The Philippines: Past and Present Volume II Part 12

Luzon 3,575,001 223,506 3,798,507 Panay 728,713 14,933 743,646 Cebu 592,247 592,247 Bohol 243,148 243,148 Negros 439,559 21,217 460,776 Leyte 357,641 357,641 Samar 222,002 688 222,690 Mindanao 246,694 252,940 499,634

"I think the above table makes clear the enormity of the injustice I am now trying to crucify. Without stopping to use your pencil, you can see that Mindanao, the island where the 'intractable Moros' Governor Forbes speaks of live, contains about a half million people. Half of these are civilized Christians, and the other half are the wild, crudely Mohammedan Moro tribes. Above Mindanao on the above list, you behold what practically is the Philippine archipelago (except Mindanao), viz. Luzon and the six main Visayan Islands. If you will turn back to pages 225 et seq., especially to page 228, where the student of world politics was furnished with all he needs or will ever care to know about the geography of the Philippine Islands you will there find all the rocks sticking out of the water and all the little daubs you see on the map eliminated from the equation as wholly unessential to a clear understanding of the problem of governing the Islands. That process of elimination left us Luzon and the six main Visayan Islands above as const.i.tuting, for all practical governmental purposes all the Philippine archipelago except the Moro country Mindanao (i.e. parts of it), and its adjacent islets. Luzon and the Visayan Islands contain nearly 7,000,000 of people, and of these the wild tribes, as you can see by a glance at the above table const.i.tute less than 300,000, sprinkled in the pockets of their various mountain regions. Nearly all these 300,000 are quite tame, peaceable and tractable, except, as Governor Forbes suggests, they 'might possibly mistake the object of a visit.'" [41]

This is all very well unless you take the Judge at his word and turn to the page of the census report referred to, but if you do this a rude shock awaits you, for instead of the table above quoted the following is the table which you will find:--

Table 1.--Total Population, Cla.s.sified as Civilized and Wild, by Provinces and Comandancias.

Province or Comandancia Total Population Civilized Wild Philippine Islands 7,635,426 6,987,686 647,740 Abra 51,860 37,823 14,037 Albay 240,326 239,434 892 Ambos Camarines 239,405 233,472 5,933 Antique 134,166 131,245 2,921 Basilan 30,179 1,331 28,848 Bataan 46,787 45,166 1,621 Batangas 257,715 257,715 ---- Benguet 22,745 917 21,828 Bohol 269,223 269,223 ---- Bulacan 223,742 223,327 415 Cagayan 156,239 142,825 13,414 Capiz 230,721 225,092 5,629 Cavite 134,779 134,779 ---- Cebu 653,727 653,727 ---- Cotabato 125,875 2,313 123,562 Dapitan 23,577 17,154 6,423 Davao 65,496 20,224 45,272 Ilocos Norte 178,995 176,785 2,210 Ilocos Sur 187,411 173,800 13,611 Iloilo 410,315 403,932 6,383 Isabela 76,431 68,793 7,638 Jolo 51,389 1,270 50,119 La Laguna 148,606 148,606 ---- La Union 137,839 127,789 10,050 Lepanto-Bontoc 72,750 2,467 70,283 Leyte 388,922 388,922 ---- Manila City 219,928 219,928 ---- Marinduque [42] 51,674 51,674 ---- Masbate 43,675 43,675 ---- Mindoro 39,582 32,318 7,264 Misamis 175,683 135,473 40,210 Negros Occidental 308,272 303,660 4,612 Negros Oriental 201,494 184,889 16,605 Nueva Ecija 134,147 132,999 1,148 Nueva Vizcaya 62,541 16,026 46,515 Pampanga 223,754 222,656 1,098 Pangasinan 397,902 394,516 3,386 Paragua 29,351 27,493 1,858 Paragua Sur 6,345 1,359 4,986 Rizal 150,923 148,502 2,421 Romblon 52,848 52,848 ---- Samar 266,237 265,549 688 Sia.s.si 24,562 297 24,265 Sorsogon 120,495 120,454 41 Surigao 115,112 99,298 15,814 Tarlac 135,107 133,513 1,594 Tawi Tawi 14,638 93 14,545 Tayabas [43] 153,065 150,262 2,803 Zambales 104,549 101,381 3,168 Zamboanga 44,322 20,692 23,630

From this it will be apparent to the reader that the Judge takes some rather unusual liberties even with such information as was available nine years before he finished his book. I have quoted the actual table in full, as it is useful for reference.

In the middle of the page referred to by Blount there begins another table showing "Total Population, Cla.s.sified as Civilized and Wild, by Islands." This table occupies four and one-half solid pages, and therefore does not closely resemble the one foisted on the public by him.

It includes 323 islands, from which the Judge has selected eight which happened to suit his purpose, giving it to be clearly understood that the islands which he has not included are "rocks sticking out of the water" and "little daubs you see on the map" "eliminated from the equation as wholly unessential to a clear understanding of the problem of governing the Islands."

Among the "rocks" and "little daubs" thus eliminated are Mindoro with an area of thirty-eight hundred fifty-one square miles, and Palawan with an area of four thousand twenty-seven square miles. Of the islands included, Leyte has twenty-seven hundred twenty-two square miles; Cebu, seventeen hundred sixty-two square miles; and Bohol, fourteen hundred eleven square miles. Incidentally, neither Leyte, Cebu nor Bohol have any non-Christian inhabitants at all, while all of Mindoro and Palawan, with the exception of narrow broken strips along the coast are populated by wild people, hence it is convenient for him to ignore them.

In spite of his suggestion that it is not necessary to use the pencil in connection with his table, I ventured to do so, in connection with his statement that "Luzon and the Visayan Islands contain nearly 7,000,000 of people." On his own showing they contain 6,158,311.

And now for the real facts. At the time the census enumeration was made Apayao had been crossed by a white man only once and that more than a hundred years ago. Extensive portions of Ifugao and Bontoc, and the greater part of Kalinga, were unexplored, as were the interior of Mindoro and most of the interior of Palawan, to say nothing of immense regions in Mindanao. As a matter of fact, we do not to-day know with any accuracy the number of Mangyans in Mindoro, nor the number of Tagbanuas in Palawan, but it has been conclusively demonstrated that the latter were greatly underestimated by the census enumerators. There will be found in the appendix [44] a table giving in detail the present accepted estimate of the non-Christian population of the islands, which numbers at least a million seventy thousand.

It is reasonably certain that the necessary corrections in the figures for several provinces for which the present estimates are admittedly too low will raise the total slightly.

Blount has made a further statement relative to the non-Christian population of Luzon which is indeed extraordinary. He says:--

"Of the 7,600,000 people of the Philippines almost exactly one-half, i.e. 3,800,000, live on Luzon, and these are practically all civilized." [45]

The table on the opposite page, giving the census estimate of the non-Christian population of Luzon and the present accepted estimate, shows how erroneous is this statement.

It will be seen that the census estimate of non-Christian inhabitants in the province of Luzon was 224,106 and the present accepted estimate is 440,926.

In explanation of his extraordinary statement that practically all of the people of Luzon are civilized Blount has inserted the following foot-note:--

"223,506 is the total of the uncivilized tribes still extant in Luzon, Philippine Census, vol. ii., p. 125, but they live in the mountains, and you might live in the Philippines a long lifetime without ever seeing a sample of them, unless you happen to be an energetic ethnologist fond of mountain climbing." [46]

Province or Census Present Accepted Subprovince Estimate Estimate

Abra 14,037 14,037 Albay 892 892 Amburayan -- 10,191 Ambos Camarines 5,933 5,933 Apayao -- 23,000 Bataan 1,621 1,621 Batangas 000 000 Benguet 21,828 28,449 Bontoc -- 62,000 Bulacan 415 415 Cagayan 13,414 15,000 Cavite 000 000 Ilocos Norte 2,210 2,210 Ilocos Sur 13,611 13,611 Ifugao -- 125,000 Isabela 7,638 (?) Kalinga -- 76,000 La Laguna 000 (?) La Union 10,050 000 Lepanto -- 31,194 Lepanto-Bontoc 70,283 000 Nueva Ecija 1,148 862 Nueva Vizcaya 46,515 6,000 Pampanga 1,098 1,098 Pangasinan 3,386 3,386 Rizal 2,421 2,421 Sorsogon 41 41 Tarlac 1,594 1,594 Tayabas 2,803 2,803 Zambales 3,168 3,168 Total 224,106 440,926

Also you might live in the Philippines a long lifetime and never see anything but wild people. The question of where they live is not intimately connected with that of their number, which is the point under discussion.

Blount devotes considerable s.p.a.ce to alleged newspaper accounts of "a speech" said by him to have been delivered by me in the Y. M. C. A. auditorium at Manila. I delivered two ill.u.s.trated lectures there, ent.i.tled respectively "The Non-Christian Tribes of the Philippines," and "What has been done for the Non-Christian Tribes under American Rule."

In the course of the latter discourse I made the point that Filipinos who claim that conquest confers no right of sovereignty are hoist with their own petard, for the simple but sufficient reason that the Negritos were the aborigines of the Philippines and were later conquered and driven out of the lowland country into inaccessible, forested mountain regions by the Malay invaders who were the ancestors of the present Filipino claimants not only to the territory thus conquered, but to territory which was held up to the time of the American occupation by wild tribes whom they now propose to conquer and rule if given the opportunity!

My shaft struck home and called forth a howl of rage from the politicians, which was the louder because I further expressed with entire frankness my firm belief that the Filipinos were unfit to govern the non-Christian tribes, whether or not they were fit to govern themselves.

In the course of further reference to the above-mentioned lecture, Blount says:--

"Another of the Manila papers gives an account of the speech, from which it appears that the burly Professor succeeded in amusing himself at least, if not his audience, by suggestions as to the superior fighting qualities of the Moros over the Filipinos, which suggestions were on the idea that the Moros would lick the Filipinos if we should leave the country. (The Moros number 300,000, the Filipinos nearly 7,000,000.) The Professor's remarks in this regard, according to the paper, were a distinct reflection upon the courage of the Filipinos generally as a people." [47]

Here, as is so often the case, he finds newspaper statements more suited to his purpose than cold facts. I yield to no one in my admiration for the courage of Filipinos, and have expressed it on a score of occasions. In my first book on the Philippines I made the following reference to it:--

"I once saw a man in Culion who was seamed and gashed with horrible scars from head to foot. How any one could possibly survive such injuries as he had received I do not know. It seemed that his wife and children had been butchered by four Moros while he was absent. He returned just as the murderers were taking to their boat. s.n.a.t.c.hing a machete, he plunged into the water after them, clambered into their prau, and killed them all. When one remembers the sort of weapons that Moros carry, the thing seems incredible, but a whole village full of people vouched for the truth of the story." [48]

This was not the only tribute which I paid to the courage of the Filipinos [49] and I have never made a statement intended to reflect on it in the slightest degree. It is true that their fighting ability is on the average far below that of the Moros, and I may add that the same thing holds for Americans on the average.

It is really funny to see how Blount sometimes tells the truth in spite of himself. He takes me to task for amusing myself "by suggestions as to the superior fighting qualities of the Moros over the Filipinos,"

and here is what he says on the same subject:--

"Again, because the Filipinos have no moral right to control the Moros, and could not if they would, the latter being fierce fighters and bitterly opposed to the thought of possible ultimate domination by the Filipinos, the most uncompromising advocate of the consent-of-the-governed principle has not a leg to stand on with regard to Mohammedan Mindanao." [50]

"Consistency, thy name is not Blount!"

The Moros are religious fanatics. I have known one when bayoneted to seize the barrel of the gun and push the bayonet through himself in order to bring the man at the other end within striking distance, cut him down, unclasp the bayonet and, leaving it in the wound to prevent hemorrhage, go on fighting. I have known two Moros armed with bamboo lances to attack a column of two thousand soldiers armed with rifles. It is an historic fact that Moro juramentados [51] once attempted to rush the walls of Jolo and kept up the fruitless effort until they blocked with their dead bodies the rifle slits, so that it became necessary for the Spanish soldiers to take positions on top of the walls in order to fire. I have known a Moro, shot repeatedly through the body and with both legs broken, to take his kriss in his teeth and pull himself forward with his hands in the hope of getting near enough to strike one more blow for the Prophet.

The Filipinos are afraid of the Moros and they have the best of reasons to be. The relative numerical insignificance of this little Mohammedan tribe of desperate fighters has little to do with the question under consideration. Their number has for centuries borne substantially the same proportion to the total population of the Philippines which it now bears, yet no one can deny that it is but a short time since they harried the archipelago from south to north and from east to west. The sh.o.r.es of Northern Luzon and the neighbouring islands are to-day dotted with the forts which were built for defence against them. The town of Polillo, on the northernmost island off the east coast of Luzon, is still surrounded by a high wall built to protect its inhabitants from the Moros. The churches at Cuyo, Agutaya, Culion, Linapacan and Taytay stand inside of strong stone fortresses in which the people took refuge when the Moros descended on their towns. Back of Bacuit a cave high up in a cliff was kept provisioned that it might serve a similar purpose. Not only were the Filipinos unable to protect themselves against these bloodthirsty pirates of the south, but the Spaniards were for nearly two and a half centuries unable to afford them adequate protection. When I was in Tawi Tawi in 1891 the Moros of that island were still actively engaged in taking Filipino slaves and selling them in Borneo.

With all of our resources we have not as yet been able to establish a decent state of public order in the little island of Jolo. No serious minded person, familiar with the facts, with whom I have ever talked, believes for a moment that the Filipinos could establish an effective government over the Moros, or could keep them at home. They are wonderful boatmen and when once at sea in the little crafts of their own building are liable to strike the coast of the Philippine Islands at any point. When it is remembered that this coast is longer than that of the continental United States, the impossibility of adequately protecting the whole of it becomes immediately manifest. It would be always possible, under Filipino rule, for the Moros to strike defenceless towns, and where they struck the only resource of the inhabitants, whether Filipinos, Europeans or Americans, would be in speedy flight. It should be borne in mind that one Mohammedan who is earnestly desirous of being killed while fighting Christians can chase a good many unarmed citizens into the tall timber, brave though they may be!

I venture here once more to express the deliberate opinion that if American control were withdrawn from these islands and some other civilized nation did not interfere to restore a decent state of public order, the Moros would resume the conquest of the Philippines which they were so actively and effectively pushing when the Spaniards compelled them to abandon it, and would slowly but none the less surely carry it through to a successful termination.

The inaccuracy of Blount's statements regarding matters covered by absolutely conclusive doc.u.mentary evidence is well typified by the following:--

"The Philippine a.s.sembly, representing the whole Filipino people, and desiring to express the unanimous feeling of those people with regard to the Worcester speech, unanimously pa.s.sed, soon after the speech was delivered, a set of resolutions whereof the following is a translation." [52]

The resolution which he quotes was never pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly which on February 3, 1911, four months after my Y. M. C. A. lecture, [53] and while I was absent in the United States, pa.s.sed another and quite different one criticizing language "ascribed" to me, without ever making any effort to ascertain from me what was really said. I might quote the two in parallel columns, but I grow weary of showing the details of Blount's false or mistaken statements, and refer those interested to the official records which he perhaps did not take the precaution to consult.

I gave the a.s.sembly and every one else interested in the matter a chance to attack me by incorporating in my annual report for 1910 every important statement made at the lecture in question and by adding various new ones for good measure, but there was no response! It is a time-honoured procedure, but one of somewhat doubtful real value, to build up a man of straw in order to have the pleasure of tearing it to pieces. I must decline to a.s.sume responsibility for statements which I did not make.

Blount says he thinks that Nueva Vizcaya is my