The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912

by James H. Blount

I think no deeper wound was ever inflicted upon the pride of the real Filipino people than that caused by this exhibition, the knowledge of which seems to have spread throughout the island. The man and woman, while actually natives of Luzon, were captives of a wild tribe of Igorrotes of the hills.

Professor Worcester was originally a professor of zoölogy, or something of that sort, in a western university. In the early nineties he had made a trip to the Philippines, confining himself then mostly to creeping things and quadrupeds—lizards, alligators, pythons, unusual wild beasts, and other forms of animal life of the kind much coveted as specimens by museums and universities. In 1899, just after the Spanish War, he got out a book on the Philippines, and as an American who had been in the Philippines was then a rara avis, it came to pass that the reptile-finder ultimately became a statesman. He was brought, possibly by conscious worth, to the notice of President McKinley, accompanied the Schurman Commission to the Islands, in 1899, and the Taft Commission in 1900, and finally evolved into his present eminence as Secretary of the Interior and official chief finder of non-Christian tribes for the Philippine Government.

The best known of the wild tribes in the Philippines are the Igorrotes, the dog-eating savages you saw at the St. Louis Exposition in 1903–4, the same Mr. Sargent speaks of in his article in the Outlook. Of course it was not a desire to misrepresent the situation, but only the enthusiasm of a zoölogist, anthropologically inclined, and accustomed to carry a kodak, which started the Professor to photographing the dog-eating Igorrotes and specimens of other non-Christian tribes soon after the Taft Commission reached the Philippines. But you cannot get far in the earlier reports of the Taft Commission, which was supposed to have been sent out to report back on the capacity of the Filipinos for self-government, without crossing the trail of the Professor’s kodak—pictures of naked Igorrotes and the like. This, however innocent, must have been of distinct political value in 1900 and 1904 in causing the heart of the missionary vote in the United States to bleed for those “sixty different tribes having sixty different languages” of which Secretary Root’s campaign speeches made so much. It must also have greatly awakened the philanthropic interest of exporters of cotton goods to learn of those poor “savage millions” wearing only a loin cloth, when they could be wearing yards of cotton cloth. By the time the St. Louis Exposition came off, in 1903–4, it was decided to have the various tribes represented there. So specimens were sent of the Igorrote tribe, the Tagalos, the Visayans, the Negrito tribe, and various other tribes. The Tagalos, the Visayans, etc., being ordinary Filipinos, did not prove money-makers. But it was great sport to watch the Igorrotes preparing their morning dog. So it was the “non-Christian tribes” that paid. It was they that were most advertised. It was the recollection of them that lingered longest with the visitor to the Exposition, and there was always in his mind thereafter an association of ideas between the Igorrotes and Filipino capacity for self-government generally. Many representative Filipinos visited the St. Louis Exposition, saw all this, and came home and told about it. One very excellent Filipino gentleman, a friend of mine, who was Governor of Samar during my administration of the district which included that island, sent me one day in October, 1904, a satirical note, enclosing a pamphlet he had just received called Catalogue of Philippine Views at the St. Louis Exposition. He knew I would understand, so he said in the note, that the pamphlet was sent “in order that you may learn something of certain tribes still extant in this country.” Concerning all this, I can say of my own knowledge exactly what Naval Cadet Sargent said concerning the lesser like indignity of the one Igorrote couple exhibited at Barcelona while the Filipinos were asking representation in the Spanish Cortes, viz.:

I think no deeper wound was ever inflicted upon the pride of the real Filipino people than that caused by this exhibition, the knowledge of which seems to have spread throughout the islands.

You see our Census of 1903 gave the population of the Philippines at about 7,600,000 of which 7,000,000 are put down as civilized Christians; and of the remaining 600,000, about half are the savage, or semi-civilized, crudely Mohammedan Moros, in Mindanao, and the adjacent islets down near Borneo. The other 300,000 or so uncivilized people scattered throughout the rest of the archipelago, the “non-Christian tribes,” which dwell in the mountain fastnesses, remote from “the madding crowd,” cut little more figure, if any, in the general political equation, than the American Indian does with us to-day. Take for instance the province of Nueva Vizcaya, in the heart of north central Luzon. That was one of the provinces of the First Judicial District I presided over in the Islands. I think Nueva Vizcaya is Professor Worcester’s “brag” province, in the matter of non-Christian anthropological specimens, both regarding their number and their variety. Yet while I was there, though we knew those people were up in the hills, and that there were a good many of them, the civilized people all told us that the hill-tribes never bothered them. And on their advice I have ridden in safety, unarmed, at night, accompanied only by the court stenographer, over the main high-road running through the central plateau that constitutes the bulk of Nueva Vizcaya province, said plateau being surrounded by a great amphitheatre of hills, the habitat of the Worcester pets.

The non-Christian tribes in the Philippines have been more widely advertised in America than anything else connected with the Islands. That advertisement has done more harm to the cause of Philippine independence by depreciating American conceptions concerning Filipino capacity for self-government, than anything that could be devised even by the cruel ingenuity of studied mendacity. And Professor Worcester is the P. T. Barnum of the “non-Christian tribe” industry. The Filipinos, though unacquainted with the career of the famous menagerie proprietor last named, and his famous remark: “The American people love to be humbugged,” understand the malign and far-reaching influence upon their future destiny of the work of Professor Worcester, and his services to the present Philippine policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention, through humbugging the American people into the belief that the Islands must be retained until the three hundred thousand or so Negritos, Igorrotes, and other primitive wild peoples sprinkled throughout the archipelago are “reconstructed.” Is it any wonder that the Filipinos do not love the Professor? To keep him saddled upon them as one of their rulers is as tactful as it would be to send Senator Tillman on a diplomatic mission to Liberia or Haiti.

Not long ago the famous magazine publisher Mr. S. S. McClure, who, I think, is trying to make his life one of large and genuine usefulness for good, said to me that if we gave the Filipinos self-government we would shortly have another Haiti or Santo Domingo on our hands. He must have seen some of Professor Worcester’s pictures of Igorrotes and Negritos scattered through public documents related to the question of Filipino capacity for self-government. Mr. McClure has never, I believe, been in the Islands; and the cruelly unjust impression he had innocently received was precisely the impression systematically developed all these years through the Worcester kodak.

In February, 1911, there appeared an article in the Sunset magazine for that month entitled “The Philippines as I Saw them.” The contributor of the article is no less a personage than the Honorable James F. Smith, former Governor-General of the Islands. At the top of the article one reads the legend “Illustrated by Photographs through the Courtesy of the Bureau of Insular Affairs.” If you read this legend understandingly, you can, in so doing, hear the click of the Worcester kodak. General Smith’s article is smeared all over with such pictures. One is merrily entitled “Eighteen Igorrot Fledglings Hatched by the American Bird of Freedom.” Another is entitled “Subano Man and woman, Mindanao.” Another is a picture of an Ifugao home in the province of Nueva Vizcaya, hereinabove mentioned. Ifugao is the name of one of the wild tribes, one of the results of Professor Worcester’s anthropological excavations of the last few years. In front of the Ifugao home stands the master of the house, clothed in a breech-clout. Next in the menagerie in the article under consideration you find a group of Ifugao children, then a Bagobo of Mindanao, then some other specimen with a curious name, in which there is a woman naked from the waist up and a man in a loin-cloth. Then follows a picture of a Tingyan girl from Abra province. And, to cap the climax, among the last of these pictures you find a Filipino couple pounding rice. The rice pounders are ordinary Filipinos. The woman is decently dressed; the man is clothed only from the waist down, having divested himself of his upper garment, as is customary in order to work at hard labor more comfortably in hot weather. I do not so much blame General Smith for this libellous panorama of pictures, scattered though they are through an article by him on “The Philippines as I Saw them.” He probably illustrated his article with what the Bureau of Insular Affairs sent him, without giving much thought to the matter. But the Bureau of Insular Affairs appears to neglect no occasion to parade the Philippine archipelago’s sprinkling of non-Christian tribes before the American public, fully knowing that the hopes of the Filipinos for independence must depend upon impressions received by the American people concerning the degree of civilization they have reached.

For all these wanton indignities offered their pride and self-respect, the Filipinos well know they are primarily indebted to Professor Worcester and his non-Christian tribe bureau. The feud between the Professor and the Filipino people—the bad blood has been growing so long that the incident hereinafter related justifies its being called a feud—has been peculiarly embittered by the missionary aspect of the non-Christian industry. The great body of the Filipino people, the whole six or seven millions of them, are Catholics—most of them devout Catholics. Presumably, their desire for salvation by the method handed down by their forefathers would not be affected by a change from American political supervision to independence. Yet the darkest thing ahead of Philippine independence prospects is the Protestant missionary vote in the United States. Bishop Brent, Episcopal Bishop of the Philippines, one of the noblest and most saintly characters that ever lived, has devoted his life apparently to missionary work in the Philippines, having twice declined a nomination as Bishop of Washington (D.C.). The only field of endeavor open to Bishop Brent and his devoted little band of co-workers is the non-Christian tribes. It seems that the Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastical authorities in the Islands get along harmoniously, a kind of modus vivendi having been arranged between them, by which the Protestants are not to do any proselyting among the seven millions of Catholic Christians. So this field of endeavor is the one Professor Worcester has been industriously preparing during the last twelve years. Obviously, every time Professor Worcester digs up a new non-Christian tribe he increases the prospective harvest of the Protestants, thus corralling more missionary vote at home for permanent retention of the Philippines. Professor Worcester is quoted in a Manila paper as saying, “I am under no delusion as to what may be accomplished for the primitive wild people. It takes time to reconstruct them.” This remark is supposed to have been made in a speech before the Young Men’s Christian Association of Manila. Neither is Mr. Taft under any delusion as to how valuable is religious support for the idea of retaining the Philippines as a missionary field. The nature of the above allusion to Bishop Brent should certainly be sufficient to show that the writer yields to no one in affectionate reverence and respect for that rare and noble character. But neither Bishop Brent nor any one else can persuade him that it is wise to abandon the principle that Church and State should be separate, in order that our government may go into the missionary business. Since it has become apparent that the Philippines will not pay, the Administration has relied solely on missionary sentiment. In one of his public utterances Mr. Taft has said in effect, “The programme of the Republican party with regard to the Philippines is one which will make greatly for the spread of Christian civilization throughout the Orient.”