ASIA 
 DS 
 654 
 P99 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 UBRARY 
 
 nHACA,N.Y. 14853 
 
 
 
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 John M. Echols Collection 
 on Southeast Ask 
 KROCH LIBRARY 
 
CORNE L UNIVERSITY tIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 072 741 626 
 
 An 
 Ancient People 
 
 and 
 
 Their Problems 
 
 By 
 
 Frank Wilkes Pyle 
 
 Reprinted by Permission from the Ladies' Home Journal 
 
PHILIPPINE PRESS BUREAU 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
An Ancient People and their Problems. 
 
 Once upon a time a journalist voj'aged to a far island country 
 over the peaceful Pacific for thirty days and nights. Gayly he 
 boasted that he knew nothing of the country, but averred that he 
 knew as much as the average person of today. Into the land he 
 went and gathered superficial data — snapped up the extreme and 
 curious, passed by unnoticed the real and everyday. Then he 
 came back from his voyage overseas and wrote so that those who 
 knew little of the land might read and wonder, while those who 
 knew more might read and — smile. 
 
 Four hundred years before him, Magellan, of primary-geog- 
 raphy fame, stopped off on a round-the-world tour to take a peep 
 at the same island and to mend his boats. Becoming interested 
 in the aspirations of one great chieftain, he led his own men into 
 battle in the chieftain's behalf and placed the favorite in power. 
 But, killed in battle, he lies buried on Mactan, a small island of 
 the Visayan group of the Philippine Islands. And we, whose lives 
 have barely touched those of the people of the Philippines — people 
 whose problems were of sufficient importance to command Ma- 
 gellan's attention three hundred years ago, centuries before our 
 own country had problems of note — are supposed to think lightly 
 of our ignorance of those distant people of an ancient origin. 
 
 THE FILIPINOS' EARLY BEGINNING 
 
 Nearly a hundred years before our permanent English settle- 
 ments were made in America, Spain was colonizing the Philippines. 
 And Spain had a lively time doing it, for the people whom she 
 undertook to conquer were themselves conquerors. They had 
 come up in prehistoric times from Southern Asia and had driven 
 the aborigines into the mountains. They had established a feudal 
 suzerainty under warlike chieftains and were carrying on com- 
 merce with the people of China and the far north when the 
 Spaniards appeared off their coasts. This prehistoric conquest 
 took place long before Magellan started out to see the world. 
 
 And a century before Sir Walter Raleigh came to Virginia 
 Legaspi, a Spanish grandee, attempted to pick maynila blossoms on 
 the coast of Luzon. The maynila is a most fragrant, waxy-white 
 blossom that hides in a glossy, dark-green shrub. Mothers in the 
 Philippines are wont to sit in their doorways at twilight while the 
 fireflies flit about the softly rustling foliage and tell their drowsy 
 tots of the valor of the mighty Tagal chieftain, the great Apo, 
 who assembled his braves behind the maynila hedge and gave battle 
 to the proud Spanish invaders while the womenfolk and children 
 hid in the tall grass. 
 
 They tell the tale of the haughty Spanish warriors spitting 
 fire and lava at the falling braves till they, knowing too well the 
 
inexhaustible force of their own powerful volcano, Taal, gave 
 way before these Spanish hand volcanoes, laid down their bows 
 and arrows, gave up their maynila hedge, signed the blood com- 
 pact and were baptized. 
 
 But the women of the tribe, so the legend goes, the wise old 
 grandmother, knowing that might is not right and that good is 
 all-powerful, met in solemn conclave in the tall grass and con- 
 trived with rites and ceremonies, long forgotten, to bewitch the 
 fiery Spanish grandees. They charmed them and shut them up in 
 the gnarled old dap-dap trees within the maynila hedge. And 
 
 The 300- Year-Old Church of 
 San Augustine 
 
 One of the Dap-Dap Trees ot 
 Legendary Days 
 
 there they are today, if you but search them out. And there they 
 will remain, prisoners throughout the span of justice. 
 
 So long as right has power, just so long will might be shut 
 up in the knotty, twisted, writhing dap-dap trees which each spring 
 throw out imploringly their blood-red, fingerlike blossoms to a 
 calm, blue, unresponsive sky. And serious little tots at play 
 whisper that bloody might is trying to get loose. This is a bit 
 of witchcraft lore that far antedates our own Salem series that so 
 sorely vexed poor, bewildered Cotton Mather. It is a legacy of 
 true worth to the childhood, of the Philippines that dates back to 
 
the fifteenth century, a legend of the power of good over evil, of 
 right over might. 
 
 CHRISTIAN FILIPINOS AND THE MOROS 
 
 With the Spanish conquest of the islands went the Christian 
 absorption of their people. The first conqueror carried with him 
 the first priest. The ideals of the Filipino people were Christian 
 ideals. They believe in the supremacy of good. They believe 
 in one great, omnipotent spirit who, according to the folk tales, 
 had in the dim distant past doomed Loku, a defiant chieftain, to 
 haunt the evening shadows in the form of a lizard and at twilight 
 to call out mournfully in vain search of his lost grandeur. To 
 this day he can be heard in the coconut groves at dusk calling hope- 
 lessly, "Loku, Loku," a warning, the little children tell you, that 
 you should obey your parents and not defy God. On these ideals 
 Christianity flourished. Within a century the islands were Christ- 
 ian—with an exception. 
 
 While Christian missionaries labored among the people of the 
 northern islands, followers of Mohammed wielded their scimitars 
 throughout Mindanao and the Sulu Islands. Those who escaped 
 the scimitar fell heir to the Mohammedan faith. The Christians 
 of the island have for centuries been harassed by the Moros. Up 
 to within a short time before the American occupation of the is- 
 land, Moros would suddenly sweep down in their gaudy canoes, lay 
 siege to a peaceful Christian village, burn the houses and carry the 
 women and children off into captivity. These Moro Filipinos, 
 however, -form only a small part of the population of the islands, 
 less than one-fifth of a million, while there are ten million Christ- 
 ian Filipinos. Further, the Moros are rapidly waking up to the 
 realization of a lack, and are applying themselves to the task of 
 mastering a bit of Christian culture and learning. 
 
 Not long ago an account appeared picturing an army officer 
 in the Philippines being, drawn across the Agno River in a rope 
 ferry. A photograph, made in the act, graphically illustrated this 
 unusual mode of travel. The officer, gun in hand, sat in a huge 
 basket suspended high in the air from a cable, and was being 
 drawn slowly across the river. Had I not lived for four years 
 on the banks of the Agno, and crossed it twice daily on an old 
 Spanish bridge, I, too, would have gathered the impression that 
 this river in particular and the archipelago in general are places 
 of unique modes of travel, where bridges are all but unheard of. 
 
 A mountainous island country, swept by tropical rains, natural- 
 ly has short, swift rivers with innumerable estuaries, and it would 
 necessarily follow that it would be a land of bridges of some char- 
 acter. Bridge building was an art in the country before the 
 Spaniards went to the islands. With their ever-ready bamboo, 
 men fasliioned bridges by driving stakes into the bed of the stream 
 so that each pair would form an acute angle far above the running 
 
water. On these for supports they tied bamboos for a tootpatli 
 and a single bamboo for a handrail. Such bridges are now to be 
 seen awa}- out in the bosque. 
 
 Once on a hike for orchids, we came upon one connecting a 
 rice field with the owner's home. They are bits of primitive in- 
 genuity in the way of engineering, and as picturesque and fantastic 
 Subjects for copy as one might wish to find. But they are the ex- 
 ception. The islands abound in bridges, bridges of all kinds, com- 
 monplace and extraordinary. Under Spanish rule the Filipinos 
 built Spanish bridges all over the archipelago. 
 
 AMERICAN BRIDGES BUILT BY FILIPINOS 
 
 Under American supervision, and now under their own — for 
 Filipino architects have recognized ability — bridges of American 
 
 One of the Many Modern Bridges in the Islands 
 
 construction are built. No province but can boast of its hundreds 
 of bridges, moss-covered bridges, suspension bridges swaying with 
 their loads, steel bridges brought from overseas, and clear-cut, con- 
 crete bridges of the American type. Every way one turns there 
 are bridges to cross, so commonplace that they are noticeable only 
 because of a picturesque setting now and again as one whirls past 
 in a car over the well-kept roads. Still, our journalist published 
 the picture of a rope ferry. What impression did it convey ? Did 
 it cause one to realize the fact that there is easy communication 
 between all important points in the island? Did it call up the 
 real picture of the motor routes connecting Manila with Baguio, 
 the summer capital some two hundred miles distant? 
 
 And so it is with the other impressions created about the 
 people of the islands ; they are either carelessly or maliciously mis- 
 
represented. There are some savages there. There ma\' be said to 
 be savages in America, also, if we take into consideration some of 
 our least progressive Indian tribes. But there are ten million 
 civilized people in the Philippines and less than half a million semi- 
 civilized and savage. America is familiar with the savage element, 
 perhaps more so than with its own Indians. The civilized 
 Filipino life is so like our own that it does not make very catch}' 
 copy. 
 
 In Washington there now lives the family of Jaime de Veyra, 
 resident commissioner of the Philippine Islands. Mr. de Veyra, 
 
 Resident Commissioner Jaime de Veyra, "Who Represents the 
 Philippines in Congress 
 
 together with Mr. Yangco, represents the island in Congress. 
 They have a voice on the floor of the House, but no vote. Mr. 
 de Veyra has risen to prominence as men do in American life. He 
 is a man of the people, a one hundred per cent Filipino from the 
 Visayan provinces. During American occupation he has been suc- 
 cessively governor of his province, member of the Philippine Con- 
 gress, cabinet member, executive secretary of the islands and resi- 
 dent commissioner to America. He is one among thousands of 
 
Filipino men of clear mental vision who are able to come to their 
 own conclusions and to act on them. 
 
 AN AVERAGE FILIPINO WOMAN. 
 
 In Mr. de Veyra's family there are four bright children who, 
 having attended American schools in Manila, slipped right into 
 their places in the schools of Washington. Even the baby of the 
 family speaks three languages — her native tongue, Spanish and 
 English. To American women, whose ideas of Filipinos have 
 
 The De Veyra Children, Who Came Straight From the American Schools 
 in Manila Into Their Grades in the Schools in Washington 
 
 been founded on vivid description of Igorrotes and other wild 
 tribes, Mrs de Veyra's gentle manner and evident culture have 
 been a revelation. She is sought by women's clubs because of her 
 charming manner as an impromptu speaker on the subjects nearest 
 her heart — the women of her country. One afternoon I heard 
 her talk before the College Women's Club of Washington, D. C. 
 She gave in perfect English a concise account of the work of a 
 woman's club in Manila which supplies milk to the babies of the 
 
poor and trains mothers to care for their young children. She 
 told of another woman's club which has branches all over the 
 Philippine Islands, and which maintains day nurseries for the 
 children of the working women ; provides Christmas cheer for the 
 lepers, the insane and the convicts; and gathers data to influence 
 legislation for the benefit of women and children in the islands. 
 
 After her talk was over a New York woman voiced no doubt 
 the sentiment of more than one woman present when she re- 
 marked: "Why, I had no idea that Filipino women were refined, 
 cultured or even educated." 
 
 Mrs. de Veyra, ^ho Has Been Awarded the Red Cross 
 Medal for War Work 
 
 Do Americans as a rule realize this? Are they not, rather, 
 too "fed up" on savage pictures and descriptions to be able to 
 picture to themselves the real people of the islands, the ten million 
 Christian Filipinos who make up the population of the little 
 island country? 
 
 Some of course will say: "But she is a 'mestiza,' a woman of 
 foreign extraction." Or else, "She has been educated abroad." 
 
 She is neither. She is an average Filipino girl of an average 
 Filipino home, who has been educated as most girls are educated. 
 
She is one of the thousands of Filipino mothers who are well 
 equipped to fill their place in life either at home or abroad. 
 
 When the European war broke out she joined the Congres- 
 sional Red Cross Unit as well as the Community Center Unit 
 in the section of the city in which she lived. She has knitted an 
 even thirty-six pairs of socks and ten sweaters for our army, be- 
 sides giving two days each week to the making of hospital gar- 
 ments. Rather an everyday woman like ourselves, is she not, 
 knitting and sewing and working to win the war? She was one 
 of the few in the District of Columbia to be awarded the Red 
 Cross medal for having done mOre than eight hundred hours" 
 work, as well as to be given the certificate signed by the President 
 in acknowledgment of articles made. She was also decorated for 
 work in the Liberty Loan campaigns in Washington. 
 
 Joint Session of the Philippine Legislature 
 
 IGORROTES IN THE PHILIPPINE CONGRESS. 
 
 The good, substantial, everyday Filipinos predominate in the 
 islands, no matter how gayly Chapdays and Quidnos may prance 
 in their native nothingness across our journalistic pages. Chap- 
 day was a friend of mine, a grand old Igorrote of his day, which 
 was passing with him. With his one hundred and twenty years 
 of semicivilized experience, he clung to his old customs. He 
 asked to be buried with the rites of his fathers. So he sat in 
 smoky state in a grass temple high above the sacred smudge, which 
 for thirtjr-two days embalmed him, while his kinsmen and clans- 
 men consumed half the herds roaming his seven hills, lest his vast 
 
wealth offend his jealous god and bar his entrance into bliss. 
 They gathered from all the corners of his estate to pay him hom- 
 age. Crouching, boiled beef in hand, they mumbled into the 
 smudgy smoke words of endearment and praise. Weird, fantastic 
 and odorful it was. Yet it bordered closely on the commonplace, 
 for Chapday's grandson could not attend the funeral because he 
 was attending school in America. 
 
 The Igorroie Queen 
 
 Chapday's day is passed. His tribe has bo3's and girls in 
 all grades of the schools. Two will finish at the university this 
 year. His descendants, with a western education engrafted on 
 the sturdy honor and integrity of their ancestors, are new men 
 ready to lead their people into a new prosperity. Two Igorrote 
 representatives already hold seats in the Lower House of the 
 Philippine Congress. One of the girls from Chapday's tribe was 
 
chosen Igorrote queen of the Baguio Country Fair in 1916. An 
 Igorrote queen of a Filipino Fair in Baguio, the summer capital — 
 is there a parallel of an Indian queen of an American Fair 
 in Washington ? The mere episode of the young mountain queen's 
 gay fair reign speaks louder than words of the Filipino's 
 attitude toward the rapidly developing people in their midst. 
 
 Our ignorant voyager brought back to America the alarming 
 cry that the Tagalogs living around Manila are a most powerful 
 tribe which is able to sway the destinies of its less fortunate con- 
 temporaries, the Ilocanos, the Pangasinans and the Visayans. He 
 declared that the Tagalog language is unintelligible to his neigh- 
 bors to the north and soutli; in fact, that he co"ld not get an 
 idea across to his neighbors, even if he tried all day. This is 
 an old, old cry among those who give the matter little thought. 
 It began when people had not learned that they could not tell a 
 Tagalog from a Visayan or an Ilocano. 
 
 President Taft, when Governor of the Philippines, found 
 that they were undistinguishable. He wrote: "I cannot tell the 
 difference between an Ilocano and a Tagalog or a Visayan. The 
 Ilocanos, it would seem to me, have something of an admixture 
 of the Japanese blood ; the Tagalogs have rather more of the 
 Chinese; and it seems to me that the Visayans have still more. 
 But to me all Filipinos are alike." 
 
 F,ven the Filipinos themselves have to ask one another from 
 what province they come, as we here must inquire a man's state 
 or town. The citizenship of Manila, the capital of the islands, 
 is made up of people from all provinces. Because the city is ad- 
 jacent to Tagalog provinces, the impression seems to gain ground 
 that the people are all Tagalogs. There is no more ground for 
 such a belief than there would be for supposing that the people 
 of Washington, D. C, are all Virginians. 
 
 ALL THE PROVINCES HAVE THEIR BIG MEN. 
 
 In reality it is not the Tagalogs who might hold a prepon- 
 derance of power, if a preponderance could be held in a demo- 
 cratic country with a republican form of government. The Visa- 
 yans are the "F. F. V.'s" of the islands; they have, since the be- 
 ginning of American occupation, had the greatest number of men 
 in positions of trust. One of the first commissioners to the 
 United States was Mr. Luzuriaga, a Visayan; and Mr. Mapa, 
 a Visayan, was one of the first justices of the Supreme Court of 
 the islands. Three members of the present cabinet are Visayans. 
 as is also one of the resident commissioners in the United States, 
 Mr. de Veyra. The speaker of the House of Representatives, 
 Mr. Osmena, the mightiest mind in the entire archipelago, is a 
 Visayan. 
 
 But all the provinces have men in positions of trust, and 
 men in public life of whom they are duly proud. The Bicols, 
 
who for decades have pointed with pride to their high percentage 
 of literacy, sending their boys and girls to Europe for higher 
 education after they have grown out of childhood at the foot of 
 their inspiring volcano, Mayon, are a deep-thinking, serious- 
 minded people; they have their Jorge Barlin, the first Filipino 
 bishop consecrated by the Pope at Rome. It was Father Barlin 
 who made the invocation at the opening of the first Philippine 
 Assembly in 1907 — a little incident in world history the full sig- 
 nificance of which one hardly grasps. In a setting of Oriental 
 
 Speaker Osmena of the Philippine Congress 
 
 fanaticism, where life is held at. naught, where man has no right 
 that he may not lose overnight, where his liberty, his home, his 
 family are his only so long as they are not wanted by another 
 more powerful than he, there had come into existence an island 
 people with Christian ideals, in whose land our own America 
 had laid the foundation of democracy. Here, in 1907, the Bicol 
 bishop. Father Jorge Barlin, gave the opening invocation at the 
 first Oriental assembly of the people, by the people and for the 
 
The Zamballans, with their rugged mountains and shell- 
 lined coasts, boast of their Theodore Yangco, capitalist and philan- 
 thropist, whose boats ply the palm-fringed bays of the archipelago, 
 picking up tropical cargoes and tropical people, carrying them 
 from port to port at Oriental rates which, though small compared 
 with Occidental fares, have made Mr. Yangco one of the rich men 
 of the world. His money he spends on his own people, matching 
 the amount raised by a country district for its much needed school 
 building, giving another district a library, putting up public 
 buildings where they will best benefit the boys and girls of the 
 Philippines. A lasting monument to his name is the Student 
 Y. M. C. A. in Manila, put up and equipped through his gen- 
 erosity. 
 
 A SELF-MADE CAPITALIST. 
 
 The Ilocanos can boast of a self-made capitalist, Mr. Sing- 
 son, who with a small capital fitted up an office in Manila with 
 
 The Stately University Hall in Manila 
 
 a second-hand table and chairs and gasoline ho.xes for filing cases, 
 and then went thoroughly into the Philippine oil industry. He 
 now conducts a three-million-dollar business, besides being a di- 
 rector of the Philippine National Bank and president of the In- 
 sular Life Insurance Company as well as president of the Com- 
 pania Mercantil de Filipinas, and of a steamship line. 
 
 The Pangasinans have a professional man of note to their 
 credit. Doctor Sison, professor of medicine and surgery in the 
 Philippine University, and his wife, who is a specialist in ob- 
 stetrics. Doctor and Mrs. Sison came to America not long ago 
 for special research work at Johns Hopkins University. While 
 here Doctor Sison was offered the professorship of tropical medi- 
 
cine in the University of Pennsylvania, but he declined, preferrini; 
 rather to serve his own people. 
 
 And the Tagalogs have their Aguinaldo, the plain farmer 
 general, vi'ho in 1898 organized a republic and put it into opera- 
 tion. And so on with all the people in all the provinces. There 
 are men who achieve results to be found everywhere. 
 
 A COLLEGE 25 YEARS OLDER THAN HARVARD. 
 
 As for the mistaken impression that men of the different 
 provinces cannot understand one another, that the Tagalogs' lan- 
 guage is unintelligible to the Ilocanos or Visayans, it is a matter 
 of record that the Ilocanos have from the beginning of Filipino 
 history depended on the provinces farther south for their food- 
 
 A Little Filipino Girl Starting Off for School 
 
 Stuffs. They do not produce rice in sufficient quantities to sus- 
 tain their people. So they depend upon their ingenuity as wood- 
 workers, making chairs, beds and carved images to barter for food. 
 As far back as men can remember the great old Ilocano 
 schooners have anchored in the harbors of Luzon with their highl) 
 prized cargoes of images, beds and chairs to trade for rice and 
 salt. In 1903 we found them in the rice fields of the Pangasinans, 
 helping harvest the cargoes for their return voyage to the north. 
 They apparently made themselves understood then, as they do 
 now. Schoolboys go to athletic meets all over the islands, and 
 Filipino commercial representatives travel from one end of the 
 archipelago to the other, and from results attained it is evident 
 
that they get ideas across, regaraiess oi tne impressions or a Hur- 
 ried visit. 
 
 The fantastic council of the headhunters, which calls the 
 braves from their sleep at dawn to race over the hills with the 
 rising sun to a spreading mango tree on the highest peak of their 
 domain, there to squat, solemnly smoking all day long while the 
 sun slowly passes overhead and down the other side of their moun- 
 tain world, throwing long shadows on the purple mists at their 
 feet, thus calling them to leave their unfinished business under 
 the tree and race away with the setting sun to their grass homes 
 and sleep again, was ideal law-making for curious observation. 
 Had our voyager chanced upon it in session, the public might 
 have had a vivid pen picture to contemplate. But the opportunity 
 lost, the little voyage of discovery a thing of the past, the public 
 
 A Philipino Boy and His Carefully Tended Garden 
 
 will suffer the prosaic description of a prosaic Congress, with 
 senators and representatives from all provinces elected by the 
 Filipino people whose franchise is limited by a literacy test. 
 
 The Filipinos are seventy per cent literate, a percentage of 
 literacy higher than that of any country in South America, as 
 well as higher than that of many countries of Europe. America 
 has done much toward bringing up this percentage of literacy. 
 We have occasion to be proud of the results of our venture. But 
 there was a good foundation upon which to build when we went 
 into the islands. The Spaniards had academies throughout the 
 archipelago. They were no popular public schools, free to all 
 as the system now is; yet Filipinos were being taught the rudi- 
 ments as well as secondary and professional subjects. The old 
 University of Santo Tomas in the Walled City of Manila is 
 
twenty-five years older than our Harvard. Thus it is not strange 
 that the great mass of the Filipino people are able to exercise the 
 franchise. 
 
 Nor need it be thought strange that Malaysia, to the south 
 of the Philippines, is drawing on the islands for teachers of Eng- 
 lish and industrial work; for the language and customs of the 
 people of the East Indies are similar to those of the Filipinos, 
 and Malaysia has waked up to the fact that the Filipino has 
 standardized his basketry and other household industries. Malay- 
 sian schools are securing Filipino teachers to put their household 
 industries on a commercial basis. 
 
 But this presents such a different picture from that of the 
 voyager who was able in so short a time to gather together so 
 many fantastic topics that he had no space left in which to tell 
 of the commonplace things of Filipino life. Truly, men some- 
 times gather weird impressions. A certain other blind man did 
 when he grasped an elephant's tail and told of the strange mam- 
 mal — from his point of contact. 
 
 National Publishing Company, Printers 
 
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