded in keeping the Moros out of the interior highlands. They were, however, long forced to trade with the Moros in order to obtain cloth, steel, salt and other things not produced in their own country, and so were at their mercy.

The Tagbanuas are a rather timid and docile people, giving evidence of a considerable amount of Negrito blood. They are at times quite industrious, and raise considerable quant.i.ties of rice and camotes, but live, in part, on fish, game and forest products.

Communication in this province was very difficult. The main island of Palawan, which is some two hundred fifty miles in length and very narrow, extends in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction, and as a result both of its coasts are swept by each monsoon so that there are only about two months of the year when travel by sea in small boats is comfortable and safe. At the outset there was not a mile of trail on the island. This latter condition is being rapidly remedied.

The first governor appointed for the newly established province of Palawan was Lieutenant E. Y. Miller, U. S. A., a man of splendid physique, tireless energy, and indomitable courage.

Governor Miller set to work very actively to better the condition of the Filipinos and to establish friendly and helpful relations with the non-Christians.

The bulk of the Christians are unusually poor and ignorant and many of them were held in a miserable state of peonage by a few caciques. Vigorous efforts extending through a long term of years have weakened the grip of the caciques, but have by no means broken it.

At an early date the new governor won the admiration of the Moros, who like courage, by a series of very brave acts. A number of constabulary soldiers who were coasting along the west sh.o.r.e of Palawan in a sail-boat went ash.o.r.e, leaving their rifles on board guarded by two or three of their comrades. They also left several Moros on the boat, and the latter, watching their opportunity, killed the guards and got away with the rifles, taking them to Dato Tumay, their chief, who armed his people with them.

Governor Miller, with Captain Louden, of the constabulary company concerned, promptly attacked Tumay's place and drove him into the hills. Tumay took refuge in a Tagbanua village, never dreaming that he would be pursued into the mountain fastnesses. Miller and his companions succeeded in getting into the place before Tumay knew they were in the vicinity, and there followed a fight to the death at close quarters. Two soldiers, standing one to the right and one to the left of Governor Miller, were shot dead, but he was not scratched.

On a number of other occasions he displayed a bravery approaching recklessness. Hearing that a fleet of some fifty Moro boats had put to sea on a piratical expedition, he embarked in a twenty-foot launch accompanied only by a captain of constabulary, and the two of them ran down and disarmed the pirates and sent them home. They nearly sank their tiny launch with the dead weight of the weapons which they took on board. The thing seems preposterous, and only Miller's extraordinary moral influence over these unruly people made it humanly possible.

When I visited Palawan on my regular inspection trip in the year 1909, I found Mrs. Miller much worried about her husband, who was absent from the capital, having gone to arrest some Moro murderers at Lara. As usual, he had taken with him only a constabulary captain and three or four soldiers, and Mrs. Miller feared that he might be killed.

I hastened down the coast of the island at the full speed of my steamer, keeping a close watch for his boat, and finally located it at Bonabona, where he had succeeded in arresting several of the criminals. On his way down he had stopped at Lara and had learned that a brother of the local chief, Dato Pula, was responsible for the murder, having ordered it and paid the a.s.sa.s.sins who committed it, one of whom was lurking in the vicinity, while others had gone to Bonabona. Governor Miller called upon Dato Pula to deliver both his brother and the murderer, who was then at Lara, and stated that he would be back on a certain day to receive them. As he insisted on returning at the appointed time and attempting to arrest these men, I took him on my steamer, together with his American companion and one constabulary soldier. The other soldiers remained on his boat to guard the prisoners he had already taken.

We returned to Lara, but were unable to land in front of the town as a heavy surf was thundering on the beach. A mile to the north we found a sheltered spot where we could safely disembark and our little party, consisting of Governor Miller armed with a six-shooter, a constabulary captain armed with a Winchester shotgun and a six-shooter, a constabulary soldier armed with a carbine, ex-Insurgent Colonel Pablo Tecson armed with my double-barrelled shotgun, Governor Pack of the Mountain Province, my brother George S. Worcester, and my stenographer, all of whom were without weapons, and myself carrying an automatic Winchester rifle, marched on the town. Governor Miller sent the soldier ahead to warn the Moros that they must meet us unarmed. A small reception committee did so.

On the very outskirts of Lara we waded a creek nearly up to our necks in water, then marched up the street and entered Pula's house. Just as we did so I saw twenty or thirty fully armed Moros come in on the run and hastily conceal themselves in one of the numerous neighbouring houses. I further promptly discovered that two rooms part.i.tioned off in the corners of the great living room of Pula's house were crowded full of men armed to the teeth, and that a second-story room, immediately under the roof and over our heads, was similarly occupied. I asked Governor Pack quietly to ascertain how many of the houses in the village were occupied by fully equipped fighting men, and he soon informed me that every one of them was packed. We estimated that there were several hundred warriors in town, which meant that Pula had raked the coast of the island north and south for miles and brought in every male Moro big enough to wield a weapon.

We seated ourselves on a table, back to back and facing out, with our own weapons very handy, and had a talk with Pula which lasted until late in the afternoon. Standing within striking distance of us most of the day, were two stalwart Moros, each of whom had a kriss dagger firmly gripped in his right hand and concealed between his folded arms. When one remembers that the average Moro fighter does not seem to know when he is dead, but keeps on doing damage after he ought to be busily occupied in pa.s.sing to the other world, it will be seen that our situation left much to be desired.

Under the pretext of sending for a phonograph with which to entertain the crowd while our negotiations continued, I communicated with the captain of our steamer, advising him of the facts. He got out ammunition for his two one-pounder rapid-fire guns and took up a position immediately in front of the town. We did not ask him for reenforcements, believing that any attempt on his part to send them would precipitate an attack on us.

Never did I pa.s.s a more peculiar, or a more unpleasant, day. Miller steadfastly insisted that Pula's brother and the hired a.s.sa.s.sin be given up. Pula produced two thoroughly cowed Tagbanuas whom he had induced by threats to declare that they had committed the murders, and most emphatically declined to turn over either his brother or the true murderer. Our discussions were punctuated by tunes played on the phonograph which created great excitement among the Moros, some of whom got up and danced to the music!