The Filipinos

DURING the first ten days of the war attention was centred upon the naval field of operations in Cuban waters or upon the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, the great cities along which, it was expected, would invite swift attack from the Spanish ships. Meanwhile in Asiatic waters an event was preparing that was to fill the world with wonder and admiration, and to render American arms glorious in the very first collision with the enemy. This was the enterprise of the American squadron on the Asiatic station against the city of Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands, colonies of Spain in the Pacific not less valuable and productive than Cuba and Porto Rico in the Atlantic. The Philippines had been first discovered by Spanish adventurers and had been in the possession of the Spanish crown for more than four hundred years, during all of which time the cruelty and rapacity of the sovereigns and of the Governors sent out to administer colonial affairs, had provoked many revolutions and uprisings. The archipelago, which consists of from 1,200 to 1,800 separate islands, only a few of which are of considerable size, contains mixtures of the most savage and intractable populations in the world. These occupy the principal islands of Luzon, Mindanao, Samar, and Panay. Luzon has an area of about 43,000 square miles, nearly equal to the State of Illinois; Mindanao covers about 38,000 square miles, nearly the area of the State of Kentucky. The land area of the archipelago is estimated at 114,000 square miles, equal to the whole of New England and New York.

In order to comprehend the problems that confronted the American forces in the Philippines, the peculiar contradictions of tribal prejudice and the oppression of the Spanish Government must be considered. The colonial government was administered by a Governor-General, invariably selected in Spain. The place was used to reward crown favorites who could return home after a few years of service with enormous fortunes wrung from natives and foreign immigrants alike by a system of taxation that savored of blackmail and confiscation. The Governor-General had a junta or cabinet composed of the Archbishop of Manila, the Captain-General of the army and the Admiral of the navy stationed in the colonies. The administrative power lay with the Governor-General and the Archbishop, and the religious orders of the Spanish Catholic Church were the practical controllers, under their superiors, of the fortunes and the fate of every locality and village that Spanish power had been able to subjugate to its iron rule. The first permanent settlement of the islands had been made by the missionaries, and Philip II. had conferred upon the succession of these peculiar and most regorous powers of civil and religious government, which have been little changed. The result through four centuries was the acquisition of vast wealth by the religious orders, the possession of well-defined incomes from monopolies and collections, and the perfection of a system of espionage that deprived the inhabitants of refuge from the rapacity of the conquerors. The persistence and intolerance of the system had been secured by excluding all native-born persons from appointment under either the civil or church branches. All civil servants and priests were native-born Spaniards sent out for the purpose of taking their instructions from those already adept in oppression, and ambitious to surpass their predecessors in the fortunes to be accumulated for the home churches or by the court favorites who returned to Spain to dazzle the supporters of the crown with the glories of a short term abroad in the service of their country. The trying climate of the Philippines, which is tropical, subjected to violent monsoons, seasons of drenching rains, and an almost intolerable heat lasting from March to July, has made it necessary to change continually the Spanish administrators. From the Governor-General down to the private soldier, five years was the average length of service possible, so that the native population, estimated at from 8,000,000 to 15,000,000 in numbers, was always under the rule of transient strangers, having no continuing interest in their welfare. There have been, of course, individual instances of honorable and just governors. Among those recognized in recent times was General Blanco, who was afterwards selected to establish the weak experiment of autonomistic government in Cuba. It was, however, the rule, under the very nature of the colonial system, that temptation to oppress, rob, and enslave the natives was held out to every administration in succession, and such temptations are not long resisted by those appointed over uncivilized and ignorant people.

The population of the Philippines was especially difficult to hold in orderly government. Naturally a heterogeneous mass, the problem of assimilating the different tribes and races would have been one difficult to accomplish by the most patient and industrious government, with years of application. The fiercest and most primitive savages inhabit the scattered islands, sometimes two or more antipathetic races occupying the same island and ceaselessly waging war against each other and the government alike. The aborigines are called "Negritos," or little negroes, dwarfs rarely exceeding five feet in stature, intractable and wary mountaineers, indulging in the cruelest pagan rites of sacrifice, including cannibalism. They have resisted conquest by retiring to mountain fastnesses where they have been slowly diminishing in numbers by self-extinction.

The Manthras, an equally wretched but more contemptible tribe, are very nearly as numerous as the Negritos. They are a cross between the Negritos and Malays and are now more degenerate than either, though at one time they were warlike and aggressive. The great body of population is Malayan, with some Chinese and a few Japanese.