Chapter VII.A Lost Tribe and the Servants of Mohammed.Wandering, always wandering through the mountains and forests since the years began,—destined to wander till the forests fall.Throughout the archipelago, in the dense mountain woods, sleeping in trees or on the ground, straying away in search of game, without a fixed place of abode, live the Negritos, aborigines, the pigmy vagrants of the Philippines. These little men, molesting no one, yet considering the rest of mankind as their enemy, and wishing only to be left alone, have hidden in the unexplored interior. Where they have come from is a mystery. It might have been that, in the ages past, the chain of islands from Luzon to Borneo was a part of Asia, an extensive mountain system populated by the tiny men found there to-day. If so, then they were driven to the highlands by the cataclysm that in prehistoric ages might have brokenup the mainland into islands, leaving only the summits of themountainsvisible.Or otherwise, might not these wanderers, who have their prototypes among the pigmies of dark Africa, or in the dwarfs inhabiting New Guinea—might they not have set sail from Caffraria, New Guinea, or the country of the Papuans, long years before the Christian era, like the “Jumblies,” in their frail canoes, perhaps escaping persecution, driven by the winds and currents, to land at last on the unpeopled shores of Filipinia?Negrito Pigmy VagrantsNegrito Pigmy VagrantsIn time came the Malayans of low culture, now the pagan tribes of the interior, and a conflict—primitive men fighting with rude weapons, clubs, and stones—ensued for the possession of the coast. In that event the smaller men were driven back into the territory that they occupy to-day. The races intermingled, and a medley of strange, mongrel tribes resulted. They have wandered, scattering themselves abroad about the islands. Influenced by various environment, each tribe adopted different customs and built up from common roots the different dialects. These tribes have always been, and always will be, mere barbariansand savages. In the pure type of Negritos, spindle legs, large turned-in feet, weak bodies, and large heads are noticeable. Shifting eyes, flat noses, kinky hair, and teeth irregularly set,—these are Negrito characteristics, though they frequently occur in themestizotypes. The Igorrotes of Luzon, whose ancestors were possibly the aborigines and the worst element of the invaders, are to-day the cannibals and the head-hunters of the north. In Abra, province of Luzon, the Burics and their neighbors, the Busaos, both of a Negrito-Malay origin, use poisoned darts, tattoo their bodies, and adorn themselves with copper rings and caps of rattan decorated with bright feathers. The Manguianes, of the mountains of Mindoro, dress in rattan coils, supplemented with a scanty apron.These Malayan races were, in their turn, driven back by later Malays, who became the nucleus of the Tagalog, Bicol, Ilocano, andVisayanraces, taking possession of the coast and mouths of rivers, and governing themselves, or being governed by hereditary rajas, just as when, three centuries ago, Magellan and Legaspi foundthem. The Moros, or Mohammedan invaders, were first heard from when, in 1597, Spain first tried to organize them into a dependent government. These treacherous pirates, the descendants of the fierce Dyacs of Borneo, had begun still earlier to terrorize the southern coasts, raiding the villages and carrying off the children into slavery. In 1599 a Moro fleet descended on the coast of Negros and Panay, and would, no doubt, have occupied this territory permanently had not the arms of Spain been there to interfere. Hereafter Spanish galleons were to oppose the progress of these pirate fleets, while troops of infantry were to defeat the savages on land. The Spaniards early in the seventeenth century succeeded in establishing a foothold on the island of Jolo and at Zamboanga. It was Father Malchior de Vera who designed the fort at Zamboanga, which was destined to become the scene of many an attack by Moro warriors, and to be the base of military operations against the surrounding tribes. A Jesuit mission was established in the sultan’s territory after the defeat of the Mohammedans by Corcuera. In the interior, around the shores ofLake Lanao, the fighting padre, Friar Pedro de San Augustin, backing the cross with Spanish infantry, carried the Christian war into the country of the infidels, continuing the conflict that for many years had made a battleground of Spain. It was in memory of their old enemies, the Moors, that when the Spaniards met the infidels in eastern lands, they named them Moros (Moors).The war between Spain and the Moros was relentless. Time and again the pirates had been punished by the Spanish admirals, until, in 1725, the sultan sent a Chinese envoy to Manila to negotiate a truce. A treaty was ratified, but broken, and again the Sulu Moros learned what Spanish hell was like. In spite of this continual warfare the Mohammedans grew stronger, and in 1754 the ocean was infested with the Morovintas, till another friar, Father Ducos, in a sea-fight off the coast of Northern Mindanao, sunk one hundred and fifty of their boats and killed three thousand men. Bantilan, the usurper of the Sulu throne, was one of the foremost of the mischief-makers who, in 1767, sent a pirate fleet as far north asManila Bay. Although the Spaniards had repeatedly won victories in Jolo, Zamboanga, and Davao, and by treaties had made all this country vassal to the crown of Spain, up to the time of the evacuation of the Philippines, when, as a last act, they had sent their own tiny gunboats to the bottom of Lanao, they never had become the undisputed masters of the territory.One of the pleasantest friends I had while I was in the Islands was Herr Altman, an orchid collector, who had risked his life a hundred times among the savages of the interior in the pursuance of the passion of his life. “One afternoon,” he said, “when we were in the forests of Luzon, my native guides approached me with broad grins. I thought, perhaps, they had discovered some new orchid; so I followed them. But I was unprepared for what they were about to show me. Since then I have had much experience among the wild tribes, but at this time everything was new to me. They motioned silence as, with broadening grins, they now approached what seemed to be a clearing in the woods. I could not think why they should be amused; but they are veryeasily delighted, just like children, and I thought that it would do no harm to humor them. Then I was startled by the howling of a dog and a strange sound coming through the woods.Still following my guides, I brought up in a growth of underbrush on a small precipice that overlooked an open space among the trees. Looking in the direction in which they pointed, I beheld a group of tiny black men dancing in a circle around what seemed to be a section of a fallen tree. Off to the side, the women, slightly smaller than the men, were cooking a wild hog on a spit, over a smoking fire. Their hair was thick and woolly and uncombed. Their arms and ankles were adorned with copper bracelets. Some of the men wore leather thongs that dangled from their legs. There were a few rude shelters in the clearing, merely improvised affairs of branches. As the men danced they sent up a song in a high, piping voice, and several hungry dogs, who had been watching enviously the roasting meat, howled sympathetically and in unison. It finally occurred to me that we were the spectators of a funeral ceremony; that the section of a tree was nothinglessthanthe rough coffin of the dead Negrito. We continued to watch them for a time, while, having finished dancing, they began their feast. The only dishes that they had were cocoanut-shells, out of which they drank immoderate amounts oftuba. The funeral ceremony, as I understand it, lasts for several days—as long as the supply of meat andtubalasts. The coffin, which appeared to me a hollowed log, is but a section of a certain bark sealed up at either end with wax. The burial is made under the house in the case of those tribes living near the coast; or in a stockade, which protects the body against desecration from the enemy.”It was with feelings such as one might entertain when looking at a mermaid or an inhabitant of Mars, that I first saw a genuine Negrito in a prison at Manila. The wretched pigmy had been brought in to the city from his inaccessible retreat in the great forest; he was dazed and frightened at the white men and the things they did. He was a miserable little fellow, with distrustful eyes, and twisted legs, and pigeon toes. He died after a few days of captivity, during which time he hadnot spoken. A dumb obedience marked his relations with the guard. The white man’s civilization was as disagreeable and unnatural to him as his nomadic life would be to us. A fish could just as well live out of water as this pigmy in the white man’s land.A few of the Negritos near the coast, however, have been touched by civilizing influences. They inhabit towns of small huts built on poles, which they abandon on the death of any one within. The house wherein a death occurs is generally burned. They plant a little corn and rice, but often move away before the crop is harvested. They are too lazy to raise anything; too weak to capture slaves. During the heavy rains, when the great woods are saturated, they protect themselves against the cold by wrapping blankets around their bodies. At night they often share the tree with birds and monkeys, sheltered from rain and dampness by the canopy of foliage. They have a head man for their villages—sometimes a member of another tribe, who, on account of his superior attainments, holds the respect of all. They huntwith bows and arrows; weapons which, by means of constant use, they handle with dexterity. At night their villages are located through the incessant barking of the hungry dogs, which always follow them around. Sleeping in huts, in order to prevent mosquitoes from annoying them, they often build a fire beneath them, toasting themselves until their flesh becomes a crust of scales.In the south Camarines, and in Negros, they will often come down to the coast towns, trading the wax and sweet potatoes of the mountains for sufficient rice to last them several days. They sometimes work a day or two in the adjacent hemp or rice fields, receiving for their labor a small measure of the rice. When they have eaten this, they fast until their hunger drives them down to work again. Their marriage relations are peculiar. While the father of the family has but one true wife, a number of women are dependent on him, widows or relatives who have attached themselves to him. The children receive their names from rivers, animals, or trees. If they were taken out of their environment when very young they might be educated, as experiments have shown that theNegrito children have the same impulses of generosity, the same attachment to their friends, the same joys, sorrows, and sensations, that belong to children everywhere. Only their little souls are lost forever in the wilderness.Neither the pagan tribes nor the Negritos read or write. The Moros, too, are very ignorant, only the priests and students being able to read passages from the Koran and make the Arabic characters. The latest Malay immigrants, who had been influenced by Indian culture, introduced a style of writing that is very queer. Three vowels were used,—a, e, and u. The consonants were represented by as many signs that look a good deal like our shorthand. Although there were three characters to represent the vowels when used alone, whenever a consonant would be pronounced with “a,” only the sign of the consonant was used. In order to express a final consonant, or one without the vowel, a tiny cross was made below the character. If “e” was wanted, a dot would be placed over the letter that expressed the consonant, or if the vowel was to be “u,” the dot was placed below.Some rainy day, when you have nothing else to do, you can invent some characters to represent our consonants, and with the aid of dots and crosses, write a letter to yourself, and see how you would get along if you were forced to use that kind of alphabet at school. The natives use the Spanish alphabet to-day, which is much like our own. Their language, being full of particles, sounds very funny when they talk. All you would understand would be perhaps, pag, naga, naca, mag, tag, paga; and all this would probably convey but little meaning to you. It is a curious fact that while the dialects of all the tribes are different, many of the ordinary words are common, being slightly changed in the transition. The language is of a Malayan origin, but has a number of Sanskrit words as well as Arabic. From studying these dialects, comparing the construction of the sentence as expressed by different tribes, and by comparing the inflections of homogeneous verbs and nouns, one might arrive at the conclusion that these tribes and races, differing so strikingly among each other, mutually antagonistic, all belong to one great family andhave a common origin. But that is a question for the anthropologists to settle; one that will give even the professors all the trouble that they want, and make them wrinkle up their learned foreheads, while among them they arrive at widely-varying decisions, which will be as mutually exclusive as the tribes themselves.It was a rainy day in the dense woods along the Iligan-Marahui road. The soft ground oozed beneath the feet, and a continual dripping was kept up from the low-hanging, saturated foliage. The Moro interpreter, in a red-striped suit and prominent gilt buttons, had come into camp with the report that one of the dattos at Malumbung wanted the military doctor to come up and treat his child, who was afflicted with a fever. The datto had offered protection for the “medico,” and, as a fee, a bottle of pure gold. The guides and soldiers, who were waiting in the forest, would conduct the doctor to Malumbung if he cared to go.“This sounds like a pretty good adventure,” said the commanding officer to me. “How wouldyou like to go along?” The doctor had accepted the offer of the Moros, and he now reiterated the commanding officer’s invitation. “It’s going to be a rather long, stiff hike,” he said. “We’ll have to sleep to-night out in the woods, and there’s no telling whether the Moros mean good faith or not. Remember that, in case the child should die while I am there, the Moros will believe that I have killed it, and will probably make matters more or less unpleasant for us both. I operated once upon a fellow over in Tagaloan who died under the knife. As soon as the spectators saw that he was hardly due to come to life again, they crowded around me with their bolos drawn, and if a friend of mine among them had not interfered, I would have followed my subject very speedily.”It was arranged that we take with us a small squad of regulars to carry the provisions and go armed, “in case there should be any game upon the way.” As this arrangement seemed to satisfy the Moros, though it did not please them much, we started, covering the first half mile along the clayey road through driving rain, and turningoff into the Moro trail around the summit of the hill. The Moros led the way with their peculiar lurching stride that covered a surprising distance in a very short time. Soon we were in the heart of the vast wilderness. We passed by colonies of monkeys, who severely reprimanded us from their secure retreat among the tree-tops. One of the soldiers killed a python with his Krag—a swollen creature, that could hardly be distinguished from the overhanging vines—that measured twenty feet from head to tail. The Moros silently unslipped their knives, and dextrously removed the skin. We camped that night in shelter tents, although the ground was soaked, and a cold breath penetrated the damp woods. All night the jungle-fowl and monkeys kept up an incessant obligato, and the forest seemed to re-echo with mysterious and far-off sounds. At daylight we pushed on, and late in the afternoon arrived at the small Moro settlement. The tinynipahouses, set up on bamboo poles, were rather a poor substitute for shelter; but on reaching them after our two days in the forest, it was like arriving in a civilized community. The doctorwent immediately to the datto’s house, a large one with a steep roof, where he dosed the infant with a little quinine.There were about five hundred Moros in the village under the datto, who ruled absolutely as by hereditary right. While he, of course, was feudal to the nearest sultan, in his own community he was a lord and prince. Most of the people were his slaves and fighting men. His private warriors, or his bodyguard, were armed with krisses,campalans, and spears, with shields of carabao hide, and coats of mail of buffalo-horn, as defensive armor. The favorite weapons of the datto were elaborately inlaid with the ivory cut from the tusks of the wild boar. His dress was also distinctive, and when new must have been very brilliant. It was fastened with pearl buttons, while along the outside seams of his tight pantaloons a row of smaller buttons ran. A dirty silk handkerchief wound around his head, the corner overlapping on the side, made an appropriate and fitting headgear. He had several wives, for whom he had paid in all a sum amounting to a hundred sacks of rice and twenty cattle.He had lost considerably on his speculations, having divorced three wives and being unable to secure a rebate on the price that he had paid for them.As soon as the doctor had completed his attentions to the patient, thepandita(priest) appeared, and asked him to account for the strange happenings that had occurred in the community. The village was in a state of panic, and unless a stop were put to the proceedings soon, there was no telling what the end might be. It seemed that during the night a number of children had been murdered secretly. Their mutilated bodies had been left at morning at the gates of their respective dwellings. These murders had been going on for several days, and though the houses had been guarded by a man armed with acampilanat night, the children would be mysteriously missing in the morning. It was evidently, said the priest, the work of devils. A big hand had been seen to snatch one of the children from its parent’s arms; and under the houses of those afflicted could be seen a weird fire glowing in the dead of night.The people claimed the murderer was none elsethan the big man of the woods, whose footprints, like the impressions of a cocoanut-shell, had been discovered in the soft ground near the border of the forest. There was a crazy prophet living in a tree, and he had seen the wife of the big man, half black, half white, wandering near the territory of the lake. The prophet had also seen a star fall from the sky, and he had followed it to see where it had struck the earth. He found there a huge stone, which, as he looked upon it, changed to a wild hog. Then the wild hog had vanished, and a flock of birds had risen from the ground. In place of the rock, a stone hand now appeared, and breaking off a finger of it, the prophet had discovered that, when burnt, its fumes had power to put the whole community to sleep. In this way had the big man of the woods been able to defy the guards and to assassinate the children at his will.The doctor, thinking that these deeds had been performed by somebody impelled by lust—the lust of seeing blood and quivering flesh—determined to investigate. Suspicion pointed to the crazy prophet, and the guards directed us to his impossibleabode. The prophet was accused directly of the crime, and, being convinced that he was found out by the white man’s magic, he confessed. The datto sentenced him to be beheaded, and seemed disappointed when we would not stay to see this operation. He even offered to turn the victim loose among the crowd, and let them strike him down with krisses. Had we desired, we could have had the places of honor in the line, and used the datto’s finest weapons. The people, he said, were puzzled at our lack of interest, for the occasion would have been a sort of festival for them. But seeing that we were obdurate, the datto served our farewell meal—baked jungle-fowl and rice—and, after offering to purchase our Krag-Jorgesens at an attractive price, he bade us all good-bye.On the way back, our guides surprised us by their climbing and swimming. There was one place where the Agus River had been spanned by jointed bamboo poles; while we crossed like funambulists, depending for our balance on a slender rail, the Moros leaped into the rushing torrent, near the rapids, swimming like ratsagainst the stream, and reaching the other side ahead of us. One of the guides went up a tall macao-tree, pulling himself up by the long parasitic vines, and bracing himself against the tree-trunk with his feet, to get an orchid that was growing high among the foliage. Though we expressed our admiration at these feats, the guides preserved their customary proud demeanor, and refused to be moved by applause.Their active life in the vast wilderness has given them athletic, supple bodies, which they handle to a nicety when fighting. Although the Moros build stone forts and mount them with old-fashioned cannon; although their arsenals are fairly well supplied with Remingtons and Mausers, their warriors generally prefer to fight with bolos. These weapons never leave their side. They sleep with them, and they are buried with them. Their heavycampalansare fastened to their hands by thongs, so that, in case the hand should slip, the warrior would not fall without his knife. The Moros in a hand-to-hand fight are extremely agile. Holding the shield on the left arm, they flourish the bolo with their right, dodging,leaping, and jeering at the antagonist in order to disconcert or frighten him.While their religion and fanaticism render them almost foolhardy in a battle, if a Moro sees that he is beaten and that escape is possible, he will avail himself of opportunities to fight another day. If brought to bay, however, he is desperate, and in his more religious moments he will throw himself on a superior enemy, expecting a sure death, but confident of riding the white horse to paradise if he succeeds in spilling the blood of infidels.Although distrustful, lazy, and malignant, the Moro is consistent in his hatred for the unbeliever, and untiring on the war-path. Scorning all manner of work, he leads an active forest life, killing the wild pig, which religious scruples prevent his eating, and waging war against the neighboring tribes. He is a born slave-catcher and a pirate. He will drink sea-water when no other is available. He shows a diabolical cunning in the manufacture of his weapons. Nothing can be more terrible than the long, snaky blade of a Malay kriss. The harpoons, with which hespears the hogs, come apart at a slight pull. The point of the spear on catching in the flesh holds fast. The handle, however, becoming detached, though held to the barbed point by a thong, catches and holds the hog fast in the underbrush. The head-ax is a long blade turned at just the proper angle to decapitate the victim scientifically.Ignorant and perfectly indifferent to the observations that their creed prescribes, the Moros gather at the rude mosque to the beating of a monstrous drum. Seated around upon straw mats, they chatter and chew betel-nut while thepanditareads a passage from a manuscript copy of the Koran. These copies are guarded sacredly, and only the young men who are studying for the priesthood are instructed from them. The priests of the first class are able to read and write, and it is better to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The birth of Mohammed is celebrated by a feast at harvest-time. Another occasion for a feast is given by the marriage ceremony. Bridegrooms are encouraged to provide these banquets by the administration of a beating if delinquent, or in case the food provided fails to meet the expectationsof the guests. On the completion of this function, the bridegroom bathes his feet; then chewingbuya, seated on a mat beside the bride, his hand and hers are covered by a napkin while the priest goes through the proper gestures and recites a verse from the Koran. The wedding celebration then degenerates into a drunken dance.The bodies of the dead are wrapped in a white shroud, and buried in a crescent trench, together with enough meat, fruit, and water to sustain the spirit on its trip to paradise. The priest, before departing, eats a meal of buffalo-meat or other game above the grave. The grave is then turned over to a guard of soldiers, who remain there for a few days, or as long as they are paid.Though the Americans have tried to deal in good faith with these fanatics, little has been accomplished either in the way of civilizing them or pacifying them. The Moro schools at Jolo and at Zamboanga have been failures. Teachers of manual training have been introduced to no avail. The Moro could be no more treacherous if his ancestors had sprung from tigers’ wombs. A Moro boy, employed for years by one of myAmerican acquaintances at Iligan, rewarded his master recently by cutting his throat at night. As superstitious as he is fanatic and uncivilized, the Moro is a failure as a member of the human race. Even the children are the incarnation of the fiend. There was that boy at Iligan who worked at the officer’s club, and who hung over the roulette-wheel like a perfect devil, crowing with demoniac glee when he was lucky. These are our latest citizens—this batch of serpents’ eggs hatched out in human form; and those who have seen the Moro in his native home will tell you that, whatever his latent possibilities may be, he can not yet be dealt with as a man.Our Latest CitizensOur Latest CitizensChapter VIII.In aVisayanVillage.The fountain on the corner, where the brown, barefooted girls with bamboo water-tubes would gather at the noon hour and at supper-time, was shaded in the heat of the day by a mimosa-tree. TheCalle de la Paz y Buen Viaje(Street of Peace and a Good Journey), flanked by sentinel-like bonga-trees and hedged in by a bamboo fence, stretches away through the banana-groves toward the fantastic mountains. A puffing carabao comes down the long street, dragging the heavy stalks of newly-cut bamboo. The pig that has been rooting in the grass, looks up, and, seeing what is coming, bolts with staccato grunts unceremoniously through the bamboo fence.In the little drygoods-store across the street, Felicidad, the dusky-eyed proprietress, has gone to sleep while waiting for a customer. She has discarded herchinelasand herpiñayoke. Her brown arms resting on the table pillow her unconscioushead. Her listless fingers clasp a half-smoked cigarette.The stock ofLa Aurorais a comprehensive one, including printed cotton goods from China, red and green belts with nickel fastenings, uncomfortable-looking Spanish shoes, a bottle of quinine sulphate tablets, an assortment of perfumery and jewelry, rosaries and crucifixes, towels and handkerchiefs, and daintypiñafabrics. The arrival of theAmericanois the signal for the neighbors and the neighbors’ children, having nothing in particular to do, to flock around. The Filipino curiosity again!On the next corner, where the wooden Atlas braces up the balcony, theChinostore is sheltered from the sun by curtains of alternate blue and white. HereChinoSantiago, in his cool pajamas, audits the accounts with the assistance of the wooden counting frame, whileChinoJosé, his partner, with his paintbrush stuck behind his ear, is following the ledger with his long, curved finger-nail. BothChinos, being Catholics, have taken native wives, material considerations having influenced the choice; butMaestroPepin saysthat, nevertheless, they are unpopular because they work too hard and cause the fluctuations in the prices. By pursuing a consistent system of abstractions from the rice-bags, by an innocent adulteration of thetintowine, these twocomercianteshave acquired considerable wealth.The bland proprietor will greet you with a smile, and offer you the customary cigarette. And if the prices quoted are unsatisfactory, they are at least elastic and are easily adjusted for a personal friend. Along the shelf the opium-scented line of drygoods is available, while portraits of the saints andNeustra Señorita del Rosario, whose conical skirt conceals the little children of the Church, hang from the wall. Suspended from the ceiling are innumerable hanging lamps with green tin shades. A line of fancy handkerchiefs, with Dewey’s portrait and the Stars and Stripes embroidered in the corners, is displayed on wires stretched overhead across the store. Bolo blades, chocolate-boilers, rice-pots, water-jars, and crazy looking-glasses are disposed around, while in the glass case almost anything from a bone collar-button to a musical clock is likely to be found.Santiago would be glad to have you open an account here and, unlike the Filipino, he will never trouble you about your bill.The market street is lined withnipabooths, whereseñoritasplay at keeping shop, presiding over the army of unattractive articles exposed for sale. Upon a rack the cans of salmon are drawn up in a battalion, a detachment of ex-whisky bottles filled with kerosene ortanduay, bringing up the rear. Certain stock articles may be invariably found at thesetiendas,—boxes of matches, balls of cotton thread, bananas,buya, eggs and cigarettes, and the inevitable brimming glass oftuba, stained a dark-red color from the frequent applications of the betel-chewing mouth.Although the stream of commerce flows in a small way where the almighty’suca ducois the medium of exchange, gossip is circulated freely; for without the telegraph or telephone, news travels fast in Filipinia. The withered hag, her scanty raiment scarcely covering her bony limbs, squatting upon the counter in the midst ofguinimos, bananas, and dried fish, and spitting a red pool of betel-juice, will chatter the day long withtheseñorain the booth across the street. The purchaser should not feel delicate at seeing her bare feet in contact with the spiced bread that he means to buy, nor at the swarms of flies around the reeking mound ofguinimosscraped up in dirty wooden bowls, and left in the direct rays of the sun.Dogs, pigs, chickens, and children tumble in the dust. Dejected Filipino ponies, tethered to the shacks, are waiting for their masters to exhaust thetubamarket. Down the lane a panting carabao, with a whole family clinging to its back, is slowly coming into town. Another, covered with the dust of travel, laden with bananas, hemp, andcoprafrom a distantbarrio, is being driven by a fellow in anipahat, straddling the heavy load. A mountain girl, bareheaded, carrying a parasol, comes loping in to themercadoon a skinny pony saddled with a red, upholsteredsilla, with a rattan back and foot-rest, cinched with twisted hemp.At night the market-place is lighted up by tiny rush lights, burningcocoanut-oilorpetrolia. Here, on a pleasant evening, to the lazy strummingof guitars, the village population promenades, young men in white holding each other’s hands, and blowing out a cloud of cigarette smoke;señoritas, in their cheap red dresses, shuffling hopelessly along the road. One of the local characters is entertaining a street-corner audience with a droll song, while the town-crier, with his escort of municipal police, announces by the beating of a drum that abandillafrom thepresidenteis about to be pronounced.Here you will find the Filipino in his natural and most playful mood, as easily delighted as a child. A crowd was always gathered round thetubadepot at the head of themercado, where the agile climbers brought the beverage in wooden buckets from the tops ofcopra-trees. A comical old fellow, Pedro Pocpotoc (a name derived from chicken language), used to live here, and on moonlight nights, planting his fat feet on the window-sill, like a droll caricature of Nero, he would singVisayansongs to the accompaniment of a cheap violin. A talkative old baker lived a short way down the street with his three daughters. They were always busypoundingrice inwooden mortars with long poles, thus making rice-flour, which they baked in clean banana-leaves and sweetened with brown sugar molded in the shells of cocoanuts.Sometimes a Moro boat would drop into the bay, and the strange-looking savages in their tight-fitting, gaudy clothes would file through town with spices, bark, and cloth for sale. From Bohol came the curious thatchedbancas, with their grass sails and bamboo outriggers, with cargoes of pottery, woven hats,bohoka, and rattan. On thefiestadays, Subanos from the mountains brought in strips of dried tobacco, ready to be rolled up into long cigars,camotes, coffee-berries, chocolate, and eggs, and squatted at the entrance to the cockpit in an improvisedmercadowith the people from the shore, who offered clams andguinimosfor sale.And once a month the town would be awakened by the siren whistle of the little hemp-boat from Cebu. This whistle was the signal for the small boys to extract the reluctant carabao from the cool, sticky wallow, and yoke him to the creaking bamboo cart. Then from the storehouses thefragrantpicosof hemp would be piled on, and the longsuffering beast of burden, aided and abetted by a rope run through his nose, would haul the load down to the beach. While naked laborers were toiling with the cargo, carrying it upon their shoulders through the surf, the Spanish captain and the mate, with rakishly-tilted Tam o’Shanter caps, would light their cigarettes, stroll over to Ramon’s warehouse where the hemp was being weighed, and, seated on sour-smelling sacks ofcopra, chat with old Ramon, partaking later of a dinner ofbalenciona, chicken and red-peppers, cheese and guava.Much of the village life centers around the river. Here in the early morning come the girls and women wrapped in robes of red and yellow stripes, and with their hair unbound. In family parties the whole village takes a morning bath, the young men poising their athletic bodies on an overhanging bank and plunging down into the cool depths below, the children splashing in the shallow water, and the women breast-deep in the stream, washing their long hair.In a Visayan VillageIn aVisayanVillageHere also, during the morning hours, the womentake their washing. Tying thechemisebelow the arms, they squat down near the shore and beat the wet mass with a wooden paddle on a rock. Meanwhile the children build extensive palaces of pebbles on the bank; the carabaos, up to their noses in the river, dream in the refreshing shade of overhanging trees. The air is vocal with the liquid notes of birds, and fragrant with the heavy scent of flowers. A leaf-green lizard creeps down on a horizontal trunk. The broad leaves ofabacárustle in the breeze; the graceful stalks of bamboo crackle like tin tubes. Around the bend the water ripples at the ford. At evening you will see the tired men from the mountains, bending under heavy loads of hemp, wade through the shallows to the cavern shelter of the banyan-tree. Through the dense mango-grove comes the faint sound of bells. Thepuk-pukbird hoots from the jungle, and the black crows settle in the lofty trees.The covered bridge that spans the river near the mouth is a great thoroughfare. Neither the arch nor pier is used in its construction; it is anchored to the shore by cables. It is not a veryrigid bridge, and sways considerably when one is crossing it. Even the surefooted ponies step a little gingerly over the loose beams that form the floor. A curious procession is continually passing,—families moving their worldly goods on carabaos, the dogs and children following;hombreson ponies, grasping the stirrups with their toes; a padre with his gown caught up above his knees, riding away to some confession; mountain people traveling in single file, and girls with trays of merchandise upon their heads.Down where thenipajungle thickens, fishingbancasare drawn up on the shore; and near by in acocoanut-grovethe old boatmaker lives. The hull of the outlandish boat that he is carving is a solid log. When finished, with its black paint,nipagunwale, bamboo outriggers, and rat-lines made of parasitic vines, it will put out from port with a big gamecock as a mascot, rowed with clumsy paddles to the rhythm of a drum, its helpless grass sails flopping while the sailors whistle for the wind. These boats, although they can not tack, have one advantage—they can never sink. They carry bamboo poles for poling overcoral bottoms. In a fair breeze they attain considerable speed; but there is danger in a heavy sea of swamping. When drawn up on shore they look like big mosquitoes, as the body in proportion to the rigging seems quite insignificant.The little fishing village is composed of leaning shacks blown out of plumb by heavy winds. Along the beach on bamboo racks the nets are hanging out to dry. At night the little fleet puts out for Punta Gorda, where a ruined watch-tower—a protection against Moro pirates—stands half hidden among creeping vines. The nets are floated upon husks of cocoanut, and set in the wild light of burning rushes. While the men are working in the tossing sea, or venturing almost beyond sight of land, the women, lighting torches, wade out to the coral reef and seine for smaller fish among the rocks. Early the following morning, while the sea is gray, the fishermen will toss their catch upon the sand. The devil-fish are the most popular at the impromptu market, where the prices vary according to the run of luck.The town was laid out by the Spaniards in the days when Padre Pedro was the autocrat andrepresentative of Spanish law. The ruins of the former mission and the public gardens are now overgrown with grass. Sea-breezes sweep the rambling convent with its double walls, tiled courtyard, and its Spanish well. The new church, never to be finished, but with pompous front, illustrates the relaxing power of Rome. Goats, carabaos, and ponies graze on the neglected plaza shaded with widespreading camphor-trees. The two school buildings bearing the forgotten Spanish arms are on the road to ruin and decay; no signs of life in the disreputablemunicipio; thepresidenteprobably is deep in hissiesta, and the solitary guard of thecarcelis busily engaged in conversation with the single prisoner.The only remains of Spanish grandeur in the village are the two ramshackle coaches that are used for hearses at state funerals. Most of the larger houses are, however, in repair, although the canvas ceilings and the board partitions seem to be in need of paint. These houses occupy the center of the town. They are of frame construction, painted blue and white. The floors are made of rosewood and mahogany; the windowsfitted with translucent shell. Storehouses occupy the first floor, while the living rooms are reached by a broad flight of stairs. A bridge connects the dining-room with the kitchen, where the greasy cook, often a Moro slave, works at a smoky fire of cocoanut-husks on an earth bottom, situated in an annex to the rear.A walk through the main street leads past a row of native houses, built on poles and shaded by banana-trees. You are continually stepping over mats spread out and covered with pounded corn, while pigs and chickens are shooed off by the excitation of a piece ofnipa, fastened to a string and operated from an upper window of the house. A smalltiendaopens from each house, with frequently no more than a few betel-nuts on sale. The front is decorated with the faded strips of cloth or paper lamps left over from the lastfiesta, while the skeleton of a lamented monkey fixed above the door acts as a charm to keep away bad luck. A parrakeet swings in the window on a bamboo perch, and in another window hangs an orchid growing from the dried husk of a cocoanut. Under the house the loom is situated,where the women weave fine cloth frompiñaand banana fibers—and the wooden mortar used for pounding rice. After the harvest season it is one of theVisayancustoms to inaugurate rice-pounding bees. Relays of young men, stripped for work, surround the mortar, and, to the accompaniment of guitars, deliver blows in quick succession and with gradually increasing speed, according to the measure of the music.In the cool shade of theylang-ylangtree a native barber is intent upon his customer. The customer sits on his haunches while the operation is performed. When it is finished, all the hair above the ears and neck will be shaved close, while that in front will be as long as ever. The beard will not need shaving, as the Filipino chin at best is hardly more aculeated than a strawberry. The hair, however, even of the smallest boys grows for some distance down the cheeks. The Filipino, when he does shave, takes it very seriously, and attacks the bristles individually rather than collectively.You will not remain long in a Filipino town without the chance of witnessing a native funeral.A service of the first class costs about three hundredpesos; but for twentypesosPadre Pedro will conduct a funeral of less magnificence. The padre, going to the house of mourning where the band, the singers, and the candle-bearers are assembled, engineers the pageant to the church. The dim interior will be illuminated by flickering candles burned in memory of the departed soul. Before the altar solemn mass is held, intensified by the deep tolling of a bell. Led by three acolytes in red and white, with silver crosses, the procession moves on to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. The padre sheltered by a white umbrella, reads the Latin prayers aloud. A small boy swings the smoking censer, and the singers undertake a melancholy dirge. The withered body, with the hands crossed on the breast, clothed all in black, is borne aloft upon a bamboo litter, mounted with a black box painted with the skull and bones, and decked with candles. Women in black veils with candles follow, mumbling prayers, the words of which they do not understand.The cemetery is surrounded by a coral wall, commanded by a gate that bears a Latin epigram.The graves, as indicated by the mounds of dirt, are never very deep, and while a few are guarded by a wooden cross, forlornly decorated by a withered bunch of flowers, most of the graves receive no care at all. There may be one or two vaults overgrown with grass and in a bad state of repair. Around the big cross in the center is a ghastly heap of human bones and grinning skulls—grinning because somebody else now occupies their former grisly beds, the rent on which has long ago expired.To theVisayanmind, death is a matter of bad luck. It is advisable to hinder it withanting-antingsand medallions; but when it comes, the Filipino fatalist will take it philosophically. To the boys and girls a family death is the sensation of the year. It means to them nine days of celebration, when old women gather at the house, and, beating on the floor with hands and feet, put up a hopeless wail, while dogs without howl dismally and sympathetically. And at the end of the nine days, the soul then being out of purgatory, they will have a feast. A pig and a goat will be killed, not to speak of chickens—and the meat will beserved up with calabash and rice; and visitors will come and look on while the people eat at the first table; and the second table and the third are finished, and the viands still hold out. But these are placed upon the table down below, wherehoi polloiand the lame, blind, and halt sit down and eat. And back of all this superficiality lies the great superstitious dread by means of which the Church of Rome holds such authority.I got to know the little village very well—to join the people in their foolish celebrations and their wedding feasts. I was among them when the town was swept by cholera; when, in their ignorance, they built a dozen little shrines—justnipashelters for the Holy Virgin, decorated with red cloth and colored grass—and held processions carrying the wooden saints and burning candles.Then the locusts came, and settled on the rice-fields—a great cloud of them, with whirring wings. They rattled on theniparoofs like rain. The children took tin pans and drums and gave the enemy a noisy welcome. But the rains fell in the night, and the next morning all the groundwas strewn with locusts trying heavily to fly. The ancient drum of the town-crier ushered in the day of work, and those who took this opportunity to pay their taxes gathered at themunicipio—about a hundred ugly-looking men. They were equipped with working bolos, with their blades as sharp as scythes for cutting grass, and, looking at them, you were forcibly reminded of another day, another army with a similar accouterment. Even thepresidentewent barefooted as he gave directions for the work. Some were dispatched fornipaand bamboo, while others mowed the grass around the church. Another squad hauled heavy timbers, singing as they pulled in unison.On Sunday mornings a young carabao was killed. The meat hacked off with little reference to anatomy was hung up in the public stall among the swarms of flies. Old women came and handled every piece, and haggled a good deal about the price. Each finally selected one, and swinging it from a short piece of cane, carried it home in triumph. Morning mass was held at the bigsimbahan, where the doleful music of the band suggested lost souls wailing on the borders of Cocytus or the Stygian creek. Youngcaballerosdressed in white, theconcijaleswith their silver-headed canes and baggy trousers, and the “taos” in diaphanous and flimsy shirts that they had not yet learned to tuck inside, stood by to watch theseñoritason their way to church. The girls walked rather stiffly in their tight shoes; but as soon as mass was over, shoes and stockings came off, and the villagers relaxed into the bliss of informality.I learned, when I last went toLa Aurora, that Felicidad was going to be married; that the banns had been announced last Sunday in the church. The groom to be, Benito,—or Bonito as we called him on account of his good looks,—had recently returned from college in Cebu, bringing a string of fighting cocks, afonografo, and a piebald racing pony. “When he sent me the white ribbon,” said Felicidad, “I was surprised, but mamma said that I was old enough to marry him—I was fourteen—and that the matter hadbeen all arranged. And so I wore the ribbon in my hair, and also wrote my nameFelicidadbeneath his on the card that he had sent. And after that, when we went walking, thedueñawas unnecessary.”She confessed naïvely to a serenade under her balcony, of which I seem to have retained a hazy memory. And so the usual pig and goat were roasted, and the neighbors’ boys came in to help. The bride, with orange-blossoms in her hair, the daintiest kid slippers on her feet, and dressed in a white mist ofpiña, rode away in the new pony cart, the only one in town. The groom was dressed in baggy trousers, with a pink shirt and an azure tie. Most of the presents came fromChinoSantiago’s store; but the best one was a beautiful piano from Cebu.After the service in the church, a feast was held upstairs in the bride’s house. Ramon, the justice of the peace, the padre,MaestroPepin, all theconcijales, and thepresidentewere invited, and the groom owned up that he had spent his last cent on the refreshments that were passed around. It is the custom in the poorer familiesfor the prospective groom to bond himself out for a certain length of time to the bride’s father, or even to purchase her with articles of merchandise. A combination of commercial interests was the result, however, of the marriage of Bonito and Felicidad.
Chapter VII.A Lost Tribe and the Servants of Mohammed.Wandering, always wandering through the mountains and forests since the years began,—destined to wander till the forests fall.Throughout the archipelago, in the dense mountain woods, sleeping in trees or on the ground, straying away in search of game, without a fixed place of abode, live the Negritos, aborigines, the pigmy vagrants of the Philippines. These little men, molesting no one, yet considering the rest of mankind as their enemy, and wishing only to be left alone, have hidden in the unexplored interior. Where they have come from is a mystery. It might have been that, in the ages past, the chain of islands from Luzon to Borneo was a part of Asia, an extensive mountain system populated by the tiny men found there to-day. If so, then they were driven to the highlands by the cataclysm that in prehistoric ages might have brokenup the mainland into islands, leaving only the summits of themountainsvisible.Or otherwise, might not these wanderers, who have their prototypes among the pigmies of dark Africa, or in the dwarfs inhabiting New Guinea—might they not have set sail from Caffraria, New Guinea, or the country of the Papuans, long years before the Christian era, like the “Jumblies,” in their frail canoes, perhaps escaping persecution, driven by the winds and currents, to land at last on the unpeopled shores of Filipinia?Negrito Pigmy VagrantsNegrito Pigmy VagrantsIn time came the Malayans of low culture, now the pagan tribes of the interior, and a conflict—primitive men fighting with rude weapons, clubs, and stones—ensued for the possession of the coast. In that event the smaller men were driven back into the territory that they occupy to-day. The races intermingled, and a medley of strange, mongrel tribes resulted. They have wandered, scattering themselves abroad about the islands. Influenced by various environment, each tribe adopted different customs and built up from common roots the different dialects. These tribes have always been, and always will be, mere barbariansand savages. In the pure type of Negritos, spindle legs, large turned-in feet, weak bodies, and large heads are noticeable. Shifting eyes, flat noses, kinky hair, and teeth irregularly set,—these are Negrito characteristics, though they frequently occur in themestizotypes. The Igorrotes of Luzon, whose ancestors were possibly the aborigines and the worst element of the invaders, are to-day the cannibals and the head-hunters of the north. In Abra, province of Luzon, the Burics and their neighbors, the Busaos, both of a Negrito-Malay origin, use poisoned darts, tattoo their bodies, and adorn themselves with copper rings and caps of rattan decorated with bright feathers. The Manguianes, of the mountains of Mindoro, dress in rattan coils, supplemented with a scanty apron.These Malayan races were, in their turn, driven back by later Malays, who became the nucleus of the Tagalog, Bicol, Ilocano, andVisayanraces, taking possession of the coast and mouths of rivers, and governing themselves, or being governed by hereditary rajas, just as when, three centuries ago, Magellan and Legaspi foundthem. The Moros, or Mohammedan invaders, were first heard from when, in 1597, Spain first tried to organize them into a dependent government. These treacherous pirates, the descendants of the fierce Dyacs of Borneo, had begun still earlier to terrorize the southern coasts, raiding the villages and carrying off the children into slavery. In 1599 a Moro fleet descended on the coast of Negros and Panay, and would, no doubt, have occupied this territory permanently had not the arms of Spain been there to interfere. Hereafter Spanish galleons were to oppose the progress of these pirate fleets, while troops of infantry were to defeat the savages on land. The Spaniards early in the seventeenth century succeeded in establishing a foothold on the island of Jolo and at Zamboanga. It was Father Malchior de Vera who designed the fort at Zamboanga, which was destined to become the scene of many an attack by Moro warriors, and to be the base of military operations against the surrounding tribes. A Jesuit mission was established in the sultan’s territory after the defeat of the Mohammedans by Corcuera. In the interior, around the shores ofLake Lanao, the fighting padre, Friar Pedro de San Augustin, backing the cross with Spanish infantry, carried the Christian war into the country of the infidels, continuing the conflict that for many years had made a battleground of Spain. It was in memory of their old enemies, the Moors, that when the Spaniards met the infidels in eastern lands, they named them Moros (Moors).The war between Spain and the Moros was relentless. Time and again the pirates had been punished by the Spanish admirals, until, in 1725, the sultan sent a Chinese envoy to Manila to negotiate a truce. A treaty was ratified, but broken, and again the Sulu Moros learned what Spanish hell was like. In spite of this continual warfare the Mohammedans grew stronger, and in 1754 the ocean was infested with the Morovintas, till another friar, Father Ducos, in a sea-fight off the coast of Northern Mindanao, sunk one hundred and fifty of their boats and killed three thousand men. Bantilan, the usurper of the Sulu throne, was one of the foremost of the mischief-makers who, in 1767, sent a pirate fleet as far north asManila Bay. Although the Spaniards had repeatedly won victories in Jolo, Zamboanga, and Davao, and by treaties had made all this country vassal to the crown of Spain, up to the time of the evacuation of the Philippines, when, as a last act, they had sent their own tiny gunboats to the bottom of Lanao, they never had become the undisputed masters of the territory.One of the pleasantest friends I had while I was in the Islands was Herr Altman, an orchid collector, who had risked his life a hundred times among the savages of the interior in the pursuance of the passion of his life. “One afternoon,” he said, “when we were in the forests of Luzon, my native guides approached me with broad grins. I thought, perhaps, they had discovered some new orchid; so I followed them. But I was unprepared for what they were about to show me. Since then I have had much experience among the wild tribes, but at this time everything was new to me. They motioned silence as, with broadening grins, they now approached what seemed to be a clearing in the woods. I could not think why they should be amused; but they are veryeasily delighted, just like children, and I thought that it would do no harm to humor them. Then I was startled by the howling of a dog and a strange sound coming through the woods.Still following my guides, I brought up in a growth of underbrush on a small precipice that overlooked an open space among the trees. Looking in the direction in which they pointed, I beheld a group of tiny black men dancing in a circle around what seemed to be a section of a fallen tree. Off to the side, the women, slightly smaller than the men, were cooking a wild hog on a spit, over a smoking fire. Their hair was thick and woolly and uncombed. Their arms and ankles were adorned with copper bracelets. Some of the men wore leather thongs that dangled from their legs. There were a few rude shelters in the clearing, merely improvised affairs of branches. As the men danced they sent up a song in a high, piping voice, and several hungry dogs, who had been watching enviously the roasting meat, howled sympathetically and in unison. It finally occurred to me that we were the spectators of a funeral ceremony; that the section of a tree was nothinglessthanthe rough coffin of the dead Negrito. We continued to watch them for a time, while, having finished dancing, they began their feast. The only dishes that they had were cocoanut-shells, out of which they drank immoderate amounts oftuba. The funeral ceremony, as I understand it, lasts for several days—as long as the supply of meat andtubalasts. The coffin, which appeared to me a hollowed log, is but a section of a certain bark sealed up at either end with wax. The burial is made under the house in the case of those tribes living near the coast; or in a stockade, which protects the body against desecration from the enemy.”It was with feelings such as one might entertain when looking at a mermaid or an inhabitant of Mars, that I first saw a genuine Negrito in a prison at Manila. The wretched pigmy had been brought in to the city from his inaccessible retreat in the great forest; he was dazed and frightened at the white men and the things they did. He was a miserable little fellow, with distrustful eyes, and twisted legs, and pigeon toes. He died after a few days of captivity, during which time he hadnot spoken. A dumb obedience marked his relations with the guard. The white man’s civilization was as disagreeable and unnatural to him as his nomadic life would be to us. A fish could just as well live out of water as this pigmy in the white man’s land.A few of the Negritos near the coast, however, have been touched by civilizing influences. They inhabit towns of small huts built on poles, which they abandon on the death of any one within. The house wherein a death occurs is generally burned. They plant a little corn and rice, but often move away before the crop is harvested. They are too lazy to raise anything; too weak to capture slaves. During the heavy rains, when the great woods are saturated, they protect themselves against the cold by wrapping blankets around their bodies. At night they often share the tree with birds and monkeys, sheltered from rain and dampness by the canopy of foliage. They have a head man for their villages—sometimes a member of another tribe, who, on account of his superior attainments, holds the respect of all. They huntwith bows and arrows; weapons which, by means of constant use, they handle with dexterity. At night their villages are located through the incessant barking of the hungry dogs, which always follow them around. Sleeping in huts, in order to prevent mosquitoes from annoying them, they often build a fire beneath them, toasting themselves until their flesh becomes a crust of scales.In the south Camarines, and in Negros, they will often come down to the coast towns, trading the wax and sweet potatoes of the mountains for sufficient rice to last them several days. They sometimes work a day or two in the adjacent hemp or rice fields, receiving for their labor a small measure of the rice. When they have eaten this, they fast until their hunger drives them down to work again. Their marriage relations are peculiar. While the father of the family has but one true wife, a number of women are dependent on him, widows or relatives who have attached themselves to him. The children receive their names from rivers, animals, or trees. If they were taken out of their environment when very young they might be educated, as experiments have shown that theNegrito children have the same impulses of generosity, the same attachment to their friends, the same joys, sorrows, and sensations, that belong to children everywhere. Only their little souls are lost forever in the wilderness.Neither the pagan tribes nor the Negritos read or write. The Moros, too, are very ignorant, only the priests and students being able to read passages from the Koran and make the Arabic characters. The latest Malay immigrants, who had been influenced by Indian culture, introduced a style of writing that is very queer. Three vowels were used,—a, e, and u. The consonants were represented by as many signs that look a good deal like our shorthand. Although there were three characters to represent the vowels when used alone, whenever a consonant would be pronounced with “a,” only the sign of the consonant was used. In order to express a final consonant, or one without the vowel, a tiny cross was made below the character. If “e” was wanted, a dot would be placed over the letter that expressed the consonant, or if the vowel was to be “u,” the dot was placed below.Some rainy day, when you have nothing else to do, you can invent some characters to represent our consonants, and with the aid of dots and crosses, write a letter to yourself, and see how you would get along if you were forced to use that kind of alphabet at school. The natives use the Spanish alphabet to-day, which is much like our own. Their language, being full of particles, sounds very funny when they talk. All you would understand would be perhaps, pag, naga, naca, mag, tag, paga; and all this would probably convey but little meaning to you. It is a curious fact that while the dialects of all the tribes are different, many of the ordinary words are common, being slightly changed in the transition. The language is of a Malayan origin, but has a number of Sanskrit words as well as Arabic. From studying these dialects, comparing the construction of the sentence as expressed by different tribes, and by comparing the inflections of homogeneous verbs and nouns, one might arrive at the conclusion that these tribes and races, differing so strikingly among each other, mutually antagonistic, all belong to one great family andhave a common origin. But that is a question for the anthropologists to settle; one that will give even the professors all the trouble that they want, and make them wrinkle up their learned foreheads, while among them they arrive at widely-varying decisions, which will be as mutually exclusive as the tribes themselves.It was a rainy day in the dense woods along the Iligan-Marahui road. The soft ground oozed beneath the feet, and a continual dripping was kept up from the low-hanging, saturated foliage. The Moro interpreter, in a red-striped suit and prominent gilt buttons, had come into camp with the report that one of the dattos at Malumbung wanted the military doctor to come up and treat his child, who was afflicted with a fever. The datto had offered protection for the “medico,” and, as a fee, a bottle of pure gold. The guides and soldiers, who were waiting in the forest, would conduct the doctor to Malumbung if he cared to go.“This sounds like a pretty good adventure,” said the commanding officer to me. “How wouldyou like to go along?” The doctor had accepted the offer of the Moros, and he now reiterated the commanding officer’s invitation. “It’s going to be a rather long, stiff hike,” he said. “We’ll have to sleep to-night out in the woods, and there’s no telling whether the Moros mean good faith or not. Remember that, in case the child should die while I am there, the Moros will believe that I have killed it, and will probably make matters more or less unpleasant for us both. I operated once upon a fellow over in Tagaloan who died under the knife. As soon as the spectators saw that he was hardly due to come to life again, they crowded around me with their bolos drawn, and if a friend of mine among them had not interfered, I would have followed my subject very speedily.”It was arranged that we take with us a small squad of regulars to carry the provisions and go armed, “in case there should be any game upon the way.” As this arrangement seemed to satisfy the Moros, though it did not please them much, we started, covering the first half mile along the clayey road through driving rain, and turningoff into the Moro trail around the summit of the hill. The Moros led the way with their peculiar lurching stride that covered a surprising distance in a very short time. Soon we were in the heart of the vast wilderness. We passed by colonies of monkeys, who severely reprimanded us from their secure retreat among the tree-tops. One of the soldiers killed a python with his Krag—a swollen creature, that could hardly be distinguished from the overhanging vines—that measured twenty feet from head to tail. The Moros silently unslipped their knives, and dextrously removed the skin. We camped that night in shelter tents, although the ground was soaked, and a cold breath penetrated the damp woods. All night the jungle-fowl and monkeys kept up an incessant obligato, and the forest seemed to re-echo with mysterious and far-off sounds. At daylight we pushed on, and late in the afternoon arrived at the small Moro settlement. The tinynipahouses, set up on bamboo poles, were rather a poor substitute for shelter; but on reaching them after our two days in the forest, it was like arriving in a civilized community. The doctorwent immediately to the datto’s house, a large one with a steep roof, where he dosed the infant with a little quinine.There were about five hundred Moros in the village under the datto, who ruled absolutely as by hereditary right. While he, of course, was feudal to the nearest sultan, in his own community he was a lord and prince. Most of the people were his slaves and fighting men. His private warriors, or his bodyguard, were armed with krisses,campalans, and spears, with shields of carabao hide, and coats of mail of buffalo-horn, as defensive armor. The favorite weapons of the datto were elaborately inlaid with the ivory cut from the tusks of the wild boar. His dress was also distinctive, and when new must have been very brilliant. It was fastened with pearl buttons, while along the outside seams of his tight pantaloons a row of smaller buttons ran. A dirty silk handkerchief wound around his head, the corner overlapping on the side, made an appropriate and fitting headgear. He had several wives, for whom he had paid in all a sum amounting to a hundred sacks of rice and twenty cattle.He had lost considerably on his speculations, having divorced three wives and being unable to secure a rebate on the price that he had paid for them.As soon as the doctor had completed his attentions to the patient, thepandita(priest) appeared, and asked him to account for the strange happenings that had occurred in the community. The village was in a state of panic, and unless a stop were put to the proceedings soon, there was no telling what the end might be. It seemed that during the night a number of children had been murdered secretly. Their mutilated bodies had been left at morning at the gates of their respective dwellings. These murders had been going on for several days, and though the houses had been guarded by a man armed with acampilanat night, the children would be mysteriously missing in the morning. It was evidently, said the priest, the work of devils. A big hand had been seen to snatch one of the children from its parent’s arms; and under the houses of those afflicted could be seen a weird fire glowing in the dead of night.The people claimed the murderer was none elsethan the big man of the woods, whose footprints, like the impressions of a cocoanut-shell, had been discovered in the soft ground near the border of the forest. There was a crazy prophet living in a tree, and he had seen the wife of the big man, half black, half white, wandering near the territory of the lake. The prophet had also seen a star fall from the sky, and he had followed it to see where it had struck the earth. He found there a huge stone, which, as he looked upon it, changed to a wild hog. Then the wild hog had vanished, and a flock of birds had risen from the ground. In place of the rock, a stone hand now appeared, and breaking off a finger of it, the prophet had discovered that, when burnt, its fumes had power to put the whole community to sleep. In this way had the big man of the woods been able to defy the guards and to assassinate the children at his will.The doctor, thinking that these deeds had been performed by somebody impelled by lust—the lust of seeing blood and quivering flesh—determined to investigate. Suspicion pointed to the crazy prophet, and the guards directed us to his impossibleabode. The prophet was accused directly of the crime, and, being convinced that he was found out by the white man’s magic, he confessed. The datto sentenced him to be beheaded, and seemed disappointed when we would not stay to see this operation. He even offered to turn the victim loose among the crowd, and let them strike him down with krisses. Had we desired, we could have had the places of honor in the line, and used the datto’s finest weapons. The people, he said, were puzzled at our lack of interest, for the occasion would have been a sort of festival for them. But seeing that we were obdurate, the datto served our farewell meal—baked jungle-fowl and rice—and, after offering to purchase our Krag-Jorgesens at an attractive price, he bade us all good-bye.On the way back, our guides surprised us by their climbing and swimming. There was one place where the Agus River had been spanned by jointed bamboo poles; while we crossed like funambulists, depending for our balance on a slender rail, the Moros leaped into the rushing torrent, near the rapids, swimming like ratsagainst the stream, and reaching the other side ahead of us. One of the guides went up a tall macao-tree, pulling himself up by the long parasitic vines, and bracing himself against the tree-trunk with his feet, to get an orchid that was growing high among the foliage. Though we expressed our admiration at these feats, the guides preserved their customary proud demeanor, and refused to be moved by applause.Their active life in the vast wilderness has given them athletic, supple bodies, which they handle to a nicety when fighting. Although the Moros build stone forts and mount them with old-fashioned cannon; although their arsenals are fairly well supplied with Remingtons and Mausers, their warriors generally prefer to fight with bolos. These weapons never leave their side. They sleep with them, and they are buried with them. Their heavycampalansare fastened to their hands by thongs, so that, in case the hand should slip, the warrior would not fall without his knife. The Moros in a hand-to-hand fight are extremely agile. Holding the shield on the left arm, they flourish the bolo with their right, dodging,leaping, and jeering at the antagonist in order to disconcert or frighten him.While their religion and fanaticism render them almost foolhardy in a battle, if a Moro sees that he is beaten and that escape is possible, he will avail himself of opportunities to fight another day. If brought to bay, however, he is desperate, and in his more religious moments he will throw himself on a superior enemy, expecting a sure death, but confident of riding the white horse to paradise if he succeeds in spilling the blood of infidels.Although distrustful, lazy, and malignant, the Moro is consistent in his hatred for the unbeliever, and untiring on the war-path. Scorning all manner of work, he leads an active forest life, killing the wild pig, which religious scruples prevent his eating, and waging war against the neighboring tribes. He is a born slave-catcher and a pirate. He will drink sea-water when no other is available. He shows a diabolical cunning in the manufacture of his weapons. Nothing can be more terrible than the long, snaky blade of a Malay kriss. The harpoons, with which hespears the hogs, come apart at a slight pull. The point of the spear on catching in the flesh holds fast. The handle, however, becoming detached, though held to the barbed point by a thong, catches and holds the hog fast in the underbrush. The head-ax is a long blade turned at just the proper angle to decapitate the victim scientifically.Ignorant and perfectly indifferent to the observations that their creed prescribes, the Moros gather at the rude mosque to the beating of a monstrous drum. Seated around upon straw mats, they chatter and chew betel-nut while thepanditareads a passage from a manuscript copy of the Koran. These copies are guarded sacredly, and only the young men who are studying for the priesthood are instructed from them. The priests of the first class are able to read and write, and it is better to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The birth of Mohammed is celebrated by a feast at harvest-time. Another occasion for a feast is given by the marriage ceremony. Bridegrooms are encouraged to provide these banquets by the administration of a beating if delinquent, or in case the food provided fails to meet the expectationsof the guests. On the completion of this function, the bridegroom bathes his feet; then chewingbuya, seated on a mat beside the bride, his hand and hers are covered by a napkin while the priest goes through the proper gestures and recites a verse from the Koran. The wedding celebration then degenerates into a drunken dance.The bodies of the dead are wrapped in a white shroud, and buried in a crescent trench, together with enough meat, fruit, and water to sustain the spirit on its trip to paradise. The priest, before departing, eats a meal of buffalo-meat or other game above the grave. The grave is then turned over to a guard of soldiers, who remain there for a few days, or as long as they are paid.Though the Americans have tried to deal in good faith with these fanatics, little has been accomplished either in the way of civilizing them or pacifying them. The Moro schools at Jolo and at Zamboanga have been failures. Teachers of manual training have been introduced to no avail. The Moro could be no more treacherous if his ancestors had sprung from tigers’ wombs. A Moro boy, employed for years by one of myAmerican acquaintances at Iligan, rewarded his master recently by cutting his throat at night. As superstitious as he is fanatic and uncivilized, the Moro is a failure as a member of the human race. Even the children are the incarnation of the fiend. There was that boy at Iligan who worked at the officer’s club, and who hung over the roulette-wheel like a perfect devil, crowing with demoniac glee when he was lucky. These are our latest citizens—this batch of serpents’ eggs hatched out in human form; and those who have seen the Moro in his native home will tell you that, whatever his latent possibilities may be, he can not yet be dealt with as a man.Our Latest CitizensOur Latest Citizens
Wandering, always wandering through the mountains and forests since the years began,—destined to wander till the forests fall.
Throughout the archipelago, in the dense mountain woods, sleeping in trees or on the ground, straying away in search of game, without a fixed place of abode, live the Negritos, aborigines, the pigmy vagrants of the Philippines. These little men, molesting no one, yet considering the rest of mankind as their enemy, and wishing only to be left alone, have hidden in the unexplored interior. Where they have come from is a mystery. It might have been that, in the ages past, the chain of islands from Luzon to Borneo was a part of Asia, an extensive mountain system populated by the tiny men found there to-day. If so, then they were driven to the highlands by the cataclysm that in prehistoric ages might have brokenup the mainland into islands, leaving only the summits of themountainsvisible.
Or otherwise, might not these wanderers, who have their prototypes among the pigmies of dark Africa, or in the dwarfs inhabiting New Guinea—might they not have set sail from Caffraria, New Guinea, or the country of the Papuans, long years before the Christian era, like the “Jumblies,” in their frail canoes, perhaps escaping persecution, driven by the winds and currents, to land at last on the unpeopled shores of Filipinia?
Negrito Pigmy VagrantsNegrito Pigmy Vagrants
Negrito Pigmy Vagrants
In time came the Malayans of low culture, now the pagan tribes of the interior, and a conflict—primitive men fighting with rude weapons, clubs, and stones—ensued for the possession of the coast. In that event the smaller men were driven back into the territory that they occupy to-day. The races intermingled, and a medley of strange, mongrel tribes resulted. They have wandered, scattering themselves abroad about the islands. Influenced by various environment, each tribe adopted different customs and built up from common roots the different dialects. These tribes have always been, and always will be, mere barbariansand savages. In the pure type of Negritos, spindle legs, large turned-in feet, weak bodies, and large heads are noticeable. Shifting eyes, flat noses, kinky hair, and teeth irregularly set,—these are Negrito characteristics, though they frequently occur in themestizotypes. The Igorrotes of Luzon, whose ancestors were possibly the aborigines and the worst element of the invaders, are to-day the cannibals and the head-hunters of the north. In Abra, province of Luzon, the Burics and their neighbors, the Busaos, both of a Negrito-Malay origin, use poisoned darts, tattoo their bodies, and adorn themselves with copper rings and caps of rattan decorated with bright feathers. The Manguianes, of the mountains of Mindoro, dress in rattan coils, supplemented with a scanty apron.
These Malayan races were, in their turn, driven back by later Malays, who became the nucleus of the Tagalog, Bicol, Ilocano, andVisayanraces, taking possession of the coast and mouths of rivers, and governing themselves, or being governed by hereditary rajas, just as when, three centuries ago, Magellan and Legaspi foundthem. The Moros, or Mohammedan invaders, were first heard from when, in 1597, Spain first tried to organize them into a dependent government. These treacherous pirates, the descendants of the fierce Dyacs of Borneo, had begun still earlier to terrorize the southern coasts, raiding the villages and carrying off the children into slavery. In 1599 a Moro fleet descended on the coast of Negros and Panay, and would, no doubt, have occupied this territory permanently had not the arms of Spain been there to interfere. Hereafter Spanish galleons were to oppose the progress of these pirate fleets, while troops of infantry were to defeat the savages on land. The Spaniards early in the seventeenth century succeeded in establishing a foothold on the island of Jolo and at Zamboanga. It was Father Malchior de Vera who designed the fort at Zamboanga, which was destined to become the scene of many an attack by Moro warriors, and to be the base of military operations against the surrounding tribes. A Jesuit mission was established in the sultan’s territory after the defeat of the Mohammedans by Corcuera. In the interior, around the shores ofLake Lanao, the fighting padre, Friar Pedro de San Augustin, backing the cross with Spanish infantry, carried the Christian war into the country of the infidels, continuing the conflict that for many years had made a battleground of Spain. It was in memory of their old enemies, the Moors, that when the Spaniards met the infidels in eastern lands, they named them Moros (Moors).
The war between Spain and the Moros was relentless. Time and again the pirates had been punished by the Spanish admirals, until, in 1725, the sultan sent a Chinese envoy to Manila to negotiate a truce. A treaty was ratified, but broken, and again the Sulu Moros learned what Spanish hell was like. In spite of this continual warfare the Mohammedans grew stronger, and in 1754 the ocean was infested with the Morovintas, till another friar, Father Ducos, in a sea-fight off the coast of Northern Mindanao, sunk one hundred and fifty of their boats and killed three thousand men. Bantilan, the usurper of the Sulu throne, was one of the foremost of the mischief-makers who, in 1767, sent a pirate fleet as far north asManila Bay. Although the Spaniards had repeatedly won victories in Jolo, Zamboanga, and Davao, and by treaties had made all this country vassal to the crown of Spain, up to the time of the evacuation of the Philippines, when, as a last act, they had sent their own tiny gunboats to the bottom of Lanao, they never had become the undisputed masters of the territory.
One of the pleasantest friends I had while I was in the Islands was Herr Altman, an orchid collector, who had risked his life a hundred times among the savages of the interior in the pursuance of the passion of his life. “One afternoon,” he said, “when we were in the forests of Luzon, my native guides approached me with broad grins. I thought, perhaps, they had discovered some new orchid; so I followed them. But I was unprepared for what they were about to show me. Since then I have had much experience among the wild tribes, but at this time everything was new to me. They motioned silence as, with broadening grins, they now approached what seemed to be a clearing in the woods. I could not think why they should be amused; but they are veryeasily delighted, just like children, and I thought that it would do no harm to humor them. Then I was startled by the howling of a dog and a strange sound coming through the woods.
Still following my guides, I brought up in a growth of underbrush on a small precipice that overlooked an open space among the trees. Looking in the direction in which they pointed, I beheld a group of tiny black men dancing in a circle around what seemed to be a section of a fallen tree. Off to the side, the women, slightly smaller than the men, were cooking a wild hog on a spit, over a smoking fire. Their hair was thick and woolly and uncombed. Their arms and ankles were adorned with copper bracelets. Some of the men wore leather thongs that dangled from their legs. There were a few rude shelters in the clearing, merely improvised affairs of branches. As the men danced they sent up a song in a high, piping voice, and several hungry dogs, who had been watching enviously the roasting meat, howled sympathetically and in unison. It finally occurred to me that we were the spectators of a funeral ceremony; that the section of a tree was nothinglessthanthe rough coffin of the dead Negrito. We continued to watch them for a time, while, having finished dancing, they began their feast. The only dishes that they had were cocoanut-shells, out of which they drank immoderate amounts oftuba. The funeral ceremony, as I understand it, lasts for several days—as long as the supply of meat andtubalasts. The coffin, which appeared to me a hollowed log, is but a section of a certain bark sealed up at either end with wax. The burial is made under the house in the case of those tribes living near the coast; or in a stockade, which protects the body against desecration from the enemy.”
It was with feelings such as one might entertain when looking at a mermaid or an inhabitant of Mars, that I first saw a genuine Negrito in a prison at Manila. The wretched pigmy had been brought in to the city from his inaccessible retreat in the great forest; he was dazed and frightened at the white men and the things they did. He was a miserable little fellow, with distrustful eyes, and twisted legs, and pigeon toes. He died after a few days of captivity, during which time he hadnot spoken. A dumb obedience marked his relations with the guard. The white man’s civilization was as disagreeable and unnatural to him as his nomadic life would be to us. A fish could just as well live out of water as this pigmy in the white man’s land.
A few of the Negritos near the coast, however, have been touched by civilizing influences. They inhabit towns of small huts built on poles, which they abandon on the death of any one within. The house wherein a death occurs is generally burned. They plant a little corn and rice, but often move away before the crop is harvested. They are too lazy to raise anything; too weak to capture slaves. During the heavy rains, when the great woods are saturated, they protect themselves against the cold by wrapping blankets around their bodies. At night they often share the tree with birds and monkeys, sheltered from rain and dampness by the canopy of foliage. They have a head man for their villages—sometimes a member of another tribe, who, on account of his superior attainments, holds the respect of all. They huntwith bows and arrows; weapons which, by means of constant use, they handle with dexterity. At night their villages are located through the incessant barking of the hungry dogs, which always follow them around. Sleeping in huts, in order to prevent mosquitoes from annoying them, they often build a fire beneath them, toasting themselves until their flesh becomes a crust of scales.
In the south Camarines, and in Negros, they will often come down to the coast towns, trading the wax and sweet potatoes of the mountains for sufficient rice to last them several days. They sometimes work a day or two in the adjacent hemp or rice fields, receiving for their labor a small measure of the rice. When they have eaten this, they fast until their hunger drives them down to work again. Their marriage relations are peculiar. While the father of the family has but one true wife, a number of women are dependent on him, widows or relatives who have attached themselves to him. The children receive their names from rivers, animals, or trees. If they were taken out of their environment when very young they might be educated, as experiments have shown that theNegrito children have the same impulses of generosity, the same attachment to their friends, the same joys, sorrows, and sensations, that belong to children everywhere. Only their little souls are lost forever in the wilderness.
Neither the pagan tribes nor the Negritos read or write. The Moros, too, are very ignorant, only the priests and students being able to read passages from the Koran and make the Arabic characters. The latest Malay immigrants, who had been influenced by Indian culture, introduced a style of writing that is very queer. Three vowels were used,—a, e, and u. The consonants were represented by as many signs that look a good deal like our shorthand. Although there were three characters to represent the vowels when used alone, whenever a consonant would be pronounced with “a,” only the sign of the consonant was used. In order to express a final consonant, or one without the vowel, a tiny cross was made below the character. If “e” was wanted, a dot would be placed over the letter that expressed the consonant, or if the vowel was to be “u,” the dot was placed below.
Some rainy day, when you have nothing else to do, you can invent some characters to represent our consonants, and with the aid of dots and crosses, write a letter to yourself, and see how you would get along if you were forced to use that kind of alphabet at school. The natives use the Spanish alphabet to-day, which is much like our own. Their language, being full of particles, sounds very funny when they talk. All you would understand would be perhaps, pag, naga, naca, mag, tag, paga; and all this would probably convey but little meaning to you. It is a curious fact that while the dialects of all the tribes are different, many of the ordinary words are common, being slightly changed in the transition. The language is of a Malayan origin, but has a number of Sanskrit words as well as Arabic. From studying these dialects, comparing the construction of the sentence as expressed by different tribes, and by comparing the inflections of homogeneous verbs and nouns, one might arrive at the conclusion that these tribes and races, differing so strikingly among each other, mutually antagonistic, all belong to one great family andhave a common origin. But that is a question for the anthropologists to settle; one that will give even the professors all the trouble that they want, and make them wrinkle up their learned foreheads, while among them they arrive at widely-varying decisions, which will be as mutually exclusive as the tribes themselves.
It was a rainy day in the dense woods along the Iligan-Marahui road. The soft ground oozed beneath the feet, and a continual dripping was kept up from the low-hanging, saturated foliage. The Moro interpreter, in a red-striped suit and prominent gilt buttons, had come into camp with the report that one of the dattos at Malumbung wanted the military doctor to come up and treat his child, who was afflicted with a fever. The datto had offered protection for the “medico,” and, as a fee, a bottle of pure gold. The guides and soldiers, who were waiting in the forest, would conduct the doctor to Malumbung if he cared to go.
“This sounds like a pretty good adventure,” said the commanding officer to me. “How wouldyou like to go along?” The doctor had accepted the offer of the Moros, and he now reiterated the commanding officer’s invitation. “It’s going to be a rather long, stiff hike,” he said. “We’ll have to sleep to-night out in the woods, and there’s no telling whether the Moros mean good faith or not. Remember that, in case the child should die while I am there, the Moros will believe that I have killed it, and will probably make matters more or less unpleasant for us both. I operated once upon a fellow over in Tagaloan who died under the knife. As soon as the spectators saw that he was hardly due to come to life again, they crowded around me with their bolos drawn, and if a friend of mine among them had not interfered, I would have followed my subject very speedily.”
It was arranged that we take with us a small squad of regulars to carry the provisions and go armed, “in case there should be any game upon the way.” As this arrangement seemed to satisfy the Moros, though it did not please them much, we started, covering the first half mile along the clayey road through driving rain, and turningoff into the Moro trail around the summit of the hill. The Moros led the way with their peculiar lurching stride that covered a surprising distance in a very short time. Soon we were in the heart of the vast wilderness. We passed by colonies of monkeys, who severely reprimanded us from their secure retreat among the tree-tops. One of the soldiers killed a python with his Krag—a swollen creature, that could hardly be distinguished from the overhanging vines—that measured twenty feet from head to tail. The Moros silently unslipped their knives, and dextrously removed the skin. We camped that night in shelter tents, although the ground was soaked, and a cold breath penetrated the damp woods. All night the jungle-fowl and monkeys kept up an incessant obligato, and the forest seemed to re-echo with mysterious and far-off sounds. At daylight we pushed on, and late in the afternoon arrived at the small Moro settlement. The tinynipahouses, set up on bamboo poles, were rather a poor substitute for shelter; but on reaching them after our two days in the forest, it was like arriving in a civilized community. The doctorwent immediately to the datto’s house, a large one with a steep roof, where he dosed the infant with a little quinine.
There were about five hundred Moros in the village under the datto, who ruled absolutely as by hereditary right. While he, of course, was feudal to the nearest sultan, in his own community he was a lord and prince. Most of the people were his slaves and fighting men. His private warriors, or his bodyguard, were armed with krisses,campalans, and spears, with shields of carabao hide, and coats of mail of buffalo-horn, as defensive armor. The favorite weapons of the datto were elaborately inlaid with the ivory cut from the tusks of the wild boar. His dress was also distinctive, and when new must have been very brilliant. It was fastened with pearl buttons, while along the outside seams of his tight pantaloons a row of smaller buttons ran. A dirty silk handkerchief wound around his head, the corner overlapping on the side, made an appropriate and fitting headgear. He had several wives, for whom he had paid in all a sum amounting to a hundred sacks of rice and twenty cattle.He had lost considerably on his speculations, having divorced three wives and being unable to secure a rebate on the price that he had paid for them.
As soon as the doctor had completed his attentions to the patient, thepandita(priest) appeared, and asked him to account for the strange happenings that had occurred in the community. The village was in a state of panic, and unless a stop were put to the proceedings soon, there was no telling what the end might be. It seemed that during the night a number of children had been murdered secretly. Their mutilated bodies had been left at morning at the gates of their respective dwellings. These murders had been going on for several days, and though the houses had been guarded by a man armed with acampilanat night, the children would be mysteriously missing in the morning. It was evidently, said the priest, the work of devils. A big hand had been seen to snatch one of the children from its parent’s arms; and under the houses of those afflicted could be seen a weird fire glowing in the dead of night.
The people claimed the murderer was none elsethan the big man of the woods, whose footprints, like the impressions of a cocoanut-shell, had been discovered in the soft ground near the border of the forest. There was a crazy prophet living in a tree, and he had seen the wife of the big man, half black, half white, wandering near the territory of the lake. The prophet had also seen a star fall from the sky, and he had followed it to see where it had struck the earth. He found there a huge stone, which, as he looked upon it, changed to a wild hog. Then the wild hog had vanished, and a flock of birds had risen from the ground. In place of the rock, a stone hand now appeared, and breaking off a finger of it, the prophet had discovered that, when burnt, its fumes had power to put the whole community to sleep. In this way had the big man of the woods been able to defy the guards and to assassinate the children at his will.
The doctor, thinking that these deeds had been performed by somebody impelled by lust—the lust of seeing blood and quivering flesh—determined to investigate. Suspicion pointed to the crazy prophet, and the guards directed us to his impossibleabode. The prophet was accused directly of the crime, and, being convinced that he was found out by the white man’s magic, he confessed. The datto sentenced him to be beheaded, and seemed disappointed when we would not stay to see this operation. He even offered to turn the victim loose among the crowd, and let them strike him down with krisses. Had we desired, we could have had the places of honor in the line, and used the datto’s finest weapons. The people, he said, were puzzled at our lack of interest, for the occasion would have been a sort of festival for them. But seeing that we were obdurate, the datto served our farewell meal—baked jungle-fowl and rice—and, after offering to purchase our Krag-Jorgesens at an attractive price, he bade us all good-bye.
On the way back, our guides surprised us by their climbing and swimming. There was one place where the Agus River had been spanned by jointed bamboo poles; while we crossed like funambulists, depending for our balance on a slender rail, the Moros leaped into the rushing torrent, near the rapids, swimming like ratsagainst the stream, and reaching the other side ahead of us. One of the guides went up a tall macao-tree, pulling himself up by the long parasitic vines, and bracing himself against the tree-trunk with his feet, to get an orchid that was growing high among the foliage. Though we expressed our admiration at these feats, the guides preserved their customary proud demeanor, and refused to be moved by applause.
Their active life in the vast wilderness has given them athletic, supple bodies, which they handle to a nicety when fighting. Although the Moros build stone forts and mount them with old-fashioned cannon; although their arsenals are fairly well supplied with Remingtons and Mausers, their warriors generally prefer to fight with bolos. These weapons never leave their side. They sleep with them, and they are buried with them. Their heavycampalansare fastened to their hands by thongs, so that, in case the hand should slip, the warrior would not fall without his knife. The Moros in a hand-to-hand fight are extremely agile. Holding the shield on the left arm, they flourish the bolo with their right, dodging,leaping, and jeering at the antagonist in order to disconcert or frighten him.
While their religion and fanaticism render them almost foolhardy in a battle, if a Moro sees that he is beaten and that escape is possible, he will avail himself of opportunities to fight another day. If brought to bay, however, he is desperate, and in his more religious moments he will throw himself on a superior enemy, expecting a sure death, but confident of riding the white horse to paradise if he succeeds in spilling the blood of infidels.
Although distrustful, lazy, and malignant, the Moro is consistent in his hatred for the unbeliever, and untiring on the war-path. Scorning all manner of work, he leads an active forest life, killing the wild pig, which religious scruples prevent his eating, and waging war against the neighboring tribes. He is a born slave-catcher and a pirate. He will drink sea-water when no other is available. He shows a diabolical cunning in the manufacture of his weapons. Nothing can be more terrible than the long, snaky blade of a Malay kriss. The harpoons, with which hespears the hogs, come apart at a slight pull. The point of the spear on catching in the flesh holds fast. The handle, however, becoming detached, though held to the barbed point by a thong, catches and holds the hog fast in the underbrush. The head-ax is a long blade turned at just the proper angle to decapitate the victim scientifically.
Ignorant and perfectly indifferent to the observations that their creed prescribes, the Moros gather at the rude mosque to the beating of a monstrous drum. Seated around upon straw mats, they chatter and chew betel-nut while thepanditareads a passage from a manuscript copy of the Koran. These copies are guarded sacredly, and only the young men who are studying for the priesthood are instructed from them. The priests of the first class are able to read and write, and it is better to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The birth of Mohammed is celebrated by a feast at harvest-time. Another occasion for a feast is given by the marriage ceremony. Bridegrooms are encouraged to provide these banquets by the administration of a beating if delinquent, or in case the food provided fails to meet the expectationsof the guests. On the completion of this function, the bridegroom bathes his feet; then chewingbuya, seated on a mat beside the bride, his hand and hers are covered by a napkin while the priest goes through the proper gestures and recites a verse from the Koran. The wedding celebration then degenerates into a drunken dance.
The bodies of the dead are wrapped in a white shroud, and buried in a crescent trench, together with enough meat, fruit, and water to sustain the spirit on its trip to paradise. The priest, before departing, eats a meal of buffalo-meat or other game above the grave. The grave is then turned over to a guard of soldiers, who remain there for a few days, or as long as they are paid.
Though the Americans have tried to deal in good faith with these fanatics, little has been accomplished either in the way of civilizing them or pacifying them. The Moro schools at Jolo and at Zamboanga have been failures. Teachers of manual training have been introduced to no avail. The Moro could be no more treacherous if his ancestors had sprung from tigers’ wombs. A Moro boy, employed for years by one of myAmerican acquaintances at Iligan, rewarded his master recently by cutting his throat at night. As superstitious as he is fanatic and uncivilized, the Moro is a failure as a member of the human race. Even the children are the incarnation of the fiend. There was that boy at Iligan who worked at the officer’s club, and who hung over the roulette-wheel like a perfect devil, crowing with demoniac glee when he was lucky. These are our latest citizens—this batch of serpents’ eggs hatched out in human form; and those who have seen the Moro in his native home will tell you that, whatever his latent possibilities may be, he can not yet be dealt with as a man.
Our Latest CitizensOur Latest Citizens
Our Latest Citizens
Chapter VIII.In aVisayanVillage.The fountain on the corner, where the brown, barefooted girls with bamboo water-tubes would gather at the noon hour and at supper-time, was shaded in the heat of the day by a mimosa-tree. TheCalle de la Paz y Buen Viaje(Street of Peace and a Good Journey), flanked by sentinel-like bonga-trees and hedged in by a bamboo fence, stretches away through the banana-groves toward the fantastic mountains. A puffing carabao comes down the long street, dragging the heavy stalks of newly-cut bamboo. The pig that has been rooting in the grass, looks up, and, seeing what is coming, bolts with staccato grunts unceremoniously through the bamboo fence.In the little drygoods-store across the street, Felicidad, the dusky-eyed proprietress, has gone to sleep while waiting for a customer. She has discarded herchinelasand herpiñayoke. Her brown arms resting on the table pillow her unconscioushead. Her listless fingers clasp a half-smoked cigarette.The stock ofLa Aurorais a comprehensive one, including printed cotton goods from China, red and green belts with nickel fastenings, uncomfortable-looking Spanish shoes, a bottle of quinine sulphate tablets, an assortment of perfumery and jewelry, rosaries and crucifixes, towels and handkerchiefs, and daintypiñafabrics. The arrival of theAmericanois the signal for the neighbors and the neighbors’ children, having nothing in particular to do, to flock around. The Filipino curiosity again!On the next corner, where the wooden Atlas braces up the balcony, theChinostore is sheltered from the sun by curtains of alternate blue and white. HereChinoSantiago, in his cool pajamas, audits the accounts with the assistance of the wooden counting frame, whileChinoJosé, his partner, with his paintbrush stuck behind his ear, is following the ledger with his long, curved finger-nail. BothChinos, being Catholics, have taken native wives, material considerations having influenced the choice; butMaestroPepin saysthat, nevertheless, they are unpopular because they work too hard and cause the fluctuations in the prices. By pursuing a consistent system of abstractions from the rice-bags, by an innocent adulteration of thetintowine, these twocomercianteshave acquired considerable wealth.The bland proprietor will greet you with a smile, and offer you the customary cigarette. And if the prices quoted are unsatisfactory, they are at least elastic and are easily adjusted for a personal friend. Along the shelf the opium-scented line of drygoods is available, while portraits of the saints andNeustra Señorita del Rosario, whose conical skirt conceals the little children of the Church, hang from the wall. Suspended from the ceiling are innumerable hanging lamps with green tin shades. A line of fancy handkerchiefs, with Dewey’s portrait and the Stars and Stripes embroidered in the corners, is displayed on wires stretched overhead across the store. Bolo blades, chocolate-boilers, rice-pots, water-jars, and crazy looking-glasses are disposed around, while in the glass case almost anything from a bone collar-button to a musical clock is likely to be found.Santiago would be glad to have you open an account here and, unlike the Filipino, he will never trouble you about your bill.The market street is lined withnipabooths, whereseñoritasplay at keeping shop, presiding over the army of unattractive articles exposed for sale. Upon a rack the cans of salmon are drawn up in a battalion, a detachment of ex-whisky bottles filled with kerosene ortanduay, bringing up the rear. Certain stock articles may be invariably found at thesetiendas,—boxes of matches, balls of cotton thread, bananas,buya, eggs and cigarettes, and the inevitable brimming glass oftuba, stained a dark-red color from the frequent applications of the betel-chewing mouth.Although the stream of commerce flows in a small way where the almighty’suca ducois the medium of exchange, gossip is circulated freely; for without the telegraph or telephone, news travels fast in Filipinia. The withered hag, her scanty raiment scarcely covering her bony limbs, squatting upon the counter in the midst ofguinimos, bananas, and dried fish, and spitting a red pool of betel-juice, will chatter the day long withtheseñorain the booth across the street. The purchaser should not feel delicate at seeing her bare feet in contact with the spiced bread that he means to buy, nor at the swarms of flies around the reeking mound ofguinimosscraped up in dirty wooden bowls, and left in the direct rays of the sun.Dogs, pigs, chickens, and children tumble in the dust. Dejected Filipino ponies, tethered to the shacks, are waiting for their masters to exhaust thetubamarket. Down the lane a panting carabao, with a whole family clinging to its back, is slowly coming into town. Another, covered with the dust of travel, laden with bananas, hemp, andcoprafrom a distantbarrio, is being driven by a fellow in anipahat, straddling the heavy load. A mountain girl, bareheaded, carrying a parasol, comes loping in to themercadoon a skinny pony saddled with a red, upholsteredsilla, with a rattan back and foot-rest, cinched with twisted hemp.At night the market-place is lighted up by tiny rush lights, burningcocoanut-oilorpetrolia. Here, on a pleasant evening, to the lazy strummingof guitars, the village population promenades, young men in white holding each other’s hands, and blowing out a cloud of cigarette smoke;señoritas, in their cheap red dresses, shuffling hopelessly along the road. One of the local characters is entertaining a street-corner audience with a droll song, while the town-crier, with his escort of municipal police, announces by the beating of a drum that abandillafrom thepresidenteis about to be pronounced.Here you will find the Filipino in his natural and most playful mood, as easily delighted as a child. A crowd was always gathered round thetubadepot at the head of themercado, where the agile climbers brought the beverage in wooden buckets from the tops ofcopra-trees. A comical old fellow, Pedro Pocpotoc (a name derived from chicken language), used to live here, and on moonlight nights, planting his fat feet on the window-sill, like a droll caricature of Nero, he would singVisayansongs to the accompaniment of a cheap violin. A talkative old baker lived a short way down the street with his three daughters. They were always busypoundingrice inwooden mortars with long poles, thus making rice-flour, which they baked in clean banana-leaves and sweetened with brown sugar molded in the shells of cocoanuts.Sometimes a Moro boat would drop into the bay, and the strange-looking savages in their tight-fitting, gaudy clothes would file through town with spices, bark, and cloth for sale. From Bohol came the curious thatchedbancas, with their grass sails and bamboo outriggers, with cargoes of pottery, woven hats,bohoka, and rattan. On thefiestadays, Subanos from the mountains brought in strips of dried tobacco, ready to be rolled up into long cigars,camotes, coffee-berries, chocolate, and eggs, and squatted at the entrance to the cockpit in an improvisedmercadowith the people from the shore, who offered clams andguinimosfor sale.And once a month the town would be awakened by the siren whistle of the little hemp-boat from Cebu. This whistle was the signal for the small boys to extract the reluctant carabao from the cool, sticky wallow, and yoke him to the creaking bamboo cart. Then from the storehouses thefragrantpicosof hemp would be piled on, and the longsuffering beast of burden, aided and abetted by a rope run through his nose, would haul the load down to the beach. While naked laborers were toiling with the cargo, carrying it upon their shoulders through the surf, the Spanish captain and the mate, with rakishly-tilted Tam o’Shanter caps, would light their cigarettes, stroll over to Ramon’s warehouse where the hemp was being weighed, and, seated on sour-smelling sacks ofcopra, chat with old Ramon, partaking later of a dinner ofbalenciona, chicken and red-peppers, cheese and guava.Much of the village life centers around the river. Here in the early morning come the girls and women wrapped in robes of red and yellow stripes, and with their hair unbound. In family parties the whole village takes a morning bath, the young men poising their athletic bodies on an overhanging bank and plunging down into the cool depths below, the children splashing in the shallow water, and the women breast-deep in the stream, washing their long hair.In a Visayan VillageIn aVisayanVillageHere also, during the morning hours, the womentake their washing. Tying thechemisebelow the arms, they squat down near the shore and beat the wet mass with a wooden paddle on a rock. Meanwhile the children build extensive palaces of pebbles on the bank; the carabaos, up to their noses in the river, dream in the refreshing shade of overhanging trees. The air is vocal with the liquid notes of birds, and fragrant with the heavy scent of flowers. A leaf-green lizard creeps down on a horizontal trunk. The broad leaves ofabacárustle in the breeze; the graceful stalks of bamboo crackle like tin tubes. Around the bend the water ripples at the ford. At evening you will see the tired men from the mountains, bending under heavy loads of hemp, wade through the shallows to the cavern shelter of the banyan-tree. Through the dense mango-grove comes the faint sound of bells. Thepuk-pukbird hoots from the jungle, and the black crows settle in the lofty trees.The covered bridge that spans the river near the mouth is a great thoroughfare. Neither the arch nor pier is used in its construction; it is anchored to the shore by cables. It is not a veryrigid bridge, and sways considerably when one is crossing it. Even the surefooted ponies step a little gingerly over the loose beams that form the floor. A curious procession is continually passing,—families moving their worldly goods on carabaos, the dogs and children following;hombreson ponies, grasping the stirrups with their toes; a padre with his gown caught up above his knees, riding away to some confession; mountain people traveling in single file, and girls with trays of merchandise upon their heads.Down where thenipajungle thickens, fishingbancasare drawn up on the shore; and near by in acocoanut-grovethe old boatmaker lives. The hull of the outlandish boat that he is carving is a solid log. When finished, with its black paint,nipagunwale, bamboo outriggers, and rat-lines made of parasitic vines, it will put out from port with a big gamecock as a mascot, rowed with clumsy paddles to the rhythm of a drum, its helpless grass sails flopping while the sailors whistle for the wind. These boats, although they can not tack, have one advantage—they can never sink. They carry bamboo poles for poling overcoral bottoms. In a fair breeze they attain considerable speed; but there is danger in a heavy sea of swamping. When drawn up on shore they look like big mosquitoes, as the body in proportion to the rigging seems quite insignificant.The little fishing village is composed of leaning shacks blown out of plumb by heavy winds. Along the beach on bamboo racks the nets are hanging out to dry. At night the little fleet puts out for Punta Gorda, where a ruined watch-tower—a protection against Moro pirates—stands half hidden among creeping vines. The nets are floated upon husks of cocoanut, and set in the wild light of burning rushes. While the men are working in the tossing sea, or venturing almost beyond sight of land, the women, lighting torches, wade out to the coral reef and seine for smaller fish among the rocks. Early the following morning, while the sea is gray, the fishermen will toss their catch upon the sand. The devil-fish are the most popular at the impromptu market, where the prices vary according to the run of luck.The town was laid out by the Spaniards in the days when Padre Pedro was the autocrat andrepresentative of Spanish law. The ruins of the former mission and the public gardens are now overgrown with grass. Sea-breezes sweep the rambling convent with its double walls, tiled courtyard, and its Spanish well. The new church, never to be finished, but with pompous front, illustrates the relaxing power of Rome. Goats, carabaos, and ponies graze on the neglected plaza shaded with widespreading camphor-trees. The two school buildings bearing the forgotten Spanish arms are on the road to ruin and decay; no signs of life in the disreputablemunicipio; thepresidenteprobably is deep in hissiesta, and the solitary guard of thecarcelis busily engaged in conversation with the single prisoner.The only remains of Spanish grandeur in the village are the two ramshackle coaches that are used for hearses at state funerals. Most of the larger houses are, however, in repair, although the canvas ceilings and the board partitions seem to be in need of paint. These houses occupy the center of the town. They are of frame construction, painted blue and white. The floors are made of rosewood and mahogany; the windowsfitted with translucent shell. Storehouses occupy the first floor, while the living rooms are reached by a broad flight of stairs. A bridge connects the dining-room with the kitchen, where the greasy cook, often a Moro slave, works at a smoky fire of cocoanut-husks on an earth bottom, situated in an annex to the rear.A walk through the main street leads past a row of native houses, built on poles and shaded by banana-trees. You are continually stepping over mats spread out and covered with pounded corn, while pigs and chickens are shooed off by the excitation of a piece ofnipa, fastened to a string and operated from an upper window of the house. A smalltiendaopens from each house, with frequently no more than a few betel-nuts on sale. The front is decorated with the faded strips of cloth or paper lamps left over from the lastfiesta, while the skeleton of a lamented monkey fixed above the door acts as a charm to keep away bad luck. A parrakeet swings in the window on a bamboo perch, and in another window hangs an orchid growing from the dried husk of a cocoanut. Under the house the loom is situated,where the women weave fine cloth frompiñaand banana fibers—and the wooden mortar used for pounding rice. After the harvest season it is one of theVisayancustoms to inaugurate rice-pounding bees. Relays of young men, stripped for work, surround the mortar, and, to the accompaniment of guitars, deliver blows in quick succession and with gradually increasing speed, according to the measure of the music.In the cool shade of theylang-ylangtree a native barber is intent upon his customer. The customer sits on his haunches while the operation is performed. When it is finished, all the hair above the ears and neck will be shaved close, while that in front will be as long as ever. The beard will not need shaving, as the Filipino chin at best is hardly more aculeated than a strawberry. The hair, however, even of the smallest boys grows for some distance down the cheeks. The Filipino, when he does shave, takes it very seriously, and attacks the bristles individually rather than collectively.You will not remain long in a Filipino town without the chance of witnessing a native funeral.A service of the first class costs about three hundredpesos; but for twentypesosPadre Pedro will conduct a funeral of less magnificence. The padre, going to the house of mourning where the band, the singers, and the candle-bearers are assembled, engineers the pageant to the church. The dim interior will be illuminated by flickering candles burned in memory of the departed soul. Before the altar solemn mass is held, intensified by the deep tolling of a bell. Led by three acolytes in red and white, with silver crosses, the procession moves on to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. The padre sheltered by a white umbrella, reads the Latin prayers aloud. A small boy swings the smoking censer, and the singers undertake a melancholy dirge. The withered body, with the hands crossed on the breast, clothed all in black, is borne aloft upon a bamboo litter, mounted with a black box painted with the skull and bones, and decked with candles. Women in black veils with candles follow, mumbling prayers, the words of which they do not understand.The cemetery is surrounded by a coral wall, commanded by a gate that bears a Latin epigram.The graves, as indicated by the mounds of dirt, are never very deep, and while a few are guarded by a wooden cross, forlornly decorated by a withered bunch of flowers, most of the graves receive no care at all. There may be one or two vaults overgrown with grass and in a bad state of repair. Around the big cross in the center is a ghastly heap of human bones and grinning skulls—grinning because somebody else now occupies their former grisly beds, the rent on which has long ago expired.To theVisayanmind, death is a matter of bad luck. It is advisable to hinder it withanting-antingsand medallions; but when it comes, the Filipino fatalist will take it philosophically. To the boys and girls a family death is the sensation of the year. It means to them nine days of celebration, when old women gather at the house, and, beating on the floor with hands and feet, put up a hopeless wail, while dogs without howl dismally and sympathetically. And at the end of the nine days, the soul then being out of purgatory, they will have a feast. A pig and a goat will be killed, not to speak of chickens—and the meat will beserved up with calabash and rice; and visitors will come and look on while the people eat at the first table; and the second table and the third are finished, and the viands still hold out. But these are placed upon the table down below, wherehoi polloiand the lame, blind, and halt sit down and eat. And back of all this superficiality lies the great superstitious dread by means of which the Church of Rome holds such authority.I got to know the little village very well—to join the people in their foolish celebrations and their wedding feasts. I was among them when the town was swept by cholera; when, in their ignorance, they built a dozen little shrines—justnipashelters for the Holy Virgin, decorated with red cloth and colored grass—and held processions carrying the wooden saints and burning candles.Then the locusts came, and settled on the rice-fields—a great cloud of them, with whirring wings. They rattled on theniparoofs like rain. The children took tin pans and drums and gave the enemy a noisy welcome. But the rains fell in the night, and the next morning all the groundwas strewn with locusts trying heavily to fly. The ancient drum of the town-crier ushered in the day of work, and those who took this opportunity to pay their taxes gathered at themunicipio—about a hundred ugly-looking men. They were equipped with working bolos, with their blades as sharp as scythes for cutting grass, and, looking at them, you were forcibly reminded of another day, another army with a similar accouterment. Even thepresidentewent barefooted as he gave directions for the work. Some were dispatched fornipaand bamboo, while others mowed the grass around the church. Another squad hauled heavy timbers, singing as they pulled in unison.On Sunday mornings a young carabao was killed. The meat hacked off with little reference to anatomy was hung up in the public stall among the swarms of flies. Old women came and handled every piece, and haggled a good deal about the price. Each finally selected one, and swinging it from a short piece of cane, carried it home in triumph. Morning mass was held at the bigsimbahan, where the doleful music of the band suggested lost souls wailing on the borders of Cocytus or the Stygian creek. Youngcaballerosdressed in white, theconcijaleswith their silver-headed canes and baggy trousers, and the “taos” in diaphanous and flimsy shirts that they had not yet learned to tuck inside, stood by to watch theseñoritason their way to church. The girls walked rather stiffly in their tight shoes; but as soon as mass was over, shoes and stockings came off, and the villagers relaxed into the bliss of informality.I learned, when I last went toLa Aurora, that Felicidad was going to be married; that the banns had been announced last Sunday in the church. The groom to be, Benito,—or Bonito as we called him on account of his good looks,—had recently returned from college in Cebu, bringing a string of fighting cocks, afonografo, and a piebald racing pony. “When he sent me the white ribbon,” said Felicidad, “I was surprised, but mamma said that I was old enough to marry him—I was fourteen—and that the matter hadbeen all arranged. And so I wore the ribbon in my hair, and also wrote my nameFelicidadbeneath his on the card that he had sent. And after that, when we went walking, thedueñawas unnecessary.”She confessed naïvely to a serenade under her balcony, of which I seem to have retained a hazy memory. And so the usual pig and goat were roasted, and the neighbors’ boys came in to help. The bride, with orange-blossoms in her hair, the daintiest kid slippers on her feet, and dressed in a white mist ofpiña, rode away in the new pony cart, the only one in town. The groom was dressed in baggy trousers, with a pink shirt and an azure tie. Most of the presents came fromChinoSantiago’s store; but the best one was a beautiful piano from Cebu.After the service in the church, a feast was held upstairs in the bride’s house. Ramon, the justice of the peace, the padre,MaestroPepin, all theconcijales, and thepresidentewere invited, and the groom owned up that he had spent his last cent on the refreshments that were passed around. It is the custom in the poorer familiesfor the prospective groom to bond himself out for a certain length of time to the bride’s father, or even to purchase her with articles of merchandise. A combination of commercial interests was the result, however, of the marriage of Bonito and Felicidad.
The fountain on the corner, where the brown, barefooted girls with bamboo water-tubes would gather at the noon hour and at supper-time, was shaded in the heat of the day by a mimosa-tree. TheCalle de la Paz y Buen Viaje(Street of Peace and a Good Journey), flanked by sentinel-like bonga-trees and hedged in by a bamboo fence, stretches away through the banana-groves toward the fantastic mountains. A puffing carabao comes down the long street, dragging the heavy stalks of newly-cut bamboo. The pig that has been rooting in the grass, looks up, and, seeing what is coming, bolts with staccato grunts unceremoniously through the bamboo fence.
In the little drygoods-store across the street, Felicidad, the dusky-eyed proprietress, has gone to sleep while waiting for a customer. She has discarded herchinelasand herpiñayoke. Her brown arms resting on the table pillow her unconscioushead. Her listless fingers clasp a half-smoked cigarette.
The stock ofLa Aurorais a comprehensive one, including printed cotton goods from China, red and green belts with nickel fastenings, uncomfortable-looking Spanish shoes, a bottle of quinine sulphate tablets, an assortment of perfumery and jewelry, rosaries and crucifixes, towels and handkerchiefs, and daintypiñafabrics. The arrival of theAmericanois the signal for the neighbors and the neighbors’ children, having nothing in particular to do, to flock around. The Filipino curiosity again!
On the next corner, where the wooden Atlas braces up the balcony, theChinostore is sheltered from the sun by curtains of alternate blue and white. HereChinoSantiago, in his cool pajamas, audits the accounts with the assistance of the wooden counting frame, whileChinoJosé, his partner, with his paintbrush stuck behind his ear, is following the ledger with his long, curved finger-nail. BothChinos, being Catholics, have taken native wives, material considerations having influenced the choice; butMaestroPepin saysthat, nevertheless, they are unpopular because they work too hard and cause the fluctuations in the prices. By pursuing a consistent system of abstractions from the rice-bags, by an innocent adulteration of thetintowine, these twocomercianteshave acquired considerable wealth.
The bland proprietor will greet you with a smile, and offer you the customary cigarette. And if the prices quoted are unsatisfactory, they are at least elastic and are easily adjusted for a personal friend. Along the shelf the opium-scented line of drygoods is available, while portraits of the saints andNeustra Señorita del Rosario, whose conical skirt conceals the little children of the Church, hang from the wall. Suspended from the ceiling are innumerable hanging lamps with green tin shades. A line of fancy handkerchiefs, with Dewey’s portrait and the Stars and Stripes embroidered in the corners, is displayed on wires stretched overhead across the store. Bolo blades, chocolate-boilers, rice-pots, water-jars, and crazy looking-glasses are disposed around, while in the glass case almost anything from a bone collar-button to a musical clock is likely to be found.Santiago would be glad to have you open an account here and, unlike the Filipino, he will never trouble you about your bill.
The market street is lined withnipabooths, whereseñoritasplay at keeping shop, presiding over the army of unattractive articles exposed for sale. Upon a rack the cans of salmon are drawn up in a battalion, a detachment of ex-whisky bottles filled with kerosene ortanduay, bringing up the rear. Certain stock articles may be invariably found at thesetiendas,—boxes of matches, balls of cotton thread, bananas,buya, eggs and cigarettes, and the inevitable brimming glass oftuba, stained a dark-red color from the frequent applications of the betel-chewing mouth.
Although the stream of commerce flows in a small way where the almighty’suca ducois the medium of exchange, gossip is circulated freely; for without the telegraph or telephone, news travels fast in Filipinia. The withered hag, her scanty raiment scarcely covering her bony limbs, squatting upon the counter in the midst ofguinimos, bananas, and dried fish, and spitting a red pool of betel-juice, will chatter the day long withtheseñorain the booth across the street. The purchaser should not feel delicate at seeing her bare feet in contact with the spiced bread that he means to buy, nor at the swarms of flies around the reeking mound ofguinimosscraped up in dirty wooden bowls, and left in the direct rays of the sun.
Dogs, pigs, chickens, and children tumble in the dust. Dejected Filipino ponies, tethered to the shacks, are waiting for their masters to exhaust thetubamarket. Down the lane a panting carabao, with a whole family clinging to its back, is slowly coming into town. Another, covered with the dust of travel, laden with bananas, hemp, andcoprafrom a distantbarrio, is being driven by a fellow in anipahat, straddling the heavy load. A mountain girl, bareheaded, carrying a parasol, comes loping in to themercadoon a skinny pony saddled with a red, upholsteredsilla, with a rattan back and foot-rest, cinched with twisted hemp.
At night the market-place is lighted up by tiny rush lights, burningcocoanut-oilorpetrolia. Here, on a pleasant evening, to the lazy strummingof guitars, the village population promenades, young men in white holding each other’s hands, and blowing out a cloud of cigarette smoke;señoritas, in their cheap red dresses, shuffling hopelessly along the road. One of the local characters is entertaining a street-corner audience with a droll song, while the town-crier, with his escort of municipal police, announces by the beating of a drum that abandillafrom thepresidenteis about to be pronounced.
Here you will find the Filipino in his natural and most playful mood, as easily delighted as a child. A crowd was always gathered round thetubadepot at the head of themercado, where the agile climbers brought the beverage in wooden buckets from the tops ofcopra-trees. A comical old fellow, Pedro Pocpotoc (a name derived from chicken language), used to live here, and on moonlight nights, planting his fat feet on the window-sill, like a droll caricature of Nero, he would singVisayansongs to the accompaniment of a cheap violin. A talkative old baker lived a short way down the street with his three daughters. They were always busypoundingrice inwooden mortars with long poles, thus making rice-flour, which they baked in clean banana-leaves and sweetened with brown sugar molded in the shells of cocoanuts.
Sometimes a Moro boat would drop into the bay, and the strange-looking savages in their tight-fitting, gaudy clothes would file through town with spices, bark, and cloth for sale. From Bohol came the curious thatchedbancas, with their grass sails and bamboo outriggers, with cargoes of pottery, woven hats,bohoka, and rattan. On thefiestadays, Subanos from the mountains brought in strips of dried tobacco, ready to be rolled up into long cigars,camotes, coffee-berries, chocolate, and eggs, and squatted at the entrance to the cockpit in an improvisedmercadowith the people from the shore, who offered clams andguinimosfor sale.
And once a month the town would be awakened by the siren whistle of the little hemp-boat from Cebu. This whistle was the signal for the small boys to extract the reluctant carabao from the cool, sticky wallow, and yoke him to the creaking bamboo cart. Then from the storehouses thefragrantpicosof hemp would be piled on, and the longsuffering beast of burden, aided and abetted by a rope run through his nose, would haul the load down to the beach. While naked laborers were toiling with the cargo, carrying it upon their shoulders through the surf, the Spanish captain and the mate, with rakishly-tilted Tam o’Shanter caps, would light their cigarettes, stroll over to Ramon’s warehouse where the hemp was being weighed, and, seated on sour-smelling sacks ofcopra, chat with old Ramon, partaking later of a dinner ofbalenciona, chicken and red-peppers, cheese and guava.
Much of the village life centers around the river. Here in the early morning come the girls and women wrapped in robes of red and yellow stripes, and with their hair unbound. In family parties the whole village takes a morning bath, the young men poising their athletic bodies on an overhanging bank and plunging down into the cool depths below, the children splashing in the shallow water, and the women breast-deep in the stream, washing their long hair.
In a Visayan VillageIn aVisayanVillage
In aVisayanVillage
Here also, during the morning hours, the womentake their washing. Tying thechemisebelow the arms, they squat down near the shore and beat the wet mass with a wooden paddle on a rock. Meanwhile the children build extensive palaces of pebbles on the bank; the carabaos, up to their noses in the river, dream in the refreshing shade of overhanging trees. The air is vocal with the liquid notes of birds, and fragrant with the heavy scent of flowers. A leaf-green lizard creeps down on a horizontal trunk. The broad leaves ofabacárustle in the breeze; the graceful stalks of bamboo crackle like tin tubes. Around the bend the water ripples at the ford. At evening you will see the tired men from the mountains, bending under heavy loads of hemp, wade through the shallows to the cavern shelter of the banyan-tree. Through the dense mango-grove comes the faint sound of bells. Thepuk-pukbird hoots from the jungle, and the black crows settle in the lofty trees.
The covered bridge that spans the river near the mouth is a great thoroughfare. Neither the arch nor pier is used in its construction; it is anchored to the shore by cables. It is not a veryrigid bridge, and sways considerably when one is crossing it. Even the surefooted ponies step a little gingerly over the loose beams that form the floor. A curious procession is continually passing,—families moving their worldly goods on carabaos, the dogs and children following;hombreson ponies, grasping the stirrups with their toes; a padre with his gown caught up above his knees, riding away to some confession; mountain people traveling in single file, and girls with trays of merchandise upon their heads.
Down where thenipajungle thickens, fishingbancasare drawn up on the shore; and near by in acocoanut-grovethe old boatmaker lives. The hull of the outlandish boat that he is carving is a solid log. When finished, with its black paint,nipagunwale, bamboo outriggers, and rat-lines made of parasitic vines, it will put out from port with a big gamecock as a mascot, rowed with clumsy paddles to the rhythm of a drum, its helpless grass sails flopping while the sailors whistle for the wind. These boats, although they can not tack, have one advantage—they can never sink. They carry bamboo poles for poling overcoral bottoms. In a fair breeze they attain considerable speed; but there is danger in a heavy sea of swamping. When drawn up on shore they look like big mosquitoes, as the body in proportion to the rigging seems quite insignificant.
The little fishing village is composed of leaning shacks blown out of plumb by heavy winds. Along the beach on bamboo racks the nets are hanging out to dry. At night the little fleet puts out for Punta Gorda, where a ruined watch-tower—a protection against Moro pirates—stands half hidden among creeping vines. The nets are floated upon husks of cocoanut, and set in the wild light of burning rushes. While the men are working in the tossing sea, or venturing almost beyond sight of land, the women, lighting torches, wade out to the coral reef and seine for smaller fish among the rocks. Early the following morning, while the sea is gray, the fishermen will toss their catch upon the sand. The devil-fish are the most popular at the impromptu market, where the prices vary according to the run of luck.
The town was laid out by the Spaniards in the days when Padre Pedro was the autocrat andrepresentative of Spanish law. The ruins of the former mission and the public gardens are now overgrown with grass. Sea-breezes sweep the rambling convent with its double walls, tiled courtyard, and its Spanish well. The new church, never to be finished, but with pompous front, illustrates the relaxing power of Rome. Goats, carabaos, and ponies graze on the neglected plaza shaded with widespreading camphor-trees. The two school buildings bearing the forgotten Spanish arms are on the road to ruin and decay; no signs of life in the disreputablemunicipio; thepresidenteprobably is deep in hissiesta, and the solitary guard of thecarcelis busily engaged in conversation with the single prisoner.
The only remains of Spanish grandeur in the village are the two ramshackle coaches that are used for hearses at state funerals. Most of the larger houses are, however, in repair, although the canvas ceilings and the board partitions seem to be in need of paint. These houses occupy the center of the town. They are of frame construction, painted blue and white. The floors are made of rosewood and mahogany; the windowsfitted with translucent shell. Storehouses occupy the first floor, while the living rooms are reached by a broad flight of stairs. A bridge connects the dining-room with the kitchen, where the greasy cook, often a Moro slave, works at a smoky fire of cocoanut-husks on an earth bottom, situated in an annex to the rear.
A walk through the main street leads past a row of native houses, built on poles and shaded by banana-trees. You are continually stepping over mats spread out and covered with pounded corn, while pigs and chickens are shooed off by the excitation of a piece ofnipa, fastened to a string and operated from an upper window of the house. A smalltiendaopens from each house, with frequently no more than a few betel-nuts on sale. The front is decorated with the faded strips of cloth or paper lamps left over from the lastfiesta, while the skeleton of a lamented monkey fixed above the door acts as a charm to keep away bad luck. A parrakeet swings in the window on a bamboo perch, and in another window hangs an orchid growing from the dried husk of a cocoanut. Under the house the loom is situated,where the women weave fine cloth frompiñaand banana fibers—and the wooden mortar used for pounding rice. After the harvest season it is one of theVisayancustoms to inaugurate rice-pounding bees. Relays of young men, stripped for work, surround the mortar, and, to the accompaniment of guitars, deliver blows in quick succession and with gradually increasing speed, according to the measure of the music.
In the cool shade of theylang-ylangtree a native barber is intent upon his customer. The customer sits on his haunches while the operation is performed. When it is finished, all the hair above the ears and neck will be shaved close, while that in front will be as long as ever. The beard will not need shaving, as the Filipino chin at best is hardly more aculeated than a strawberry. The hair, however, even of the smallest boys grows for some distance down the cheeks. The Filipino, when he does shave, takes it very seriously, and attacks the bristles individually rather than collectively.
You will not remain long in a Filipino town without the chance of witnessing a native funeral.A service of the first class costs about three hundredpesos; but for twentypesosPadre Pedro will conduct a funeral of less magnificence. The padre, going to the house of mourning where the band, the singers, and the candle-bearers are assembled, engineers the pageant to the church. The dim interior will be illuminated by flickering candles burned in memory of the departed soul. Before the altar solemn mass is held, intensified by the deep tolling of a bell. Led by three acolytes in red and white, with silver crosses, the procession moves on to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. The padre sheltered by a white umbrella, reads the Latin prayers aloud. A small boy swings the smoking censer, and the singers undertake a melancholy dirge. The withered body, with the hands crossed on the breast, clothed all in black, is borne aloft upon a bamboo litter, mounted with a black box painted with the skull and bones, and decked with candles. Women in black veils with candles follow, mumbling prayers, the words of which they do not understand.
The cemetery is surrounded by a coral wall, commanded by a gate that bears a Latin epigram.The graves, as indicated by the mounds of dirt, are never very deep, and while a few are guarded by a wooden cross, forlornly decorated by a withered bunch of flowers, most of the graves receive no care at all. There may be one or two vaults overgrown with grass and in a bad state of repair. Around the big cross in the center is a ghastly heap of human bones and grinning skulls—grinning because somebody else now occupies their former grisly beds, the rent on which has long ago expired.
To theVisayanmind, death is a matter of bad luck. It is advisable to hinder it withanting-antingsand medallions; but when it comes, the Filipino fatalist will take it philosophically. To the boys and girls a family death is the sensation of the year. It means to them nine days of celebration, when old women gather at the house, and, beating on the floor with hands and feet, put up a hopeless wail, while dogs without howl dismally and sympathetically. And at the end of the nine days, the soul then being out of purgatory, they will have a feast. A pig and a goat will be killed, not to speak of chickens—and the meat will beserved up with calabash and rice; and visitors will come and look on while the people eat at the first table; and the second table and the third are finished, and the viands still hold out. But these are placed upon the table down below, wherehoi polloiand the lame, blind, and halt sit down and eat. And back of all this superficiality lies the great superstitious dread by means of which the Church of Rome holds such authority.
I got to know the little village very well—to join the people in their foolish celebrations and their wedding feasts. I was among them when the town was swept by cholera; when, in their ignorance, they built a dozen little shrines—justnipashelters for the Holy Virgin, decorated with red cloth and colored grass—and held processions carrying the wooden saints and burning candles.
Then the locusts came, and settled on the rice-fields—a great cloud of them, with whirring wings. They rattled on theniparoofs like rain. The children took tin pans and drums and gave the enemy a noisy welcome. But the rains fell in the night, and the next morning all the groundwas strewn with locusts trying heavily to fly. The ancient drum of the town-crier ushered in the day of work, and those who took this opportunity to pay their taxes gathered at themunicipio—about a hundred ugly-looking men. They were equipped with working bolos, with their blades as sharp as scythes for cutting grass, and, looking at them, you were forcibly reminded of another day, another army with a similar accouterment. Even thepresidentewent barefooted as he gave directions for the work. Some were dispatched fornipaand bamboo, while others mowed the grass around the church. Another squad hauled heavy timbers, singing as they pulled in unison.
On Sunday mornings a young carabao was killed. The meat hacked off with little reference to anatomy was hung up in the public stall among the swarms of flies. Old women came and handled every piece, and haggled a good deal about the price. Each finally selected one, and swinging it from a short piece of cane, carried it home in triumph. Morning mass was held at the bigsimbahan, where the doleful music of the band suggested lost souls wailing on the borders of Cocytus or the Stygian creek. Youngcaballerosdressed in white, theconcijaleswith their silver-headed canes and baggy trousers, and the “taos” in diaphanous and flimsy shirts that they had not yet learned to tuck inside, stood by to watch theseñoritason their way to church. The girls walked rather stiffly in their tight shoes; but as soon as mass was over, shoes and stockings came off, and the villagers relaxed into the bliss of informality.
I learned, when I last went toLa Aurora, that Felicidad was going to be married; that the banns had been announced last Sunday in the church. The groom to be, Benito,—or Bonito as we called him on account of his good looks,—had recently returned from college in Cebu, bringing a string of fighting cocks, afonografo, and a piebald racing pony. “When he sent me the white ribbon,” said Felicidad, “I was surprised, but mamma said that I was old enough to marry him—I was fourteen—and that the matter hadbeen all arranged. And so I wore the ribbon in my hair, and also wrote my nameFelicidadbeneath his on the card that he had sent. And after that, when we went walking, thedueñawas unnecessary.”
She confessed naïvely to a serenade under her balcony, of which I seem to have retained a hazy memory. And so the usual pig and goat were roasted, and the neighbors’ boys came in to help. The bride, with orange-blossoms in her hair, the daintiest kid slippers on her feet, and dressed in a white mist ofpiña, rode away in the new pony cart, the only one in town. The groom was dressed in baggy trousers, with a pink shirt and an azure tie. Most of the presents came fromChinoSantiago’s store; but the best one was a beautiful piano from Cebu.
After the service in the church, a feast was held upstairs in the bride’s house. Ramon, the justice of the peace, the padre,MaestroPepin, all theconcijales, and thepresidentewere invited, and the groom owned up that he had spent his last cent on the refreshments that were passed around. It is the custom in the poorer familiesfor the prospective groom to bond himself out for a certain length of time to the bride’s father, or even to purchase her with articles of merchandise. A combination of commercial interests was the result, however, of the marriage of Bonito and Felicidad.