Centuries before Spanish discovery the Filipinos were in regular intercourse with the neighboring countries of China, Japan, Borneo, and others. In the work of Chao Ju-kua, a Chinese geographer of the thirteenth century, there is a chapter on Philippine trade, from which we learn that the “foreign traders import porcelain, commercial gold, iron vases for perfumes, leaden objects, glass, pearls of all colors, iron needles,”1 black damask, and other silk fabrics, fish nets, and tin, and also silk umbrellas, and a kind of basket woven from rattan. In exchange, the Filipinos exported cotton (perhaps the “kapok” or tree cotton), yellow wax, strange [39]cloth (foreign cloth: sinamay, a light fabric made from abacá,—and other textiles of the country.—Blumentritt’s note), coconuts, onions, (camotes?—Blumentritt’s note), and fine mats; also pearls, shells (i. e., tortoise-shell.—Blumentritt’s note), betelnuts, and jute (yuta) textiles. (Yu-ta seems to be the abacá.—Blumentritt’s note).2 [40]

Hardly had wealth been created by the commerce of the first years after the conquest, when the policy of restriction found its strong supporters in the merchants of Cadiz and Seville, who, accustomed to monopolize the trade with America, looked with jealous eyes upon the rapidly growing prosperity of Manila, the new center of trade. The cotton and silk cloths from China were underselling in Mexico those coming from Spain and Peru, and a good deal of the silver was going, not to Spain, but to the East; hence, the long drawn-out rivalry between Manila, on the one hand, and Cadiz, and Seville, on the other, with America as a third party, also working for her own interest. This commercial activity was the phenomenon which dominated the Philippines for over two centuries, and had such marked influence upon its whole economic development.

Before giving the various decrees passed from time to time to regulate this commerce, it is advisable to discuss the arguments advanced by the two sides. The Spanish merchants contended that the competition of goods coming from the East would destroy the manufactures on the Peninsula; and, further, that the sending of silver to the Orient, would drain the supply available for Spain, and, therefore, in accordance with the mercantilist doctrine, should be prevented. Manila answered by saying that the goods that she exported to New Spain were different from those coming from Spain; therefore, there was really no competition between them. In other words, the demand for either kind of goods was separate from, and independent of, the demand for the other.1 Other arguments were advanced to prove that [51]Manila should be treated with consideration; the driving out of the Dutch from the Moluccas by the Philippine government,2 the preservation of the missionary conquests in the Far East,3 and the maintenance of the prestige of the Spanish crown,4 all of these would result from the maintenance of the Philippines, by making it possible for her to support herself with the galleon trade. These, added to the fact that the trade with New Spain was not so profitable as commonly reported5 on account of the many perils involved in it, entitled Manila to a more liberal treatment.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century there were events which indicated the coming of greater liberty. Direct communication was established in 1765 between Manila and Spain by means of a warship which was to sail annually from Cadiz, with European goods, and to come back loaded, not only with the products of the Philippines, but also with Oriental merchandise, including goods from China and Japan. However, the innovation was not well received in Manila, due perhaps to the monopolistic habit of the merchants, and, in 1783, these annual voyages were discontinued.1

The coming of Governor José de Basco y Vargas marked a new era in the economic history of the country, for two important events happened during his term: the establishment of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del Pais, in 1781, and of the Real Compañía de Filipinas, in 1785. These may be considered to be the most serious attempts of Spain throughout her rule, to develop the natural resources of the Philippines.

Pre-Spanish Philippine History during the first years of the conversion-conquest was tabooed because of its pagan and infidel associations. Whatever had to do with the past, the many records there must have been in a land where literacy is reported to have been general, was religiously destroyed by the missionaries. Likewise the converts, and it was almost an unanimous conversion, were exhorted to banish from their memories all traditions and recollections as they valued their immortal souls. Thus was repeated, on a much larger scale and more effectively, the Christianizing of England’s Saxons.

The possibility of classical references to the archipelago had at first to be generally ignored, even had the early European comers been educated men, which for the most part they were not. Spain’s occupation was based on discovery from the New World and it would have been considered like championing Portugal’s rival claims to circulate accounts of earlier Asiatic associations.

The contempt in which the Chinese were held acted to prevent much mention of their former knowledge of the islands though scanty references, apparently unwittingly, have occasionally crept into some of the first chronicles.

Similarly a prejudice consequent upon the 1762–3 occupation of Manila banned English histories of the Indian Archipelago. Then during the last decades of Spain’s [78]final century of rule her apologists sought to minimize the lamentable lack of progress since the first few decades by ascribing savagery to the people Legaspi found.

A suggestion of the antagonism to historical research appears in the frequent assertions of Spanish writers from 1888 to 1898 that the only Philippine history was the chapter of Spanish history dealing with Spain in the Philippines. More emphatic proof is the bitter criticism of the early Spanish historian Morga whose 1609 “Events in the Philippines” Doctor Rizal was blamed for republishing. That Spaniards were not ignorant of the Philippines’ past may be proved by Raimundo Geler, who, in a book issued in Madrid during the liberal régime of 1869, made a brief summary of what foreign writers had gleaned from Arabian sources about the early Filipinos, but with the return of the Bourbon dynasty to power he had to withdraw his work from circulation till the claim is made that only a single copy remains.

Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt, the Austrian professor, seems to have pioneered in applying modern critical methods to extract the true narrative from conflicting early authorities, in the later 1880s. Isabelo de los Reyes, a Filipino born in the Ilocos provinces, tried to make deductions to fill out this narrative and supplemented it with materials from folk-lore. Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera, another Filipino, sought the aid of philology, dealing with the considerable Sanscrit element in the local dialects. To Juan Luna, also a Filipino, belongs the credit for the first essays in Philippine historical paintings, for he availed himself of European museums to depict his characters in the real costumes of their times. And Mariano Ponce, in the Filipino students’ Madrid review La Solidaridad, popularized the chief events and prominent personalities of the conquest period.

Dr. José Rizal, greatest of all Filipinos, however, excelled all the rest. His is the first history from the Filipino view point (to be found in The Philippines a Century Hence, The Indolence of the Filipinos, and his annotations to Morga’s History). His was the first systematic work by a Filipino in zoology, philology, and ethnology as aids to history; and as well his was the earliest Filipino interest in the Chinese records referring [79]to these Islands. It was in 1887, in Dresden, Germany, that Rizal conferred with Dr. A. B. Meyer and Professor Blumentritt on the Chua Ju-Kua account of Manila in the middle of the thirteenth century which had just been translated by Dr. Friedrich Hirth, an extract from the work begun in 1885 and continuing over ten years.

By Elsdon Best

(Polynesian Society, Journal, Vol. 1)

When a powerful and highly civilized nation comes in contact with a barbaric and isolated people, who have nevertheless advanced many steps on the road of progress, it would naturally be thought that the superior and conquering race would endeavor to collect and place on record information concerning such people: their manners, customs, language, religion, and traditions. Unfortunately, in the case of the Spanish conquests of the XVI century, that nation appears never to have considered it a duty to hand down to posterity any detailed description of the singularly interesting races they had vanquished. As it was with the Gaunches of the Canaries, the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Quichuas of Peru, so was it with the Chamorro of the Ladrones, and the Tagalog-Bisayan tribes of the Philippines. The same vandal spirit that prompted the conquistadores to destroy the Maya and Aztec literature also moved them to demolish the written records of the Philippine natives, and but few attempts were made to preserve relics or information concerning them. The Spanish priests, as the lettered men of those times, were the persons we should look to for such a work, but in their religious ardor they thought only of the subjugation and conversion of the natives, and so, with the sword in one hand and crucifix in the other, they marched through that fair land ignoring and destroying the evidences of a strange semi-civilization which should have been to them a study of the deepest interest. Fortunately, however, there were a few in that period who were interested in such matters, and who wrote accounts of the state of culture of the islanders of that early date. Some of these MSS. have been preserved in the archives of Manila and have lately attracted the attention of Spanish scholars.

Such is the article from which the greater part of these notes is taken. In the volume for 1891 of the Revista Ibero-Americana, published at Madrid, there appeared a series of papers contributed by the Bishop of Oviedo, and entitled La antigua civilización de las Islas Filipinas, in which he gives a very interesting description of the natives and their mode of life. The source of this information is an old folio manuscript written on rice-paper in the year 1610 [80]from data collected at the period of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines by Legaspi. It is extended to the year 1606, and relates minutely the condition of the islanders prior to the arrival of the Spanish. The codex is divided into five books, and these again into 183 capitulos, or chapters. The writer lived in the group for twenty-nine years in order to complete his work, which is authorised by authentic signatures of responsible persons. Extracts have also been made from Miguel de Loarca’s account of the Philippines written in 1583, Dampier’s voyage in the Pinkerton collection, and Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.

The first historical existence of the Malay proper is traced to Menangkabau in the Island of Sumatra, from whence they have spread over the islands of the East India Archipelago, and by their vigor, energy and skill have made themselves masters of the original inhabitants. At an early period they probably received instruction from Hindoo immigrants in the arts of working metals, spinning, weaving, etc. As to the whence of the various Malayan tribes of the Philippines, it is most probable that they originally reached the Archipelago from Borneo, or the Malay Peninsula. From northern Borneo the Sulu islands form a series of stepping stones across to Mindanao. As the Tagalog language is looked upon as one of the purest of Malay dialects, and contains the least number of Sanscrit words, it may be inferred from this that the race has occupied the islands from an early date. It is possible that the first settlers were carried thither by ocean currents, and that the Kuro Siwo, or Black Current, which sweeps up past Luzon, is also responsible for the existence of the Kabaran (a Malay tribe) in Formosa. From ancient times boats and men have drifted up from the Malay Islands to Japan, and W. E. F. Griffis, in his “Mikado’s Empire,” states that Shikoku and Kiushiu were inhabited by a mixed race descended from a people who had come from Malaysia and southeast Asia. It is most probable that Micronesia was settled from the Philippine Group, which thus became the meeting ground of the northern migration of Polynesians from Samoa, and the Micronesians proper. The Spanish codex before mentioned states that the Tagalog-Bisayan tribes were thought to be derived from the coast of Malabar and Malacca, and that, according to tradition, they arrived at the islands in small vessels called barangayan under the direction of dato or maguinoo (chiefs or leaders), who retained their chieftainship after the landing as the basis of a social organization of a tribal kind, and that every barangay (district or tribal division) was composed of about fifty families. Nothing definite appears to have been obtained from their traditions as to the original habitat of the race, and this may be accounted for by the supposition that the migration occurred at a remote period, and that all knowledge of their former home was lost. When a migratory race takes possession of new regions it maintains little or no correspondence with those left behind; thus in time they forget their old habitations, and their geographical knowledge is reduced to obscure and fading traditions.

On arriving at their new home the invaders must have ejected the indigenous Aieta from the low-lying country, and driven them back into the mountains. Juan de Salcedo, the Cortes of the Philippines, [81]in his triumphal march round the island of Luzon, was unable to conquer many of the hill tribes, both Aieta and Tagalog, some of whom have remained independent until the present time. The Spanish Government forbade all intercourse with these mountaineers, on pain of one hundred lashes and two years’ imprisonment, and this edict had the effect of preserving the ruder, non-agricultural hill-races.

This invading race of Malays was divided into many different tribes, the principal ones being the Tagalog of Luzon and the Bisayan of the southern isles. The Tagalog, or Ta-Galoc, were the most numerous, and were endowed with all the valor and politeness which can be expected in a semi-civilized people. The Pampangan and Camarine tribes were noted for their generosity. The Cagayans were a brave people, but easily civilized. The Bisayans were also called Pintados, or “painted ones,” by the Spanish, from their custom of tattooing the body. Within this community of tribes there are numerous differences of dialects and customs, clothing, character, and physical structure, which in many cases indicate obvious traces of foreign mixture.

As a race, the Philippine natives of the Malayan tribes are of moderate stature, well-formed, and of a coppery-red color, or, as Morga quaintly describes them, “They were of the color of boiled quinces, having a clever disposition for anything they undertook: sharp, choleric, and resolute.” Both men and women were in the habit of anointing and perfuming their long black hair, which they wore gathered in a knot or roll on the back of the head. The women, who were of pleasing appearance, adorned their hair with jewels, and also wore ear-pendants and finger-rings of gold. The men had little or no beard, and both sexes were distinguished for their large, black eyes. The Zambales, or Beheaders, shaved the front part of the head, and wore on the skull a great lock of loose hair, which custom also obtained among the ancient Chamorro of the Ladrones. Most of the tribes filed their teeth, and stained them black with burnt coconut shell; while among the Bisayans the upper teeth were bored, and the perforations filled with gold, a singular custom observed by Marco Polo in China, and which was also practised in ancient Peru and Egypt. Many of the tribes are spoken of by the early Spanish navigators as being endowed with fair intellectual capacities, possessing great powers of imitation, sober, brave, and determined. The Tagalog character, according to some later writers, is difficult to define: the craniologist and physiognomist may often find themselves at fault. They are great children, their nature being a singular combination of vices and virtues.

The costume of the men consisted of a short-sleeved cotton tunic (chinina), usually black or blue, which came below the waist, a colored cotton waistcloth, or kilt (bahaque), extending nearly to the knee, and over this a belt or sash of silk a handbreadth wide, and terminating in two gold tassels. On the right side hung a dagger (bararao) three palms long, and double-edged, the hilt formed of ivory or gold, and the sheath of carabao-hide. They wore a turban (potong) on the head, and also leg-bands of black reeds or vines such as are seen among the Papuans of New Guinea. Chains, bracelets [82](calombiga), and armlets of gold, cornelian and agate were much worn, and he was reckoned a poor person who did not possess several gold chains. Hernando Requel, writing home to Spain, stated: “There is more gold in this island of Luzon than there is iron in Biscaya.”

The Tinguianes had a peculiar custom of wearing tightly-compressed bracelets, which stopped the growth of the forearm, and caused the hand to swell. Women wore the tapis, a bordered and ornamented cloth wrapped round the body, which was confined by a belt, and descended to the ankles. The bust was covered with a wide-sleeved camisita, or waist (baro), to which was sometimes added a handkerchief. The women of Luzon were without headdress, but made use of a parasol of palm leaves (payong). Among the Bisayans the women wore a small cap or hood, and in the northern isles they were permitted the luxury of being carried on the shoulders of slaves. Both sexes wore the same dress among the Ilokanos, the chief article of attire being a loose coat (cabaya) similar to those of the Chinese. The dress of the Chief’s wives was more elegant than that of women of the common people (timaguas). They wore white robes, and others of crimson silk, plain or interwoven with gold, and trimmed with fringes and trinkets. From their ears were suspended golden pendants of excellent workmanship, and on their fingers and ankles were massive gold rings set with precious stones. The timaguas and slaves went barefooted, but the upper class wore shoes, the women being daintily shod with velvet shoes embroidered with gold. “Both men and women were very cleanly and elegant in their persons and dress, and of a goodly mien and grace; they took great pains with their hair, rejoicing in its blackness, washing it with the boiled bark of a tree called gogo, and anointing it with musk oil and other perfumes. They bathed daily, and looked upon it as a remedy for almost every complaint. On the birth of a child the mother repaired to the nearest stream, and bathed herself and the little one, after which she returned to her ordinary occupation. Women were well treated among these people, and had for their employment domestic work, needle work, in which they excelled, the spinning and weaving of silk and cotton into various fabrics, and also the preparation of the hemp, palm, and banana fibers.

The Philippine natives, with the exception of some of the hill tribes, were diligent agriculturists, this being their chief occupation. In some mountainous regions they adopted a system of terrace cultivation similar to that of China, Peru, and Northern Mexico in bygone times, and which may also be seen in Java. They cultivated rice, sweet potatoes, bananas, coconuts, sugar-cane, palms, various vegetable roots and fibrous plants. They hunted the wild carabao, deer and wild boar. The flesh of the carabao, or water buffalo, was preserved for future use by being cut into slices and dried in the sun, when it was called tapa. Rice was prepared by being boiled, then pounded in a wooden mortar and pressed into cakes, thus forming the bread of the country. They made palm wine (alac or mosto) from the sap of various species of palms. Food was stored in raised houses similar to the pataka of the Maori. The [83]first fruits of the harvest were devoted to the deified spirits of ancestors, called anito. The Bisayans, when planting rice, had the singular custom of offering a portion of the seed at each corner of the field as a sacrifice. The ordinary dainty among the islanders was the buyo or betel quid, consisting of a leaf of betel pepper (tambul or siri) smeared over with burnt lime and wrapped round a piece of areca nut (bonga).

“The Filipinos,” says the old Spanish padre “lived in houses (bahai) built of bamboo six feet from the ground.” These dwellings were supplied with cane screens in the place of divisions and doors. The elevated floor, where they ate and slept, was also made of split cane, and the whole structure was secured by reeds and cords for want of nails. They ascended to these houses by a portable ladder, which was removed when the inmates went out, a sign that no person might approach the dwelling, which was otherwise unsecured. The house was surrounded by a verandah, and in one apartment were the household utensils, dishes and plates of earthenware, and copper vessels for various purposes. They had, moreover, in their houses some low tables and chairs, also boxes, called tampipi, which served for the purpose of keeping wearing apparel and jewels. Their bedding consisted usually of mats manufactured from various fibers. The houses of the chiefs were much larger and better constructed than those of the timaguas. Many of their villages were built on the banks of rivers and the shores of lakes and harbors, so that they were surrounded by water, in the manner of the seaside dwellings of New Guinea and the Gulf of Maracaibo. Among the Tinguianes tree houses were made use of. In these they slept at night in order to avoid being surprised by enemies, and defended themselves by hurling down stones upon the attacking party, exactly in the same manner as the natives of New Britain do to this day.

The external commerce of the Tagalog tribes was principally with China, of which nation there were vessels in Manila on the arrival of the Spanish. They are also said to have had intercourse with Japan, Borneo, and Siam. They had no coined money, but to facilitate trade they utilized gold as a medium of exchange in the form of dust and ingots, which were valued by weight. Magellan speaks of their system of weights and measures. These people were skilful shipwrights and navigators. The Bisayans were in the habit of making piratical forays among the isles. Their vessels were of various kinds, some being propelled by oars or paddles, and others were provided with masts and sails. Canoes were made of large trees, and were often fitted with keels and decks, while larger vessels, called virey and barangayan, were constructed of planks fastened with wooden bolts. The rowers, with paddles (busey) or oars (gayong), timed their work to the voices of others, who sung words appropriate to the occasion and by which the rowers understood whether to hasten or retard their work. Above the rowers was a platform (bailio) on which the fighting men stood without embarrassing the rowers, and above this again was the carang, or awning. They sometimes used outriggers (balancoire) on both sides of the vessel. The laip and tapaque were vessels of the largest kind, some [84]carrying as many as two hundred and fifty men. The barangayan, a type of vessel used from the earliest times, was singularly like those of the ancients described by Homer.

Society among the Tagalog-Bisayan tribes was divided into three classes, the chiefs and nobles, the common people (timagua), and the slaves. The principal of every group, styled maguinoo among the Tagalogs, bagani by the Manobos, and dato by the Bisayans, was the only political, military, and judicial authority. These chieftainships were hereditary, and the same respect was shown to the women as to the men of the ruling families. Their power over the people was despotic, they imposed a tribute upon the harvests, and could at any time reduce a subject to slavery, or dispose of his property and children. The slaves were divided into two classes: the sanguihuileyes, who were in entire servitude as also were their children, lived and served in the houses of their masters; while the namamahayes lived in houses of their own, and only worked as slaves on special occasions, such as at harvesting and housebuilding. Among this latter class there obtained a peculiar half-bond system, which may be explained thus: In the event of a free man marrying a slave woman, and their having only one son, that child would be half free and half enslaved—that is, he would work one month for his owner and the next for himself. If they had more than one child, the first born would follow the condition of the father, the second of the mother, and so on. If there were uneven numbers, the last born was half free and half bond. Slaves were bought, sold, and exchanged like ordinary merchandise. In their social manners these people were very courteous, more especially the Luzon tribes. They never spoke to a superior without removing their turban. They then knelt upon one knee, raised their hands to their cheeks, and awaited authority to speak. The hongi, or nose-pressing salutation of the Polynesians, was an ancient custom in the Philippine Group, and on the island of Timor. It also obtained among the Chamorro of the Ladrones, who termed it tshomiko. The Philippine natives addressed all superiors in the third person, and added to every sentence the word po, equivalent to Sir. They were given to addresses replete with compliments, and were fond of music of the cud, a guitar with two strings of copper wire. In regard to judicial matters, all complaints were brought before the dato of the barangay (district) for examination. Though they had no written laws, they had established rules and customs by which all disputes were settled, and the chiefs recovered their fees by seizing the property not only of the vanquished party, but also of his witnesses. Trial by ordeal was common, the usual mode being that of plunging the arm into a vessel of boiling water and taking out a stone off the bottom; or a lighted torch was placed in the hands of the accused, and if the flame flickered towards him he was pronounced guilty. Theft was sometimes punished by death, in which case, the condemned was executed by the thrust of a lance. In some cases the punishment was by being reduced to slavery. Loans with excessive interest were ordinary, the debtor and his children often becoming enslaved to the lender. Verbal insults were punished with great severity. It was also regarded as a great insult to step over a sleeping person, [85]and they even objected to awakening one asleep. This seems to refer to the widespread belief of the soul leaving a sleeping body. Their worst curse was “May thou die sleeping.” The male children underwent a species of circumcision at an early age, which was but preparatory to further rites. Their oaths of fidelity, in conventions of peace and friendship, were ratified by the ceremony of bloodbrotherhood, in which a vein of the arm being opened, the flowing blood was drunk by the other party. Among these people was sometimes seen that singular mania for imitation called by the Javanese sakit latar, on the Amoor olon, in Siberia, inuira, and in the Philippines malimali. This peculiar malady, presumably by the result of a deranged nervous system, manifests itself as far as I can gather, in the following manner, the afflicted person is seized with a desire to copy or imitate the action and movements of others, and will do the most extraordinary and ridiculous things to attain his object. The despair induced by this strange mania and its consequent ridicule, urges the unfortunate to end his life in the dreaded Amok. These unfortunates were sometimes attacked by the amok frenzy.

It is certain that gold and copper mines have been worked in the islands from early times. The copper ore was smelted, and worked into various utensils and implements, and the gold was formed into ornaments, or used, as a medium of exchange. The ruder mountain tribes brought much gold from the interior and traded it to the lowland people in exchange for various coveted articles. Several of the tribes were in the habit of tattooing the body, the Bisayans being the most noted for the practice. The Catalangan Iraya used for tattoo patterns, and as decorations for sacred places, certain marks and characters which appeared to be of Chinese or Japanese origin. The Iraya proper used only straight and simple curved lines like those of the Aieta. The Ysarog (Issaro), a primitive race of mountaineers, who have been isolated for centuries, are said by later writers to resemble the Dyaks of Borneo. Time was reckoned in former days by suns and moons, and feasts were held on the occurrence of certain astronomical phenomena. Brass gongs were much used at these feasts, and also on war expeditions.

Such are some of the notes collected in reference to this interesting race. These Tagalogs, Bisayans, Pampangans and Cagayanes were despised by their Iberian conquerors as being ignorant savages; but, as the good old padre says in his MS., they were worthy of being placed on a superior level to certain ancient people who possess a more illustrious fame. And who shall say it was not so?

The various tribes of the Philippines were frequently at war with each other, as seems to be the invariable rule where a race is broken up into many separate divisions. The weapons used in former times were the bow and arrow, the lance, long curved knives, and in the southern isles the blow pipe (sarbacan), for propelling poisoned darts. The arrows and lances were pointed with iron and bone, or were simply hardened with fire. Their defensive armour consisted of carved wooden shields (carans), inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl, which covered them from head to foot, and also cuirasses formed of bamboo. It is not clear whether they [86]manufactured artillery, but they certainly used cannon of iron and bronze before the advent of the Spanish, at which time the Mindanao tribes held strongly fortified positions—defended with cannon. These fortifications consisted of earthworks and stockades, sometimes surrounded by morasses. Such were the defences of the town of the Chief Rahamora when Legaspi attacked it. This town consisted of four thousand houses, and, having destroyed it, the victorious Spaniards built on its site, in 1571, the city of Manila. The poison used for the sarbacan darts was either derived from certain trees, or, it is said, from the saliva of a green lizard (chacon). The natives are said by Morga to have used this poison in order to kill the Spanish, for whom they had conceived a most bitter hatred.

The Manobos and Zambals were the most savage tribes. The Manobos surprised their enemies while asleep, slaughtered the men, and enslaved the women and children. The priest opened the breast of the first victim with the sacred knife, took out the heart, and ate it. This tribe also sacrificed slaves to the god of war, to whom the color red was sacred. They were also head-hunters, and hung these trophies to the roofs of their houses. The Zambals, a fierce and savage tribe, were also head-hunters, as their name signifies, and were in the habit of extracting and eating the brains of slain enemies. Among the Ifugaos the lasso is said to have been used as a weapon.

In regard to marriage customs, there was one peculiar form worthy of observation. When a man wished to marry he went to live with his prospective father-in-law, thus becoming a member of the household, and as such he worked at whatever duties were imposed upon him. This lasted sometimes for several years. If the family became dissatisfied with him he was dismissed, but if all went well he paid over to the parents what was known as “the price of the mother’s milk”—that is, a compensation for the rearing of his wife. During the probationary period the young man assumed the name of bagontao, and the girl that of dalaga. They were much given to the practice of divination during the period of the wedding festivities, which lasted for several days. Although polygamy did not exist in a legal sense, yet concubinage was common. The first woman married, however, was the only legitimate wife (inasaba). To the inferior wives were assigned the various domestic labors, the milking of the carabao-cows, and the rearing of ducks, swans, geese, and pigeons. The women, in paying visits or in walking abroad, were attended by a following of maids and slaves. In various tribes the Assuan, an evil deity, was supposed to exercise an evil influence over women in labor, and at such a time the husband mounted the house-roof, or stationed himself, before the door, and, with lance or dagger in hand, cut, and slashed vigorously at the air in order to drive away the dreaded spirit. Among these people also obtained that strange and world-wide custom known among anthropologists as the couvade the origin of which it is difficult to conjecture. In China and Africa, in Egypt and South America, in Malabar and Corsica, among the Basques, Caribs, Burmese, and many other races, this singular custom of simulated maternity seems to have originated independently. [87]

The language of the Philippines was divided into many different dialects, of which the Tagalog, an abundant and copious tongue, was the most perfect specimen. These, together with the languages of various outlying groups, can be traced to the same origin by unequivocal marks of affinity, both in word formation and grammatical construction. In spite of various linguistic changes it has been noted by Le Gobien that the language of the Carolines bears a strong resemblance to the Tagalog, and the same may be said of the ancient Chamorro tongue. The Battak speech of Sumatra is said to be closely allied to the Tagalog. Prichard states that the Malagasi resembles Tagalog more than it does any other Malayan tongue. The Tagalog-Bisayan-languages are said by several writers to be the most highly developed of this family, and are in a transition state between the agglutinative and inflective stages. Von Humboldt considered the Tagalog to be the parent language of the Malay type, but this was denied by Crawfurd. In the Javanese, one hundred and ten words per thousand are Sanscrit, in Malay fifty, in the Bugi, seventeen, in Tagalog one and a half, and in Malagasi there are none. It might be inferred from this that the Tagalog-Bisayan migrations from the southwest took place prior to, or about, the sixth century of our era, about which time the Hindu religion was introduced into the East Indies, bringing with it many Sanscrit terms. The native languages hold their own in the Philippines. Pickering, in his “Races of Man,” states that the Tagalog is still the chief language of Luzon, being in general use in all the interior towns.

In respect to religion, the more advanced of the tribes appeared to have arrived at the stage of intellectual progress when Nature worship begins to give place to a dim idea of a Supreme Being, a Maker of all things. This protecting genius, to whom they offered sacrifices, was called Bathalang Meicapal. These people had a vague conception of a future state in which the good were rewarded and the wicked punished. Among the Bisayans, Ologan was the term for Heaven in their ancient religion, and their Hell was Solad. The souls of their dead were said to pass to the mountain of Medias in the Oton district. Tigbalan was the name of a forest demon among the northern tribes, who was treated with great respect. In passing beneath a tree a native would invariably say “Tavit po,”—that is, “By your leave, my lord.” They practised fire worship and fetishism and paid homage to the Sun, Moon, rainbow, to animals, birds, and even to trees, and to rocks of peculiar appearance. The worship of birds appears to have been confined to two species, the bathala, a small blue bird, and the maylupa, a species of crow or kite. The trees, rocks, and headlands which were close to contrary currents, or places dangerous to navigation, were objects of veneration and dread, and the deities of these places were propitiated by offerings of food, or were supposed to be quelled by a flight of arrows being discharged against them. Influenced by terror, they venerated the crocodile, calling it nono, or grandfather, and it was sometimes tamed and cherished by the priests. These huge saurians were extremely dangerous, and many natives lost their lives by them, for which reason they constructed enclosures for bathing purposes. The Manobos revered the lightning, and believed thunder to be its [88]voice. The Bisayans held that all who perished in battle or were killed by crocodiles became divata. The divata or anito were guardian spirits, and among some tribes were represented by idols of gold, ivory, or stone. There were anito of the cultivations, of the rains, of the sea, cocoanut trees, also of newly-born children, and of children during the period of lactation. Again there were family anito, a species of household gods, who protected the family, and who were principally deified ancestors, having, it is said, ascended to heaven on the rainbow (balangao). Images representing these were kept in the houses, or in the vacant space beneath them, and slaves were sometimes sacrificed in their honor. It has been denied by some writers that the Philippine natives had any idols or images, or any places set apart for religious ceremonies, but the account of Cavendish, the adventurous English navigator, who visited the Philippines in 1588, states: “These people wholly worship the Devil, who appears unto them in divers horrible forms, and they worship him by making figures of these forms, which they keep in caverns and special houses, offering to them perfumes and food, and calling them anito or licha.” The MS. which we quote says: “These people lacked capacious temples, neither had they sacred days set apart for religious practices, but they had at the entrances to their towns, and even close to their houses, small chapels or rooms consecrated to the anito, and to the offering of sacrifices. In these places were deposited offerings of food to sustain the souls of the dead in their journey of three days which divided death from the re-incarnation which ensued. Before the figures also were placed small braziers burning perfumes, and plates of sago and fruits.”

The priests of these tribes were known as catalona in the north, and as babailan among the Bisayans. They were the sorcerers, or “medicine men,” and rude beyond measure was their art in curing, consisting generally of the imaginary extraction of pebbles, leaves, or pieces of cane from the affected part. The priests possessed great authority among the people. In their invocations to the anito they sometimes deceived the spectators by a peculiar sound produced by burning the kernels of the cashew (casuy); “and at all times,” says the padre, “they were assisted by the devil.” The secret of these frauds was transmitted by inheritance, or was sold to the highest bidder, and after being consecrated the priests did no other work than net-making or weaving cloth.

As to their sacrifices, the object of them in many cases was to gain a knowledge of the future. Among other modes, they practised divination by an examination of the victim’s entrails, and also by the stars, both widely spread customs. In the case of prolonged illness a new house was built, and the patient removed to it. The priestess being summoned, she sacrificed according to the wealth of the offerers, sometimes a tortoise, and sometimes as many as three slaves. The house was filled with small tables, on which were placed refreshments, and which correspond with the number of guests. The priestess performed a sacred dance, purified and sacrificed the victim, and with the warm blood sprinkled the most distinguished of the guests, distributing to the remainder small copper bells. After repeating an incantation the entrails were examined after the [89]manner of the Roman augurs, by the priests, who were often seized with convulsions, made grotesque contortions, foamed at the mouth, and finally announced the sentence of the death, or recovery of the patient. If the omen was of health, a revel was held, and the valor of the patient’s family and ancestors celebrated with songs. If the omen was of death, they diverted the mind of the patient by dancing, drinking, singing his praises, and persuading him that the gods removed him from this world in order to elevate him to the dignity of anito. At the close of the proceedings the priest received presents of gold and food from the guests. Sacrifices which were offered before undertaking a war or assault were conducted in a similar manner. Others, which were arranged by the chiefs, and dedicated to the principle of good, were celebrated with feasting and dancing to the sound of their primitive music. The best dancer was invited by the priest to give the fatal thrust, and the flesh of sacrificed hogs was distributed among the guests, who looked upon it as sacred food.

The Philippine natives had a firm belief in omens and superstitions of many kinds. Thus, in the house of the fishermen, new nets were not spoken of until they had been tested and found reliable, and among hunters the merits of dogs recently acquired were not discussed until they had been successful in catching game. A belief in the invulnerability (anting) of certain persons was a common superstition. A pregnant woman was not allowed to cut her hair for fear the infant should be bald. Much importance was attached to dreams, of which they were anxious to divine the meaning. In order to navigate their seas with safety it was not permitted to carry in the vessel either animals or land birds, nor even to name them; and in like manner, when travelling by land, they did not mention things which pertained to the sea. Before embarking on a voyage they caused the boat to oscillate and observed carefully to which side it inclined the most. If to the right, it was accepted as a good omen, but if to the left, it was an evil omen. They also tied together many cords, and one end being made fast, would rub the other between the hands, and by observing the manner in which the cords became entangled, they inferred the good or evil fortune which fate had in store for them.

The geogony of primitive and semi-civilized races always contains an element of interest, and that of the Philippine natives was certainly a singular belief. The creators of the earth were the sky and the kite, and the sea. After the bird had flown many times across the ocean, and found nothing to alight upon, the sky, in quarreling with the sea, caused the bird to throw huge rocks with the aim of subduing it. These rocks became islands, and the earth generally.

The tradition of the origin of man is as follows: “Two logs of bamboo, impelled by the waves, were cast on shore at the feet of the bird, which becoming enraged, began to pick them to pieces, when there appeared from the first log a man, and from the second a woman, thus proving the monogeny of the human species.” The man succeeded in gaining the affections of the woman, and from them [90]are descended the whole human race. The dispersion of the race throughout the world was caused by a family quarrel. The many children of the primal couple lived independent in the house of the parents, which displeased the father, who belabored them with a cudgel, and expelled them from the house. Some concealed themselves in the house, and from them are descended the maguinoo, or chiefs. Others went out openly from the house, and these were the fathers of the timagua (timawa) or freemen, and yet others took refuge in the cooking-sheds and beneath the house. From these last sprang the slaves. Finally, those who were banished, and never returned, became the ancestors of distant people, and remote tribes. It is worthy of note that, on the arrival of the Spanish, they were supposed by the natives to be the descendants of the last-mentioned migration. The various animals are also said by tradition to have been derived from other logs of bamboo; and the fact that the monkey came from one close to that which contained man, explains satisfactorily the resemblance between them.

Respecting their idea of a future life, the belief was, that preceding the state of happiness after death, there was a series of incarnations or purifications of the soul, which successive transmigrations took place in a cluster of one and fifty islands, on which were sheltered the souls of the dead. In those beautiful isles departed spirits enjoyed perpetual youth. In this paradise there were trees always loaded with ripe fruits, and fastened to the earth by chains of gold, which served as roots. Of gold also were the ornaments, the bells, ear-rings (panica), the cloths (isine), and many other things. The shores of the sea were formed of pure rice, and there was also a sea of milk, and another of linogao, which is rice boiled with milk or fat. Yet another sea was of blood, and on the bank of this grew plants, whose flowers had petals of flesh ready for eating.

These people held primitive notions concerning original sin, and also cherished a belief in the punishments and rewards of a future life. They accounted for the coming of death into the world in the following manner: Far back in the very night, the god Laon possessed a most beautiful fish which was his delight, also a tree which bore the most luscious fruits. The offenders killed the fish and plucked the fruit. For this offence Laon caused men to die in all ages.

Such was then the state of civilization among the Tagalog-Bisayan tribes at the time when the Malay Mohammedans, and the Spanish conquistadores attempted, from opposite points, to introduce their religions into the archipelago. The Moros of the Sulu Islands were beginning to overrun the Philippines on the arrival of the Spanish, and would eventually have Mohammedanised the entire group. The Philippine natives at this time were in a singularly interesting stage of intellectual progress. They had lived through the crude fetishism of savagedom, and were emerging from the second stage of religious feeling, during which they had evolved, out of the contemplation of Nature, one of those wonderful mythologies which are met with among so many nations. They were beginning to renounce the old Nature worship, of which the central figure was a Supreme Maker. [91]

It has been truly said that nothing requires such calm and impartial judgment as the inquiry into the moral and religious condition of uncivilized races. The co-evolution of religion and civilization is an extremely interesting subject to the student of anthropology, when he notes the gradual refinement of the national religion as the culture of the race improves, and the degradation of that religion when a race retrogrades in civilization. It is one of the many grand problems, based on the retributive laws of Nature, which confront the enquirer into that great and wonderful mystery—the development of the human race. Well it is for him who can learn from the savage Aieta, or the semi-civilized Tagalog, a lesson in the evolution of the human intellect; but, unfortunately, so many who have golden opportunities of studying the intellect and works of uncultured man are careless of those matters, and look with contempt upon the noblest of studies. They cannot interest themselves in the struggling intellect of primitive man; they no longer understand the craving of youth for advancement; they disdain to look upon the dawn of intellectual day.

These are the most interesting points procured from the aforementioned works on the Philippine Islands, a land which we call new, but in which the events of the Tagalog-Bisayan migrations were but as of yesterday. Here, as elsewhere, the rude savage retreats before a superior race, but the receptive Tagalog attaches himself to the civilization of his conquerors. He had already advanced himself to the difficult highway that leads from barbarism to a higher culture, and was thus enabled to receive the teachings of his Iberian invaders; but he who would seek the indigenous Aieta must look for him in the distant recesses of the primeval forest, or in the dark and gloomy cañons of the great ranges.

By Austin Craig

The Philippine History of which one is apt to think when that subject is mentioned covers hardly a fourth of the Islands’ book-recorded history.

These records are not the romantic dream of a Paterno that under the name Ophir the Philippines with their gold enriched Solomon (10th century B. C.). There are solider grounds than any plausible explanations that Manila hemp (abaká) was Strabo’s (A. D. 21) “ta seerika,” the cloth made of “a kind of flax combed from certain barks of trees.” The shadowy identification of the Manilas with Ptolemy’s Maniolas (c. A. D. 130) is not in their class. Nor, to accept them, is recourse needed to farfetched deductions like Zuñiga’s that the American Continent received Israel’s ten lost tribes, and thence, through Easter Island, Magellan’s archipelago was peopled. Their existence saves us from having to accept [92]such references as how Simbad the sailorman (Burton: The Arabian Nights, Night 538 et seq.) evidently made some of his voyages in this region, though it would not be uninteresting to note that the great Roc is a bird used in Moro ornament, the “ghoul” of the Thousand and One Nights is the Filipino Asuang and that the palm-covered island which was believed to be a colossal tortoise because it shook might well have been located where the Philippine maps indicate that earthquakes are most frequent.

The records hereinafter to be cited are for the most part of the prosaic kind, all the more reliable and valuable because they are inclined to be dry and matter-of-fact. They make no such demand upon imagination as Europe’s pioneer traveller’s tales, for instance the sixteenth century chart which depicted America as inhabited by headless people with eyes, nose and mouth located in the chest.

The British Museum’s oriental scholar (Douglas: Europe and the Far East, Cambridge, 1904) states that by the beginning of the Chou dynasty (B. C. 1122–255) intercourse had been established at Canton with eight foreign nations. Duties as early as 990 B. C. were levied, and among the imports figure birds, pearls and tortoise shell, products of the Philippines, but the origin of these has not been investigated. “Reliable history,” says Dr. Pott (A Sketch of Chinese History, Shanghai, 1908), “does not extend further back than the middle of the Chou dynasty (B. C. 722). * * * After the time of the Chou dynasty we come to more solid ground, for at the beginning of the Han dynasty (B.C. 206) the custom originated of employing Court chroniclers to write a daily account of governmental proceedings. These diaries were kept secret and stored away in iron chests until the dynasty they chronicled had passed away; then they were opened and published, and so form the basis of our knowledge of the events that had transpired while the dynasty was in existence.”

Philippine history, however, has attracted only incidental interest in the translating of these voluminous chronicles so that while the first three mentions hereafter to be cited are well within the reliable history period they have not been verified and are valuable only as suggesting more definitely where to investigate.

Dr. von Moellendorf, a sinologist, formerly German consul in Manila, states that the Philippines were once called “Gold” in China, because of their considerable export thither of the precious yellow metal. This parallels the Malay province named “Silver” (Perak or Pilak). Further he refers to Becker’s Geology of the Philippines where (on page 90 of the reprint) F. Karusch gives a former German Consul in Manila as authority for gold having been exported to China during the third century. If the Chinese authority for this can be found it will destroy the value of Dr. Groeneveldt’s observation (Notes on the Malay Archipelago and Malacca compiled from Chinese sources; Batavia, 1876, p. 4) on his quotation from the history of the Liang dynasty (Book 54, p. 1):

[93]

The commentator admits that “what these countries were is not stated,” but believes the “Malay islands were not amongst them, otherwise their name would have appeared at that time already in the annals of China.”

Since only a beginning has as yet been made in studying the voluminous records of China, a little further investigation may easily result in establishing this early date.

The last of the early three possible references to the Philippines, classed only as introductory because of their uncertain character, is from the narrative of Fahien, the details of whose home voyage seem to suggest that he passed in the vicinity of, if not through, this group of islands. This Buddhist priest in A. D. 400 went overland to India (Groeneveldt, Notes, p. 6) in search of Buddhist books and fifteen years later came back by sea in Indian vessels via Ceylon and Java. Shortly after his death a book was published, written from his narratives, giving “an account of Buddhist countries” (Fo Kuo Chi). After staying five months in Java where “heretics and Brahmans flourished but the law of Buddha hardly deserved mention,” Fahien embarked in May, 414, on a large merchant vessel with a crew of over two hundred and provisioned for fifty days. Steering a north east course for Canton, when over a month out they struck a typhoon, “a sudden dark squall accompanied by pelting rain.” The Brahmans felt that the priest of the rival religion was a Jonah and wanted to land him on one of the neighboring islands but were dissuaded by a trader representing the danger that would be to all on coming to China. The weather continued very dark and the pilots did not know their situation. Finally on the 78th day, with water almost gone and provisions short, they determined to change their course since they had already exceeded the usual fifty days for the run. So on a northwest route in twelve days more they reached not Canton but Shantung, nearly thirteen degrees farther north. Now this voyage on a map works out that they passed the Philippines about the time that marooning the priest on an island was under discussion, and, as St. John notes (The Indian Archipelago, London 1853, Vol. I, p. 103), “The Philippines * * * occupy the only part of the Archipelago liable to hurricanes.” Apparently the land was then unfamiliar to these early navigators.

No voyages of discovery were attempted by the Chinese but, creeping along the coast, they finally came to the Malay Peninsula and they worked from one island to another in the Indian Archipelago. (Groeneveldt, p. 1.) By this roundabout course in connection with the great island of Borneo, then called Polo and noted to have sent envoys to China in 518, 523 and 616, we find the Sulu islands suggested. The reference reads “at the east of this country is situated the land of the Rakshas (or lawless persons, or pirates.)” These were stated to have the same customs as the Poli people, unerring in throwing a saw-edged (wooden) discus knife, but using other weapons like those in China, in ways resembling Cambodia and with products like Siam’s. Murder and theft were punished by cutting off the hands and adultery by chaining together the legs for a year. In the dark of the moon came the sacrifices, bowls of wine and eatables set adrift on the surface of the water, as Bornean [94]tribes supposed to be akin to the Bisayans and Tagalogs now are doing. The Polans collected coral and trained parrots to talk, and so probably did the men of Sulu. In their ears were the teeth of wild beasts and a piece of home-made cotton cloth was wrapped about their waists, sarong fashion. Their markets they held at night and they were accustomed to keep their faces covered.

Next in point of time is a reference through Southern Formosa, called by the Chinese P’i-sho-ye, which the author of “China before the Chinese” (De Lacouperie) believes is only a miscalling of Bisaya, and former Consul Davidson of Formosa corroborates this both on Chinese authority (Ma Touan-lin) and from local traditions. (Davidson: The Island of Formosa Past and Present, New York, 1903).

“Bands of uncivilized Malays” from the south drove into the interior the Formosans with whom the Chinese earlier had been familiar. So on the next expedition from the mainland, in 605, the Chinese leader was surprised to find on the coast strange inhabitants with whom he could not communicate. His surmise that the newcomers were Malays led the next expedition to take with it interpreters from different southern Malayan islands, of whom at least one made himself understood. The immigrants kept up communication with Luzon and on their rafts raided coast towns of China, as will be later seen.

Pangasinan once extended much farther north in Luzon and Mr. Servillano de la Cruz, a University of the Philippines student specializing in the history of that province, describes rafts of bamboo bound together with vines, of a size which two men can lift, yet used on rivers and by people venturing as far as four miles from the coast upon them.

The chronological order takes us again to the south.

A “Ka-ling” mentioned in the old Chinese history of the T’ang dynasty (618–906) has been, it seems to me, wrongly identified by the Dutch scholar Groeneveldt (Notes on the Malay Archipelago, p. 12) as Java on the assumption that Pali or Po-li was Sumatra. Since it is much more probable that Poli is only an older form of Poni, Brunei, our Borneo (Hose and McDougall: Pagan Tribes of Borneo, London, 1912, Vol. I), Kaling rather should be looked for as an island off the eastern side of Borneo, Cambodia to the north, the sea to the south, and on the western side of the island of Dva-pa-tan, which might have been the old, and more extensive, district of Dapitan on the northwest of Mindanao. Directions are so general that the fixing of the spot is only guess work, yet the probability puts it within the southern (Sulu) part of the Philippine Archipelago.

The walls of the city were of palisades as were those enclosing Fort Santiago’s Moro predecessor. The king’s palace was a two-story affair thatched with coir from the abundant coco palms and the throne of the monarch was an ivory couch. Using neither spoons nor chopsticks, food was handled with that manual dexterity of which the Tondo tribune has recently been complaining as contributory to cholera. The palm wine was obtained just as tuba is now prepared.

The older history was considered vague and in its revision, called “the new history,” fuller details appear, among them another [95]name (Djava, Djapa or Dayapo (Dva-apo?)). The larger houses were covered with palm leaves and like the king’s equipped with ivory couches. Bamboo mats are also mentioned and the exports are given as tortoise shell, gold and silver, rhinoceros-horns, and ivory. The ivory might have been white camagon, since it was used for furniture, and the rhinoceros horns could have been imported. The rapid intoxication from the native drink is emphasized and, contrary to the American traveller (Rev. Arthur J. Browne) who attributed the introduction of vice here to his soldier-countrymen, a virulent venereal disease is mentioned. The alternative name of the island turns out to belong to the place on it where the king resided and he is said to be a descendant of Ki-yen who had lived more to the east in the town of Pa-lu-ka-si. Of his thirty-two high ministers Datu Kan-liung was chief and twenty-eight small neighboring countries owed him allegiance, as the twenty-eight islands would to a powerful Sulu sultan. (As to number of islands, see Saleeby’s History of Sulu, Manila, 1908, p. 15.)

A royal mountain resort overlooking the sea was Lang-pi-ya, a name for which, like the others, Groeneveldt finds it difficult to name a counterpart in Java, in this case noting “we think it advisable not to insist upon the above identification.” The latitude would seem to have been in the Sulu neighborhood for at the summer solstice an 8-foot gnomon cast, on the south side, a 2.4-foot shadow.

Between 627 and 649 envoys to China accompanied the tribute bearers from Dva-ha-la and Dva-pa-tan (Dapitan?), receiving acknowledgments under the Chinese Emperor’s great seal. Dva-ha-la also asked for good horses, and got them.

Then in 674 there was an ideal ruler, a woman named Sima, of whom a story is told similar to one remembered in Korea, and somewhat like the tales of China’s Golden Age, that a foreign king (prince of Arabs) to test the reports he had heard sent a bag of gold to be left in the road. There it remained undisturbed till the heir apparent happened to step over it. The incensed queen was dissuaded by her ministers from killing him but, saying his fault lay in his feet, insisted on cutting these off, finally, however, compromising on amputating the toes. Not only was this an example to the whole nation but it so frightened the Arab king that he did not carry out his planned attack. This variation of the Queen of Sheba-Solomon anecdotes is common in Chinese history, and its extensive use was probably due to the same sort of local adaptation as later made an orientalized Dido story of land-measurement trickery spread so quickly after the coming of the Europeans. Groeneveldt suggests the Arab prince might have been one of the Arab chiefs in the Archipelago, which would by our identification nicely fit with Bornean conditions.

Between 766 and 779 three Ka-ling envoys visited China and in 813 four slaves (Groeneveldt thinks negroes), assorted colored parrots, “pinka-birds”—whatever these may have been, and other gifts were presented to their powerful neighbor. A title of “Left Defender of the office of the Four Inner Gates” came to the ambassador [96]who, by cleverly seeking to relinquish this title to his younger brother, secured imperial praise and the coveted honor for two members of his family instead of one.

In 827 and 835 were two embassies, and between 837 and 850 an envoy presented female musicians as the tribute gift. (Account summarized from Groeneveldt, pp. 12–15.)

“The great sea southwest of Hainan,” says he, “* * * has in it Triple-joint currents (Shan-ho-lin). The waves break here violently, dividing into three currents: one flows south and is the sea which forms the highway to foreign lands; one flows north and is the sea of Canton (and Amoy) * * * one flows eastward and enters the boundless place, which is called the Great Eastern Ocean Sea.

“Ships in the southern trade, both going and coming, must run through the Triple-joint currents. If they have the wind, in a moment they are through it. But if on getting into the dangerous place there is no wind, the ship cannot get out and is wrecked in the three currents. * * * It is said that, in the Great Eastern Ocean Sea there is a long bank of sand and rocks some myriads of li (705 yards or 2–5 mile) in length. It marks the gulf leading to Hades (Wei-lu). In olden times there was an ocean-going junk which was driven by a great westerly wind to within hearing distance of the roar of the waves falling into Wei-lu of the Great Eastern Ocean. No land was to be seen. Suddenly there arose a strong easterly wind and the junk escaped its doom. (Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, note 3, p. 185.)

Such superstition, like that of the Pillars of Hercules, in the Strait of Gibraltar, naturally restrained explorations so that the first voyages across the China sea came from Manila.

The earliest account of Filipino traders comes through a brief mention in a French ethnologist’s notes on foreigners in China (Henry St. Denis, Ethnographie, II, 502, according to Rockhill) that in 982 merchants from Manila visited Canton for trade. They probably were not pioneers as it is related that they came with valuable merchandise. This was about the time (between 976 and 983) when the Canton trade was declared a state monopoly. Over two centuries a maritime customs service had existed in that port, reorganized in 971 because of the greatly increased foreign trade.

From 1174 to 1190 (Chau Ju-Kua’s account, Hirth and Rockhill, p. 165) the Formosan Bisayan chiefs were in the habit of assembling parties of several hundreds to make sudden raids on villages of the neighboring Chinese coast. There murders innumerable and even cannibalism were charged against them, though perhaps there should be some discount upon these unfavorable statements as even today enemies are not always reliable authorities upon their adversaries.

They placed great value upon iron, even to the extent of attaching ropes, of over a hundred feet in length, to their spears so that these might be recovered after each throw.

Such was their fondness for all forms of iron that those surprised by them would throw away spoons or chopsticks of that metal so [97]while the pursuers were stopping to pick these up they could gain a start. Once in the house the door had only to be closed and they would be distracted from the attack by sight of an iron knocker which they would wrench off and then immediately depart with it.

The soldiers decoyed them with mail-covered horsemen and in their mad struggle to strip off the armor they would meet their death without being sensible of their danger. Bamboo lashed into rafts conveyed them over the waters and when hard pressed facilitated their escape for these, folded up like screens, were easy to lift and swim off with.

A collector of customs (the Chau Ju-Kua before quoted) of Chinchew, the port in the Amoy district later made famous by Marco Polo, from personal investigation obtained data as to the Philippines which he published in a geography written between 1209 and 1214 (B. Laufer, Relations of Chinese to the Philippines, Washington, 1907, p. 24).

Under “Mai,” an island north of Borneo, he is supposed to include Western Luzon, and the Island of Mindoro, which Blumentritt thinks (Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen, 65) had the name “Mait,” or black, from the former negrito population. The opening description, now held to be of Manila, tells of about a thousand families who occupied both banks of a water-course. Some people wore only waist-cloths while others draped themselves in a sort of cotton sheet, getting presumably much the same effect as may be seen among the feminine bathers on the Tondo beach any Sunday morning.

Little bronze idols of unknown origin were to be found in the grassy region outside the village, for Mr. Rockhill is careful to translate “idols” instead of “Buddhas,” holding that the word has the more general meaning often. Yet because the later idols of the country were of wood and clay one wonders where bronze idols would be made at that time if not in a Buddhist land. Manila was a peaceable community then, and peaceful too, for the fierce pirates of the south had not yet gotten into the habit of coming there, still less had settled, as they were to do two centuries later.

The traders’ ships anchored in front of the quarters of the chiefs, to whom they presented the white silk parasols which these dignitaries were accustomed to use. There the market was held, and the shore people at once went on board, mixing in friendly fashion with the newcomers. Nor was there fear of loss, for such then was the Manilans’ honesty that even when some one helped himself and took away goods without being seen he could be relied on in due season to faithfully account for them. The period was usually eight or nine months so that, though not travelling the greatest distance, those trading to Manila were among the latest in getting back to China.

The trade was without money, a barter of the country’s yellow wax (a medium grade), cotton, pearls, tortoise shell, medicinal betel nuts, and native cloth, for imported porcelain, trade gold, iron censers, leads, colored glassbeads and iron needles. Names of other settlements in this region may be what we now call the Babuyanes islands, Polillo island, off the East coast, Lingayen in [98]Pangasinan, Luzon perhaps used of East Luzon and (according to Luther M. Parker, a graduate student in the University of the Philippines, 1913–14) Lian in Batangas.

For the group called “the three islands,” Calamianes, Palawan and Busuanga are the closest resemblances to the curious names of the Chinese narrative, though B. Laufer in his notes to Fay Cole’s Chinese pottery in the Philippines (Field Museum Bulletin) suggests another for Calamianes.

Local customs were said not to differ particularly from the ways of Mai. The country, grand in its scenery, had many ridges and ranges of cliffs rose from the shore, steep as the walls of a house.

Each tribe had about a thousand families (which seems to be only another way of saying that the tribes were large rather than an effort at statistics) and they lived in wattled huts in commanding situations difficult of access. The sight of women bringing water from the streams in jars gracefully and easily carried on the head, two or three being borne one above another, still amazes and interests us as it did the Chinese geographer’s informant.

In more remote valleys lurked the negritoes, nesting in the trees the author alleges. They were stunted in stature, with eyes round and yellow, curly hair, and teeth exposed by their parted lips. In groups of three or five they would ambuscade some unwary wayfarer and many fell victims to their cunning and deadly arrows. But throwing a porcelain bowl would make them forget their murderous purpose and off they would go, leaping and shouting in joy.

The country folk evidently did not inspire in the traders the same confidence these felt toward the Manilans. Their ships would anchor in midstream and none went ashore till there had been sent one or two hostages to be retained till the trading was over. Drum beating announced their arrival, when the local traders raced for the ship carrying, evidently as samples, cotton, yellow wax, and home made cloth, and coconut heart mats, whatever this last may have meant. In case of disagreement over prices the chiefs of the traders came in person, when, after a mutually satisfactory settlement had been reached, there would be presents given,—silk umbrellas, porcelain and rattan baskets, probably the first two from the visitors and the last from the people. Then the barter was concluded ashore. Three or four days was the usual stop in each place when the ships sailed to another anchorage, for each of the settlements was independent of its neighbors. The Chinese goods were porcelain, black damask, and other silks, beads of all colors leaden sinkers for nets, and tin.

Polillo, on the Pacific coast, was also, but less frequently, visited, to obtain two prized varieties of coral. There local customs and commercial usages were the same as on the other side of the archipelago, but though the settlements were more populous the coral was hard to get and so there was little trade. The coast, too, was dangerous, with the sea full of “bare ribs of rock with jagged tooth-like blasted trees, their points and edges sharper than swords and lances.” Ships tacked far out from shore in passing to avoid these perils, and besides the people were “of cruel disposition and given to robbery.” [99]

Northern Formosa, during this period, was not visited by Chinese for there were no goods of special importance to be gotten there while the people were also given to robbery, but Formosan goods,—yellow wax, native gold, buffalo tails, and jerked leopard-meat, were brought to the Philippines for sale.

For 1349, in an unpublished translation by Mr. Rockhill of “A Description of the Barbarians of the Isles (Tao-i-chih-lio) by Wang Ta-yuan is mentioned the “three archipelagoes,” if that is the proper way to distinguish between Chao-ju-kua’s Sanhsu and the present San-tao. Islands were for the Chinese merely places distant by a sea route from each other rather than our “bodies of land completely surrounded by water.”

This author’s region was to the east of a very curious range of mountains if one may translate the name “taki-shan.” It was divided by a triple peak and there was range upon range of mountains which suggests to Mr. Rockhill the Pacific coast of Luzon south of Cape Engaño.

As now, the soil was poor and the crops sparse, while the heated climate was variable.

The old question of a lost white tribe, attributed so often to Mindoro, is raised by mention of “some males and females,” being “white.” Perhaps the breeding principle that a second cross sometimes reverts to the original type may be the explanation. Chinese mestizos have seemed to me whiter here than European blends with Filipinas where no Chinese strain was present. Their delicate beauty suggests the Caucasians from whom the earliest Chinese may have taken wives in the remote past before they came to the “eighteen provinces.” The first Spaniards comment also on exceedingly fair Filipinas and as the Caucasian type is the European ideal of beauty it probably resulted that such mixed marriages as occurred were with these Chinese mestizas. The prejudice of new converts against pagans, linked with the humiliation to which the Chinese residents in the Philippines were subject during Spain’s rule here, led to covering up and ignoring all Chinese relations and is a very good reason why even where known there is today reluctance to admit descent from the oldest of civilized races. Yet before the Spaniards came both in the Philippines and in the lands from which successive immigrations of Filipinos have come, the Chinese traders ranked with the aristocracy and Chinese wives were sought by royalty.

A trait by no means died out was a fondness for jewelry shown by stowaways on board junks for Chinchew. When their money was all expended on personal adornments they returned home, there to be honored as travelled personages, the distinction of having visited China raising them above even their own fathers and the older men.

The 1349 account of Mai, or Manila, credits the people with “customs chaste and good.” Both men and women wore their hair done up in a knot and clothed themselves in blue cotton shirts. Since the earlier notice, within the century and a quarter interval, Hindu influence had become manifest for a sort of suttee is related. New [100]widows with shaven heads would lie fasting beside their husband’s corpses for seven days. Then if still alive they could eat but were never permitted to remarry and many when the husband’s body was placed on the funeral pyre accompanied it into the flames. The region must have been populous for on the burial of a chief of renown two or three thousand slaves would be buried in his tomb. The imports show more luxuries; red taffetas, ivory and trade silver figuring in the later list.

Sulu comes in for mention with fields losing their fertility in the third year of cultivation. Sago, fish, shrimps and shell fish made up the diet and the people, with cut hair, wore black turbans as may now be seen in parts of Borneo, and dressed in sarongs. Boiling seawater for salt, making rum and weaving were their occupations ashore, and dyewoods of middling quality, beeswax, tortoise-shell and pearls, surpassing in roundness and whiteness, were their exports.

Laufer (Relations of Chinese to the Philippines, p. 251) gives 1372 as the date of the first tribute embassy to China from the Philippine peoples under their present name of “Luzon-men,” then designating principally Manilans (Ming Chronicles chap. 323, p. 110 according to his reference). Luzon was then stated to be situated in the South Sea very close to Chinchew, Fukien province.

The ruler of the great Middle Kingdom in return sent an official to the king of Luzon with gifts of silk gauze embroidered in gold and colors. The commentator adds a well founded caution against accepting the word “first” as meaning anything other than that the chronicler was unfamiliar with previous notices.

Laufer quotes from the Ming Chronicles of the Malayan tribe F’ing-ka-shi-lau whom he concludes are the Pangasinanes, inhabitants of the western and southern shores of Lingayen Bay, Luzon, but in earlier days apparently extending further north. Early in the XV century they had a small realm of their own, sending an embassy to China in 1406 and presenting the emperor as gifts “with excellent horses, silver and other objects” and receiving in return paper money and silks. In 1408 the chief was accompanied by an imposing retinue of two headmen from each village subject to his authority and these in turn each accompanied by some of his retainers. This time the imperial gifts were paper money for the sub-chiefs and for each hundred men six pieces of an open-work variegated silk, for making coats, and linings.

Besides a 1410 embassy from Pangasinan there was another tribute party from Luzon headed by one Ko-Ch’a-lao who brought products of his country, among which gold was most prominent. This last party came because in 1405 the Emperor Yung-lo had sent a high Chinese officer to Luzon to govern that country. Here is definite political identification with the Chinese empire. In 1407 it is probable this moral force of respect for the superior culture of what was the Rome of the Orient witnessed also a physical demonstration, for in that year the eunuch Cheng-ho set sail, with his 62 large ships bearing 27,800 soldiers, on the expedition which explored as far as the Arabian Gulf and required the nominal allegiance of the numerous countries visited during repeated voyages extending over thirty years. [101]

Ian C. Hannah states in his “Eastern Asia: A History” that outside the North of Toh Chow, in Shantung province, by a little mosque, is yet marked the burial place of a former sultan of Sulu who died on a visit to the Emperor Yung-lo in 1417.

In the same year, Sulu’s eastern, western and village rajahs with their wives, children and headmen all came to the Chinese court with tribute, and another tribute mission from Sulu arrived in 1420.

About the middle of the XV century, Doctors Hose and McDougall in their history of Borneo (Pagan Tribes of Borneo, London, 1912, chap. 1) assert, a Bisayan was king of Brunei. This Alakber Tala, later to be called Sultan Mohammed, introduced Arabic doctrines into his kingdom and the use of Arabic writing made his reign the beginning of Brunei’s local recorded history. His great grandnephew, Makoda Ragan, had Arab and Chinese as well as Bisayan blood, a fact remembered to this day by having representatives of these three races officiating at the king’s coronation, and the fourth official on these occasions is dressed in ancient Bisayan costume. Makoda Ragah, also called Sultan Bulkiah, is spoken of as the most heroic character in Bornean history and conquered the Sulu islands, and sent expeditions to Manila, the second time seizing the place. His wife, the first queen of the Philippines of whom we know, was a Javan princess. This great king was accidentally killed by his wife’s bodkin. It was this monarch or his son who died in 1575 that so impressed the chronicler of Magellan’s expedition.

Corroboration for this considerable historic association comes in the Chinese jars found in the oldest burial caves as well as prized among the more remote hill tribes as ancestral possessions, handed down from so remote an antiquity that their origin has long been forgotten and they are now venerated as objects that came from heaven (Fay Cole: Chinese Pottery in the Philippines). The four-toed dragon claw designs place them among the Chinese manufacture of not later than the last of the XIV century.

Legend is not lacking, either, for a tradition of Tapul (Saleeby: The Origin of the Malayan Filipinos, p. 1) relates that a Chinese rajah who anchored his boat at the south of their island had his daughter stolen in the night by the “dewas.” She was hidden in a bamboo stalk and there found by the solitary male who had hatched out of a roc’s egg. Their daughter, the earliest recorded Chinese mestiza, was, according to Doctor Saleeby again, the grandmother of the Chiefs of Sulu.

The very name Luzon is not the time-honored rice mortar, La-sung, but Luzong of which John Crawfurd (History of the Indian Archipelago, vol. 1, p. 324) says: “The term, I have no doubt, is Chinese, for the Chinese, who destroy the sound of all other native names of countries, or use barbarisms of their own, apply the word Lusong familiarly and correctly.” They even associate it with their famous dynasty of that name and have a joke of their own at the expense of the Spaniards (B. Laufer: The Chinese in the Philippines).

Naming in pairs is common enough by Chinese to make it seem more than a mere coincidence that these islands are called “Liu sung,” while their neighbors to the north were originally “Liu Kiu.” [102]

(Translation, by Hon. W. W. Rockhill, of a Chinese book of 1349, by Wang Ta-yuan, Description of the Barbarians of the Isles (Tao-i-chih-lio).)

Mr. Salmon’s “Modern History,” London, 1744, Vol. I, pp. 92–93.

The Portuguese were no sooner in possession of Malacca, but they discovered the Moluccas or Spice islands; at which time Magallanes returning home and not being rewarded according to his expectations, as has been hinted above, offered his service to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, proposing to discover a passage to these very Spice islands by sailing westward, which he apprehended would bring them within the Emperor’s share, according to the agreement above mentioned, that all countries which should be discovered westward should belong to Spain, as all the discoveries eastward were to belong to Portugal.

The Spaniards who lived to return home again, gave a very extravagant account of the inhabitants which has since appeared to have little truth in it. They afterwards sailed into the 50th degree of South latitude, where they pretended to meet with a monstrous race of giants, which have never been heard of since; and, among other improbable stories, tell us that their way of letting blood there was by chopping a great gash in their arms and legs with a hatchet, instead of using a lancet; and the way of vomiting their patients was by thrusting an arrow a foot and a half long down their throats.

So little credit is to be given to some discoverers, especially where they happen to be people of no judgment, and who have little regard for truth, as it happened in this case where the commander, Magellan, and most of the officers died in the voyage, and very few besides the common sailors returned to give an account of the expedition.

Magellan was killed in a skirmish with the natives; having a little before his death received intelligence that the Molucca islands, which he came out in search of, were not far distant; and his ships, afterwards pursuing the voyage, arrived at Tidore, one of the Moluccas, on the 8th day of November, 1521. In these islands they were kindly received by the respective Princes and suffered to build a fort and erect a factory at Tidore; they also left one of their ships which was leaky there to be refitted, which the Portuguese afterwards took as a prize and ruined their factory. [105]

These islands were probably first peopled from the continent of China, being formerly under the Emperor of China’s government; who deserted them, it seems, on account of their being too remote from the rest of his dominion; but their religious rights, as well as several other customs they retained when the Spanish came thither, show that the people were of Chinese extraction.

The Mindanayans are said to be an ingenious, witty people and active enough when they have a mind to it; but for the most part very lazy and thievish, and will not work unless compelled to it by hunger; but our author attributes their want of industry chiefly to the tyranny of the government, which will not suffer them to enjoy the wealth they acquire, and therefore they never endeavor to lay up anything.

(Dr. Terrien de Lacouperie, Formosa Notes; Hertford, 1887, p. 39.)

There are other evidences of importance, which show that the Chinese were acquainted with the dark-skinned occupiers of Formosa as originated from the Philippine Archipelago. The Yang tchou wen Kao (v. Geo. Kleinwachter, The History of Formosa under the Chinese, p. 345) says that “the island of Tai-wan (or Formosa), which was formerly called Ki-lung, was originally a part of the Liu-Kiu state, which was founded by some descendants of the Ha-la. The author does not say what the Ha-la are, assuming that his readers are acquainted with that name, so that we must look elsewhere for the wanted explanations. I find it in the Miao Man hoh tchi (k. III, ff. 6–7), “A Description of the Miao and Man Tribes,” by Tsao Shu-K’iao of Shanghai. The entry about that people is amongst those of the South. They are described as “dark, with deep-set eyes,” a peculiarity which the Chinese stated to be that of the kun-lun men, as we have seen above. The author of the Miao Man hoh tchi says also that the Hala do not know the practice of chewing betel and he proceeds with some details on their clothes and customs in so far as they are peculiar to themselves, but they are unimportant. Now these Ha-la of the Chinese are simply the Gala, commonly Ta-gala, with the usual Ta1 prefix of the Philippine Islands and the statements agree entirely with the inferences of ethnologists deduced from travellers’ reports as to the parentship of several tribes of aborigines of Formosa with the Tagal population of the Philippines.

The Chinese ethnographical notices of the Sung Dynasty on the Liu Kiu islands, including as it does all the islands from Japan to the Philippines, states that next to Liu-Kiu lies the country of the P’i-she-ye2 in which we must I think recognize the Bisayas, the most diffused population of the Philippines, and next to the Tagalas in importance. [106]

They made a raid on the coasts of Fuhkien at Tsiuen-tchou during the period A. D. 1174–1189 and caused a great deal of havoc. They are described as naked savages with large eyes, greatly covetous of iron in any shape, using bamboo rafts and a sort of javelin attached by a long string and which they throw on their enemy (cf. Ma Tuanlin, Wen hien t’ung K’ao; d’Hervey de St. Denis, Ethnographie de Matouanlin, Vol. 1, p. 425). These people travelling on rafts could not have come from afar, and therefore may be supposed to have come over to the Chinese coast from Formosa. In which probable case, this ought to have resulted from an emigration of them to the great island.

By Jose Rizal

Tagalog belongs to the agglutinative branch of languages. For a long time it was believed to be one of the dialects of Malay, through that language having been the first of the family known to Europeans. But later studies, by comparing the Malay-Polynesian idioms with one another, have succeeded in showing how slight is the basis for this supposition. The conjugation of the Tagalog verbs, far from being derived from the Malay verbs, contains in itself every form of that’s and besides some from other dialects.

Although in Tagalog as at present spoken and written (slightly different from ancient Tagalog), there are to be found many Sanscrit, Spanish and Chinese words, nevertheless the structure of the language still retains its own distinctive character. These foreign words are stitched to the fabric much as gems are set in jewels; they could come off and something else be substituted without the framework losing its form.

Like every other language, Tagalog has its alphabet; composed of five vowels and fourteen consonants.

The vowels are: A, E, I, O, U.

A is pronounced clear and full as in all other languages. The same may be said of I and U.

E and O only are found in the last syllable, or in the next to the last when that begins with the same vowel. In these cases E or O can be likewise represented by I or U, since the sounds of these final, or penultimate, vowels partake of both sounds. For example, in mabuti or mabute, the final I or E sounds like the final Y of the English words pity and beauty, where Y has a sound intermediate between E and I; leeg or liig is pronounced with a vowel which resembles E as much as it does I.

In the same way, O in the words dulo, ubod, look, has the value of a vowel intermediate between O and U.

The consonants are: B, D, G, G̃, H, K, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, Y. [107]

By Prof. Ferdinand Blumentritt.

Notwithstanding the rich literature concerning the peoples and languages of the Philippine Archipelago, there is no book or publication in which are catalogued the names of the tribes and the languages, and this appears the more inexcusable, since both Spanish and Philippine writers, with few exceptions, handle these names very carelessly, so that great confusion must ensue. The prevailing bad form in the Philippines, of transferring the name of one people or family (Stamm) to another, who possess similarities of any kind with the first, either in manner of life, or even only in culture grade in the widest sense of the term, has its counterpart in a second bad fashion of making several peoples out of one by replacing the folk name with the tribal names. Only with the greatest pains and thought is it possible to extricate one’s self from this labyrinth of nomenclature. After thorough search, I am convinced that many names reported to me must be eliminated, since they owe their existence to mistakes in penmanship or printing, to ridicule, misunderstanding, or error, as I have proved in single instances. However, I have been convinced that by a closer and intelligent exploration of the archipelago, it would not only be possible to make many corrections, particularly in orthography, but that new names would also be added, especially from northern Luzon and from the interior of other islands.

I have introduced into this catalogue all the variations of published names known to me, and briefly the description of tribal locations and reports on their culture grades, especially their religion. Besides the Negritos, I differentiate only Malay peoples (Stamme) in general, because here regard for different principles of grouping and subdividing of the Malay race would appear to serve no good end and perhaps prove troublesome. Obsolete forms of names are carefully marked with a cross. Where I, as with the Talaos, Mardicas, and Cafres, take note of foreign peoples or castes on the islands, it is because Spanish authors have erroneously set them down as Philippine. On the other hand, in order to draw attention to a few names customary in the country for races and castes, I have included the following, not belonging here in strict accordance with the title of this article: Castila, Cimarrones, Indios, Infieles, Insulares, Mestizos, Montaraz, Peninsulares, Remontados, and Sangley:

Abacas.—Heathen Malay people, who lived in the dense forests of Caraballo Sur (Luzon). Warlike, probably head-hunters. In the last century they were Christianized, and in their territory the parish of Caranglan (province of Nueva Ecija) was founded, where their descendants lived as peaceful Christians. They have a language of their own, but appear now to be thoroughly Tagalized.

Abra-Igorots, Igorots of Abra.—Collective title for the head-hunters living in the province of Abra (Luzon). Belong for the most part to the Guinaanes.

Abulon.—The name of a group of wild peoples living in the mountain regions of Zambales. They are perhaps identical with the Zambales and Igorots.

Adang.—A folk with a language of their own, who dwell about a mountain of the same name in the province of Ilocos Norte. According to the Augustians P. Buzeta and P. Bravo, they are a mixture of Malays and Negritos. But the first-named element is more prevalent than the second. Their customs resemble those of the Apayaos, their next neighbors; still they do not appear to be head-hunters. [108]

Aeta, see Negrito. (Variants: Aheta, Eta, Aita, Aigta, Ita, Atta, Agta, Inagta, Até, Atá, etc., from the Tagalog, ita, itim, Malay itam, Bicol, ytom, black).

Agutainos.—Name of the natives of Malay race in the island of Agutaya, in the Cuyo archipelago (province of Calamianes). They have their own dialect, called Agutaino; are Christianized and civilized.

Alibaon, Alibabaun.—Not the name of a people, but, it seems, a title of the Moro chief, settled on the bay of Davao.

Alimut.—This name is cited in the form Igorots of Alimut. Supposed to be the tribe of head-hunters who lived in June, 1889, in the lately erected comandancia Quiangan and on the banks of the river Alimut. In this case they should belong to the Mayoyao or Ifugao family (Luzon).

Altasanes or Altabanes.—In both forms a head-hunting people of northwestern Nueva Vizcaya (Luzon) is known. The correct spelling of the name should be decided. They appear to have no language of their own and perhaps belong to the Mayoyaos and Ifugaos.

Apayaos.—Warlike head-hunters, having their own language and dwelling in the northwestern portion of the province of Cagayan (Luzon) and the adjoining portions of Ilocos Norte and Abra. Buzeta and Bravo report that they are not full-blood Malays, but mixed with Negritos. It must not be forgotten, however, that the Spanish authors have such mixtures ready made. Dark hair is a mixture of Negrito blood; clear skin or yellowish is the result of crossing with Chinese or Japanese. They are partly Christianized. Some Spanish authors declare their language to be Mandaya, but this is improbable.

Variants: Apayos, Apoyaos. (Consult also Vol. VIII, folio series of the Royal Ethnographic Museum in Dresden, by A. B. Meyer, with A. Schadenberg.)

Aripas.—A Malay language, spoken by a peaceable people. They live near Nacsiping and Tubang (Luzon). They are heathen, but a portion of them have been converted to Christianity. With these new Christians the village of Aripa has been founded.

Atas (also Ataas, Itaas).—(1) A powerful people of unknown origin, who occupy the head waters of the rivers Davas, Tuganay, and Libaganum, and their country extends in the eastern portion of the province of Misamis (Mindanao) to the home of the Bukidnones. Little is known about the Atás; they appear to be a mixture of Negritos and Malays. They have a language of their own. Their name means “dwellers in highlands.” Variants: Ataas, Itaas. (2) A mixture of Bicols and Negritos in Camarines Sur. [On the confounding of Atás with Aetas, consult A. B. Meyer, 1899, p. 18. The Atás are not pure Negritos.—Tr.]

Até.—Name which the Tagbanuas of Palawan (Paragua) give to the Negritos.

Atta.—Dialect spoken by the Negritos of the province of Cagayan (Luzon).

Baganis.—No people is known under this name, as Moya erroneously asserts; it is the title conferred on every Manobo warrior who has slain seven enemies.

Bagobos.—A heathen and bloodthirsty people of Malay derivation and with an idiom of their own. Their home is at the foot of the volcano of Apo (Davao, in Mindanao). There are detached Christian settlements of them.

Balugas.—(1) Collective title for dark mixed people of Malay and Negrito race, derived from the Tagalog word baloga, “black mixed one.” Balugas are to be found in several portions of central Luzon. (2) Some authors identify Aetas with Balugas. Camarca calls the black, woolly savages of the mountains in Camumusan “Negros Balugas,” so it seems that in certain regions more or less pure-blooded Negritos were called by this name.

Banaos.—[In northern Luzon. See A. B. Meyer, with A. Schadenberg, in Vol. VIII, folio series of the Royal Ethnographic Museum, in Dresden.]

Bangal-Bangal.—The Dulanganes are so called by the Moros.

Bangot.—A name conferred on various bands of Manguianes in Mindoro, for the place and mode of life. So called are (1), by the Socol and Bulalacao, those Manguianes who inhabit the plains; and (2) those Manguianes of Mongoloid type who have their dwelling places on the banks of the streams south of Pinamalayan.

Banuaon.—Name of the Manobos tribe from which the Christian settlement of Amporo, in the district of Surigao (Mindanao), was formed.

Barangan.—Name borne by those Manguian hordes who occupy the most elevated stations in the Mangarin Mountains (Mindoro).

Batak.—Another name for the Tinitianos, especially those that dwell in the neighborhood of Punta Tinitia and the Bubayán Creek, on the island of Palawan.

Batan.—The inhabitants of Batanes Island were and are enumerated by Spanish authors among the Ibanags or Cagayanes. According to Dr. T. H. Pardo this is incorrect, for their idiom differs not only from the Ibanag but from [109]all others in the Philippines, having the sound of “tsch,” unknown elsewhere in the archipelago, and a nasal sound like that of the French “en.” They are therefore to be separated from the Cagayanes.

Bayabonan.—Name of a supposed Malay people with a language of their own, living as neighbors to the Gamunanges on the mountain slopes eastward from Tuao, in Cagayan (Luzon). They are heathen and little is known of them save the name.

Beribi.—Manguianes domiciled between Socol and Bulalacao, living on the mountains. (Compare Bangot.)

Bicol.—Autonym of those natives of Malay race who inhabit the peninsula of Camarines in Luzon and some outlying islands. On the arrival of the Spaniards they were somewhat civilized and had a kind of writing. They are Christians, still a section of them live under the names Igorots, or Cimarrones, mostly mixed with Negrito blood, in the wilds of Isarog, Iriga, Buhi, Caramuan, etc., wild, and plunged in the deepest heathendom. The official spelling of the name is Vicol. This is clear, since in Spanish the letter v, especially before e or i, is sounded like German b.

Bilanes.—A Malay people occupying, according to latest accounts, a larger area than I have attributed to them in my ethnographic chart of Mindanao, here thoroughly penetrated also by other stocks. The Sarangani islands, lying off the southern point of Mindanao, are inhabited by them. They are heathen, of peaceable disposition. Their language is characterized by the possession of the letter f. The proper form of their name ought to be Buluan, so that they have the same title as the lake. They must then at first have been called Tagabuluan (Taga = whence, from there). (Compare Tagabelies.)

Variants: Buluanes, Buluan, Vilanes, Vilaanes.

Bisayas.—Officially written Visayas. A Malay people who, on the arrival of the Spaniards, had a culture and an art of writing of their own. They inhabit the islands named after them, besides the northern and the eastern coast of Mindanao, with small intrusions of heathen populations that have become Visayised since the converted tribes—Manobos, Buquidnones, Subanos, Mandayas, etc., have been taught the Visaya language in the schools. Also Zamboango and Cottobato show Visaya settlements. Among them are to be counted the Mundos. At the time of the discovery they painted (or tattooed) their bodies, on which account they received from the Spaniards the name of Pintados, which stuck to them even till the eighteenth century. They are Christians. Their language is divided into several dialects, of which the Cebuano and Panayano are most important. (Compare Calamiano, Halayo, Hiliguayna, Caraga. Blumentritt places their number at 2,500,000 and upward. Globus, 1896, LXX, p. 213.)

Bontok-Igorots.—Collective name of the head-hunting peoples living in the province of Bontok, to whom also the Guinaanes belong.

Bouayanan.—A heathen folk in the interior of Palawan. The name appears to mean “crocodile men.”

Buhuanos, Bujuanos.—A heathen folk related to the Igorots (head-hunters?), dwelling in the province of Isabela de Luzon. They are warlike in nature.

Bulalacaunos.—A wild people of Malay race (without Negrito mixture?), having its own (?) idiom. It is to be found in the interior of the northern part of the island of Palawan (Paragua) and in Calamianes islands.

Buluanes, see Bilanes.

Bungananes.—A warlike, head-hunting (?) people, who live in the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela de Luzon. Except the name, almost nothing is known of them, and in my view this is not certain.

Bukidnones, Buquidnones.—A heathen Malay people living in the eastern part of the district of Misamis (Mindanao), from Ibigan to Punta Divata (the coast is settled chiefly by Visayas), and along the Rio de Tagoloan. Lately they have been partly Christianized. The Spaniards conferred on them the name of Monteses, “dwellers in the mountains,” which is a translation of their name.

Bukil, Buquil.—Name of different Manguiana tribes of Mindoro: (1) the Manguianes mixed with Negrito blood, whose homes are in the vicinity of Bacoo and Subaan; (2) those that dwell on the spurs of the mountains between Socol and Bulalacao, and show a pure Malay type; (3) in Pinamalayan they are called Manguianes of Mongoloid type, who inhabit the plains; (4) the Manguianes who dwell on the banks of the rivers are named Mangarin. In view of the fact that Bukil is identical with Bukid, and can be applied only to tribes living in mountain forests, it appears to me that the settlements given under 3 and 4 are incorrect. [110]

Buquitnon.—A “race” by this name, on the island of Negros, until recently unknown (used in La Oceañía Española, Manila, August 9, 1889, copied from the Provenir de Visayas.) The Buquitnon are said to be a heathen tribe of about 40,000 souls that has its homes on the mountains of Negros, not massed together and not to be distinguished from the Visayas living on the coast. Whether the Carolanos are identical with them is hard to say. The name Buquitnon and also Buquidnon in Mindanao means mountaineers, upland forest dwellers, yet are the Buquitnon, of Negros, and the Buquidnon, of Mindanao, to be strongly distinguished from each other.

Buriks.—Under this name figures a pretended Igorot people in all publications devoted to the Igorots, but Dr. Hans Meyer found that Burik applies to any Igorot who is tattooed in a certain manner. I did not believe this until a Philippine friend, Eduardo P. Casal, wrote that the Igorots in the Philippine Exposition in Madrid, in 1887, had confirmed the statement of Dr. Meyer.

Busaos.—From Spanish accounts the Busaos are a separate division of Igorots. Dr. Hans Meyer has reported that the Basaos, or Bisaos, through manner, costume, and custom, are to be numbered rather with the Guiaanes and Bontok-Igorots than with the Igorots proper.

Cafres.—No native people by this name. The Papuan slaves brought to Manila by the Portuguese at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century were so called. (The abolition of slavery under Philip II arrested this traffic.)

Cagayanes.—A Malay language group. Their dwelling places are the Rio Grande de Cagayan (Luzon) from Furao to the mouth, the Babuyanes and Batanes islands, although the people of the last named are by some authors made an independent stock. (Compare Batan.) The Cagayanes had at the time of the Spanish discovery a civilization of their own. They are Christians. Their language is Ibanag. From them are to be sharply discriminated the people of Cagayan, in Mindanao, belonging to the Visayan stock.

Calaganes.—A small Malayan people who live on the Casilaran Creek (Bay of Davao, Mindanao). Partly converted to Christianity.

Calamiano.—Buzeta and Bravo understand by Calamiano a Visaya dialect which was made up of Tagalog mixed with Visaya and spoken by the Christians of northern Palawan (Paragua) and Calamianes islands. Pere Fr. Juan de San Antonio has preached in Calamiano and composed in it a catechism. The existence of the Calamiano language should therefore be unassailable, but A. Marche has declared that it does not exist.

Calauas (pronounced Calawas).—A Malay people, heathen and peaceable. They live near Malauec, in the valleys of the Rio Chico de Cagayan (Luzon), and on the strip of land called Partido de Itavés. Their language is called Itavés also, but others declare their speech to be identical with the Malauec. The portion of the Calauas who hold the Itavés land are by some authors called Itaveses. I am not sure whether there may not have been a misunderstanding here.

Calibuganes.—So are called in western Mindanao the mixtures of Moros and Subanos.

Calingas.—(1) In northern Luzon, Calinga is the collective designation for “wild” natives, independent heathen, as, in northwestern Luzon, the word Igorot is applied. (2) This term is specially attached (a) to that warlike people of Malay descent who live between Rio Cagayan Grande and Rio Abulug, and are marked by their Mongoloid type; (b) according to Semper, also the Irayas. (See Die Calingas, by Blumentritt, in Das Ausland, 1891, No. 17, pp. 328–331.)

Camucones, Camocones.—Name of the Moro pirates who inhabit the little islands of the Sulu group east of Tawi-Tawi, and the islands between these and Borneo; but on the last the name Tirones is also conferred.

Cancanai, Cancanay.—Igorot dialect spoken in the northwest of Benguet.

Caragas.—In older works are so named the warlike and Christian inhabitants of the localities subdued by the Spaniards on the east coast of Mindanao, and, indeed, after their principal city, Caraga. It has been called, if not a peculiar language, a Visaya dialect, while now only Visaya (near Manobo and Mandaya) is spoken, and an especial Caraga nation is no longer known. I explain this as follows: Already at that time newly arrived Manobos and Mandayas were settled who spoke Visaya only imperfectly. This Visaya muddle and the mixture of Visayas and newcomers are to be identified with the Caraga, if in the end, under the first, the Mandaya is not to be directly understood.

Variants: Caraganes†, Calaganes (to be distinguished from Calaganes of Davao), Caragueños (now the name of the inhabitants of Daraga la Nueva and Caraga.) [111]

Carolanos.—Diaz Arenas so designates the heathen and wild natives who inhabit the mountain lands of Negros, especially the Cordillera, of Cauyau. They appear to be of Malay stock, transplanted Igorots from Negros. Practically nothing is known concerning them. Compare Buquitnon.

Castilas.—Native name for Spaniards and other Europeans in the Philippine Islands.

Catalanganes.—A Malay people of Mongoloid type. They live in the flood plain of the Catalangan river (province of Isabela de Luzon). They are heathen and peaceable, and have the same language as the Irayas. (Half Tagala and half Chinese, Brinton, American Anthropologist, 1898, XI, p. 302.)

Cataoan.—A dialect spoken by the Igorots of the district of Lepanto, living in the valley of the Abra River.

Catubanganes, or Catabangenes.—Warlike heathen, settled in the mountains of Guinayangan, in the province of Tayabas (Luzon). Through lack of available information nothing can be said about their race affiliations, whether they be pure Malay or Negrito-Malay. They are probably Remontados mixed with Negrito blood and gone wild.

Cebuano.—Dialect, Visaya.

Cimarrones.—This characterization (“wild,” “gone wild”) is given to heathen tribes of most varied affiliations, living without attachment and in poverty, chiefly posterity of the Remontados. (See note by A. B. Meyer, 1899, p. 12.—Translator.)

Coyuvos.—The natives of Cuyo archipelago (province of Calamianes), with exception of those who belong to the stock of Agutainos. According to A. Marche, the Coyuvos appear to be Christianized Tagbanuas. For that reason would the idiom called official Coyuvo be the Tagbanua.

Culamanes.—Another name for the Manobos, who live on the southern portion of the east coast of Davao Bay, the so-called coast of Culaman.

Dadayag.—A Malay people, who occupy the mountain wilds in the western part of Cabagan (province of Cagayan). They have a language of their own and are warlike heathen as well as head-hunters.

Variant: Dadaya.

Dapitan (Nacion de)†.—Title conferred in the sixteenth century on the Visayas of the present comandancia of Dapitan (province of Misamis, Mindanao).

Dayhagang†.—According to S. Mas, before the arrival of the Spaniards, the progeny of Borneo-Malays and Negrito women were so called.

Dulanganes.—This heathen people occupy the southern part of the district of Davao. The name signifies “wild men.” It is not known whether they are pure bloods or Malays with infusion of Negrito blood. I believe that the Malay type predominates. Since they also bear the name of Gulanganes, perhaps, more properly, it is to be suspected that they form with the Mangulangas, Manguangas, and Guiangas (q. v.) a single linguistic group, or at least a stock closely related to them. This is merely a conjecture. By the Moros they are called Bangal-Bangal.

Dumagat.—A name conferred on the Negritos of the northeast coast of Luzon and by older non-Spanish writers on coast dwellers of Samar, Leyte, and Mindoro. Latterly it has come about that the Tagal name Dumagat (from dagat, “sea,” “dweller on the strand,” “skillful sailor,” etc.) has been taken for the name of a people. (A. B. Meyer, 1899, p. 11, calls the Dumagates Negrito half-breeds of the island of Alabat, quoting Steen Bille, Reise der Galathea, 1852, Vol. I, p. 451.—Translator.)

Durugmun.—The Manguianes of Mongoloid type are so called who occupy the highest portions of the mountains around Pinamalayan (Mindoro). They are called also Buchtulan.

Etas, see Negritos.

Gaddanes.—A Malay head-hunting people, with a language of their own, settled in the provinces of Isabela and Cagayan, but especially in the comandancia of Saltan (Luzon). The Gaddanes of Bayombong and Bagabag are Christians; the rest are heathen.

Gamungan, Gamunanganes.—A Malay people having their own idiom, and inhabiting the mountain provinces in the eastern and northeastern portions of Tuao (province of Cagayan, Luzon). They are heathen.

Guiangas, Guangas.—A Malay people in the northeastern and northern part of Davao (Mindanao). They are heathen and do not differ greatly from the Bagobo, their neighbors; on the other hand, according to the accounts of the Jesuit missionaries, their speech differs totally from those of the heathen tribes near by, and for that reason it is difficult to learn. On account of their wildness [112]they are much decried. The variants, Guanga and Gulanga, which mean “forest people,” give rise to the bare suspicion that they are a fragment of the little-known tribe who, according to location, lived scattered in southern Mindanao under the names: Manguangas, Mangulangas, Dulanganes.

Guimbajanos (pronounced Gimbahanos).—The historians of the seventeenth century, under this title, designated a wild, heathen people, apparently of Malay origin, living in the interior of Sulu Island. Their name is derived from their war drum (guimba). Later writers are silent concerning them. In modern times the first mention of them is by P. A. de Pazos and by a Manila journal, from which accounts they are still at least in Carodon and in the valley of the Loo; it appears that a considerable portion of them, if not the entire people, have received Islam.

Variants: Guinbajanos, Guimbanos, Guimbas, Quimpanos.

Guinaanes (pronounced Ginaanes).—A Malay head-hunting people inhabiting the watershed of the Rio Abra and Rio Grande de Cagayan (Luzon), as well as the neighboring region of Isabela and Abra. They are heathen; their language possesses the letter f.

Variants: Guianes, Ginan, Quinaanes, Quinanes. (See A. B. Meyer, with A. Schadenberg, Volume VIII, folio series, Royal Ethnographic Museum, Dresden, 1890.)

Gulanga, see Guianga.

Gulanganes, see Dulanganes.

Halaya†.—A Visaya dialect spoken in the interior of Panay.

Haraya.—A Visaya dialect spoken in the interior of the island of Panay, nearly identical with the foregoing.

Hiliguayna†.—A Visaya dialect spoken on the coast of the island of Panay. Variants: Hiligueyna, Hiligvoyna.

Hillunas, Hilloonas, see Illanos.

Ibalones†.—Ancient name of Bicols, especially those of Albay.

Ibanag.—Name of the language spoken by the Cagayanes. They possess the letter f.

Idan, Idaan.—The Idan, sought by non-Spanish authors on the islands of Palawan (Paragua) and Sulu, have not been found.

Ifugaos.—A dreaded Malay head-hunting people who inhabit the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela and the lately formed comandancia of Quiangan. To them belong the Quianganes, Silipanos, etc. They are heathen. Their language possesses the sound of f.

Ifumangies.—According to Diaz Arenas, this name applies to a tribe of Igorots who were then (1848) in the province of Nueva Vizcaya. The f in their name leads to the suspicion that they are Ifugaos.

Ibilaos.—A Malay head-hunting people, having also apparently Negrito blood in their veins. They are heathen and inhabit the border lands of Nueva Vizcaya and Nueva Ecija.

Igorots.—With the name Ygolot the first chroniclers characterized the warlike heathen who now inhabit Benguet, therefore the pure Igorots. Later, the name extended to all the head-hunters of northern Luzon; still later it was made to cover the Philippine islanders collectively, and to-day the title is so comprehensive that the name Igorot is synonymous with wild. According to Hans Meyer, the name applies only to the Igorots of Lepanto and Benguet, who speak the dialects Inibaloi, Cancanai, Cataoan, and a fourth (Suflin?), that of the Berpe Data.

Variant: Ygolot, Ygulut.

(A Chinese-Japanese Tagala group. Brinton, Amer. Anthropologist, 1898, XI, p. 302. Consult A. B. Meyer, with A. Schadenberg, in Vol. VIII, folio series of the Royal Ethnographic Museum, in Dresden, 1890; and Die Igoroten von Pangasinan, F. Blumentritt, in Mittheil. T. K. K. Geogr. Gesellschaft in Wien, 1900. hft. 3 u. 4.)

Ilamut.—Name of an Igorot tribe always mentioned together with that of Altsanes. If this tribe really exists, its home is in the Cordilleras which separate Benguet from Nueva Vizcaya, and is to be sought, indeed, in the last-named province, especially in Quiangan. They may be identical with the Alimut.

Ilanos, Illanos.—The Moros dwelling in the territory of Illano, Mindanao. Their name should be connected with Lanao, “lake,” since their land incloses Lake Dagum, or Lanao. This conjecture is strengthened through the names Lanun, Lanaos, Malanaos, existing in the neighborhood. (Consult A. B. Meyer, 1899, p. 18, on the Hillunas, “Correcting Quatrefages and Hamy Crania Ethnica,” 1882, p. 178, where they are called Negrito.—Translator.)

Ileabanes.—According to Diaz Arenas there existed an Igorot tribe of this name (1848) in the province of Nueva Vizcaya. [113]

Ilocanos.—A Malay people, with language of their own. At the discovery they had their peculiar culture and an alphabet. They inhabit the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Union, and form the civic population of Abra, whose Tinguian peasants they Ilocanise. Since they are fond of wandering, their settlements are scattered in other provinces of Luzon, as Benguet, Pampanga, Cagayan, Isabela de Luzon, Pangasinan, Zambales, and Nueva Ecija. They are to be found as far as the east coast of Luzon. They are Christians and civilized. (The Ilocanos of the northwest are markedly Chinese in appearance and speech. Brinton, Amer. Anthropologist, 1898, XI, p. 302. Consult A. B. Meyer, with A. Schadenberg, in Vol. VIII, folio series, of the Royal Ethnographic Museum in Dresden, 1890.)

Ilongotes.—A Malay people of apparent Mongoloid type, inhabiting the borders of Nueva Vizcaya, Isabela, and Principe, and known also in Nueva Ecija. They are bloodthirsty head-hunters. (In the eastern Cordillera, a rather pure but wild Tagala horde. Brinton, American Anthropologist, 1898, p. 302.)

Indios.—Under this title the Spanish understand the non-Mohammedanized natives of Malay descent, especially those Christianized and civilized.

Infieles.—Heathen, uncivilized peoples of Malay descent; were so named by the Spaniards.

Inibaloi.—Name of the dialect spoken by the Igorots Agnothales.

Insulares.—Spaniards born in the Philippine Archipelago.

Irapis.—After Mas, a subdivision of Igorots.

Irayas.—A Malay people mixed with Negrito blood, who dwell south of the Catalanganes and in the western declivities of the Cordillera of Palanan (Luzon). They speak the same language as the Catalanganes, and are likewise heathen. Their name seems to mean “dwellers on the plains,” “owners of plains.” To them the collective name Calinga is applied. (Consult A. B. Meyer, with A. Schadenberg, in Vol. VIII, folio series, of the Royal Ethnographic Museum in Dresden, 1890.)

Isinays (Isinayas, Isinay).—In the eighteenth century the heathen population of the then mission province of Ituy were so called, which includes the present communities of Aritao, Dupax, Banibang, Bayombong (Nueva Vizcaya, Luzon). It is not certain whether they are a separate people or are identical with Gaddanus, Italones, or Ifugaos.

Italones.—A head-hunting Malay people who inhabit the mountain wilds of Nueva Vizcaya (Luzon). They are heathen, only a small part of them having embraced Christianity.

Ita, see Negritos.

Itaas, see Atas.

Itanegas, Itaneg, Itaveg. See Tinguianes.

Itaves.—So used the language of the Calauas to be called; still there are authors who affirm that these two are different. Nothing certain is known concerning this name, which is also written Itaues, Itanes. From latest accounts, this is a dialect of Gaddan.

Itetapanes (Itetapaanes).—According to Buzeta and Bravo, a head-hunting Malay people mixed with Negrito blood, living on the western borders of Isabela de Luzon and perhaps also in Bontok.

Ituis.—According to Mas, a subdivision of Igorots. Nothing more is known. Compare Isinays.

Ivanha.—Form of Ibanag.

Joloanos.—The Moros of Sulu.

Jacanes, see Yacanes.

Kianganes, see Quianganes. (Meyer has Kingianes, 1899.)

Jumangi, see Humanchi.

Humanchi.—Heathen people of central Luzon (?); written Jumangi.

Latan.—Another name for the Manguianes who inhabit the plains of Mangarin (Mindoro).

Lanaos, see Illanos and Malanaos.

Lanun, see Illanos.

Laut, see Samales-Laut.

Lingotes, see Ilongotes.

Loacs.—Not a separate people, but the name of a very poor Tagacaolo tribe who dwell in the mountain forests of San Augustin Peninsula (Mindanao).

Lutangas.—A Mohammedan mixed race of Moros and Subanos, who inhabit the island of Olutanga and the adjacent coast of Mindanao.

Lutaos, Lutayos.—Moros of the district of Zamboanga and frequently called Illanos. It appears to be the Hispanicized form of the Malay Orang-Laut. [114]

Maguindanaos (Mindanaos).—Another of the Moros who inhabit the valley of the Rio Palangui or Rio Grande de Mindanao. To them belong also the Moros of Sarangani Islands and partly those of Davao Bay. (See the Maguindanaos, by Blumentritt, Das Ausland, 1891, No. 45, pp. 886–892.)

Malanaos.—Common name of those Moros, specially of Ilanos, who inhabit the shores of Malanas Lake (Mindanao).

Malancos.—A tribe alleged to be settled in Mindanao, but the name is plainly an error for Malanaos.

Malauec.—In an anonymous author of “Apuntes interesantes sobre las islas Filipinas,” (Madrid, 1870), and quoting V. Barrantes, the common language of commerce of Malaneg (province of Cagayan) is so called; but on the last named also (only) Ibanag is spoken. Other authors understand by this the language of the Nabayuganes or that of the Calaluas. The suspicion is also well founded that by Malauec is meant a lingua franca made up from various tongues. It is difficult to extract the truth from these conflicting accounts.

Mamanuas.—A Negrito people inhabiting the interior of Surigao Peninsula (northeast Mindanao). Semper and others have called them a bastard race, but the Jesuit missionaries, who have turned a great number of them to Christianity, call them “los verdaderos negritos aborigines de Mindanao.” (On the Mamanuas consult A. B. Meyer, Distribution of the Negritos, Dresden, 1899, p. 17.—Translator.)

Mananapes.—A heathen people alleged to dwell in the interior of Mindanao, possibly a tribe of Buquidnones or Manobos.

Mandaya.—In some authors this is the name of the Apayas language, which is somewhat doubtful.

Mandayas.—A bloodthirsty Malay and bright-colored head-hunting people in the comandancia of Bislig and the district of Davao (Mindanao). They are heathen, partly converted to Christianity by the Jesuits.

Mancayaos.—Not a separate people, but merely the warriors among the Manobos, who carry lances.

Manguangao.—Under this name the Jesuits near Catel (comandancia Bislig, east Mindanao) characterized the heathen inhabitants. By the same authors the heathen living on the upper tributaries of the Rio Agusan, Rio Manat, and Rio Batutu are called Manguangas and Mangulangas (forest people). Pere Pastells identifies Manguangas and Mangulangas and says that they inhabit the head waters of the Rio Salug (which does not agree with Montano’s communications). From all which it results that Manguangas is a collective name and stands in connection with that of the Dulanganes and Guiangas. Perhaps all the folk named belong to one people. They are heathen and of the Malay race.

Manguianes.—The heathen, unaffiliated natives inhabiting the interior of Mindoro, Romblon, and Tablas. Manguian (forest people) is a collective name of different languages and races. According to R. Jordana, the Manguianes of Mindoro are divided into four branches, one of which, Bukil or Buquel, is a bastard race of Negritos, while a second in external appearance reminds one of Chinese Mestizos, and on that account it is to be regarded as a Mongoloid type. The other two are pure Malay. To the name Manguianes (which calls to mind Magulangas) specially belong only (1) those Manguianes who live in the mountains near Mangarin and (2) only those between Socol and Bulacao who dwell on the river banks. The remaining tribes bear different names—Bangot, Buquil, Tadianan, Beribi, Durugmun, Buctulan, Tiron, and Lactan. The Manila journals speak of Manguianes of Paragua (Palawan). These have naught to do with those of Mindoro, since on Paragua this title in its meaning of “forest people” is applied to all wild natives of unknown origin.

Mangulangas, see Manguangas.

Manobos.—A Malay head-hunting people, sedentary, chiefly in the river valley of middle Rio Agusan (district of Swigao), as well as at various points in the districts of Davao (Mindanao). A considerable portion have been converted through Jesuit missionaries; the rest are heathens. The correct form of the name is Manuba, or, better, Man-Suba; that is, “river people.” The name in earlier times was frequently extended to other heathen tribes of Mindanao. (On the relationship of Manobos with Indonesians, an allophyllic branch of the white race, see remark of Brinton on Quatrefages and Hamy in American Anthropologist, 1898, Vol. XI, p. 297.)

Mardicas†.—In the war between Spain and Holland (seventeenth century) the mercenaries from the Celebes, Macassars, and the Moluccas were so called.

Maritimos.—The Remontados, who inhabit the islands and rocks on the north coast of Camarines Norte. (The island of Alabat, on the east coast of Luzon, is peopled by Negrito half-breeds, called Dumagat and Maritimos.—A. B. Meyer.) [115]

Mayoyaos.—A Malay head-hunting people, who inhabit the southwest corner of Isabela and the northwest angle of Nueva Vizcaya. The Mayoyaos belong, without doubt, to the Ifugao linguistic stock.

Mestizo.—Mixture. Mestizo Peninsulo, Mestizo Español, Mestizo Privilegiado, mixture of Spaniards and natives; Mestizo Chino, Mestizo Sangley, Mestizo Tributante, or mixture of Chinese with natives.

Mindanaos, see Maguindanaos.

Montaraz, Montesinos.—Collective name for heathen mountain peoples and also for Remontados.

Monteses.—(1) Collective name in the same sense as Montaraz; (2) Spanish name for Buquidnones and Buquitnon.

Moros.—Mohammedan Malays in the south of the archipelago, southern Palawan, Balabac, Sulu Islands, Basilan, western and partly the southern coast of Mindanao, as well as the territorio illano and the Rio Grande region and the Sarangani islands. Various subdivisions have been recognized: Maguindanaos, Illanos, Samales, Joloanos, etc.

(In the sixteenth century, 1521–1565, the Moros of Brunei (Borneo) propagated Islam among the brown race of the Philippines.)

Mundos.—Heathen tribes inhabiting the wilds of Panay and Cebu. Buzeta and Bravo regard them as Visaya Remontados gone wild. Baron Huegel says that their customs resemble those of the Igorots. This is a contradiction, in which more stress is laid on the testimony of the two Augustinians, that Mundos is misused as a collective name, like Igorots, Maguianes, etc.

Nabayuganes.—A warlike, head-hunting people of Malay origin, dwelling westward from Malaneg or Malanec (province of Cagayan). They appear to be related to the Guinaanes.

Negrito.—(Native names: Aeta, Até (Palawan), Eta, Ita, Mamanua (northeast Mindanao), old Spanish name, Negrillo, Negros del País). The woolly-haired, dark-colored aborigines of the land who, in miserable condition, live scattered among the Malay population in various parts of Luzon, Mindoro (?), Tablas, Panay, Busuanga (?), Culion (?), Palawan, Negros, Cebu, and Mindanao. There are supposed to be 20,000 of them. They are also spoken of under the word Balugas. The Negrito idiom of the province of Cagayan is called Atta.

(“It may be regarded as proved that Negritos are found in Luzon, Alabat, Corregidor, Panay, Tablas, Negros, Cebu, northeastern Mindanao, and Palawan. It is questionable whether they occur in Guimaias (island south of Panay), Mindoro.”—A. B. Meyer, 1899, p. 19.

Upon the Negritos, consult A. B. Meyer: The Negritos of the Philippines, publications of the Royal Ethnographic Museum of Dresden, 1893, Vol. IX, 10 pl., folio; also, The Distribution of the Negritos, Dresden, 1899; Montano, Mission aux Philippines, 1885; Marche, Lucon et Palaouan, 1887.—Translator.)

Palauanes.—Another name for Tagbanuas, perhaps their original name, from which the island of Paragua got the name Isla de los Palauanes. The u in these names equals the German w and the English v.

Pampangos.—A Malay language group who, at the arrival of the Spaniards, possessed a civilization and method of writing of its own. The people inhabit the province of Pampanga, Porac, and single locations in Nueva Ecija, Bataan, and Zambales. They are Christians.

Panayano.—Dialect of Visaya.

Pangasinanes.—A Malay language group which already at the time of the conquest had its own civilization and writing. The people inhabit the larger part of Pangasinan and various localities of Zambales, Nueva Ecija, Benguet, and Porac (?). They are Christians.

Panguianes, see Pungianes.

Panuipuyes (Panipuyes).—A tribe of so-called Igorots. Their dwellings were to be sought in the western portion of Nueva Vizcaya or Isabela de Luzon.

Peninsulares.—European Spaniards.

Pidatanos.—In the back country of Libungan, therefore not far from the delta of the Rio Grande de Mindanao, dwell, as the Moros report, a heathen mountain people bearing the name of Pidatanos. Probably they have not a separate language, but belong to one of the well-known families, perhaps the Manguangas.

Pintados,† see Visayas.

Pungianes.—Tribe of Mayoyaos. [116]

Quianganes.—(Pronounced Kianganes). A head-hunting people, settled in 1889 in the comandancia of Quiangan (Luzon), for that reason belonging to the Ifugao linguistic family. (See Die Kianganes (Luzon), by Blumentritt, Das Ausland, Stuttgart, 1891, pp. 129–132.)

Quimpano, see Quimbazanos.

Quinanes, see Guinaanes.

Remontados.—Name of civilized natives who have given up the civilized life and fled to the mountain forests.

Samales.—(1) A small Malay people living on the island of Samal in the Gulf of Davao (Mindanao). They are heathen, but they are partly converted to Christianity. (2) Another name for the Moros who inhabit the islands lying between Basilan and Sulu.

Samales-Laut.—The Moros who inhabit the coasts of Basilan. Compare Samales (2).

Sameacas.—Some authors speak of them as the aborigines of Basilan pushed back into the interior by the Moros. According to Claudio Montero y Gay, they are heathen.

Sangley.—A name borne in early times by Chinese settled in the Philippines. Going into disuse.

(It is thought that the Chinese were not numerous on the islands until the settlement of the Spaniards had established commerce with Acapulco, introducing Mexican silver, greatly coveted by the Celestials.—Translator.)

Sanguiles.—(1) Until most recent times by this name was understood a people in the little-known southern part of the district of Davao (Mindanao). The Jesuit missionaries have found no people bearing this name; it seems, therefore, that Sanguiles was a collective title for the Bilanes, Dulanganes, and Manobos, who occupied the most southern part of Mindanao, the peninsula of the volcano Sanguil or Saragana. (2) Moros Sanguiles means those Moros who dwell in the part of the south coast of Mindanao (district of Davao) lying between the Punto de Craan and the Punta Panguitan or Tinaka. They also appear to have received their name from the volcano of Sanguil.

Silipanes.—A heathen head-hunting people having its abode in the province of Nueva Vizcaya (and comandancia Quiangan). It belongs to the Ifugao linguistic family. (Consult A. B. Meyer, with A. Schadenberg, in Vol. VIII, folio series, Royal Ethnographic Museum in Dresden, 1890.)

Subanos.—(Properly Subanon, “river people.”) A heathen people of Malay extraction, who occupy the entire peninsula of Sibuguey (west Mindanao), with exception of a single strip on the coast. (See Die Subanos (Mindanao), by Blumentritt, Das Ausland, Stuttgart, 1891, pp. 392–395.)

Suflin.—An Igorot dialect. The f in the name would hint at Guinaanes or Ifugaos. The official nomenclature in 1865 so characterizes a dialect spoken in Bontok.

Tabanus, see Tagbanuas.

Tadianan.—Another name for those Mongoloid Manguianes who live in the mountain vales of Pinamalayan (Mindoro).

Tagabaloyes.—In a chart of the Philippines for 1744, by P. Murillo Velardi, S. J., this name is to be seen west of Caraga and Bislig (Mindanao). English authors speak of the Tagabaloyes, Waitz mentions their clear color, and Mas calls them Igorots. Others add that they were Mestizos of Indians and Japanese, and more fables to the same effect. Their region has been well explored, but only Manobos and Mandayas have been found there. The last named are clear colored, so Tagabaloyes seems to be another name for Mandayas. The name sounds temptingly like Tagabelies.

Variants: Tagbalvoys, Tagabaloyes, Tagobalooys, etc.

Tagabawas.—Dr. Montano reports that this is not a numerous people and that it is made up of a mixture of Manabos, Bagobos, and Tagacaolos. Their dwelling places are scattered on both sides of Davao Bay (Mindanao), especially near Rio Hijo.

Tagabelies.—A heathen people of Malay origin, living in the region between the Bay of Sarangani and Lake Buluan (Mindanao). Since they call themselves Tagabulu (people of Bulu), it is suspected that they, like the Buluanes or Bilanes, derive their name from the lake mentioned.

Tagabotes.—A people of Mindanao mentioned in the Ilustración Filipina (1860, No. 17).

Tagabulu, see Tagabelies, also Tagabuli.

Tagacaolos.—A Malay, heathen people. Their settlements are scattered among those of other tribes on both sides of the Gulf of Davao (Mindanao). Compare also Loac. Their name Taga-ca-olo would mean “dwellers on the river sources.” [117]

Variant: Tagalaogos.

Tagalos, Tagalog (elsewhere Tagalas).—A Malay people of ancient civilization, possessing already an alphabet in pre-Spanish times. They are Christians, and inhabit the provinces and territory of the following: Manila, Corregidor, Cavite, Bataan, Bulacan, Batangas, Infanta, Laguna, Mindoro; in less degree, Tayabas, Zambales, Nueva Ecija, Isabela, and Principe. They form, with the Visayas and Ilocanos, the greater part of the native population, as well by their numbers as by their grade of culture. Their language is called Tagalog. (See Brinton, American Anthropologist, 1898, XI, pp. 303–306.)

Tagbalvoys, see Tagabaloyes.

Tagbanuas.—A Malay people mixed with Negrito blood. They are heathen, with exception of the Calmianos, and appear to have formerly stood on higher culture grade, for A. Marche found them in possession of an alphabet of their own. They inhabit the island of Palawan (Paragua) and the Calamianes. The Moros of Palawan are partly Tagbanuas. Variant: Tabanuas. (See Dean Worcester, Philippine Islands, 1898, p. 99.—Translator.)

Tagobalooys, see Tagabaloys.

Talaos.—This newly christened name belongs to no Philippine people, but is the Spanish title of the inhabitants of the Dutch island Talaut. They come to southern Mindanao to purchase provisions.

Tandolanos.—Wild natives living on the west coast of Palawan, between Punta Diente and Punta Tularan. As they are also called Igorots they appear to belong to the Malay race.

Teduray, see Tirurayes.

Tegurayes.—A variant form of Tirurayes.

Tinguianes.—A heathen people of Malay origin and peaceable disposition. Their home is the province of Abra and the bordering parts of Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur. They have also villages in Union (Luzon). The Tinguianes converted to Christianity are strongly Ilocanised. Variants: Itanega,† Itaneg,† Itaveg,† Tingues.† (See Brinton’s note on the identification of Tinguianes with Indonesians, an allophyllic branch of the white race, by Quatrefages and Hamy. American Anthropologist, 1898, Vol. XI, p. 297. Consult A. B. Meyer, with A. Schadenberg, in Volume VIII, folio series, Royal Ethnographic Museum, in Dresden, 1890.)

Tinitianes.—A heathen people, probably of Malay origin. They inhabit a strip of land north of Bubayan Creek, Palawan. (A. B. Meyer, 1899, pp. 9, 19, quotes Blumentritt’s The Natives of the Island of Palawan and of the Calamanian Group (Globus, Braunschweig, 1891, Vol. LIX, pp. 182, 183), to the effect that the Tinitianes are probably only Negrito half-breeds.—Translator.)

Tinivayanes.—Moros (?) or heathen (?). Said to live along the Rio Grande de Mindanao.

Tino.—Name of the language of the Zambales.

Tiron.—Separate name of those Manguianes of Mindoro who inhabit the highest mountain regions in the surroundings of Naujan.

Tirones†.—The Moro pirates of the province of Tiron in Borneo and the islands near-by are so called.

Tirurayes.—A peaceable heathen people of Malay origin. They live in the district of Cottabato, in the mountains west of the Rio Grande de Mindanao. The Christian Tirurayes live in Tamontaca. Variants: Teduray, Tirulay.

Vicol, see Bicol.—(Vicol is preferable.)

Vilanes, see Bilanes.—(Vilanes is preferable.)

Visayas, see Bisayas.—(This spelling is preferable to Bisayas.)

Ygolot, see Igorots.

Ycanes—According to P. P. Cavallería, S.J., the Moros dwelling in the interior of the island are so called. (Compare Jacanes, Sameacas, and Samales-Lautes.)

Yvgades, see Gaddanes.

Zambales.—A civilized, Christianized people of Malay origin, living in the province of the same name. Those called by different writers Igorotes de Zambales, Cimarrones de Zambales, are posterity of Remontados. Their language is Tino. [118]

The third of a thousand years during which Spain misgoverned the archipelago that Magellan had discovered for her was a period of Philippine preparation.

Divided already so each town was jealous of its neighbors and anxious to enlist the Europeans in waging war upon them, the Filipinos were an easy conquest for soldiers whose first military maxim was Rome’s “Divide and Conquer.”

The conquest might better be called a conversion for the cross did much more to establish and maintain Spain’s authority than the sword. And the new religion formed a bond of union, perhaps the only one which could have brought together such diverse elements.

Spanish catholicism was not merely a Spanish church, the church was Spain. There was therefore no humiliation over subjugation, rather exultation in having found salvation.

The people were seafaring folk with the sturdiness such a life gives. Their chiefs were their captains, and, in waters that are the home of the typhoon, leadership, if in no other way than by the survival of the fittest, came to the most capable.

Women held high position, for with their husband so much away not only the household but all the family affairs were under their control, a condition still notable. Thus the home influence in which the children grew up was not that of the Orient, a shut-in Zenana with, for the child’s first model, a mother who had been a slave and now as mistress was a tyrant, but the youth of the Philippines earlier saw the real world and had training from mothers who knew its ways.

There were gradations of rank, but people were constantly falling from the higher to the lower so that these had ambitious persons among them seeking to regain their former estate and arousing ambition among their fellows. And the condition of even the lowest was not [119]hopeless. So well ordered was society that even slaves had rights and knew them; had too the civic courage to stand up for them against their masters. Witness the story of the surprise of the Spaniards who heard slaves saying to their masters, “What is there in it for me in this?”, when orders were given them.

Nor should it be thought that the wholesale conversion betrayed weakness of character. The islands had had a nature religion, the belief of an artistic people, that their Gods would delight in and frequent the most beautiful spots. Then came the religion of Mahomet with a system which reason readily recognized as superior, but before it was fairly established there arrived another religion which not only commended itself to reason but appealed to the artistic sense, both in larger measure than either of its predecessors.

Those who had felt exalted in the glory of the tropical sun, found comfort in the moonbeams’ softer radiance, had sought the leafy recesses of the forest for reflection and were soothed and sustained by the musical murmurs of mountain cascades found greater comfort and a higher gratification in the rites and ceremonies of a church which has ever been the patron of art and consecrates all that is beautiful in music, painting and sculpture to adorn its sanctuaries and dignify its worship.

By “Plaridel” (Marcelo H. del Pilar).

Three centuries have passed since the blood of Legaspi and of Sikatuna mingled in a cup of which both partook in token of eternal friendship, thus ratifying their oaths to fuse thenceforward into a single ideal the aspiration of Spain and the Philippines. But the passage of time, instead of making firmer this fusion, has only strengthened the predominance of the religious orders who have turned the islands into a colony exploited by friars.

No one is ignorant of the rebellion of the friars against the highest political and religious authorities of the archipelago; nor is anyone ignorant of the violent death of some, the coercion exercised on others and the vexations visited upon all those who in governing the country have dared to place the interests of the motherland of the Catholic religion before the convents. [120]

The immunity of those implicated and the predominance of the rebellious elements compel the unhappy belief that Spain has already abdicated the sovereignty in favor of Philippine friarism.

So it is worth while to dissipate this erroneous impression. Sad is it to think that the planning of Charles V and Philip II, the efforts of Magellan and Elcano, the sufferings of Villalobos, the prudence and the valor of Legaspi, the sacrifices of Salcedo, Lavezares, Goiti, and the others, only served as a stepping-stone for enthroning the friar orders.

The Filipino people are passing in these moments through an interesting period. Already they have manifested their aversion to the friars, and I believe the time has come to draw attention to the aspirations which palpitate in their bosoms.

On the one hand their future and on the other the attitude of China, Japan and other nations which from Europe and Asia have fixed their gaze on the map of Oceanica, offer to the thoughtful man problems of deep seriousness which perhaps may be resolved in time to forestall and smooth out future difficulties.

Luna’s palette has revived the recollection of the “Blood Compact” between Legaspi and Sikatuna, and the Filipino cannot view without regret the powerful intervention of the friar interests which, blocking every tendency toward fraternity between Spain and the Philippines, are creating a difficult situation by increasing the former’s unfriendliness and the latter’s burdens. For this they rely on the difference of language between the governing and the governed classes; and to maintain that difference, to impede popular instruction and to prevent at all cost that the people and their government shall come to understand each other is the best way to maintain them in perpetual antagonism.

How far this plan has already gone can be estimated by analyzing the relations of the friarocracy with the official institution which makes up the organization of the towns of the Philippines. As everywhere else, in the Philippines the relation of residents to the municipal officers is of the utmost importance. The petty governor, or chief of the village, in each locality constitutes the channel of communication and the agency for carrying out the ideas of the government, and according to the activity or inertness of this element the plan of the higher authorities works out effectively or suffers sad shipwreck.

The parish priest has no vote in these elections, but controls them because in his hands is the veto power. In forwarding the returns for the ratification of the election result, the parish priest makes two reports: one is public in character and is limited to setting forth the grade of instruction of the candidate in the official language; the other is confidential and under no restrictions whatever.

The candidate who has no legal impediment, unless he is of the priest’s following, will turn out disqualified in some other way, thanks to the confidential report. He will be anti-Spanish, an agitator (filibustero), separatist, and if this report cannot be controverted the candidate of the town meeting will be thrown out. The parish priest, in the final result, is master of the situation. [121]

In carrying on their municipal duties, the local authorities are dependent upon the parish priest. For a report on the conduct of a resident, a hundred of the principal men are not enough; the vital point is having the “O. K.” of the parish priest. In turning in the tax rolls of the neighborhood, his signature is necessary. For the calling to the colors of the young men to whom the lot has fallen to serve as soldiers, the parish priest’s “approved;” to validate accounts and other official documents, the parish priest’s “approved;” in everything and for everything there is demanded as the essential requisite the approval of the parish priest.

In exchange there exists no corrective provision which regulates the conditions under which the parish priest may grant or withhold this approval. He grants or withholds it according to his own free will or as he is directed by his ecclesiastical superiors. The chief local authority is the only one on whom falls this burden of regularizing his acts with the indispensable approval of the parish priest. If the parish priest refuses it, then the chief incurs the discipline of his superiors.

Manifold are the functions of the chief local authority in the Philippines. Aside from his judicial duties, he has charge of the administration, of the tax collecting, of the port, etc., and, given the dependence upon the parish priest in which he finds himself, it is not to be wondered at that the latter controls even to the official correspondence, in fact retaining the right to authorize its transmission.

Orders from above are complied with when it so pleases the Most Reverend Parish Priest. If the higher authority attempts to impose and require energetic compliance with his commands, the parish priest communicates it to one of the superiors of his order, and this obtains the overthrowing of the official. For it he has an argument incontrovertible and of magic effect, to wit, that it endangers the national indivisibility. If it is an effort to open a road and the parish priest doesn’t want it, then it endangers the national indivisibility. Or if the public health requires that dead bodies should not be taken into the church, still it is no reason,—it would imperil the national indivisibility.

And in everything, the same tendency.

(Translated from a copy obtained from the Manila Executive Bureau Archives)

Your Serene Highness: The undersigned archbishop respectfully addresses your highness, impelled by a true love of country as well as from a sense of the duty incumbent upon him of working for the tranquillity of his archdiocese. Frequently has it been disturbed and altered by the turning over of the curacies of the secular clergy which some years since were granted to the friar orders. This [122]has been the cause of an antagonism between the two branches of the clergy each time more marked, and is taking a turn which sooner or later can become untoward for our beloved Spain.

Merely to fix the time of the beginning of this antagonism do I mention the royal decree of July 8th, 1826, by which there were restored to the religious communities the curacies in charge of the secular clergy since the second period of the governorship of Don Simon de Anda y Salazar. Just as this measure, as the native priests had those parishes for over half a century and considered them then theirs, they felt it a great hardship each time when, on the death or transfer of one of their number, a friar was put in to replace him. On the death of the parish priest of San Simon, in this present year, the last of the provisions of said royal order was carried out.

One may cite, as another cause contributing to the growing antagonism, the royal order of March 9th, 1849, which takes away from the secular clergy and gives to the friars seven more parishes in Cavite, namely: Bacoor, Cavite Viejo, and Silang to the Recollect Augustinians; and Santa Cruz and San Francisco de Malabon, Naic and Indan to the Dominicans. By reason of their having become vacant five of these have already been turned over.

But what brought the antagonism to a crisis and filled the native priesthood with indignation was the royal order of September 10th, 1861, to which and to its results the subscriber has in mind especially to call the exalted attention of your Highness.

Article 13 of the royal decree of July 30th, 1859 (relative to the establishment of a government for Mindanao), arranged that the Jesuit priests should take charge of the parishes and religious duties of that island then held and attended to by the Recollect Friars of the Province of San Nicolas de Tolentino. It thus became necessary to have some workable plan for carrying the arrangement into effect, and the above mentioned royal order of September 10th was given for this purpose, besides indemnifying the Recollects by assigning to their administration curacies in Cavite Province or elsewhere (in the archdiocese of Manila according to a later provision) which had been under the native clergy. The circumstances under which this royal decree was issued deserve careful examination. In the first place, there was then no archbishop, a condition under which the sacred canons enjoin and counsel prudence, when no innovation of any kind shall be introduced; secondly the opinion of the customary ecclesiastical authority was not asked, though here on matters of much less importance numerous endorsements are the rule; thirdly, your Highness is already aware how the priest nominated to the mitre of Manila knew nothing of the anomalous ecclesiastical administration nor of the usages and customs (the reason why he would have renounced such a heavy responsibility and only did accept after strong urging) and so there had to elapse considerable time before he could learn enough of the matter to cause him to complain of it. The foregoing facts are respectfully submitted to Your Highness. [123]

When, toward the close of May, 1862, the writer took possession of his archbishopric, he found the native clergy extraordinarily excited and on every hand was urged to request the revocation of the September 10th royal order aforesaid. Unconvinced by petitions and appeals, rather, then in his heart persuaded that the Supreme Government could give him good and sufficient reason for taking so serious a step, the archbishop was disposed to comply as he has complied, cheerfully and to the letter. If he courteously declined to award the Antipolo curacy to the Recollects, it was because he understood this was a request not warranted by the royal order, and he could not have been far out of the way when the State Council formally upheld his judgment as appears in the royal order of May 19th where the formula used is “Having listened to the State Council,” one indicating action against their advice. Moreover now, after long residence in the country, with some knowledge of the church conditions and of its running and of affairs and persons, each time I see with greater clearness that the complaints of the native clergy are not without foundation, that there ought to be some effort to conform the royal order of September 10th, 1861, to the rules of propriety and equity, and that if one observes its results, one must conclude that it does not conform entirely to those of wise policy. Briefly I shall explain these assertions.

The Supreme Government was within its rights in entrusting to the recognized zeal of the Jesuit Fathers the curacies and missions of Mindanao, the law on the Royal Patronship in the code of the Indies authorizing such action. Worthy, too, of praise is it that there should be recognition of the Recollect Fathers’ services and compensation for the loss of their Mindanao religious establishments, because, although many of these were founded by the early Jesuit Fathers, yet the Recollects were then in possession of them and had made them theirs by right of prescription. But if it had been taken into account that likewise the native priests’ services merited appreciation (for under unfavorable vicissitudes they have always borne themselves as faithful subjects of Spain and in the parochial ministry as coadjutors, theirs is even the hardest part of the charge), then by no means would so deserving a class have been wronged to reward any other, and there would have been sought some gentler and equitable way of carrying out the wishes of the Government. The very diocese of Cebu, within whose borders at that time belonged the island of Mindanao, in fact offered no obstacle since it would have been only justice to have not compensated the Recollects with the parishes of other friars, for to them had been previously granted all the curacies of the Island of Negros, which belonged to the native clergy, for want of persons of that class.

The curacies of the aforesaid diocese were two hundred and thirty-seven, of which forty-eight belonged to the secular clergy. The scant resources of Cebu’s theological seminary, its lack of professors and the students’ ignorance of the Spanish language, knowledge of which is indispensable in the study of Latin and moral theology, not only prevented the preparation of a sufficient number of priests for the control of the above-mentioned parishes, but also detracted from the success of those needed as coadjutors to aid the parish [124]priests in the administration of the sacraments and the care of the sick. That seminary rightly should be called a college because the natives go to it for the purpose of learning Spanish, and most of them leave when they only have half learned the language. Suffice it to say that there have been, and still are within the former boundaries of the Bishopric of Cebu towns (not compact but confined to distant and scattered barriers) seventeen thousand and more souls where the spiritual administration rests on a single friar priest, usually advanced in years, too. For this reason it cannot be doubted that its zealous prelate would have welcomed the assistance of twenty-seven friars who could have taken charge of that number of parishes, because manifestly this would have improved the parochial administration, and still there would have been left him twenty-one curacies with which to reward those coadjutors who were distinguished among their scanty number for virtue, learning, and hard work.

Though the Archdiocese of Manila lacked ministers to attend to all the spiritual necessities of the faithful (for the force scarcely suffices under normal conditions to respond to the most urgent calls), nevertheless it formed a striking contrast in this matter to the Diocese of Cebu.

The Archbishopric had at the time approximately one million four hundred thousand inhabitants, with one hundred and ninety-one parishes served by both classes of clergy. Deduct from this number assigned to the secular clergy those which had to be returned by order of the Royal Decree of 1826, those which the Royal Order of 1849 commanded to be given the Recollects and the Dominicans, and the twenty-seven which, by the order of September 10th, 1861, the parishes and missions they had had to surrender to the Jesuits in Mindanao, and there are only twelve left to reward deserving coadjutors. The priests of this class, comparing them with those of Cebu, are very numerous, for there are not four cases where coadjutors are not provided on the scale of one for parishes of 4,000, two for 8,000, three for 12,000, and so on up to Taal, which has seven coadjutors. But let us continue the comparison of the two dioceses.

Though the diocese of Cebu has few who understand the Spanish language, there are many in Manila and adjacent provinces who speak it; and in contrast to the limited facilities of the Cebu seminary, the archdiocese has the University of Sto. Tomas and the colleges of San Juan de Letran and of San José, where numerous students are studying Latin, philosophy, theology and the sacred canons. Nor should one omit the seminary of San Carlos in spite of the fact that, because of difficulties elsewhere enumerated, it is not of a standard commensurate with the importance of the capital of the Philippine Archipelago, a land conquered and held by Spain primarily for religious reasons. Do not the foregoing facts prove that the losses suffered by the Recollects should be compensated with curacies in the diocese of Cebu, and not with those of Manila?

The spirit inspiring the Royal Order of September 10th, 1861, seems no more in conformity with policy and equity, when the native priests compare the missions and curacies relinquished by the Recollects with those they received in exchange in this Archbishopric. [125]If Your Highness will have the goodness to glance over the accompanying table, perhaps you may agree with them and also may observe, as they do, that if to the term “indemnization” (which should only mean making good the actual loss) there is to be given the broader meaning that the present result suggests, then there will be many who will want to be damaged in order to get back ten-fold the value of what they lose.

It is worthy of especial note that, despite the Antipolo parish having few parishioners, such is the devotion on the part of the towns toward the image of the Virgin venerated there, so great are the crowds who from even more remote provinces during the month of May repair to this celebrated shrine, and so many and so large are the largesses for masses ordered that this is considered the pearl of the curacies, one of the fattest parishes in all the Archipelago. So it is not at all to be wondered at that the secular clergy have especially regretted its loss, and there is good reason for asserting that the Royal Order of May 19th, 1864, is far from harmonizing with the order of September 10th, 1861.

Besides the facts above set forth, which have created and continued antagonism and animosity between the secular and regular clergy, it is necessary to add another for your Highness’ better understanding of the discontent of the native priests.

To fill a vacancy in the curacy of San Rafael, Bulacan Province, occasioned by the death of its parish priest, seventy days’ notice was given of a competition, the time expiring February 17th, 1868. The examinations were held in the manner prescribed by Pope Benedict XIV on the 21, 22 and 23rd, and seventeen candidates presented themselves. Their papers were already graded and the highest three eligibles selected to be certified to the Vice Royal Patron on March 2nd, but the day previous the Diocesan prelate received a communication from him transmitting a brief by the Provincial of the Augustinian arguing that the said curacy should be adjudged theirs.

I at once replied begging the Vice Royal Patron not to disturb the course of the competition because the secular clergy were already in possession of the curacy and the candidates had acquired a right to it by the holding of the competition while the objection had not been made at the proper time. This was to be without prejudice to later going fully into the claim raised by the Reverend Provincial, which turned upon the question of ownership. The reply denied this just petition on the ground that would prejudice the question grievously, conferring the right to possession with the title of ownership. I made clearly apparent the error which had been incurred, and received a reply that “the Vice Royal Patron was not in the habit of changing a decision once it had been decreed.”

The question of ownership resulted equally unsatisfactorily. To the case were attached the original canonical order for the creation issued in 1746 at the instance of the Vice Royal Patron and in conformity with the canonical custom and the laws of the Indies. Likewise there were submitted certified copies of the nomination of the parish priest who served the parish from the last named date to 1808, since which date as the Provincial admitted “it had been bestowed [126]on competition and appointment by the Vice Royal Patron on secular priests.” Against its having been a canonical foundation, the most legal and strongest of claims, and to a continuous, undisturbed, unquestioned and clear possession for one hundred twenty years, the Provincial offered that his order had claimed the curacy within a few days of its establishment. He did in fact submit two documents which were written by the Provincial of San Juan de Dios, to which order the hacienda of San Rafael had belonged. But in one hundred and twenty-two years it had not been found convenient to push the claim, possibly because at first the curacy had only some eighty poverty-stricken natives, herders and laborers, while now it has over three thousand souls.

Likewise it was argued that since the Royal warrant of July 8th, 1826, monastic orders had been returned to their charges in the state and conditions they had when these were secularized by the Royal Warrant of December 11th, 1776, the curacy of San Rafael must be included because of the situation within the territory ceded to them. One must, however, remember that this curacy could not be secularized, because from its foundation it had been secular, and the two Royal warrants mentioned are not applicable except by making the laws retroactive, since the curacy was created thirty years before the Royal Warrant of 1776 was issued.

These arguments, with others of the weakest character, were set forth in a lengthy and hazy brief fathered by the Administrative Council, and as the Vice Royal Patron endorsed it without changing a letter, the matter was closed, because, although the undersigned petitioned the Vice Royal Patron to submit the case to the Supreme Government’s decision, enclosing an opinion from two attorneys, he could not gain this point and out of respect to the highest authority of the Island (whose prestige he has ever endeavored to sustain) he desisted from further effort. This result produced a real scandal among the native priests and greatly enhanced their grief over so great and repeated losses.

The chief cause of the obstacles which in every direction the clergy of the country encounter is a public sentiment in vogue for some years back, which unreasonably opposes having any native parish priest. Those who think thus entirely forget the facts, allowing their imagination to freely rove in the realm of imagination. Certain is it that if the ecclesiastical establishment of the Archipelago were being for the first time set up and it were possible to bring from Spain enough priests to attend to the spiritual needs of its populous parishes, scarcely would there be found a Spaniard of any intelligence to whom such an arrangement would not seem the politic course. But the question is not theoretic, on the contrary it is eminently practical, and before it is settled there is no escape from the previous examination of others which offer serious difficulties, for example, considering the present cooling of religious ardor, what likelihood is there of obtaining a considerable number of young men willing to abandon their home country and go to lend their services in spiritual ministrations in so distant a clime, especially one which is reputed bad for the health? Could the public treasury without difficulty meet the expenses necessary for establishing colleges and [127]maintaining professors and students, and for fitting out and paying the fares of so many persons from the Peninsula to the Philippine Islands? And even if this offered no difficulty and putting aside present conditions, is there nothing to fear from keeping the native clergy in their present growing bitterness? Let anybody put himself in their place and reflect upon the series of measures heretofore mentioned and he cannot but recognize how enormous have been the damages they have suffered, and that those with which they are still threatened give over-sufficient and powerful motives that, notwithstanding their timidity, should change to hostility their former fidelity and respect for the Spaniards.

Formerly the native priests controlled the curacies of the provinces of Zambales, Bataan, and Pampanga. Of these they were dispossessed and when they felt that with the taking away of these parishes all their ills had ended, they received fresh, ruder shocks which renewed and inflamed the wound. Consequently it is no longer possible to characterise as class hatred their resentment against the friars, though that was the proper term while the natives attributed their ill fortune to the ambition and power of the monastic order. Now, after repeated proofs, they are convinced that the government is assisting the friars’ immoderate aspirations; and that in the opinion of these same priests of the country there has been adopted the policy of reducing them to insignificance, they pass over the ancient barrier, direct their glances higher, and what was formerly only hostility to the friars is changing into anti-Spanish sentiment. I do not hesitate to assert that if the Anglo-Americans or the English were to possess themselves of the Philippine Archipelago they surely would show the natives more consideration than they are receiving at the hands of the Spaniard. And so, Your Royal Highness, to escape an imaginary risk there is being created a real and true danger.

It will be readily understood that for the full carrying out of the Royal Order of September 10th there will have to elapse a period as long as that (from 1826 till the present) taken for completing the turning over of the curacies assigned the friars under the Royal Warrant before mentioned. And likewise it must be understood that as the resentment of the natives is renewed each time that they lose a curacy (as has just happened with the loss of Rosario parish in Batangas province and of Cavite of which the Recollects are going to take charge by way of compensation for the parish of Dapitan and Lubugan mission, which they relinquished to the Jesuit fathers last July) their hearts are filled with bitter grief, and so far from its finding any relief, it is embittered, as seeing themselves without any assistance at all while on the other hand the influence of their adversaries is increasing on every hand. It is more urgent to furnish prompt relief for their discontent and exasperation since if the effervescence which I noticed in them on my return from the Vatican council continues for any considerable length of time it will give an opportunity for the sentiments of the native clergy spreading among their parents, relatives, and the entire Filipino people, with whom they are in closer touch than are the friars, and so the evil might take on grave proportions. [128]

It will not be hidden from the exalted acumen of Your Highness that it is highly desirable and even necessary to put out this small fire which might by mischance change itself into a formidable conflagration, which perhaps in the first stage of slight apprehension might serve the purpose of those who are trying to spread vain terrors, and I say vain, because in spite of the strictest investigation, until now there has been no positive proof to justify the accusation latterly directed against the secular clergy, for the reason set forth that the writer is of the opinion that the Royal Order of September 10th, and the explanation thereof insofar as they affect the Archbishopric of Manila, should be changed restoring matters by prompt and effective measures to the conditions and state in which they were when the Mindanao curacies and missions were turned over by the Recollect friars to the Jesuit fathers; that the Recollect should be compensated with other parishes in the Diocese of Cebu and the Jaro Diocese, which was taken from them in 1867, according to the number of parishes supplied in each of them by the secular clergy, to make up for the lack of native priests which is experienced in both; and, lastly, that there be ordered the reference to the Minister of Ultramar of the original case instituted at the suggestion of the Provincial (now the Procurator) of the Calced Augustinians (i. e., Recollects), regarding the holding of the parish of San Rafael, Bulac province, in order that it may be investigated and reach a solution in accordance with justice, which in the judgment of the secular clergy it is now far from being.

The writer earnestly implores Your Excellency so to adjust the matter, with full confidence that it will not only calm the inquietude of their minds, but also that, reenforced by the gratitude of the never tarnished loyalty of the Filipino native clergy, it may tighten more and more the ties that unite this fruitful Archipelago to our beloved Spain.

May God preserve for many years the life of Your Highness and grant him amplest wisdom and favor for the well-being of the Catholic religion and of our beloved fatherland.

GREGORIO,
Archbishop of Manila.

Manila, December 31, 1870.

HIS SERENE HIGHNESS
The Regent of the Kingdom.

(In Madrid review: “La Politica de España en Filipinas” in a series. “Las Insurrecciones de Filipinas,” beginning with Vol. I, p. 44.)

1807.—The political troubles and intrigues of the Court between Godoy, Maria Luisa and Ferdinand VII reached the Philippines (as had the errors of Carlos III and those of a celebrated American archbishop, a great reformer).

In spite of the vigilance of the authorities an outbreak occurred in Ilokos, at first controlled by the missionaries, who put themselves [129]at the head of the loyal towns, but soon it broke out again, the insurgents making themselves masters of the town of Pigdig and conquering the king’s forces there. An Augustinian friar (parish priest of Batac) preached obedience to the sovereign but a woman immediately made a speech in opposition, saying not to believe the priest for they all were deceivers who in the name of God, of the Gospel and of the King only beguiled them so the Spaniards might despoil them and suck their blood; that the friars were Spaniards like the rest. The priest preached again next day and got the people to take arms, cheering for the king, march to the mountains of Patae where he maintained them all at his own expense.

1811.—In this same region, there was another uprising to change the religion, setting up a new God called Lingao. The principales (former town-chiefs—C.) and cabezas de barangay (vice-chiefs for wards—C.) conspired with the igorots and other persons, madmen and savages of Cagayan, to exterminate the Spaniards, but they were found out by the friars who informed the Government in time to thwart so terrible a plot.

1814.—At the beginning of the year, against the advice of the friars, General Gardoqui set out to publish the Constitution of 1812 and the Indians took so seriously the equality between themselves and the Spaniards that they began to rebel, refusing to pay the tribute and slight taxes placed upon them. They would not recognize the authority of the principales and barangay chiefs and in some towns of Ilokos they went so far as to set free the prisoners.

Ferdinand VII abolished the Constitution of 1812, which had so pleased the Indians, and then arose a conspiracy because the Indians believed the abolition of the Constitution was due to the intrigues of the Spaniards and the missionaries to deprive them of the equality over which they had gotten so enthusiastic. With the organic law of 1812 they had thought themselves free, happy, and independent, with no tribute to pay nor any authority to obey.

Other insurrections followed in 1820, 1828, 1837, 1844, 1854, 1863, 1869, 1872, 1883, and 1888. (Also in 1896 and 1898—C.)

The fatal consequences of the imprudent proclamation of the constitution of Cadiz in the Philippines produced a certain lack of social discipline and led to uprisings. A pitiable one was the catastrophe of 1820, when, with excuse of cholera, the Indians assassinated countless Chinese and many foreigners who were in Manila. The hatred against the French (from Napoleon’s attempt to make his brother King of Spain in place of Ferdinand VII.—C.) the pretext which caused the American conspiracies—had come even there. Let us cover with a veil the horrible picture, only saying that the ones chiefly guilty of this international crime were the acting Captain General Folgueras, weak and not far-seeing, and the Alcalde of Tondo (a position corresponding to the later Governor of Manila) who was a Spaniard of the country (creole) named Varela, more ignorant, impressionable and of worse and bad faith than any Indian.

The archbishop and all the clergy sallied forth in procession through the streets of Binondo, yet nevertheless did not succeed in pacifying the insurgents, who now commenced to attack by word the same missionaries until the peninsulars united with the friars, [130]in obliging Folgueras, who had shut himself up in the walled city, to display energy and military skill. For the affair was not alone with the foreigners and Chinese, but was taking very serious proportions.

The political events happening in the Peninsula from 1820–1823, likewise had in the Philippines their echo. A vast conspiracy was discovered by various native women who denounced it to the friars, so there were exiled to Spain several persons, among whom figured officers of the army. But there was great laxity by the authorities because they left there other conspirators, among them a creole captain named Novales who gathered up the scattered threads of the conspiracy.

The Auditor de Guerra (Judge Advocate—C.) asked that Novales be likewise exiled and watched very closely, even in exile, but General Martinez, a goodhearted fellow and more than goodhearted, simple, and unsuspecting, was content to order him to Mindanao to chase pirates in the province of Cagayan de Misamis.

Mr. Gironiere relates that Novales went to see him on the morning that he received the order to embark and told him that the Spanish Government had repented of having distrusted him. According to Estado de Filipinos he did not embark because of bad weather. According to Mr. Gironiere he returned to Manila that same night. This was June 2. On guard at the palace of the Captain General was Lieutenant Ruiz, a mestizo and a conspirator like Novales, and Novales’ brother was in Fort Santiago, the only fort of Manila. Fortunately for Spain and for General Martinez the Governor resided outside the walled limits of Manila in Malacañang Palace, as it was then the season of greatest heat. The mutineers (free from all difficulty, for the authorities, despite the warnings of the friars, did nothing to prevent the rebellion) assassinated the Teniente del Rey, Folgueras, who so expiated his weakness of the year 1820, and it was not without labor that the Coronel del Rey, Sta. Romana, escaped death, deserting his poor wife, for she then was in the family way. However the Indians, more humane than their bloodthirsty leaders were not anxious to assassinate her, and they made prisoners and kept safe many Spanish officials who had scorned and ridiculed the predictions of the patriotic missionaries.

Although it was in the late hours of the night, the shouts of “Long Live Emperor Novales” awoke the Mayor de Plaza, Duro, who bravely ran to the Parian gate and taking the guard that was there, entered with it into the barracks of the mutineers. The one who opened the door was Novales’ own brother for he was too accustomed to discipline to refuse obedience. Thus the Spanish party was organized in the artillery barracks.

The friars preached to the multitude submission and due obedience to the King and of the grave sin committed in rising against the generous Spanish nation.

Novales, who had returned to the barracks, found the door shut by his own brother and with his plans upset, took possession of the cathedral. Some unknown persons kept him out of the Government Palace, where he could have maintained himself for some time, and finally he was abandoned by his own troops. This was through [131]the efforts of the Spanish friars, for the rebels threw down their guns, fearful of the wrath of God, and cried “Long live the king.” Novales was captured at the Real Gate and Ruiz made prisoner and manacled, by the Indians themselves, in the district of Tondo. The other mutineers were easily apprehended and shot, to the number of 23.

So fell the most astute of the Filipino conspirators who, helped on by unwise reforms, tried to raise the country against the mother fatherland. At midnight he was banished, at 2 proclaimed Emperor of the Philippines, and at 5 in the afternoon shot in the back.

1828.—Had another conspiracy. Two army officers, brothers, like the Novales brothers, put themselves at the front of a separatist movement which broke out in Manila in consequence of the excitement which there was in the country because of the famous interpretations which the Indians anew were making of the Constitution of Cadiz. That was suppressed too, not without first reenforcing the army with Spanish troops which till then had not regularly and permanently existed in the country.

In 1836–1837 the Acting Governor, Salazar, had not a little to do with the consequences of the uprising of La Granjo and the uncloistering of the Religious orders in Spain.

The Indians were divided into two factions, one wanted that the friars should leave the Islands and as well the other Spaniards (castilas). The other said it was better that the other Spaniards should go away and leave the friars in charge of the Government. The missionaries appeased the trouble, saying that they and the other Spaniards were in the islands in the name of God and of the King and one and all sought only the Indians’ happiness and well being.

The imprudence of a few Spaniards of high position very quickly produced a new conflict, because while some wanted that the Constitution should be sworn to, others believed it perilous to introduce political reforms of such great importance. The excitement was increased by the appointment of General Camba who had been there before and was favorable to certain Filipinos. The relief of the general, with great scandal, came after sixteen months of administration. This was because of the suspicion of the Government of Maria Cristina who realized his undesirability and the perils which the conduct of Camba could bring to the archipelago.

A stormy passage was made, and shortly after their arrival, a meeting of the commanders of the different vessels was convened by Commodore Dewey on board the flagship Olympia, and the plans for the operations of the fleet were discussed. The bombastic proclamation of Governor-General Basilio Augustin y Davila was read over to the commanders, and occasioned much merriment. It was resolved to have copies made of the proclamation, to be read out to the men on the different ships. Mr. Williams’ narration of the position of affairs in Manila, and the hasty but ineffective measures for the defence, more especially the extinguishing of lights on the coasts and the instructions issued to neutral vessels entering Manila harbor to take a pilot at Corregidor Island to avoid dangers [132]from mines, torpedoes, etc., were somewhat lightly regarded, the latter instruction being received with much laughter as an antique dodge to frighten the enemy.

The conference concluded, the commanders departed to their respective vessels, with orders to get ready to steam off immediately. Mr. Williams, late United States Consul at Manila, went on board the Baltimore and the rebel leader Alejandrino was berthed on the transport Zafiro. Consul Rounsevelle Wildman and the two rebels who accompanied Alejandrino to the fleet then boarded the Fame. The commanders having made known their orders, the ships were weighed, and amidst great enthusiasm the fleet steamed out of Mirs Bay. The fleet left in double line, the Olympia and Baltimore leading.

By Austin Craig

In July of 1869 a new Governor-General arrived in Manila. He was a soldier who could prove his valor by wounds gained in many successful battles which had brought him to the rank of Lieutenant General. The nobility of his family, almost as distinguished as royalty, gave him precedence among aristocrats. Wealth, too, he had. Yet he was Manila’s first democratic governor.

Unusual were the circumstances of his coming and epoch-making were the events of his administration.

The Philippines had been loyal to the royal family of Spain during the Napoleonic wars and the withdrawal of their representation in the Cortes, which occurred at intervals for a third of a century, had not disturbed that loyalty. Yet now there had come a governor-general who represented a government in power through the expulsion of their sovereign. It was revolutionary, and the excitement over the news was increased by De La Torre’s reversal of all precedents.

The stately guard of halberdiers was dismissed and the highest official of the land mixed in society unceremoniously. A proclamation announced him to be at the people’s service at all hours for whatever complaints they might have, and deeds promptly followed his words.

The alleged outlaws, who were really persons who had been wronged in the land troubles, were pardoned and from their number under their former chief was organized a corps of rural guards which speedily brought a theretofore unknown tranquillity.

No wonder the Filipinos gave to the new administration an honor unknown to his predecessors, the spontaneous tribute of a popular serenade.

Twenty-one months passed and De La Torre was replaced by Izquierdo, for whom he conscientiously compiled an explanation of his administration that the new authority might intelligently carry on the work. But reaction came, those who had applauded De La Torre for that reason found themselves in disfavor. [133]

As a precaution Governor De La Torre had had all foreign mail examined and the list of men of liberal ideas thus obtained was the basis of the persecutions which followed the executions and wholesale exiling nominally connected with Cavite.

An old man, he retired to his family estates, once broad but sadly shrunken through his years of liberality. There from Pozorubio he wrote his defence against the charge of being responsible for the uprising of Cavite.

Contrast the brave words of the Governor-General upon his first coming to the Philippines, and his expressions after the conclusion of his office when he was upon the defensive.

“As good, honored and loyal, you are recognized as our brothers. * * * I shall indicate to you the salient features that will characterize my administration, which I hope will be as my character dictates, foreign to all kinds of repression, because command is more pleasant when it is chosen by those who are under the necessity of being affected by it.”

And on the defensive: “I have governed, with justice and, honesty, conformably to the special laws of that country, without consenting or permitting the slightest alteration in them, and what is more, without permitting in the newspapers of Manila any discussion nor even any allusion as to whether or no it were desirable to alter or modify those laws.”

Yet that was the most liberal period of Philippine history under Spanish rule. Twenty odd years later another liberal Governor of the Philippines defended himself against the charge of too great humanity by telling of how many men he had ordered shot.

Sorry indeed was Spain when a De La Torre had to save himself with his countrymen in the Peninsula by exaggerating his despotism and a Blanco found his only defense in magnifying his brutality. There’s a contrast with the present régime which marks 1898 as the beginning of different days, and the men of the old era are entitled to the charitable consideration which belongs to those who come out of great tribulation.

Biographical details and incidents of De La Torre’s administration would detract from the one great lesson which paints the past in its true colors and reveals how the Filipino people found themselves without hope and came to resort to the weapon of despair, insurrection. The outcome of the events of 1869 was the origin of the events of 1896.

(A British magazine article of 1896, by John Foreman.)

At this crisis, when the development of Japan is attracting public attention, the following paragraph in a recent issue of the St. James Gazette would be highly instructive were it based on real facts. That journal says:—

“This revolt, in fact, is really a consequence, to some extent, of the rising power of Japan in Far Eastern waters. Having acquired Formosa and become ambitious of a territorial and commercial empire, [134]the eyes of the Japanese have lately been eagerly directed towards the next islands to the south; and the weakness of Spain is regarded as the opportunity of Japan. But it is quite another matter whether the European powers will take the same view.”

Those who have been long resident in the Far East and are well informed on the subject do not take that view at all. From the facts which I am about to give regarding this rebellion it will be clearly seen that the above statement is merely a hypothetical conjecture.

A plot was formed, at the instance of rich Chinese half-breeds, to murder all the Europeans. The priests choose to call this secret society “freemasonry,” whilst the conspirators themselves style their body the “Katipunan,” which simply means the “League.” Each member, on being sworn in, made the “blood compact,” which consists of an incision in the arm or leg whence the blood was taken to inscribe the roll of brotherhood. The general massacre of whites was to have taken place on the night of the 20th of August last, but at almost the last hour a woman came to Father Mariano Gil, the parish priest of Tondo—a suburb of Manila—and paved the way for a repentant member of the League to make his full confession of the plot under a promise of immunity from punishment. The promise was given and the confession made. An hour afterwards the civil guard was on the track of the principal leaders of the movement. Three hundred known malcontents were arrested in a few hours in the capital and adjacent provinces of Bulacan and Pampanga and further arrests having since been effected daily, the Manila prisons are overcrowded with suspects and proved delinquents. Room for more is being made by the periodical shipping off of batches of prisoners to the Caroline Islands, Mindanao Island, Fernando Po, and other distant possessions. I have just learnt from the secretary of the military court that at this moment there are 4,377 individuals awaiting trial by court-martial. Many of the richest men in the colony, the leaders of Manila society, such as it is, figure amongst the promoters of this conspiracy. Pedro Rojas, a wealthy Chinese half-caste and popularly supposed to be the prime mover of the rebellion, accepted the hospitality of the Governor-General in his palace only forty-eight hours before the hour destined to witness the general massacre. The most curious fact—which no one dares to discuss in public—is that this man, denounced by all, was allowed to quietly leave the colony. He embarked in a steamer, ostensibly for Spain, but left it at Singapore and is supposed to be residing in some Asiatic port to watch events. The arch-agitator, José Rizal, who had been purging himself of his former misdemeanors by a two years’ banishment to the south, was sent as a prisoner to Spain, where he was confined in the Catalunian fortress of Montjuich for a few days and then shipped back to Manila for trial.

It appears that some months ago a deputation of Philippine natives went to Japan and presented a petition to the Mikado, praying his Majesty to annex these Islands. The petition was signed, it is said, by 5,000 natives and half-breeds. The Japanese Government, far from regarding the troubled condition of Spanish affairs as their opportunity, forwarded the petition to the Spanish [135]Government, thus the names of 5,000 disaffected persons became known to the authorities here and were inscribed in their Black Book. No measures, however, were taken until the storm was about to burst. Intense excitement prevailed amongst the Europeans as the names of the 300 arrested were disclosed, for they were not mostly individuals known to us personally or by repute. But since then three months have lingered on, with the daily arrests of so many men of position that we are prepared to meet the most startling event with perfect equanimity.

On the 23rd of August the leading newspaper of Manila published a stirring article, ringing with high patriotism, which concluded with an appeal to the Spaniards to go en masse to Government House the next day to discuss a proposal for extraordinary measures. They closed their offices and shops and went. It looked like a Sunday or a three-cross saint day. The Governor-General refused to receive them, and fined the newspaper $500, which was raised at once by public subscription. Indignation was openly expressed. A cablegram was sent to the Home Government asking for one thousand troops, etc. The reply came advising the immediate dispatch of 2,000 men, two millions of cartridges, 6,000 Remington rifles, and the gunboats Isla de Luzon and Isla de Cuba. Every fortnight, indeed, has brought fresh supplies of troops, which now make a total in the colony of about 10,000 Spanish regulars under arms.

On the 26th of August one thousand rebels appeared at Caloocan, four miles from Manila. They murdered some Chinese and took others prisoners. They were held back by the gendarmerie until reinforcements of cavalry came from the capital, but just before the squadron of troops arrived the rebels fled. The cavalry scoured the district and returned to Manila the next day. I saw them pass over the Bridge of Spain. There was tremendous excitement. Groups formed about the Escolta—the principal business street—discussing the situation. For days no one met another without having some news, real or imaginary, to disclose. Business was, and still is, much interrupted. Market people, washmen, traders of all sorts from outside, were afraid to venture along the approaches to the city. Two days passed—three days passed, there was really no fresh event. The nervous tension of the amazed population began to slacken. A reaction set in, and whilst precautions were discussed and everybody was prepared to say what he should do, the Caloocan onslaught began to be talked of as a mere filibustering expedition which would break up at the first smell of powder, and simply go to swell the ranks of the ever-existing brigand bands. The Governor-General refused to proclaim martial law. The circumstances were declared to be not sufficiently grave to warrant that measure being taken, and the public were settling down into a state of acquiescence with that view when, like a bombshell, the news of a far more serious raid fell upon Manila. On Sunday, 30th of August, before daybreak, the rebels again concentrated at San Juan del Monte, four miles from the city walls. An artilleryman was murdered, and an attempt was made to seize the powder-magazine, whilst several of the loyalists were wounded. [136]

(Hongkong Telegraph, April 28, 1898.)

The United States Asiatic Squadron left Mirs Bay yesterday afternoon for the Philippines. It was previously arranged that the fleet should have left on Tuesday, but the departure was delayed to await the arrival of Mr. O. F. Williams and several officers who had stayed behind for dispatches. As we have already intimated, Mr. Williams and the officers were stormstayed on Tuesday and had to return to Hongkong. * * * * * * Meanwhile Mr. Rounsevelle Wildman, United States Consul at Hongkong, and Mr. Williams had had interviews with several of the Philippine rebel chiefs who were deported to Hongkong, and arrangements were made that one of their number, J. Alejandrino, should accompany the squadron, and act as the intermediary between the Americans and rebels. Yesterday morning, about eight o’clock, Mr. Wildman, Mr. Williams, the United States officers, newspaper representatives, and J. Alejandrino, accompanied by two rebel friends, started in the Fame to make their way to the fleet.

(From the London and China Telegraph of March 22, 1872, retranslated.) Reviewing the Cavite uprising, it concludes:

“The magnificent resources of these Islands have been neglected too long, whatever has been done toward their development is due to Anglo-Saxons whose efforts have been impeded by every possible means through the indifferent and indolent ideas of the Spanish government. As to the future government of the Philippines, could our government, or the American, be induced to accept any responsibility no one would benefit more than they from a change in affairs so necessary to the due development of the rich and magnificent products of that soil. Therefore the best thing that the inhabitants there could do would be to establish their independence under a republican form of government, making use in this of some of the Anglo-Saxons who now reside among them.

“The local government would be acting with practical wisdom did it not oppose a peaceable revolution. That a separation has to take place is inevitable. The power of Spain to govern distant colonies has disappeared, never to return.

“We cannot, however, end this article without paying a merited tribute of respect to the gallant Governor and Captain-General. His proclamation, which we published in the last issue of the London and China Telegraph, is worthy of the most exalted patriotism. He had the duty of stifling the revolution, but now it will be found that its spirit is like the fabled seven-headed serpent.” [137]