Note 1 — Chapter XXV

The question now presents itself: What is to become of these highlanders of Northern Luzon? And if the answer to be given is here applied only to them, let it be distinctly understood that logically the question may be put in respect of all the wild people of the Philippines. Of these there are over one million in a total population of perhaps eight millions. At once it appears that any conclusions we may draw, any speculations we may cherish, in respect of the Archipelago, as being inhabited by a Christian people unjustly deprived of liberty by us, must be subject to a very large and important correction. Limiting our inquiry to Luzon alone, let it be recollected that of its 4,000,000 population nearly four hundred thousand, or one-tenth, are highlanders, and that these highlanders, in all probability, arrived in the Islands at an earlier date than their Christianized cousins of the lowlands. Let us recollect further that these people are ethnologically [196] not savages at all; not only are they workers in steel and wood, weavers of cloth, but hydraulic agriculturists of the very highest merit. On the side of moral qualities they invite our approving attention: they speak the truth, they look one straight in the eye, they are hospitable, courageous, and uncomplaining; their women are on a footing of equality, more or less, with the men, and are respected by them. Where they have had an opportunity, they have shown an aptitude to learn of no mean quality. Physically they are the best people of the Archipelago, and under this head would be remarkable anywhere else in the world. Now, the Spaniards, with a few exceptions, made no systematic, continuous attempt to civilize these peoples; or, if they did, no measurable results have come down to our own day, even Villaverde’s efforts, genuine as they were, having left almost no trace. So far from having done anything for the hillmen, the record of the Spanish at the very few points garrisoned by them is one of injustice and robbery, and worse. That of the Filipinos,1 in imitation of [197] their Spanish masters, is no better. At any rate, when we took over the Archipelago in 1898, a vast area of Luzon was held by a people who looked, and justly, so far as their experience had gone, upon the white man and his Filipino understudy as an enemy. The difficulty of guiding and controlling these people undoubtedly had been (and still is) great, and partly accounts for the state of affairs we encountered when we first entered the country, but it was necessarily no greater for our predecessors in the Islands than it has been for us. Now, where they failed, we, it may be said without fear of contradiction, are succeeding, and it is but the simplest act of justice to say that the credit for our success belongs to the Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine Islands, Mr. Dean C. Worcester. He would be the last man on earth to say that his success is complete; on the contrary, he would assert that a very great quantity of work yet remains to be done, and that what he has done so far is but the beginning. But it is nevertheless a successful beginning, and successful because it rests on the solid foundation of honesty and fair dealing, and is inspired by interest in and sympathy for a vast body of people universally hated and feared by the Filipino, and until lately [198] neglected and misunderstood by almost everybody else.