A Woman's Impression of the Philippines

by Mary H. Fee

I am certain that there is no braver soldiery in all the world than ours. But I am equally certain that when war is a man’s profession, on which all his chances of honor, pay, and promotion hinge directly or indirectly, the wish in his mind is father to the thought, and unconsciously he scents danger because he wants danger. Of an officer it may be said, as of Thisbe’s lion, that his trade is blood, and “a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing,” But nothing pleased me more than to hear the officers tell tales of the old campaign and speculate on the possibilities of a new one.

Our Supervisor had been a captain of volunteers in a Minnesota regiment. He was a thoroughly interesting talker, and an inimitable story-teller, a man who did not lose his sense of humor when the joke turned on himself. I heard him tell one or two stories well worth repeating.

Our valorous Supervisor was stationed in Antique province, while in Capiz was a detachment of the regular army. And in full sight of both on the top of a precipice, an insurrecto flag flaunted its impertinent message.

The Supervisor said he waited a decent length of time to give the regulars a chance to pull down the flag, as it lay in their province, but when they failed to act, he went out, full of hope and good United States commissary valor, to destroy the insurrecto stronghold and to give an object lesson in guerilla warfare to the regulars. His men hacked and hewed their way through the jungle and cogon grass, with never a shot from the insurrectos. Then at the last they came to a clear slope, and when they were about half-way up this, the insurrectos opened fire, not only with rifles but with great boulders. The Supervisor said it took them over two hours to get up, and they went down in less than twenty minutes. One little Dutch private was in so much of a hurry that he punched him (the officer) in the back with a gun butt and said, “Hurry up! get out of the way.” Most of the shots flew high, however. The flag came down later, but it required four hundred men and a battery of artillery to bring it down.

On another occasion the Supervisor, his wife, a constabulary lieutenant, and I were out on the playa (beach) when we came to a little hollow almost hidden by grass, so that I stumbled in crossing it. This started the two men into retrospect of a day’s fight over on the beach of the west coast. The insurrectos at last took to flight, and the Supervisor started after one whom he had noticed, on account of the beautiful kris, or fluted bolo, which he carried. As they ran, the Supervisor stumbled over such a grass-hidden hollow, and without his perceiving it, his revolver flew out of its holster. He kept on gaining slightly on his quarry, who glanced apprehensively over his shoulder now and then, expecting to see the big Colt come out. At last, when he thought the range was good, the officer reached for his revolver. He described the sort of desperate grin with which the Filipino glanced back expecting the end, and the rapid change to satisfaction and triumphant ferocity as pursuer and pursued realized what had happened. Then the race changed. It was the Supervisor who panted wearily back toward his scattered fellows, and it was the Filipino with a kris to whose muscles hope of victory lent fresh energy. Fortunately, this young constabulary lieutenant, who had been a non-commissioned officer of volunteers, saw what was going on, and picked off the Filipino with a long range shot from his rifle. The kris was secured, and its beautiful blade and tortoise-shell scabbard, inlaid with silver, went as a present to Mrs. Wright when she visited the province.

Somewhere in his “Rulers of the South” Marion Crawford speaks of the wonderful rapidity with which news flies among the native population in warfare, and he cites as an illustration that “when Sir Louis Cavagnari was murdered in Cabul, in 1879, the news was told in the bazaar at Allahabad before the English authorities received it by telegraph, which then covered more than half the whole distance between the two places.” This same condition beset the American officers in the Philippines. Secretly as they might act, they found the news of their movements always in advance of them, and the crafty native hard to surprise.

Among the leaders in Panay a certain Quentin Salas who operated both in Antique and Iloilo provinces was noted for his daring and cruelty. The American troops spent much time in pursuit of him, and among others the doughty Captain of volunteers. The Captain said that Salas made his headquarters in a certain pueblo, and often word was brought that the insurrecto would be found there on a certain day. The Captain tried all devices, forced marches, and feints on other pueblos, but to no purpose. He always arrived to find his quarry gone, but breakfast waiting for him (the American) at the convento, or priest’s house. The table was laid for just the right number of persons, and the priest was always affable and amused. The Captain grew desperate. He gave out false marching orders, and tried all the tricks he knew of. Finally, he let it be known that he intended to march on Salas’s pueblo the next morning, and he did so, and actually arrived unexpectedly, or at least so nearly so that breakfast was not ready. The Filipinos had assumed that his announcement cloaked some other invention, and had expected him to branch off at the eleventh hour.

Procession and Float in Streets of Capiz, in Honor of Filipino Patriot and Martyr, José Rizal

The Captain searched the town from garret to cellar, but no Quentin Salas. He unearthed, however, the usual score of paupers and invalids. One of these was a man humped up with rheumatism, as only a Filipino decrepit can be. The Americans finally departed, leaving this ruin staring after them from the window of a nipa shack. Months afterward, when peace had been declared, the officer heard his name called in the government building at Iloilo, and saw a keen-eyed Filipino holding out his hand. The Filipino introduced himself as Quentin Salas, and owned that he possessed a slight advantage in having viewed the officer in propria persona, while he, Salas, was in disguise. He confessed that the American had caught him napping on that day, and that he had been forced to assume hurriedly the garb and mien of an aged pauper. The American owned himself outwitted, and shakes his head to this day to think how near he came to victory.