- Author:
- Hannaford, Ebenezer
- Publication Info:
-
Springfield, O:
The Crowell and Kirkpatrick co,
1900,
pg 22
Text on page 22
22
THE PICTURESQUE PHILIPPINES
come of Malay stock, and they have, moreover, been pronounced the highest type of that race. In the Philippines the different Malay offshoots principally group themselves as Tagal, Yisayan or Moro; and with yet greater precision these terms indicate the three spheres of influence into which racial politics divide the archipelago. Despite their mutual jealousies and animosities it does really seem as if, under Providence, the hapless Filipinos had entered upon a career denoting aspiration, a struggle out of semi-barbarous, tribal life toward national unity and higher things. Wisely to guide, not repress, will be Americaa s glory in meeting this phase of her new
responsibility in the Far East. The modern miracle of Japan has great encouragement for their well-wishers. To remember three definitions will help in reading Philippine items. The term a Indiana has been already explained. It is a misnomer. a Half-caste,a appropriate enough in India, becomes misleading in the Philippines, where the absence of class distinctions is most marked. There it is a mere softened form of a half-breed.a Lastly, by a nativesa must usually be understood not only the little brown men we liked to read about when Dewey and they were tightening the toils around Manila, but also the mestizoes and the a sons of the country.a
THE a LITTLE NEGROa ABORIGINES
IN OUR mental pictures of things Philippine we must avoid hasty generalizing, and not judge the whole from only a part.
Among hundreds of islands
Wealthy Filifinos in European Dress
scattered up and down the ocean for a thousand miles it would be strange if some diversities of aspect and of products did not appear; and as to the inhabitants, when the varying stages of development represented are nude savages at one extreme and polished gentlemen at the other, the range is obviously immense. If the resultant differences facilitate the triumph of American arms, on the other hand they cannot but embarrass American administration. Dealing with a Christianized and propertied native in Manila, Cebu or Iloilo is one thing. Dealing with a pagan nomad roaming some almost inaccessible interior is quite another. And between these two come all sorts of intellectual grades and susceptibilities to improvement.
The very lowest of Philippine Malays despises and consistently ill-treats the aboriginal negrito (the Spanish for a little negroa ), whose forefathers some wave of Malay emigration defeated in battle ages ago, and drove into the forested mountains and foothill jungles; a thin, dwarfed, spindle-legged, ugly Polynesian black, about four feet eight in height, with a thick mat of frizzled black hair, and almost a monkeya s aptitude in taking hold of things with his toes and feet. %The negritos wear ex-
