ss 05 s t:r4 i30r0 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 3 9015 01791 1887 B 721,209:: I I:~~:- ~:~::::_::~ ~ ---~,i — ~ ~ ' __ THE PHILIPPINES AND THE - FILIPINOS.. 0 AN ADDRESS BY BRIG.-GENERAL FREDERICK DENT GRANT, U.S.A. DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK SOCIETY OF THE ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND PATRIOTS OF AMERICA DECEMBER o1, I904 I I "I THE PHILIPPINES AND THE ---- FILIPINOS a I AN ADDRESS BY BRIG.-GENERAL FREDERICK DENT GRANT, U.S.A. DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK SOCIETY OF THE ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND PATRIOTS OF AMERICA DECEMBER o1, i904 I~f CFK! - 6 it.Y 4 Atcttafast foxr ojd and T1o mntrgn. (^ ^4 -be Ef Bs NOTE The following address was delivered by Brig.-General Frederick Dent Grant, U. S. A., first Governor-General of the Order of the Founders and Patriots of America and first Governor of the New York Society of the Order, at a meeting of said Society, held in his honor, at the Hotel Manhattan, New York City, Saturday evening, December o1, 1904. Its publication was directed by the New York Society of the Order of the Founders and Patriots of America. THE NEW YORK SOCIETY OF THE ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND PATRIOTS OF AMERICA OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR ENDING APRIL I9, I905 Governor HON. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT Deputy Governor THEODORE FITCH Chaplain REV. GEORGE BURLEY SPALDING, D.D. Secretary WILLIAM ALLEN MARBLE Treasurer GEORGE CLINTON BATCHELLER State Attorney HENRY WICKES GOODRICH Registrar TEUNIS DIMON HUNTTING Genealogist CLARENCE ETTIENNE LEONARD Historian HENRY LINCOLN MORRIS Councillors HON. WILLIAM WINTON GOODRICH EDWARD PAYTON CONE THEODORE GILMAN HOWARD SUMNER ROBBINS JAMES LE BARON WILLARD COL. HENRY WOODWARD SACKETT MILO MERRICK BELDING, JR. COLGATE HOYT Ladies and Gentlemen and Associates of the Order of the Founders and Patriots of America: I have been asked to address you this evening on the subject of the Philippines. In accepting the invitation I understood that it was for a dinner, and that my talk was to take place after the collation, but I find that I have to make a speech first, and unfortunately I have not prepared one, so will have to excuse the disordered arrangement of the subjects upon which I speak to you. As you all know, the Spanish-American War brought to us the Philippines. This war lasted only one hundred and three days and secured to the United States strong footholds in the West Indian Islands of Cuba and Porto Rico and in the Philippine archipelago of the East Indies. As we did not occupy all of the territory, and the military conditions were such that the Spaniards would be unable to protect the parts occupied by them, the Paris Commission, which was appointed to negotiate peace, agreed to the surrender to the United States of all the Spanish possessions not occupied by American troops, for the sum of twenty millions of dollars. In this way we became possessors of the Philippine Islands, not only as conquerors but also as purchasers. In the beginning of our administration in the Philippines uncertainty existed as to what the United States would do, whether it would occupy the entire archipelago or take only a small part of it for a naval station and turn the rest of the country over to the Filipinos for independent government. The Filipino troops organized under Aguinaldo became very aggressive, and as the Americans acted in a kindly manner towards them, the Filipinos soon became convinced that the Americans were cowardly and that they, the Filipinos, could easily drive our troops into the sea. Conditions gradually grew from bad to worse, until they became unendurable, and a shot fired by an American sergeant, who was at an outpost near Manila, upon a body of armed Filipinos, caused them to return the fire, and the skirmish gradually spread from outpost to outpost until 6 a general engagement was in progress, the immediate results of which were to push the Filipinos back from their line of outposts around the city of Manila, and thus the Philippine War commenced. Our army consisted of volunteers of State troops who had been enlisted for the Spanish War, with a very small body of regulars. The volunteer troops had been enlisted for the war with Spain, and there was a question as to the legality of keeping these volunteers in military service after the war with Spain was over, so our army had to be reorganized, though our troops already in the Philippines were pushed out from Manila as far as San Fernando on the north, Imus on the southwest, and Calamba to the south. My part of the line was fourteen miles from Manila, at the town of Imus, in Cavite province. This was known as "the southern line" and covered a territory of twelve to thirteen miles in extent, and I had from thirteen to sixteen hundred men with which to confront an insurgent force estimated to be from five to six thousand. Of course these insurgents made my occupation of the line as difficult as possible, by night attacks at various points, from time to time. This condition prevailed until the new volunteer army arrived, and early in November a general advance of our troops commenced. By the middle of December the insurgent armies were scattered to the winds, and the whole country was in the hands of the Americans. Then the guerilla war commenced. The guerilla war was most tedious, as the insurgents scattered, having rendezvous in the hills and could rely upon their own people. But as the American government showed good intentions, some few of the Filipinos began to feel a friendship for us and became convinced that the Americans would give them a good government. At any rate, it did not seem probable that the insurgents could succeed. This caused the scattered insurgents to heap punishment upon such of their own people as they called "Americanistis," and their punishments of them were most cruel. In okrder to meet this condition, the American troops were divided into small parties and occupied all the towns, with many of the more important barrios, in order to extend protection to those who were friendly to the American cause. The cruelty of these insurgents soon alienated individual Filipinos from their cause, and out of revenge, where they had 7 been injured, they would give the American troops such information as would result in the capture of insurgent arms. But unfortunately the talk of some of the people in America about abandoning the Philippines left an uncertainty in the minds of many friendly Filipinos as to whether or not we would abandon the country and leave them in the lurch and that it would not be well for them to have the reputation of having been too friendly to the Americans. However, as soon as the re-election of President McKinley was known these people began to come forward, and through the information they gave, we rapidly secured the arms in the possession of these insurgents, so that in my command alone I secured 4,800 rifles. Guerilla warfare is most arduous and distressing. Our soldiers were subjected to ambuscades, assault and assassination at all times, and yet it was our policy to be friendly with the natives. To illustrate: the town of Baliuag, in the province of Bulacan,was the headquarters station of a regiment, the 35th U. S. Infantry, which garrisoned the eastern half of the province. The provost marshal had employed in his office a young native of good standing, named Rosario, who seemed to be friendly to the American cause. This young man would occasionally report the presence of insurgents at some nearby town or barrio and the United States troops would immediately make a descent upon the place, but in every case they found that the insurgents had disappeared a short time before and no one there would know where they had gone. This information of Rosario, of course, impressed the officers with his loyalty and good faith, though somehow our troops, while coming very near the insurgents through his information, never seemed to be able to catch them. On one occasion a Filipino by the name of Buencamino, who was the Presidente of the town of San Magil and had really shown a desire to assist the Americans, appeared in Baliuag and asked for an escort to take him to San Cagil, as he said he felt that it would be dangerous for him to go through the country without American protection. The provost at Baliuag sent Rosario out to hire three little Philippine carriages, and a guard of six soldiers was detailed to escort Buencamino. About half way between Baliuag and San Magil, Buencamino and his escort were ambuscaded, three of the soldiers being shot down and Buencamino and the other three captured and afterwards 8 killed. Some time later, papers were found by us which indicated that this Filipino employee, Rosario, whom we had trusted, was the actual leader of this insurgent band, and that when he went out to hire the wagons for Buencamino and the escort, he had gathered up his insurgent followers in the town and sent them out in advance to waylay Buencamino and his party. Of course, when this evidence was found, Rosario was arrested, tried and punished. Another incident showing the difficulties that we had to deal with, which happened in my command, occurred in the province of Bataan. I had two companies of the 32d Regiment of United States Infantry stationed at the town of Dinalupijan, an important place, as it was located some little distance back from the coast at the entrance of a pass over the Zambales Mountains. The natives here seemed to be very friendly and fraternized with our troops. It was the custom every ten days to send a wagon from Dinalupijan with a small detachment to the town of Orien for supplies. Of course the natives soon learned of the strength and travel of this escort, and one day when it passed down to Orien they broke down a culvert on the road, so that when the loaded wagon came back its wheel went through the culvert with a jolt and the soldiers collected around to raise the wheel out of the hole. While they were thus bunched together, the insurgents, who were hidden in bamboo bushes, not more than forty to fifty yards away, fired a volley into them. Six of the eleven United States soldiers fell dead or mortally wounded; the other five jumped across the road and succeeded in holding the insurgents off, and worked their way back to Orien. It was a constant strain upon one's mind to guard against these actions by apparently friendly natives, and one had to always be on his guard to escape assassination. A little carelessness would lead in a very short time to death or capture. You all remember the terrible disaster that happened to Captain Connell's company of the 9th Infantry at Balangaga, Samar. To me personally this guerilla war was extremely interesting. It gave me an opportunity of being in the field a great deal under the most exciting conditions, and during the last three or four months of the guerilla war in the fifth district, which district I commanded and which, I take pride in saying, was the 9 first to come under civil government, the insurgents did me the great honor to make their war upon me personally. I was told that they had directions to kill me, in the belief that if they could get rid of me they would have no further trouble in that district. The result of their flattering attentions to me was, that I was compelled to be exceeding observant in going from place to place, and I was personally engaged in frequent little skirmishes. On one occasion, when I was visiting the province of Bataan, I received information that the insurgents had laid an ambuscade for me at the Barrio of Ano, which was a small village in a valley through which I had to pass on my way back to my headquarters at Angeles, in the province of Pampanga. I had about twenty scouts with me, and so in approaching Ano I scattered the men in skirmish line and passed through, and thus surprised the would-be ambuscade. We, the insurgents, and I with escort had a little fight, and I afterwards saw in an insurgent paper published at Hong Kong a reference to this fight as being a " cruel one " in which more insurgents were killed than necessary. This paper said that my party had killed eighteen of the insurgents. I do not know that this was true, as I only saw nine dead, which number I mentioned in my official report. This was about the last attempt that was made upon my life, as in a very short time afterwards this province became pacified and civil government established, and my enemies became my friends. A question often asked in the United States is, will holding the Philippines pay; is it worth while for us to retain them? To answer this, I will say that the Americans are divided into four classes of people: a small one saying that we have no right to be in the Philippines at all; another and a large class being indifferent; a third and larger class believing that the islands are legitimately ours and our possession of them is an advantage to the United States as well as to the Philippine people; the fourth class look upon the question entirely as to its material advantages and ask, does the possession of the Philippines pay? I believe I have answered the first class of people, and I cannot see where there is any doubt of our absolutely honorable right to retain the possession of the Philippines. The indifferent class of people will naturally throw their voice from time to time on different sides of the question, as the arguments are presented to them. The third class, of course, are those IO answered by the first. And to the fourth class, people who look entirely as to the material advantage of possessing the Philippines, we can give the following answer: The possession of the Philippines has cost the people of the United States about $170,000,000, the larger part of which was necessarily spent in suppressing the insurrection. Now, the material advantage that we derive in the possession of the Philippines, measured in dollars and cents, is great, our trade with the islands amounting to some twenty millions a year. This is distributed among the people of the United States and is growing. To what extent it will increase no one knows, but in my opinion, even with the present business between the two countries, the people of the United States will have in the course of ten or twelve years the entire cost of the Philippines returned to them, and the business of the future will be clear profit. Strategically, the islands are of vast value, as it enables us to be near the Asiatic shore with a base of supplies and a body of troops ready to support the diplomatic measures of the United States to keep the " open door," and I assure you that a division of troops on hand in the Philippines, with Manila or Subig Bay as a base, is worth more to the United States than the entire cost that we have been put to for the Philippines. The fact of our possessing this base would make enemies hesitate, and will probably prevent an expensive war. In case of any future wars in the East, the cost in life and money of securing as good a location for a base would be several times as much as the Philippines have cost us. I therefore have no hesitancy in saying that the possession of the Philippines will pay, not only because of the trade between the people, but also for strategical reasons. The formation of the Philippine Islands is volcanic, and the group consists of several large islands with a good many small ones. Luzon contains an area of about 47,000 square miles; Mindanao, an area of about 37,000 square miles. These are by far the largest islands in the group, though there are many others that are large enough to be of great importance. All these islands havd been formed by volcanic eruptions, and on Luzon there still exists two or more active volcanoes. The tropical rains have worn down the sides of these volcanic hills and have surrounded the islands with a low alluvial bottom land which is enormously rich. Also the spaces between the hills II have been filled with this rich and productive soil. The climate is such that vegetation will grow in all parts, and there is little or no land in all the Philippines that will not produce something for the use of man. The warm climate with its moisture is so productive that an ordinary brick thrown into the yard will in a short time be covered with a moss which gradually accumulates on its surface. In fact, I have seen walls covered with moss and with even small bushes growing upon them. A piece of ground covered with any hard substance in a few years' time would have over it a coverlet of soil caused by the decomposition of the mould on its surface in which a grass would grow. I have seen roads with a growth of grass several feet high on them, that but a few years before had had good macadamized surfaces. At the present time little of the ground is cultivated except in the valleys, and many of the mountains are covered with trees, as are also many of the valleys. Most of the timber is valuable-some of it of very great value. In the valleys where the ground can be irrrigated one can raise a continuous crop of rice or sugar. Where the land cannot be irrigated one can raise only one crop a year of either rice or sugar, which necessarily needs water; but in the dry season a crop of something else can be grown on this land, and it is very common to see the natives on the higher ground after gathering their rice crop break the ground and plant a crop of corn or vegetables, which they reap before the next rainy season. One of the important crops of the archipelago is hemp. This grows principally at the southern end of Luzon and the southern islands, and is a continuous crop. The amount of land now used for the purpose of raising hemp is very small compared to the amount available. I believe that fifteen or twenty times the amount of hemp that is now produced in the islands will be produced there within a few years. The mineral production of the Philippines is undeveloped, but bids fair to be of great importance. To my knowledge there are coal, iron, gold, quicksilver and copper. As to the quantities in which these may exist I am unable to state, though I believe that most of them will be found in large quantities. In one of my expeditions in the mountains I found abundant indications of copper, and in one place masses of iron, the purity of which led me to believe that a paying iron mine could be 12 opened at that point. I also at one time on one of my expeditions learned that there was gold in the vicinity, and I employed a person in the mountains to wash some of the soil to search gold for me. There was nothing in which to wash this soil except a cocoanut shell, and in the course of three days a small bottle filled with nuggets of gold from it, was brought to me. The amount of gold in the bottle would have amounted to five or six dollars. I brought this home and had the pleasure of giving it to President McKinley as a specimen from the Philippines. Could that ground have been worked by our system of modern machinery, I have no doubt but that enough gold could have been obtained from it to make the work profitable. The place that I refer to was in northern Luzon, and I have heard extravagant statements of the existence of gold further north, and in the south of Luzon, where I afterwards was in command, there was quite a settlement of people, mostly Germans, who were mining gold. As to coal, there are several places in the archipelago where the coal veins can be seen on the surface of the ground, and some of this coal I have had mined and used on our boats for fuel. Some of it was very good. In southern Luzon, on the mountain of Isarog, there are indications of cinnibar, and a native down there brought me at one time a bottle containing about a pound of quicksilver. Whether or not paying mines of this valuable metal can be found there I cannot say, but that there is cinnibar there I know to be a fact. Perhaps the thing that would most interest this audience is a description of the people of the archipelago. The original settlers were without doubt the Negritos. The Negrito is a little fellow with the markings of the African Negro, "negrito" being diminuitive for "negro," and when young they are very well formed, but their figures change before they attain very great age. As they get older their stomachs become large and their arms and legs attenuated. They are still wild and are savages without great courage, and I doubt if they are susceptible of civilization. The settlements bf the islands by other races have been very disastrous to the Negrito, of whom there are probably at the present time not more than twenty or twenty-five thousand in the entire archipelago. When I was in northern Luzon I secured one of these Negritos as a scout. He was intelligent and quite 13 a handsome little fellow and I employed him to get information of the location of insurrecto strongholds in the mountains. Little has been written about the Negrito and it is difficult to tell you much about them except what I observed. They, as a rule, are very timid and it was very hard to become acquainted with them. In Spanish times it was not an unusual thing for the Negritos to be made slaves when captured. The Negritos live altogether in the mountains, but do not inhabit permanent places. They locate themselves where they can obtain food, which consists principally of wild sweet potatoes. When these potatoes begin to be scarce in their neighborhood the Negritos move to another place convenient to obtain food and water. The sweet potatoes grow in large quantities and are scattered throughout the mountains. The next race that inhabited the Philippines was apparently the Malays, who settled along the coast and streams, driving the Negritos more to the interior. There have evidently arrived on the islands at different times and in different places both Chinese and Japanese, as their features and traits are to be seen in the people. At the present time I believe it is estimated that there are sixty-four different tribes in the Philippine Islands, but I think all the sixty-four tribes contain only the blood of the four races that I have mentioned. The four largest and most important tribes that inhabit this archipelago at present are, first, the Tagalos, which number about two millions of people and inhabit central Luzon; they are the richest, the most civilized and have most learning among them. Their basic blood is Malay, with a large mixture of Chinese and some Spanish. The next tribe in numbers and importance is the Visayan; they inhabit what is known as the Visayan group, which consists of the islands of Panay, Negros, Cebu, Leyte and Samar. Their basic blood is Malay, with a less mixture of Chinese and Spanish. There are about a million and a half Visayans. The third in importance is the Bicol, who inhabit southern Luzon and number about 700,000. They are a quiet people and engage principally in raising rice and hemp. The fourth class are the Moros, who inhabit the island of Mindanao and what is known as the Jolo group. They have little or no civilization, living mostly on fish, with some rice, and they do some work in iron, principally the manufacture of weapons. 14 All of these large tribes, except the Moros, profess Christianity as their religion, the Moros being Mohammedans. It must be confessed, however, that the Christianity of the Visayans and the Bicols is such as would not be understood by us with our own ideas of the doctrines of Christ. All of the sixty-four tribes inhabiting this archipelago except the four I have mentioned are small in numbers and, as a rule, not regarded as civilized. The most important of these uncivilized tribes is the Irrigotas. They are a good people, being both quiet and industrious, and I think contact with civilization and the protection that they will receive from now on, will soon make them a valuable addition to the inhabitants of the islands. When our troops advanced the natives would desert the communities and flee to the hills and other places. As the troops began to cover much territory these people would return, but all their reins of government would be lost and conditions were chaotic. General Otis issued an order for a general form of local government which was a very simple affair and in the main similar to what Spain had established. Each locality was organized under this order, and local affairs were put in the hands of natives under the care and guidance of the United States Army. After the whole country came under control, General Otis, with the assistance of a board of commissioners appointed by him, promulgated a second order for the establishment of a civil government which was very much in advance of what had already been practiced. It was more liberal and better than anything the Filipinos had experienced under the Spanish regime, and was in force when peace was established, and then the Philippine Commission took charge of affairs under Judge Taft. The Commission under Judge Taft received the entire archipelago, which was in a peaceful state under the government established by the militray authorities, and then the Civil Commission commenced their work, and with the basis of the military government established laws that are the most liberal and enlightened, probably, than those of any country in the world. The work of the Army and of the Civil Commission is a credit to the American people and a happiness to nine hundred and ninetynine out of every thousand Filipinos. In fact, I believe that the work of our Army and the Civil Commission in the Philippines has caused the great majority of the Filipinos to become as loyal I5 to the American system and government as are the Americans themselves. I know that the work of the American government in the Philippines has attracted attention throughout the world, and within the past few days I have heard of leading men in India calling the attention of the English Government to what America has accomplished in the Philippines and asking the pertinent question, why England could not do for them what America has done for the Filipino. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for having listened to me talk about the Philippines, which I trust has not wearied you. I regret that I had not, before coming here, written out heads to speak from, as I could then have made this talk more interesting. But before I sit down I want to assure you that the conquest and the subsequent course of action carried out by the Government of the United States in the Philippines will be a source of pride to you as citizens of the United States, and to people that take an interest in work the United States is doing in its far-off possessions, and to your children, to the end of time. i , " ~ 7- I t-X*' J