History of the United States Volume V Part 21

During the long session of the Fifty-seventh Congress, a Cuban reciprocity bill being before the House, the sugar-beet interest demonstrated its power. The House "insurgents," joining the Democratic members, overrode the Speaker and the Ways and Means chairman, and attached to the bill an amendment cutting off the existing differential duty in favor of refined sugar. A locking of horns thus arose, which outlasted the session, neither side being able to convince or outvote the other. Sanguine Democrats thought that they espied here a hopeful Republican schism like that of 1872.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE UNITED STATES IN THE ORIENT

PHILIPPINES AND FILIPINOS

[1899]

The Philippine Archipelago lies between 4 degrees 45 minutes and 21 degrees north lat.i.tude and 118 and 127 degrees east longitude. It consists of nineteen considerable and perhaps fifteen hundred lesser islands, an area nearly equal that of New Jersey, New York, and New England combined. The island of Luzon comprises a third of this, that of Mindanao a fifth or a sixth. The archipelago is rich in natural resources, but mining and manufactures had not at the American occupation been developed. Agriculture was the main occupation, though only a ninth of the land surface was under cultivation. The islands were believed capable of sustaining a population like j.a.pan's 42,000,000.

Luzon boasted a glorious and varied landscape and a climate salubrious and inviting, considering the low lat.i.tude. Manila hemp, sugar, tobaco, coffee, and indigo were raised and exported in large amounts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sixteen men seated in a small room.]

General Bates. The Sultan.

The Jolo Treaty Commission.

The islands lay in three groups, the Luzon, the Visaya (Negros, Panay, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Samar, and islets), and the Mindanao, including Palawan and the Sulu Islands. Some of these islands were in parts unexplored. The Tagals and the Visayas, Christian and more or less civilized Malay tribes, dominated respectively the first and the second group. The Mindanao coasts held here and there a few Christian Filipinos, but the chief denizens of the southern islands were the fierce Arab-Malay Mohammedans known as Moros, most important and dangerous of whose tribes were the Illanos.

In all, there were thirty or more races, with an even greater number of different dialects. Northern Luzon housed the advanced Ilocoans, Pampangos, Pangasinanes, and Cagayanes, with their hardy bronze heathen neighbors, the Igorrotes. The Visayas had many degraded aborigines, the Negritos among them. Over against the Moros in the Mindanao group one could not ignore the warlike Visayan variation, or the swarming savages of the interior, hostile alike to Moro and Visaya.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Parade.]

Three Hundred Boys in the Parade of July 4, 1902, Vigan, Ilocos.

The population of the islands numbered 8,000,000 or 10,000,000, 25,000 being Europeans. Half the islanders were Christians, eight or ten per cent. Mohammedan, perhaps ten per cent. heathen. One considerable fraction were Chinese, another of mixed extraction. Probably none of the races were of pure Malay blood, though Malay blood predominated.

Mercantile pursuits were largely in Chinese hands. The Moros disdained tillage and commerce alike, living on slave labor and captures in war.

Spain had done in the islands much more educational work than the Americans at first recognized, though none of an advanced kind. Schools were numerous but not general. Many Filipinos had studied in Europe.

There was a select cla.s.s possessing information and manners which would have admitted them to cultivated circles in Paris or London, and thousands of Filipinos were intellectually the peers of average middle-cla.s.s Europeans. The University of St. Thomas graced Manila. Some seventy colleges and academies at various centres professed to prepare pupils for it.

Filipinos of aught like cosmopolitan intelligence numbered less than 100,000. Below them were the half-breeds, perhaps 500,000 strong, white, yellow, or brown, according to the special blend of blood. They were "intelligent but uneducated, active but not over industrious. They loved excitement, military display, and the bustle and pomp of government."

Farther down still were the vast toiling ma.s.ses neither knowing nor caring much who governed them. Only in suffering were they experts, having learned of this under the iron heel of Spain all there was to be known.

[Ill.u.s.tration: About fifty girls.]

Girls' Normal Inst.i.tute, Vigan, Ilocos, April, 1902.

In the Philippines one had incessantly before him social and economic problems in their rudimentary form--populations the debris of centuries, and the reactions upon them of their first contact with real civilization. In case of any but the most advanced tribes the immediate suggestion was despair, a feeling that they could never appropriate the culture offered them. But the heartiness of the response which even such communities made to our advances brought hope. Our methods were better than the Spanish, and our progress correspondingly rapid; yet the task we undertook bade fair to last centuries. Nor were its initial steps undefaced by errors.

A Blue Book would not suffice to describe this motley material. We can only ill.u.s.trate.

The Iocoros were in a forward state, if not of civilization, of preparation therefor. On all hands their youth were anxiously waiting to be taught. Compared with Teutonic races they were superficial and emotional, but they had great ambition and perseverance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Several men.]

Igarrote Religious Dance, Lepanto.

A sharp contrast were the Igorrotes. These appeared to be at bottom Malays, though Mongolian features marked many a face. They had withstood all attempts to christianize them, and stubbornly clung to their primitive mode of life as tillers of the soil. Mentally they were near savagery, entirely without ambition or moral outlook. Nevertheless they adhered to the American arms and rendered valuable porter service.

Their religion had elements of sun and ancestor wors.h.i.+p. The one tangible feature in it was the "kanyan," a drunken feast held on such occasions--fifteen in all--as marriage, birth, death, and serious illness. The feast began with an invocation to Kafunion, the sun G.o.d, and a dance much like that of the American Indians. Then came the drinking of tapi, a strong beer made from rice, and gorging with buffalo, horse, or dog meat, the last being the greatest delicacy. Till the Americans vetoed the practice, the Igorrotes were "head hunters."

The theory was that the brains of the captured head became the captor's.

The Igorrotes had magnificent chests and legs, and were extensively used as burden-bearers. Sustained by only a few bowlfuls of rice and some sweet potatoes, a man would carry fifty or even seventy-five pounds on his head or back all day over the most difficult mountain trails. The Igorrotes had a mild form of slavery, and, though good-natured and at times industrious, appeared utterly without spirit of progress. It was interesting to mark whether or not contact with a superior race would be a stimulus to them.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Igarrote Head Hunters with Head Axes and Spears.

A contrast, again, to the Igorrotes was presented by the Ilocoans, an intelligent, industrious, Christian people, eager for education, yet promising to cherish independent ideals the more dearly the more prosperous and advanced they became.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Six men on horseback.]

Native Moros-Interior of Jolo.

Most implacable of all the races were the Moros of the Sulu Islands.

Warlike, and despising labor, their terrible piracies had been curbed only within fifty years, and their depredations and slave raiding by land were never wholly prevented. They were suspiciously eager to "a.s.sist" our forces in subduing the insurgents. The American authorities negotiated a treaty with the Sultan and his dattos, involving their submission to the United States. A provision of this treaty excited reprobation, that permitting a slave to buy his freedom, a recognition of slavery in derogation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution. The provision was excused as an absolutely necessary makes.h.i.+ft to put off hostilities till the United States had a freer hand.

Spain never governed a colony well. Her whole record outre-mer was of a piece with the enslavement and extermination of the gentle Caribs, with which it began. In slavery and the slave trade Anglo-Saxon conquistadors shared Spain's dishonor, but in sheer ugliness of despotism, in wholesale, systematic, selfish exploiting, and in corrupt and clumsy administration the Iberian monarchy surpa.s.sed all other powers ever called to deal with colonies. The truth of this indictment was, if possible, more manifest in the Philippines than anywhere else in the Spanish world.

The religious orders, which early achieved the conversion of Tagals, Visayas, and some other tribes, after generations of evangelical devotion, ceased to be aggressive religiously, growing opulent and oppressive instead. They were the pedestal of the civil government.

Their word could, and often did, cause natives to be deported, or even put to death. One of their victims was that beautiful spirit, Dr. Rizal, author of Noli me Tangere, the most learned and distinguished Malay ever known. He had taken no part whatever in rebellion or sedition, yet, because he was known to abominate clerical misrule, he was, without a scintilla of evidence that he had broken any law, first expatriated, then shot. This murder occurring December 30, 1896, did much to further the rebellion then spreading.

"Once settled in his position, the friar, bishop, or curate usually remained till superannuated, being therefore a fixed political factor for a generation, while a Spanish civil or military officer never held post over four years. The stay of any officer attempting a course at variance with the order's wishes was invariably shortened by monastic influence. Every abuse leading to the revolutions of 1896 and 1898 the people charged to the friars; and the autocratic power which each friar exercised over the civil officials of his parish gave them a most plausible ground for belief that nothing of injustice, of cruelty, of oppression, of narrowing liberty was imposed on them for which the friar was not entirely responsible. The revolutions against Spain began as movements against the friars." [footnote: Abridged from Report of Taft Commission.]

Senator h.o.a.r wrote: "I should as soon give back a redeemed soul to Satan as give back the people of the Philippine Islands to the cruelty and tyranny of Spain."

Freemasonry in the Philippines was a redoubtable antagonist to the orders. There were other secret leagues, like the Liga Filipina, with the same aim, most of them peaceful. Not so the "Katipunan," which adopted as its symbol the well-known initials, "K. K. K.,"

"Kataas-Ta.s.san, Kagalang-Galang, Katipunan," "sovereign wors.h.i.+pful a.s.sociation." If the Ku-Klux Klan did not give the hint for the society's symbol the programmes of the two organizations were alike. The Katipunan was probably the most potent factor in the insurrection of 1896. Its cause was felt to be that of the whole Filipino people. In December, 1897, the conflict, as in Cuba, had degenerated into a "stalemate." The Spaniard could not be ousted, the Filipino could not be subdued. Spain ended the trouble for the time by promising reform, and hiring the insurgent leaders to leave the country. Only a small part, 400,000 Mexican dollars, of the promised sum was ever paid. This was held in Hong-Kong as a trust fund against a future uprising.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Emilio Aguinaldo.

Chief among the leaders s.h.i.+pped to Hong-Kong was Emilio Aguinaldo. He was born March 22, 1869, at Cavite, of which town he subsequently became mayor. His blood probably contained Spanish, Tagal, and Chinese strains.

He had supplemented a limited school education by extensive and eager contact with books and men. To a surprising wealth of information the young Filipino added inspiring eloquence and much genius for leaders.h.i.+p.

He had the "remarkable gift of surrounding himself with able coadjutors and administrators." The insurrection of 1896 early revealed him as the incarnation of Filipino hostility to Spain. Judging by appearances--his zeal in 1896, bargain with Spain in 1897, fighting again in Luzon in 1898, acquiescence in peace with the United States, reappearance in arms, capture, and instant allegiance to our flag--he was a s.h.i.+fty character, little worthy the great honor he received where he was known and, for a long time, here. But if he lacked in constancy, he excelled in enterprise. Spaniards never missed their reckoning more completely than in thinking they had quieted Aguinaldo by sending him to China with a bag of money.