Note 10 — Chapter XXV · Slavery and Peonage

Its governor, Louis G. Knight, called my attention to the fact that Ifugao children were frequently enslaved by Filipinos of Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela. I asked him to get specific data so that we might prosecute the offenders. He soon sent to the Executive Secretary a report10 which gave full details of a number of recent cases of the buying and selling of Ifugaos as slaves, contained a statement that Governor Knight, who was himself a lawyer, could “find nothing whatever in the penal code defining or punishing as a crime the buying or selling of human beings,” and recommended that “this crime be defined and punished in the proposed new penal code.”