Chapter 45

Future of the highlanders.--Origin of our effort to improve their condition.--Impolicy of any change in present administration.--Transfer of control of wild tribes to Christianized Filipinos.--Comparison of our course with that of the Japanese in Formosa.

The question now presents itself: What is to become of these highlanders of Northern Luzon? And if the answer to be given is here applied only to them, let it be distinctly understood that logically the question may be put in respect of all the wild people of the Philippines. Of these there are over one million in a total population of perhaps eight millions. At once it appears that any conclusions we may draw, any speculations we may cherish, in respect of the Archipelago, as being inhabited by a Christian people unjustly deprived of liberty by us, must be subject to a very large and important correction. Limiting our inquiry to Luzon alone, let it be recollected that of its 4,000,000 population nearly four hundred thousand, or one-tenth, are highlanders, and that these highlanders, in all probability, arrived in the Islands at an earlier date than their Christianized cousins of the lowlands. Let us recollect further that these people are ethnologically not savages at all; not only are they workers in steel and wood, weavers of cloth, but hydraulic agriculturists of the very highest merit. On the side of moral qualities they invite our approving attention: they speak the truth, they look one straight in the eye, they are hospitable, courageous, and uncomplaining; their women are on a footing of equality, more or less, with the men, and are respected by them. Where they have had an opportunity, they have shown an aptitude to learn of no mean quality. Physically they are the best people of the Archipelago, and under this head would be remarkable anywhere else in the world. Now, the Spaniards, with a few exceptions, made no systematic, continuous attempt to civilize these peoples; or, if they did, no measurable results have come down to our own day, even Villaverde's efforts, genuine as they were, having left almost no trace. So far from having done anything for the hillmen, the record of the Spanish at the very few points garrisoned by them is one of injustice and robbery, and worse. That of the Filipinos, [45] in imitation of their Spanish masters, is no better. At any rate, when we took over the Archipelago in 1898, a vast area of Luzon was held by a people who looked, and justly, so far as their experience had gone, upon the white man and his Filipino understudy as an enemy. The difficulty of guiding and controlling these people undoubtedly had been (and still is) great, and partly accounts for the state of affairs we encountered when we first entered the country, but it was necessarily no greater for our predecessors in the Islands than it has been for us. Now, where they failed, we, it may be said without fear of contradiction, are succeeding, and it is but the simplest act of justice to say that the credit for our success belongs to the Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine Islands, Mr. Dean C. Worcester. He would be the last man on earth to say that his success is complete; on the contrary, he would assert that a very great quantity of work yet remains to be done, and that what he has done so far is but the beginning. But it is nevertheless a successful beginning, and successful because it rests on the solid foundation of honesty and fair dealing, and is inspired by interest in and sympathy for a vast body of people universally hated and feared by the Filipino, and until lately neglected and misunderstood by almost everybody else.

The physical difficulty alone of reaching these various peoples was not only very great, but mere presence in their country involved great risk of one's life. Again, the absence of even the rudest form of tribal organization made the way hard. Take the Ifugaos, for example, about 120,000 in number, all speaking essentially the same language, inhabiting the same country, and having the same origins and traditions. Yet this large body was and is yet broken up into separate _rancherías_, or settlements, each formerly hostile to all the others, this hostility being so great that merely to walk into a neighboring _ranchería_ in plain sight, not more than two miles off across the valley, was a sure way to commit suicide. And what is true of the Ifugaos is true of all the others. Could any other field have been more unpromising, have offered more difficulties? There were those thousands of savages shut up in their all but inaccessible mountains. Why not leave them there, to take one another's heads when occasion offered? They raised nothing but rice and sweet potatoes, anyway, and not enough of those to keep from going hungry. Why concern one's self about them, when there was already so much to be done elsewhere?

To Mr. Worcester's everlasting honor, be it said, he took no such view. On the contrary, he went to work, and that after a simple fashion, but then, all great things are simple! The first thing was to see the people himself; and then came the beginning of the solution, to push practicable roads and trails through the country. Once these established, communication and interchange would follow, and the way would be cleared for the betterment of relations and the removal of misunderstandings. Today an American may ride through the country alone, unarmed and unmolested; [46] twenty years ago a Spaniard trying the same thing would have lost his head within the first five miles. And this difference is fundamentally due to the fact, already mentioned, of the honesty of our relations with these simple mountaineers. We have their confidence and their esteem and their respect, and this in spite of the necessity under which our authorities have constantly labored of punishing them when necessary and of insisting upon law and order wherever our jurisdiction prevails. The lesson has been hard to learn, but it has been driven home. The truth of the matter is, that a great missionary work has been begun; missionary not in the limited sense of forcing upon the understanding of a yet circumscribed people a religion unintelligible to them, but in the sense of teaching peace and harmony, respect for order, obedience to law, regard for the rights of others.

A beginning accordingly has been made, but what is to be the end? We should not stay for an answer, could we but feel sure that but one answer were possible. But we can not feel sure on this head; the people of the Islands, whether civilized or uncivilized, have not yet gone far enough to proceed alone. To drop the work now, nay, to lessen it, would merely be inviting a return to former evil conditions. No greater disaster could befall these highlanders to-day than a change entailing a diminution of the interest and sympathy felt for them at the seat of government. It is best to be plain about this matter: the Filipinos of the lowlands dislike the highlander as much as they fear and dread him. They apparently can not bear the idea that but three or four hundred years ago they too were barbarians; [47] for this reason the consideration of the highlander is distasteful and offensive to them. The appropriations of the Philippine Assembly for the necessary administration of the Mountain Province are none too great; they would cease entirely could the Assembly have its own way in the matter. The system of communications, so well begun and already so productive of happy results, would come to an end. To turn the destiny of the highlander over to the lowlander is, figuratively speaking, simply to write his sentence of death; to condemn as fair a land as the sun shines on to renewed barbarism. We are shut up to this conclusion, not by theoretical considerations, but by experience. The matter is worth examining a little closely, covering, as it does, not only the hill tribes, but non-Christians everywhere else.

Certain persons have demanded from time to time that the control of non-Christian tribes shall be turned over to the Filipinos. Now, pointing out in passing that the Filipinos and the non-Christians are distinct peoples, fully as distinct as the Dutch and the Germans, and that the Filipinos have no just claim to the ownership of the territory occupied by the wild men, let us ask ourselves if the Filipinos are able and fit to control the non-Christian tribes. [48]

Consider for a moment the facts set out in the following extracts:

"With rare exceptions, the Filipinos are profoundly ignorant of the wild men and their ways. They seem to have failed to grasp the fact that the non-Christians, who have been contemptuously referred to in the Filipino press as a 'few thousand savages asking only to be let alone,' number approximately a million and constitute a full eighth of the population of the Archipelago."

"The average hillman hates the Filipinos on account of the abuses which his people have suffered at their hands, and despises them because of their inferior physical development and their comparatively peaceful disposition, while the average Filipino who has ever come in close contact with wild men despises them on account of their low social development, and, in the case of the more warlike tribes, fears them because of their past record for taking sudden and bloody vengeance for real or fancied wrongs."

"It is impossible to avoid plain speaking if this question is to be intelligently discussed; and the hard fact is, that wherever the Filipinos have come in close contact with the non-Christian inhabitants, the latter have almost invariably suffered at their hands grave wrongs, which the more warlike tribes, at least, have been quick to avenge. Thus a wall of prejudice and hatred has been built up between the Filipinos and the non-Christian tribes. It is a noteworthy fact that hostile feeling toward the Filipinos is strong even among people like the Tinguians who, barring their religious beliefs, are in many ways as highly civilized as are their Ilocano neighbors,"

"The success of American rule over the non-Christian tribes of the Philippines is chiefly due to the friendly feeling which has been brought about."

"The wild man has now learned for the first time that he has rights entitled to a respect other than that which he can enforce with his lance and his head-axe. He has found justice in the courts. His property and his life have been made safe, and the American governor, who punishes him sternly when he kills, is his friend and protector so long as he behaves himself."

"Finally, it should be clearly borne in mind that the Filipinos have been given an excellent opportunity to demonstrate practically their interest in the non-Christians, and their ability wisely to direct the affairs of primitive peoples. While the inhabitants of the Mountain Province, Nueva Vizcaya, Agusan, and the Moro Province are not now subject to control by them, and the inhabitants of Mindoro and Palawan are subject to their control only through the Philippine Legislature, there are non-Christian inhabitants in the provinces of Cagayán, Isabela [and eighteen others].

"At the outset, these governors and provincial boards [_i.e._, of the provinces just mentioned] exercised over their non-Christian constitutents precisely the same control they had over Filipinos. To the best of my knowledge and belief, not one single important measure looking to the betterment of the condition of these non-Christian inhabitants was ever inaugurated by a Filipino during this period. Indeed, the fact that no expense would be voluntarily incurred for them became so evident as to render necessary the passage, on December 16, 1905, of an act setting aside a portion of the public revenues for the exclusive benefit of the non-Christians.

"After Apayao was established as a sub-province of Cagayán and the duty of providing funds for the maintenance of its government was explicitly imposed upon the provincial board of that province, the governor stated to me that, in his opinion, it would be useless to make the necessary expenditure, and that, in his opinion, it would be better to kill all the savages in Apayao! As they number some 52,000, this method of settling their affairs would have been open to practical difficulties, apart from any humanitarian consideration!"

"Contrast with this record of inaction and lack of interest the record of the special Government provinces [49] and the Moro Province, where dwell really formidable tribes, which have until recently engaged in piracy, head-hunting, and murder. Here very extensive lines of communication have been opened up by the building of roads and trails and the clearing of rivers. A good state of public order has been established. Head-hunting, slavery, and piracy are now very rare. The liquor traffic has been almost completely suppressed. Life and property have been rendered comparatively safe, and in much of the territory entirely so. In many instances, the wild men are being successfully used to police their own country. Agriculture is being developed. Unspeakably filthy towns have been made clean and sanitary. The people are learning to abandon human sacrifices and animal sacrifices and to come to the doctor when injured or