San Sebastian Church, Manila
An exhibition of an Igorot village at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 probably spread in America more of the notion of the Philippines as an untamed wilderness than tons of statistics could correct. These, then, were the people America had undertaken to govern—wild, naked creatures, beside whom the North American Indian was a gentleman and a scholar! Indeed, a long time must elapse before you can reduce these to suspenders and beefsteaks. A long time? Why, centuries and centuries!
Non-Christian population Again, to the assiduous readers of press dispatches, the typical Filipino has come to mean the fierce Mohammedan Moro; although, there are in the Islands less than 400,000 Mohammedans of all kinds, whether fierce or urbane. Still others have concluded that the wild-eyed nomad of the mountains, the man with the bow and arrow, with no religion at all, must be the determining factor of the situation because there are so many of his kind; and yet the census reveals the total number of persons in all the Islands that do not profess either Christianity, Mohammedanism, or Buddhism as only 102,000.
Literacy So, too, the ignorance of the Filipinos has always been believed to be appalling and a bulwark of darkness not to be overcome in generations, if ever; and yet the census reveals the percentage of literacy in the entire Islands at 49.2 per cent. The percentage compares favorably with the literacy of many of the small independent nations of the world at present.
The facts are these, as regards the Filipinos even in Pre-Spanish days:
Facts of Filipino Attainments in Pre-Spanish Days The Spaniards found that the inhabitants of the Islands built and lived in planned houses, had a machinery of government of their own, maintained a system of jurisprudence, in many cases dwelt in ordered cities and towns and practised the arts familiar to the most advanced peoples of their times.
Gunpowder they knew and used before 1300, when it had not yet been introduced in Europe; and they made firearms that astonished the Spaniards. At the siege of Manila, 1570, the natives defended their city with cannon, and the conquerors found within the walls the factory where these guns had been forged, as well equipped and ordered as any abroad.
The Islanders were expert in other metal-working, skilful ship-builders, able carpenters. Copper they had worked; but bronze, of which their great guns were made, they imported from China. Some of their art in silver-work excites admiration even now, for their beautiful design and fine workmanship.
They wove cloths of cotton, hemp, and other fibers. They were, in fact, inheritors of two great cultural infiltrations upon what original culture the Malays had two thousand years before: on one side, was the influence of the Hindus and on the other the civilization of the Chinese, and to these had been added, years before the Spaniards came, stray gleams of information transmitted roundabout from Europe.