The Philippines: Past and Present Volume II Part 14

"Very well. What else?"

"You will have to build a good, tight fence around the lot given you and keep your domestic animals inside it. You must also clean it up thoroughly, removing all vegetation and filling all the low places so that water cannot stand in them. Then you must keep it clean."

"What is the use of that?"

"The busaos [60] who cause sickness do not like clean places and stay away from them."

"I never heard of that."

"Ask the people who have tried keeping their yards clean, and they will tell you that it is true."

"Well, what else?"

"As long as you have to keep your yard clean you might as well plant something useful in it, so that you will get a good return for your labour."

"That is a good idea. Is there anything more?"

"Yes. You must take up a piece of the beautiful prairie land near town, build a fence around it to keep out the wild hogs and deer, and plant it with rice, camotes or something else that will give your family plenty of food and if possible leave a surplus to sell, so that you can buy better clothes with the money you make."

"But I cannot break this thick prairie sod."

"The ground will be ploughed for you the first time. After that you must look after it yourself."

"Is that all?"

"No. There is one additional very important thing. I am getting old and fat, [61] and I can no longer scramble around over these hills as I used to do. I want to come and see you every year, and find out how you are getting on. You will have to help build good trails for my big horse, working ten days every year, or paying two pesos, so that some one else can be hired to work in your place. Everything else that I have told you must be done, if you come to town, is for your benefit, not for mine, and even the trails are only partly for my benefit. You will find it easy and safe to travel over them, and when you want to go to market, your carabao will be able to pack three or four times as much as he can now carry over bad paths."

"Will I gain any other advantages by living in town?"

"Yes, two very important ones. You and your family will be safe from attack, and you will have a chance to send your children to school."

"Must I come and live in town if I do not want to?"

"By no means. If you prefer to live up a tree in the mountains, no one will interfere with you so long as you behave yourself. There are plenty of mountains and plenty of trees."

As a result of the simple arguments above outlined and of the protection and help given them, nearly all of the Bukidnon people have left the mountain fastnesses through which they have until recently been scattered, and are voluntarily taking up their residences in towns which in their way are models.

Could the Filipinos keep them in the towns where we have settled them? No; and they would not if they could. They would chase them back into the forests as they were doing when we made them stop it. Furthermore, they could not if they would. In September, 1912, I heard the people of eastern Bukidnon tell Governor Reyes of Misamis that if their territory were put back into his province, they would take to the hills and live with the Man.o.bos.

One of the most important factors in winning and retaining the good will of the non-Christian peoples has been the extension to them of protection from the impositions of their Filipino neighbours. The following is a fair sample of the sort of thing to which they have in the past been subjected.

During my last trip through Bukidnon I learned that a long-haired mountaineer who had been encouraged to plant coffee and Manila hemp had acted on the suggestion, working very hard and establis.h.i.+ng an excellent plantation which had prospered. When he had products ready for market he had taken them to the coast town of Balingasak. He did not speak the language of the Visayan Filipino inhabitants of that place, so fell into the hands of one of them who knew his dialect. This rascal helped him to sell his produce, but took a heavy commission for this service. The hillman was nevertheless delighted with the result, whereupon his "commissioner" suggested that what he really needed was a partner in town to sell his crops, so that he could spend his whole time in cultivating his fields and not have to go to market. This struck the hillman as a good idea. The Filipino made out what purported to be articles of partners.h.i.+p and the hillman signed them with his mark, in the presence of witnesses.

A few months later he sent a valuable s.h.i.+pment of coffee and hemp to his "partner." When weeks had pa.s.sed without his hearing from it, he went to Balingasak to find out what was wrong, whereupon his "partner" stated that he was greatly obliged to him for his trouble in cultivating and harvesting the products of the farm. The hillman demanded his share of the returns and the "partner" calmly a.s.sured him that he had no share, having sold his farm at the time of his last visit. Investigation proved that this ignorant man had signed a bill of sale for his place.

Lieutenant-Governor Fortich interested himself in the case and caused suit to be brought against the rascally "partner" for stealing the hillman's produce. The fiscal, or public prosecuting, officer was a bright young Filipino who had recently graduated from an American university. Nevertheless, he had the suit thrown out of court because the "partner" of the hillman claimed that the farm was his, and a question of property owners.h.i.+p could not be conveniently determined in connection with a criminal suit.

At this stage of events I took a hand and brought the matter to the attention of the Honourable Gregorio Araneta, secretary of finance and justice. The fiscal had suggested that the wild man could bring a civil suit for damages against his "partner." How could this helpless barbarian have gone to Cagayan, hired a lawyer and lived there while his case was pending? He was absolutely helpless. Naturally, I was not. Another suit was brought and the "partner" was sentenced to pay a fine and was given a term in jail.

This is no isolated case. The wild men are constantly deprived of their crops or their lands; cheated in the sale of their products and in their purchases; arrested and fined on trumped-up charges; compelled to work for others without compensation; charged by private individuals for the privilege of using government forests or taking up public lands; and badgered and imposed upon in a thousand and one other ways.

If the Filipinos were put in control, would there rise up among them unselfish men who would check the rapacity of their fellows, and extend to the helpless peoples the protection they now enjoy?

At all events, those who have made it their business to protect the people of the non-Christian tribes have not been popular among the Filipinos. As a precautionary measure, I warned every man appointed governor of, or lieutenant-governor in, a special government province that he must expect sooner or later to be accused of many of the crimes recognized by existing laws. Every such man who does his duty eventually has false, and usually foul, charges brought against him. A common, and indeed the favourite, complaint is that he has been guilty of improper relations with women. The Filipino is an expert in framing up cases of this sort, and seems to take special delight in it, partly no doubt because such charges are so excessively difficult to disprove.

Cruel abuse of the wild men, or their families; falsification of public doc.u.ments; misappropriation of public funds; adultery; rape,--these are all common charges, while more than one of my subordinates has been accused of murder, and one has actually been brought into court on such a charge. It is certainly no sinecure to be an officer of a special government province.

A potent means of winning the undying regard of the wild man is to cure him when he is sick, or heal him when he is injured. Hospitals have already been established in two of the special government provinces and are doing untold good. Practically every officer of these provinces carries a set of simple remedies with him when he travels, and treats the sick without compensation as opportunity offers, but this work is as yet in its infancy.

The Filipinos have not doctors enough to heal their own sick. Would they remember to heal the wild men? Hardly.

Several of the wild tribes have progressed much more rapidly during the brief period since the American occupation than have any of the Filipino peoples, and if given adequate protection and friendly a.s.sistance they will continue to progress. Their splendid physiques and high intelligence, no less than their truthfulness, honesty and morality, certainly make them well worth saving.

Under Filipino rule the more helpless of these tribes would speedily come under the control of their former oppressors, but people like the Ifugaos, Bontoc Igorots, Kalingas and wild Tingians would fight to the death before submitting to them, and there would result a guerrilla warfare as endless and disastrous as that which has lasted so long between the Dutch and the Achinese. There is every theoretical reason to believe that the Filipinos would adopt toward such hostile primitive peoples the policy of extermination which the j.a.panese have been so vigorously carrying out in dealing with the hill people of northern Formosa, who do not differ in any important respect from the hill people of northern Luzon, with whom such helpful and friendly relations have now been established.

We have encouraged the primitive Philippine peoples to stand up for their rights. We have promised them our protection and help if they would do it, and thus far we have kept our promise. To break it now, and turn them over to the tender mercies of the Filipinos, who have never ceased to make threats as to what they will do when they get the chance, would in my opinion be a crime against civilization.

The Moros openly boast that if the Americans go they will raid the Christian towns, and this is no idle threat. They will most a.s.suredly do it.

Were American control to be withdrawn before the civilization of the wild tribes had been effected, their future would be dark indeed. Under continued American control they can be won over to civilized ways, and will in the end become mentally and morally, as they now are physically, superior to the lowlanders.

No man has been blessed with better subordinates than I have had to a.s.sist me in the work carried on under my direction for the non-Christian tribes of the Philippines. I wish it clearly understood that it is to the loyalty and efficiency of these men that the results which have been obtained are due. Fearlessly, tirelessly, uncomplainingly, they have borne their heavy shares of the white man's burden, finding their greatest reward in the respect, grat.i.tude, and in many cases the affection, of those whom they have so faithfully and effectively served.

Think of Pack, weakened by illnesses which twice brought him within a hair's breadth of death, wearing himself out riding over the Mountain Province trails, many of which he himself had laboriously built, in order to keep the little handful of men who control its 400,000 non-Christian inhabitants up to the high-water mark of efficiency, when he could have gone home any day and spent his remaining years in leisurely comfort; of Bryant, wandering for weeks on end through the trackless forests of Nueva Vizcaya in order to get in touch with Ilongot savages who were a good deal more than "half devil" with the balance not "half child" but peculiarly treacherous, vicious and savage man; of Offley, packing the bare necessities of life on his own back while he struggled out to the coast from the centre of Mindoro, where his frightened carriers had deserted him; of Kane, burning in the heat of the lowlands or soaked and s.h.i.+vering on chilly mountain crests, while building new roads and keeping old ones open for traffic; of Lewis, trying to cover a territory large enough to tax the energies of three men, and in his efforts to do so riding until so weary that at night he fell from his horse unable to dismount; of Fortich, a Filipino lieutenant-governor, faithfully carrying out the white man's policy and protecting the Bukidnons from his own people who charged him with murder because he drove them from their prey; of Gallman, risking his life a thousand times in a successful individual effort to bring 125,000 head-hunting savages under effective control and to establish relations of genuine friends.h.i.+p with them; of Hale, turning tattooed Kalinga devils into effective officers for the maintenance of law and order, or making a bundle of the lances thrown at him and sending them back to the people who threw them with a mild suggestion that it was impolite to treat a would-be friend in such an unceremonious way; of Johnson, tramping through the reeking filth of the Butuan swamps with a cancer eating away the bone of his leg, and referring to it as "a little swelling" when asked what made him lame; of Bondurant, spending the last afternoon of his life in pursuing Moro outlaws through that worst of all tropical infernos, a mangrove swamp, when burning with pernicious malarial fever and fighting for the very breath of life; of Miller, faithful unto death!

We are wont to quote with feeling the familiar words, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend,"

but what shall we say of the love of duty of men like Miller and Bondurant, who in doing their country's work cheerfully laid down their lives for an alien people?

While in the United States in 1910 I read Rudyard Kipling's "If"

and thereafter did not rest until I had sent a copy of it to each governor and lieutenant-governor employed in the special provincial government service of the Philippine Islands. Kipling wrote for these men of mine up in the hills without knowing it. They understand him and he would understand them.

There is not one of them who has not learned to

"... fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run";

not one whose personal experience has left him deaf to the appeal of the lines:--

"If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise."

Furthermore, each of them has again and again finished on his nerve. Did not the words,--

"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'"