After the meal several chiefs insisted on my visiting them individually, and I found that entertainment had been provided at each of their houses. Old Dato Tumay, with only one woman to help him, had built the best house in town, and was cultivating with his own hands the largest piece of land farmed by any Moro in Palawan. He was greatly pleased when I complimented him on the good example he was setting. Later I referred to it in my annual report, and the assistant to the governor for work among the Moros read to him what I had said. The old man was delighted. He immediately called the local chiefs together and delivered a long lecture on the advisability of settling down and tilling the soil. The principal request that the Moros made, on the occasion of this visit, was that they be furnished agricultural implements and seeds.
Tumay was very ill with dysentery. From the ship I sent him medicine and a case of milk. He recovered in due time.
Moros are uncertain people to deal with, but I believe that we are now on the right road so far as concerns those inhabiting Palawan, and that with a continuance of the present policy there will be no further serious trouble with them.
The Tagbanua reservation and the school established in connection with it have proved a great success. A large number of Tagbanuas have settled on the reserve and are farming industriously, while their boys and girls are making rapid progress in school, where they obtain practical instruction that will make them better and more useful men and women.
In Southern Palawan the wild people of the highlands, who have never yet allowed any one to enter their country, are being persuaded to come down to the coast by the establishment of little government trading posts where they can sell their few products at good prices, and can purchase what they need at a reasonable figure.
All in all, things are moving forward steadily in Palawan, although many of the Filipino settlements are still filthy and unsanitary. Encouraged by the results obtained in Mindoro, I have inaugurated an active campaign to compel these people to clean up, and anticipate success. One thing which renders it difficult to deal with some of the Filipinos of this province is that in its more remote districts they are showing a marked tendency to scatter out into the forests where they make caiñgins, or forest clearings, and live in tiny huts. Little by little they are gravitating back to the barbarism from which they originally emerged, and under existing laws they are free to do this if they like. I regret that this tendency is by no means confined to the province of Palawan. The Spaniards dealt with it in no gentle manner, but we are powerless to do more than argue against it.
The cost of the work in Palawan in valuable human lives has been dear. No one can at the outset fill the place of a man like Governor Miller, who had become invaluable not only as a result of his personal characteristics, but because of his years of experience and of the regard in which he was held by his people. Unfortunately his life is not the only one which has been sacrificed for the good of the inhabitants of this province. Mr. W. B. Dawson, who organized the work of the Tagbanua Industrial School and was in a fair way to make a success of it, died of malignant malarial fever contracted at his post of duty. Mr. William M. Wooden, who succeeded him, in his anxiety to return more quickly to his post after a brief absence, leaped overboard from a launch and was drowned while trying to swim ashore. Mr. Olney Bondurant, assistant to the provincial governor, who did admirable work among the Moros and the Tagbanuas in Southern Palawan, and though suffering from dangerous illness never gave up, but rendered service in the field on the very day of his death, also fell a victim to pernicious malaria.
If the results obtained by these splendid men, who amid lonely surroundings and in the face of manifold discouragements, bravely and effectively carried on their country’s work, are to be permanent results, then I hold that the price has not been too dear, but if they are to be destroyed by the premature withdrawal of American control these sacrifices are pathetic indeed.
Difficult Bit of Rock Work on the Mountain Trail in Benguet.