Note 15 — Chapter XXI · Governor Smith—1907–9

The signers of the certificate of 1907 justify their certificate as to Samar and Leyte on a very ingenious theory. The Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, already cited, which had provided for the taking of a census preliminary to the call of an election for delegates to a legislature, had recognized the crude ethnological status of the Moros and other non-Christian tribes. These had never had anything whatever to do with the insurrection against us. Therefore in making the continuance of a state of general and complete peace for a prescribed period a condition precedent to granting the Filipinos a legislature, the Act of 1902 had limited that condition precedent to “the territory of said Islands not inhabited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes.” In fact President Roosevelt’s proclamation of September 25, 1902, already noticed, ordering the taking of the census on the theory that a state of general and complete peace then existed, explains that this theory is entirely consistent with trouble among the Moros and other non-Christian tribes because they, it says, quoting from a statement of the Philippine Commission previously made to the President, “never have taken any part in the insurrection.” The Moros and other non-Christian tribes were, so to speak, in no sense assets of the Philippine insurrection. All the rest of the population was—that is, if there was anything in the veteran General MacArthur’s grim jest of 1900, prompted by Governor Taft’s half-baked opinion to the contrary, that “ethnological homogeneity” was the secret of the unanimity of the opposition we met, and that somehow people “will stick to their own kith and kin.” When the Philippine Government Act of 1902 was drawn nobody pretended for a moment that there were any non-Christian tribes either in Samar or Leyte. The whole population of those Islands were valuable assets of the insurrection. If any one doubts it, let him ask the 9th Infantry. You will find in the Census of 1903 that there are no non-Christian tribes credited either to Samar or Leyte.15 When the Philippine Government Act of 1902 was drafted, the exception about Moros and other non-Christian tribes was intended to except merely certain types of people as distinct from the great mass of the Philippine population as islands are from the sea. The fact is, no person connected with the Philippine Government either before or after the certificate under consideration, ever thought of classifying the ignorant country people of the uplands and hills of Samar or Leyte, as “non-Christian tribes.” The Philippine Census of 1903 does not so classify them. The very volume of the Report of the Philippine Commission for 1907 in which the certificate aforesaid appears, does not. In that volume,16 the report of the Executive Secretary deals elaborately with the subject of non-Christian tribes. Professor Worcester of the Philippine Commission has for the last twelve years been the grand official digger-up of non-Christian tribes. He takes as much delight at the discovery of a new non-Christian tribe in some remote, newly penetrated mountain fastness, as the butterfly catcher with the proverbial blue goggles does in the capture of a new kind of butterfly. The Executive Secretary’s report, out of deference to the professor, omits no single achievement of his with reference to his anthropological hobby. It treats, with an enthusiasm that would delight Mrs. Jellyby herself, of “the progress that was made during the fiscal year in the work of civilizing non-Christian tribes scattered throughout the archipelago.” It gives an alphabetical list of all the provinces where there are non-Christian tribes, and, under the name of each province it gives notes as to the progress during the year with those tribes. Neither Samar nor Leyte appear in that list of provinces. So that the Samar “Pulajans,” or “Red Breeches” fellows,—“fanatical” Pulajans, they are called in the certificate—were “non-Christian tribes” for peace certificate purposes only. One thing which makes it most difficult of all for me to understand how these gentlemen got their consent to sign that certificate is that each non-Christian tribe in the Philippines has a language of its own, whereas the country people of the uplands and mountains of Samar and Leyte who are labelled—or libelled—“non-Christian tribes” in the certificate of 1907, were no more different from the rest of the population of those islands than, for instance, the ignorant mountain people of Virginia or Kentucky are different, ethnologically, from the inhabitants of Richmond or Louisville. In his report for 1908,17 Governor-General Smith himself makes this perfectly clear, where he describes the Samar Pulajan, or mountaineer, thus: