A Visit to the Philippine Islands

Chastity seems to have been unknown, though a price was always exacted for a woman’s favours.

Many Mahomedan superstitions and usages had found their way to the interior, and among them the rite of circumcision.

All the Indians are born with a circular dark spot on the buttock, of the size of a shilling; as their skins darken the mark extends, becomes lighter in colour, and in age is scarcely distinguishable.

There is a tradition that the Indians were formerly in the habit of punishing an unpopular person by a penalty which they called Cobacolo, and which was inflicted on any who had misled them by false counsels. The whole population assembled, went to the house of the offender, every one bearing a cudgel; some surrounded the house to prevent escape, and others entered and, by blows, drove the victim to the balcony, from whence he was compelled to leap, and he was then chased out of the neighbourhood, after which the house was razed to the ground, and all that it contained destroyed. The tradition is preserved in many popular proverbs and phrases, in which the Cobacolo is used as a menace to evil-doers.

Among the most celebrated books on the Philippines are the “Cronicas Franciscanas,” by Fr. Gaspar de S. Agustin, an Augustine monk of Madrid, who lived forty years among the Indians, and from whose descriptions I have made a few selections; but there are remarkable contrarieties of opinion among different writers. Their fields of observation are different, and natural temperament has much to do with the judgment formed. Our friar does not give the natives a favourable character. According to him they are generally “inconstant, distrustful, malicious, sleepy, idle, timid, and fond of travelling by rivers, lakes, and seas.”

“They are great consumers of fish, which are found in immense abundance. After rains the fields and marshes and ponds are filled with them. Fish two palms long are often pulled up from among the paddy. As the waters dry up, the fish retreat to any muddy recess, and the Indians catch them with their hands, or kill them with sticks.” I have seen many Indians fishing in the paddy grounds, and what becomes of the fish in the times of drought, when no “muddy recesses” are to be found, it is hard to say, but where there is water fish may invariably be sought for with success.

“They eat three meals a day, consisting principally of rice, the sweet potato, and a small quantity of fish or meat; the daily cost of the whole being half a rial” (= 3d. sterling). “As labourers they get half a rial in addition to their food. They willingly borrow money, which they do not repay, and he who will not encourage ingratitude must show them no favour; to exact a promise is to ensure a falsehood. They are the ingrates described in the 36th Psalm. They never shut the door they have opened; they return nothing to its place; they never do the work they have been paid for beforehand, yet they do not fail to ask for an advance: the carpenter must have money to buy wood; the washerman to get soap; and they even practise their devices upon the parish priest! They have the art of blundering about everything; they fold all garments the wrong way; turn a shirt inside out, always present the back where the front should be.” The father is somewhat severe, and of my own experience I can say there was at least about as much chance in such matters of the Indians doing right as wrong. Alava said of the Indians that their brains were in their hands.

The padre continues: – “They are envious, ill-bred, and impertinent. They will even ask a padre, ‘Whence do you come? where are you going?’ If you are reading a letter, they will look over your shoulders, though not able to read themselves; and if two people are talking in secret, the Indians will come near, though not understanding a word.” Grave charges these. “They enter houses, and even convents, without leave, and seem to make themselves at home in a manner to excite wonderment and anger; even when the padre is asleep, they make a great noise in trampling the floor, though in their own houses they walk with as much care as if treading among eggs. They use no chairs at home, but absolutely wear out those of the convents by sitting and lounging on them, particularly in the balconies, where they can get a look at the women.”

These extracts are as characteristic of the monk as of the Indian. “They care nothing for dog, cat, horse nor cow; the game-cock is their great concern; him they visit at dawn; him they caress through the day; they will contemplate him with eyes fixed for half an hour at a time: the passion never decays; many of them think of nothing else. The government patronizes cock-fights. Last year they produced 40,000 dollars” (in 1859, 86,000 dollars); “sad resource this for so many tears, crimes, and punishments! What quarrels, what lawsuits, what appeals! And in their gambling they pass the night till sunrise. The chief of the Barangay (clan) loses the tribute-money he has collected; his doom is the prison, or a flight to the mountains. They hate to live in houses or convents where they would be placed beyond even the odour of women. They take care of their own plates, and exhibit in their dwellings some possessed before the arrival of the Spaniards, but in convents and houses they break plates enough to ruin their masters. This is because of their stupidity, or that they are thinking of their beloved, or of anything but what ought to occupy their thoughts; and if they let fall a dish, it is passed over by the Spaniards, or they are only called ‘brute! animal! savage!’ In their own house, however, the breaking a piece of earthenware would be followed with a good number of cane blows, and this is of more efficacy than all Cicero’s Philippics (sic in orig.) They cannot be trusted with a sword, mirror, glass, gun, watch, nor any delicate thing; they are sure to spoil it. You may confide to them a bamboo, a stick, a piece of timber, a palm-branch, and to a few of them a ploughshare.

“They are bold and insolent in making unreasonable requests, careless of the when or the how. They remind me in their petitions of what happened to Sancho Panza in the island of Barataria, when troubled with that impertinent and intrusive rustic Michael Turra. For their four eggs they want a hundred dollars. I never see an Indian coming towards me with a gift – something worthless, of course, and of no use to himself – flowers or fruits, but I exclaim, in the words of Laocoon to the Trojans” (grandiloquent friar!) “‘Timeo Danaos dona ferentes.’ The Bishop of Troya, Don Francisco Gines Barrientes, a most circumspect prelate, told me that an Indian brought him a handkerchief of Guava fruit and asked him for the loan of fifty dollars. And when the Lord Marquis de Villasierra, Don Fernando de Valenzuela, was in the castle of Cavite, an Indian gave him a cock, for which the Marquis ordered him to be paid six times its value, and the Indian said he expected eighty cavans of rice, and this, too, was in the time of scarcity, when every cavan was worth two dollars. It matters little, however, for they are just as well pleased when they fail as when they succeed, for they do not value anything given them by a Spaniard, not even by a priest! In selling they will ask thirty and accept six; they take the chance of cheating, and, knowing the great goodness (la suma bondad) of the Spanish character, they do not apprehend any expression of anger in consequence of an absurd pretension.”

The friar thus describes a negotiation between an Indian peasant and a merchant: – “The peasant has two or three hundredweight of indigo for sale; he does not come alone, but with his relations, friends, and sometimes the women, for the indigo belongs to several who form the suite of the seller. Every offer has to be communicated to the party, who are crouched in a circle round the negotiator; the offer being discussed, they agree to the reduction of a dollar in the price – the buyer requires three; this matter being settled, another discussion begins; some of the indigo is damp and dirty, and an allowance must be made, and thus the negotiation goes on harassing and never-ending, so that very few Spaniards will tolerate such impertinence and importunity, and the conference ends by a dry inquiry, ‘Will you? yes! or no!’ If no, the Indians are angrily ordered into the street, but the more patient mestizos and Chinese make the Indians their guests, feed them and lodge them, and get these commodities on their own terms, in Chinese style, for the Indian is very stupid in trading matters.” And then the father gives abundant evidence of their simplicity. “In fine, the Indian prefers the rial of a Chinese to the dollar of a Spaniard.” Who can wonder, then, at the prosperous condition of the Chinese in the Philippines? “The Indians show great indifference to danger: they will not move out of the way of a restive horse, nor, if in a small boat, give place to a large one. In the river, if they see crocodiles approaching, they take no notice and adopt no precautions. The Koran says that every one has his fate written in the marks on his forehead; so think the Indians, not that they have read the Koran, but because of their own folly, which exposes them to daily misfortunes.” “They are very credulous among themselves, yet believe nothing but what is unfavourable about the Spaniards. It is evident that the act of faith is supernatural when they acknowledge the divine mysteries taught by the Spaniards. In other matters they believe in nothing which is adverse to their interests. They do not object to rob Spaniards, not even the ministers of religion. Of this we have irresistible evidence, so that there can be no doubt, and we can only regret that no remedy can be found.”

The Augustine provincial friar of Ilocos, reporting on the insurrection of 1807 in that province, says: – “Here, as elsewhere, there are abundance of robbers and pilferers; it is of no use to bring them to Manila, they should be punished in the locality; but they can be no more extirpated than can the rats and mice. Indeed there is an Indian proverb which says: – ‘Robbers and rats will disappear together.’” I cannot endorse the friar’s indiscriminating censures, for I have heard extraordinary evidences of extraordinary integrity. The Alcalde of Cagayan told me that, though he had frequently left uncounted dollars in the care of the Indians, he had never discovered a single fraud.

One would suppose that the rich and potent friars were tolerably well protected against the Indians, yet one of them writes: – “The Indians do not now employ lances and arrows against our ministry, but papers, pens, tales, jokes and calumnies. So much have they been taught politics in Manila that now in all the pueblos are obscure scribblers, pettifoggers, pretenders, who are clever enough in writing memorials on stamped paper, to be presented to the Royal Audiencia. So if the parish priest reprove or punish them for their evil and scandalous lives, they meet together, drink wine, and fill a folio paper with their crosses, and march off to Manila, to the tribunal which they deem the most impressionable, from whence great vexations are caused to the poor parish priest. And much courage is required to bear this species of martyrdom, which is sufficiently common in the Indies.” – (Abbé Amodea.)

I do not know how lately there have been perquisitions against witches, but in the middle of the last century I find the record of a most diligent pursuit and rigorous punishment against the witches of Pampanga. The proceedings were superintended by a friar named Theodore of the Mother of God, who made a special report to the Mexican Inquisition. He says: – “There are witches in every pueblo, and in some they form a third part of the population. These slaves of the devil are divided into sundry classes: lamias, who suck the blood of infants; striges, who are wanderers on the face of the earth; sagas, who dwell in houses, and convey to the devil all the information he requires; larvas, who devote themselves to carnal delights; temures, who prepare love filtres; but all unite to do mischief to the human race.”

Of the credulity of the Indians there is no end of examples. In 1832, when the Santa Ana arrived with 250 soldiers, a report spread like wild-fire that the King of Spain had ordered all the children of the Indians to be collected, that their blood might be spilt upon the Spanish mines to make them more productive. The women fled to their homes, seized their children, and sought an asylum in the houses of the Spanish ladies in Manila. The men armed themselves with spears, and rushed tumultuously through the streets. The agitation was appeased with some difficulty. What any man reputed as a sage among the Indians avers, acquires immediate authority, and is not to be controlled by the influence of the priests; the words “Vica ng maruning,” meaning “The wise say so,” is the ready answer to all impugners. “God preserve us,” says the friar, “from Indian sages! for the Indians are proud, and will not obey the priest, nor the friar, nor the chaplain, unless obliged by fear, and they are not always afraid, though they feel thoroughly convinced of the superiority of the Spaniard, and are governed in spite of themselves. They imitate the Spaniard in all that is evil – his love of dress, his swearing habits, addiction to gaming, and all the vicious practices of the zaramullos (fops or busy-bodies); but Spanish courtesy and urbanity and good education they neither study nor copy; but revels and drunken bouts, and riotous weddings and burial excesses and tyrannical acts of all sorts they have inherited from their ancestors, and still preserve, so that they have Spanish vices added to their own.”

They show much deference to everything that is aristocratic among themselves. The jacket-wearing principalia are treated with great deference, and their rank religiously respected. First, the gobernadorcillo; then the ex-gobernadorcillos, who are called passed captains, in order of seniority; then the acting lieutenant, who must be the head of a barangay; then the heads of barangays according to age; then passed lieutenants, and so on; and their rank is recognized by the adjacent communities.

Bathing is universal, men and women in the same place. The men wear pantaloons, the women cover themselves with a garment which they throw off when they enter the water. No scandal is caused by the habit, and several attempts of the Spanish authorities to interfere with the ancient usage have failed.

The Indians embrace by touching noses; but lip-kissing often accompanies the act. When the nostril is contracted (as in the act of smelling), and the Indian looks towards a person at a distance, it is deemed an invitation to a closer embrace. Strange stories are told of the exquisite sense of smell possessed by the Indians; that by it they can distinguish the dresses of their masters and mistresses, and lovers ascertain the state of each other’s affections. Inner garments are interchanged which are supposed to be impregnated with the passions of the owners. In disregard of the monks, the Indians secretly circumcise their children. The banian-tree (Balete, Ficus Indica) is held sacred. They burn incense under it, which they obtain from the friars under various pretences. How strangely are the rites of idolatry mingled with Christian observances! This is not the case alone in the Philippines. One of Dr. Gutzlaff’s renowned converts in Hong Kong used to say that to please the missionary he had added another god – the Christian’s God – to those he worshipped before; and I have known of secret visits to heathen temples on the part of Chinese professing Christians, when they were about to enter upon any important undertaking. “There is no driving out of them,” says the padre, “the cursed belief that the spirits of their ancestors are in the woods and among the roots of bamboos, and that they can bring good or evil upon them. They will offer sacrifices to them; and all our books and all our preachings have failed to remove the impressions left by any old man whom they choose to call ‘a sage.’” “The curates,” says De Mas, “profess to believe that these superstitions are passing away; no doubt the Indian conceals them as much as he can from his father confessor, but I have on many occasions convinced myself of their existence and influence.” Who, indeed, knowing anything of the credulity of the less instructed classes, and not these alone, among ourselves, can wonder at the state of “the religious mind” of the Philippine Indian? And so little are the priests themselves wholly free from infirmity, that a Philippine curate, Mallares, committed and caused to be committed no less than fifty-seven assassinations in the town of Magalan, believing that he should thus save his mother from being bewitched. Mallares was executed in 1840; and in his report the fiscal expresses his horror of “the incredible and barbarous prodigality of bloodshed by this monster.”

“The Indian knows no medium,” again to quote from the father. “Ask for tepid water, he will bring it boiling; say it is too hot, and you will get it quite cold. He lives in a circle of extremes. He rejoices if you lose patience and give him a beating, for he goes and boasts of having put his master into a passion. To irritate the Indian, you must take no notice of his short-comings. The sagacious men among them say that the Indian and the cane (for his correction) always grow together. They have another proverb: ‘The Spaniard is fire, and the Indian snow, and the snow puts out the fire.’” One of the padres reports that his servant-boy said to him: “You are a new comer, and are too indulgent: if I do amiss you ought to chastise me. Don’t you know the proverb, ‘The Indian and the cane grow together?’” “They blaspheme and abuse God when their prayers are not granted, and use language which would indeed be horrible were it not known how thoughtless they are, and how impossible it is for them to conform themselves to the Divine will.”

They are fond of religious dramas, especially of one in Tagál representing the passion and death of Christ; but these religious representations and gatherings give rise to scandal and abuse, and the birth of many illegitimate children. The priests have generally prohibited these exhibitions at night, and sometimes disperse them, whip in hand; at other times the singers are denounced, and get flogged for their pains – or pleasures.

It is amusing to read the contradictory opinions of the friars respecting their flocks. One says: – “Their confessions are false; they never own to any but three sins: first, that they have neglected church-going; second, that they eat meat during Lent; and third, that they have sworn profanely.” Another reports – “No Spaniard can be more devout and fervid than the Indians of Manila in their confessions. They obey the instructions they receive, and I have the same good account from many padres of many Indians in the provinces.” No doubt the ecclesiastical statistics would be curious, if obtainable. In Lilio, the curate reports that of 1,300 persons paying tribute in 1840, 600 never confessed, and “this pueblo is not of the most remiss.” In Vigan, of 30,000 inhabitants, the attendance at church did not exceed from 500 to 800 (De Mas), except on the yearly festival of the Virgin, patroness of the pueblo. Father Agustin’s indignation is vehemently expressed as regards confession: – “The infernal Macchiavel Satan has taught them a policy as good for their bodies as bad for their souls, which is that they own their errors and crimes to one another, and conceal them, however excessive, from the spiritual father, from the Spanish alcalde, notwithstanding their personal quarrels, and, as they call them, murder-enmities; so that there is among them no greater offence than to tell the padre or the alcalde what has happened in the pueblo, which they say is mabibig, the most abominable of sins; indeed, the only offence which they hold to be sin.”

The friars speak in general more favourably of the women than of the men. They are more devout, more submissive, more willing to listen to their ghostly fathers, one of whom says: – “Did all mankind hang upon a single peg, and that peg were wanted by an Indian for his hat, he would sacrifice all mankind. They have no fear of death, but this is an infinite mercy of the Divine Being, who knows how fragile they are; they talk about death, even in the presence of the dying, without any concern. If condemned to the scaffold, they exhibit equal indifference, and smoke their cigar with wonted tranquillity. Their answer to the attendant priest is invariably, ‘I know I am going to die. I cannot help it. I have been wicked – it was the will of God, – it was my fate,’ But the approach of death neither interferes with their sleep nor their meals.” “The tree must bear its fruit,” he continues. “God in his wisdom has made many races of men, as He has made many varieties of flowers, and at last I reconciled myself to seeing the Indians do everything differently from what we should do, and keeping this in view, I could mould them like wax to my purpose.”

As a general result I have not found among these Indian races any one distinguished for intellectual superiority. A few were not backward in their knowledge of the mechanical arts; one or two examples there were of genius as sculptors; a universal love and devotion to the musical art, and some appreciation even of the merits of European composers; but, it must be added, little or nothing is done to develop such capacities as the Indians possess; the field of public instruction is narrowed alike by religious and official influences, and the social tone of the opulent classes, to which alone the Indian can look up, is greatly below that of the Spanish peninsula. Literature is little cultivated: the public newspapers are more occupied with the lives of saints, and preparation for, or accounts of, religious fiestas, than with the most stirring events of the political world. The Spaniards have never been celebrated for very busy inquiries, or very active virtues; but it is to be hoped that the mañana, to which everything is referred, will at last become an hoy dia.

It has been said of the Indian that he is more of a quadruped than a biped. His hands are large, and the toes of his feet pliant, being exercised in climbing trees, and divers other active functions. He is almost amphibious, passing much of his time in the water. He is insensible alike to the burning sun and the drenching rain. The impressions made upon him are transitory, and he retains a feeble memory of passing or past events. Ask him his age, he will not be able to answer: who were his ancestors? he neither knows nor cares. He receives no favours and cannot, therefore, be ungrateful; has little ambition, and therefore little disquiet; few wants, and hence is neither jealous nor envious; does not concern himself with the affairs of his neighbour, nor indeed does he pay much regard to his own. His master vice is idleness, which is his felicity. The labour that necessity demands he gives grudgingly. His health is generally good, and when deranged he satisfies himself with the use of herbs, of whose astringent or laxative powers he has had experience. He uses no soap to wash, no razor to shave; the river is his bathing-place, and he pulls out the hairs in his face with the assistance of a sharp shell; he wants no clock to tell him of the flight of time – no table, nor chairs, nor plates, nor cutlery, to assist him at his meals; a hacha, or large knife, and bag are generally hung at his waist; he thinks no music equal to the crowing of his cock, and holds a shoe to be as superfluous as a glove or a neck-collar.

I certainly have not discovered among the Indians that enduring “à tout jamais” horror of foreigners upon which M. Mallat dwells, and which he represents as specially and properly directed against Englishmen. On the contrary, I found many Englishmen settled in the Philippines objects of great confidence and affection; and I have heard mestizos and Indians say that they put greater trust in English commercial probity than in that of any other nation. I have witnessed the cordiality with which the old Spanish proverb, “Paz con Ynglaterra y con todo el mundo guerra,” has been quoted in large assemblies of the Filipinos. And assuredly there is no nation which has contributed more than England to the prosperity of the Spanish archipelago. Evidence enough will be found in the course of this narrative of the kindness shown to Englishmen.