Lieutenant-Governor Hale has now been in the special government service longer than any other man who remains in it, and has an admirable record for quiet efficiency. Like Gallman, he is a man with chilled-steel nerve, and he needed it in the early days in Kalinga where the people, who had been allowed to run wild too long, did not take as kindly to the establishment of governmental control as had the Bontoc Igorots and the Ifugaos. The Kalingas are a fine lot of head-hunting savages, physically magnificently developed, mentally acute, but naturally very wild. Hale soon made friends with many of the local chiefs, and thereafter when he received invitations from outlying rancherias to come over and have his head taken would quietly accept to the extent of setting out accompanied by a few soldiers, or none at all, and talking the matter over with the people who had made the threat! In the end they always decided that he was too good a man to kill.
Here, as in Ifugao, we felt our way, avoiding trouble with hostile settlements as long as it was possible to do so. And here, as in Bontoc and Ifugao, head-hunting was abolished and law and order were established practically without killing. In a few instances settlements which absolutely refused to come into the fold, and persisted in raiding and killing in the territory of people who had already become friendly, were given severe lessons, which they invariably took in good part.
One of the pleasant things about dealing with people like the Kalingas and the Ifugaos is their manliness when they fight. They let one know, so plainly that there can be no mistake about it, whether they are friendly or hostile, and even if thoroughly whipped they bear no ill will provided they know that they deserve a whipping, but come calmly walking into camp to tell you that they have had enough and are going to be good. And they keep their promises.
In Kalinga, as elsewhere throughout the Mountain Province outside of Apayao, an admirable trail system has now been opened up and travel is not only safe but comfortable. The people are most friendly and loyal, and while head-hunting has not completely disappeared, cases of it are extremely rare and occur only in the most remote parts of the subprovince.
Apayao has proved a hard nut to crack. As previously stated, I made a trip across this subprovince from west to east in 1906, without encountering any hostility whatsoever. Unfortunately, the officer who commanded my escort saw fit to go blundering back there with a constabulary command a few weeks later. He managed to get into a fight and was whipped and chased out of the country. A so-called punitive expedition was then sent in, which came near meeting a similar fate, but finally withdrew in fairly good order after having inflicted slight damage on the town of Guennéd, the people of which made the original attack.
Apayao was at first organized as a subprovince of Cagayan, and Colonel Blas Villamor, who had accompanied me on my two longest exploration trips through northern Luzón, was appointed its lieutenant-governor. The attitude of the provincial officials of Cagayan toward the difficult task which confronted them in Apayao was most unsatisfactory. Indeed, the governor of that province informed me that in his opinion the best way to settle the Apayao problem was to kill all of the inhabitants. As Colonel Villamor reported that there were some fifty-three thousand of them[5] this procedure would have presented practical, as well as moral, difficulties! I myself was of the opinion that the Apayao people, who proved to be wild Tingians, were altogether too good to kill.
Colonel Villamor was a native of Abra, where approximately half the population is made up of Tingians who have attained to a high degree of civilization. He was already quite familiar with the dialect spoken by these people, and speedily learned the language of their wild brethren in Apayao, many of whom understood Ilocano, which was his native tongue.
At the outset he made excellent progress in bringing his people under control. The task was undoubtedly more difficult than that in any other subprovince of the Mountain Province, both because the Spaniards had failed to penetrate into this region, leaving the people untouched by civilization up to the time of the American occupation, and for the further reason that their head-hunting is connected with religious beliefs. They think that when a man dies his prospect for a good time in the future world is bad unless the members of his family take a head within six months, and this idea has a tendency to keep society in a somewhat disturbed condition.
For reasons which I have never been able fully to fathom, Villamor’s progress in establishing governmental control grew steadily slower as time went by, and ultimately came to a standstill. During my absence from the islands it was deemed best to accept his resignation, for reasons not immediately connected with his administration of the affairs of his subprovince. Before surrendering his post he caused word to be spread among the Tingians that the kindly policy which had thus far been pursued in dealing with them was to be superseded by one of severity, greatly alarming them, and seriously retarding work which he had quite auspiciously begun. There was absolutely no justification for his statements, as no one thought for a moment of dealing with the Apayao Tingians in a fashion differing at all from that invariably followed in our relations with non-Christians in the special government provinces.
Mr. Norman G. Connor was appointed to succeed Señor Villamor. Mr. Connor had been acting governor of Nueva Vizcaya and had rendered very satisfactory service. He has made material progress in establishing control over the people of Apayao, where the work of trail construction has now begun. At the outset communication was maintained by boats on the Abulúg River and its branches, near which most of the wild Tingian villages are situated, but it is a dangerous stream to navigate, especially when in flood, and lines of land communication must therefore be opened up.