things in order, a pole was set, and the stars and stripes unfurled to
the breeze. The quarters of our soldiers were near the park and so our
boys had a pleasant place to lounge when off duty in the early morning
or evening. When our troops first landed here in 1898 there was quite a
battle, but I am not able to give its details. The results are obvious
enough. The native army set fire to the city before fleeing across
the river to the town of Jaro (Hár-ro). The frame work of the upper
part of the buildings was burned but the walls or lower part remains.
After the battle at Jaro, I went out to live for awhile in the quarters
of Captain Walter H. Gordon, Lieutenant J. Barnes, and Lieutenant
A. L. Conger, 18th U. S. A. I soon realized that the war was still on,
for every day and night, the rattle of musketry told that somewhere
there was trouble.
One day I went out to see the fortifications deserted by the
Filipinos. They were curious indeed; built as an officer suggested, to
be run away from, not to be defended. One fortification was ingeniously
made of sacks of sugar. Everywhere was devastation and waste and
burned buildings. The natives had fled to distant towns or mountains.
All this sounds bad and looked worse, and yet it takes but a little
while to restore all. The houses are quickly rebuilt; a bamboo roof
is made, it is lifted to the desired height on poles set in or upon
the ground. The walls are weavings of bamboo or are plaited nepa. The
nepa is a variety of bamboo grown near shallow sea water. When one
of these rude dwellings is completed, it is ready for an ordinary
family. They do not use a single article that we consider essential
to housekeeping. Some of the better class have a kind of stove;
its top is covered with a layer of sand or small pebbles, four or
five inches thick; on this stand bricks or small tripods to hold
the little pots used in cooking. Under each pot is a tiny fire. The
skillful cook plays upon his several fires as a musician upon his
keys, adding a morsel of fuel to one, drawing a coal from another;
stirring all the concoctions with the same spoon. The baking differs
only in there being an upper story of coals on the lid.
It has been said that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Two
or three of us American women, eager to learn all we could, because
we were daily told that the war was over and we should soon be going
home, were rashly venturesome. But we soon found that it was unsafe to
go about Molo or Iloilo even with a guide, and so we had to content
ourselves with looking at the quantities of beautiful things brought
to our door. We were tempted daily to buy the lovely fabrics woven
by the native women. Every incoming ship is beset by a swarm of small
traders who find their best customers amongst American women. Officers
and men, too, are generous buyers for friends at home. The native
weaves of every quality and color are surprisingly beautiful.
Jusa (hoó-sa) cloth is made from jusi fibre; piña (peen-yah) from
pineapple fibre; cinemi is a mixture of the two; abaka (a-ba-ka) from
hemp fibre; algodon from the native cotton; sada is silk; sabana is
a mixture of cotton and hemp.
We visited many of the places where the most extensive weaving is done,
and there we saw the most wretched-looking, old women handling the
hair-like threads. Each one had by her side some emblem of the Roman
Church as she sat at her daily task. These poor, dirty, misshapen
creatures, weaving from daylight to dark, earn about fifty cents
a month. So many of the women are deformed and unclean, both the
makers and the sellers, that it seemed utterly incongruous that they
should handle the most delicate materials. In all my observations,
I saw but one nice, clean woman of the lower classes. In our happy
country we do not think of seeing a whole class of people diseased
or maimed. In the Philippines one seldom sees a well formed person;
or if the form is good, the face is disfigured by small-pox.
I was surprised, at first, on looking out after breakfast, to find at
my door every morning from two to a dozen women and boys in sitting
posture, almost nude, only a thin waist on the body, and a piece
of cotton drawn tightly round the legs. Many would be solemnly and
industriously chewing the betel nut, which colors lips and saliva a
vivid red.
It would not only be impertinent on my part to relate particulars of
our army, but I should undoubtedly do as Mrs. Partington did--"open
my patrician mouth and put my plebeian foot in it." The first thing
I did on arriving at Iloilo was to call mess "board" and go to bed
instead of "turning in."
In time of special danger, the various commanders were very kind in
providing guards--mostly, however, to protect Government property. I
felt no great uneasiness about personal safety, though I always
"slept with one eye open." We were so frequently threatened that we
stood ready every moment to move on. Shots during the night are not,
as a rule, conducive to sleep, and I did not like the sound of the
balls as they struck the house. I had my plans laid to get behind
the stone wall at the rear of the passage and lie on the floor. It
was necessary to keep a close watch on the servants who were "muchee
hard luc" (very much afraid) at the slightest change in the movements
of either army, home or foreign.
Their system of wireless telegraphy was most efficient, so much so
that one day at 2 P. M. I was told by a native of an engagement that
had taken place at 10 A. M. in a distant part of the island, remote
from the telegraph stations. I wondered how he could have known,
and later learned of their systems of signaling by kites. For night
messages the kites are illuminated. They are expert, not only in
flying, but in making them.
Their schools are like pandemonium let loose; all the pupils studying
aloud together, making a deafening, rasping noise. Sessions from 7
to 10 A. M., 3 to 6 P. M.
The large Mexican dollars are too cumbersome to carry in any ordinary
purse. If one wishes to draw even a moderate sum, it is necessary to
take a cart or carriage. A good sized garden shovel on one side and a
big canvas bag on the other expedites bank transactions in the islands.
At the time of the evacuation of Jaro by the insurrectos, our officers
chose their quarters from the houses the natives had fled from. The
house which we occupied had formerly been used as the Portuguese
Consulate. Like all the better houses the lower part was built of
stone, and the upper part of boards. There was very little need of
heavy boards or timbers except to hold the sliding windows. I should
think the whole house was about eighty feet square with rear porch
that was used for a summer garden. The pillars of this porch were
things of real beauty. They were covered with orchids that in the
hottest weather were all dried up and quite unsightly, but when the
rainy season began they were very beautiful in their luxuriance of
growth and bloom. The front door was in three parts; the great double
doors which opened outward to admit carriages and a small door in one
of the larger doors. There was a huge knocker, the upper part was a
woman's head. To open the large doors it was necessary to pull the
latch by a cord that came up through the floor to one of the inner
rooms. I used to occupy this room at night and it was my office and my
pleasure to pull the bobbin and let the latch fly up when the scouting
troop would come in late at night. Captain Gordon said that he never
found me napping, that I was always ready to greet them as soon as
their horses turned the corner two squares away. The entrance door
admitted to a great hall with a stone floor, ending in apartments
for the horses. On the right of the hall were rooms for domestic
purposes, such as for the family looms, four or five of them, and for
stores of food and goods. On the left there were four steps up and
then a platform, then three steps down into a room about twenty feet
square. There were two windows in this room with heavy gratings. We
used it as a store room for the medical supplies. Returning to the
platform, there were two heavy doors that swung in, we kept them
bolted with heavy wooden bolts; there were no locks on any doors. At
the foot of the steps was a long narrow room with one small window;
it was directly over the part where the animals were. The hall was
lighted with quite a handsome Venetian glass chandelier in which we
used candles. From this room we entered the large main room of the
house; the ceiling and side wall was covered with leather or oil
cloth held in place with large tacks; there were sliding windows on
two sides of the room which, when shoved back, opened the room so
completely as to give the effect of being out of doors; the front
windows looked out on the street, the side windows on the garden,
on many trees, cocoanut, chico, bamboo, and palm. There was a large
summer house in the center of the garden and the paths which led up
to it were bordered with empty beer bottles. The garden was enclosed
by a plastered wall about eight feet high, into the top of which were
inserted broken bottles and sharp irons to keep out intruders. The
house was covered with a sheet iron roof. The few dishes that we
found upon our occupation were of excellent china but the three
or four sideboards were quite inferior. The whole house was wired
for bells. This is true of many of the houses, indeed they are all
fashioned on one model, and all plain in finish, extra carving or fine
wood-work would only make more work for the busy little ants. Even
when furniture looked whole, we often found ourselves landed on the
floor; it was no uncommon thing for a chair to give way; it had been
honeycombed and was held together by the varnish alone.
My first evening in Jaro was one of great fear. We were told by a
priest that we were to be attacked and burned out. While sitting
at dinner I heard just behind me a fearful noise that sounded like
"Gluck-co-gluck-co." An American officer told me it was an alarm
clock, but as a matter of fact it was an immense lizard, an animal
for which I soon lost all antipathy, because of its appetite for the
numerous bugs that infest the islands. Unfortunately they have no
taste for the roaches, the finger-long roaches that crawl all over
the floor. Neither were they of assistance in exterminating the huge
rats and mice, nor the ants. The ants! It is impossible to describe
how these miserable pests overran everything; they were on the beds,
they were on the tables. Our table legs were set in cups of coal
oil and our floors were washed with coal oil at least once every
week. This disagreeable condition of things will not be wondered at,
when I say that the horses, cattle, and carabao are kept in the lower
part of the house, and the pigs, cats, and dogs allowed up stairs with
the family. The servants are required to stay below with the cattle.
The animals are all diseased, especially the horses. Our men were
careful that their horses were kept far from the native beasts. The
cats are utterly inferior. The mongoose, a little animal between
a ferret and a rat, is very useful; no well-kept house is without
one. Rats swarm in such vast hordes that the mongoose is absolutely
necessary to keep them down. Still more necessary is the house
snake. These reptiles are brought to market on a bamboo pole and
usually sell for about one dollar apiece. Mine used to make great
havoc among the rats up in the attic. Never before had I known what
rats were. Every night, notwithstanding the mongoose, the house snake,
and the traps, I used to lay in a supply of bricks, anything to throw
at them when they would congregate in my room and have a pitched
battle. They seemed to stand in awe of United States officers. A
soldier said one night, glancing about, "Why, I thought the rats moved
out all of your furniture." They would often carry things up to the
zinc roof of our quarters, drop them, and then take after with rush
and clatter, the snake in full chase. Mice abound, and lizards are
everywhere, of every shape, every size, and every color.
I spent a large part of my time leaning out of my window; there
was so much to see. The expulsion of the insurrectos had just been
effected, and very few of the natives remained, but as soon as they
were thoroughly convinced that our troops had actually taken the town,
they flocked in by the hundreds, the men nearly naked, always barefoot,
the women in their characteristic bright red skirts.
The entire time spent there was full of surprises, the customs, dress,
food, and religious ceremonies continually furnishing matter of intense
and varied interest. I noticed, especially, how little the men and
women went about together, riding or walking, or to church. Neither
do they sit together, or rather should say "squat," for, even in the
fine churches, the women squatted in the center aisles, while the
men were ranged in side aisles. There are few pews, and these few,
rarely occupied, were straight and uncomfortable. No effort was ever
made to make them comfortable, not to mention ornamental.
THE NATIVES.
CHAPTER NINE.
The natives are, as a rule, small, with a yellowish brown skin; noses
not large, lips not thick, but teeth very poor. Many of them have
cleft palate or harelip, straight hair very black, and heads rather
flattened on top. I examined many skulls and found the occiput and
first cervical ankylosed. It occurred to me it might be on account
of the burdens they carry upon their heads in order to leave their
arms free to carry a child on the hips, to tuck in a skirt, or care
for the cigars.
The Filipino skirt is a wonder. It is made by sewing together the
ends of a straight piece of cloth about three yards long. To hold it
in place on the body, a plait is laid in the top edge at the right,
and a tuck at the left, and there it stays--till it loosens. One
often sees them stop to give the right or left a twist. The fullness
in the front is absolutely essential for them to squat as they are so
accustomed to do while performing all sorts of work, such as washing,
ironing, or, in the market place, selling all conceivable kinds of
wares. The waist for the rich and poor alike is of one pattern, the
only variation being in the quality. It has a plain piece loose at
the waist line for the body, a round hole for the rather low neck,
the sleeves straight and extending to the wrist, about three-fourths
of a yard wide. These sleeves are gathered on the shoulder to fit the
individual. A square handkerchief folded three times in the center is
placed round the neck and completes the costume. As fast as riches
are amassed, trains are assumed. All clothing is starched with rice
and stands out rigidly.
The materials are largely woven by the people themselves, and the finer
fabrics are beautiful in texture and fineness, some of the strands
being so fine that several are used to make one thread. By weaving
one whole day from dawn to dark, only a quarter of a yard of material
is produced. The looms, the cost of which is about fifty cents, are
all made by hand from bamboo; the reels and bobbins, which complete
the outfit, raise the value of the whole to about a dollar. There is
rarely a house that does not keep from one to a dozen looms. The jusi,
made from the jusi that comes in the thread from China, is colored
to suit the fancy of the individual, but is not extensively used by
the natives, who usually prefer the abuka, piña, or sinamay, which
are products of the abuka tree, or pineapple fibre. The quality of
these depends on the fineness of the threads. It is very delicate,
yet durable, and--what is most essential--can be washed.
The common natives seem to have no fixed hours for their meals, nor
do they have any idea of gathering around the family board. After
they began to use knives and forks one woman said she would rather
not use her knife, it cut her mouth so. Even the best of them prefer
to squat on the floor, make a little round ball of half cooked rice
with the tips of their fingers and throw it into the mouth.
My next door neighbor was considered one of the better class of
citizens, and through my window I could not help, in the two years
of my stay, seeing much of the working part of her household. There
were pigs, chickens, ducks, and turkeys, either running freely about
the kitchen or tied by the leg to the kitchen stove. The floors of
these kitchens are never tight; they allow the greater part of the
accumulated filth of all these animals to sift through to the ground
below. There were about fifteen in the family; this meant fifteen or
twenty servants, but as there are few so poor in the islands as to be
unable to command a poorer still, these chief servants had a crowd
of underlings responsible to themselves alone. The head cook had
a wife, two children and two servants that got into their quarters
by crawling up an old ladder. I climbed up one day to see how much
space they had. I put my head in at the the opening that served them
for door and window, but could not get my shoulders in. The whole
garret was about eight feet long and six feet wide. One end of it
was partitioned off for their fighting cocks.
All the time I was there this family of the cook occupied that loft,
and the two youngest ones squalled night and day, one or other, or
both of them. There was not a single thing in that miserable hole
for those naked children to lie on or to sit on. The screams or the
wails of the wretched babies, the fighting of the rats under foot, the
thud of the bullets at one's head, the constant fear of being burned
out,--these things are not conducive to peaceful slumbers, but to
frightful dreams, to nightmare, to hasty wakenings from uneasy sleep.
As soon as there is the slightest streak of dawn, the natives begin to
work and clatter and chatter. No time is lost bathing or dressing. They
wear to bed, or rather to floor or mat, the little that they have
worn through the day, and rise and go to work next day without change
of clothing. It never occurs to them to wash their hands except when
they go to the well, once a day perhaps. While at the well they will
pour water from a cocoanut shell held above the head and let it run
down over the body, never using soap or towels. They rub their bodies
sometimes with a stone. It does not matter which way you turn you see
hundreds of natives at their toilet. One does not mind them more than
the carabao in some muddy pond, and one is just about as cleanly as
the other. They make little noise going to and fro, all being barefoot;
but it was not long until I learned to know whether there were three,
fifty, or one hundred passing by the swish of their bare feet.
The fathers seem to lavish more affection on the children than the
mothers, and no wonder. Even President Roosevelt would be satisfied
with the size of families that vary from fifteen to thirty. They do
not seem to make any great ado if one or more die. Such little bits
of humanity, such wasted corpses; it hardly seems that the shrunken
form could ever have breathed, it looks so little and pinched and
starved. There was a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, which were
said to be twenty-five years old, that were the most hideous looking
things I ever saw. They were two feet high, with huge heads out of
all proportion to their bodies. They used to go about the streets
begging and giving concerts to get money. I understand that they are
now somewhere in America.
I became very much interested in a man with only one leg. I wanted
to get him a wooden mate for it, but he said he didn't want it; that
he could get around faster with one leg, and he certainly could take
longer leaps than any two legged creature. Even when talking he never
sat down. He had admirable control of his muscles. A little above
the average height, his one leggedness made him seem over six feet.
It was out of the question to take the census of any town or province,
because of the shifting population. It is nothing for a family to move
many times in the course of the year; they can make thirty or forty
miles a day. They have absolutely nothing to move unless it might be
the family cooking "sow-sow" pot, which is hung over the shoulder
on a string, or carried on top of the head. I used often to see a
family straggling along with anywhere from ten to twenty children,
seemingly all of a size, going to locate at some other place. One
family came to Jaro the night before market day. They had about six
dozen of eggs. I said I would buy all of them; the woman cried and
said she was sorry, as she would have nothing to sell in the market
place the next day. At night the whole family cuddled down in a corner
of the stable and slept.
The native cook we employed proved to be a good one, and was willing to
learn American ways of cooking. We did not know he had a family. One
morning while attending to my duties there appeared a woman about
five feet tall, with one shoulder about four inches higher than the
other, one hip dislocated, one eye crossed, a harelip, which made
the teeth part in the middle, mouth and lips stained blood red with
betel juice, clothes--a rag or two. I screamed at her to run away,
which she did instantly. I supposed she was some tramp who wanted to
get a look at a white woman. She proved to be the wife of our cook,
and after I had become accustomed to her dreadful looks, she became
invaluable to me. Hardly anyone would have recognized her the day
that she accompanied me to the dock. The little money that she had
earned she had immediately put into an embroidered waist and long
black satin train; and as I bade her good-bye she left an impression
quite different from the first, and I am sure that the tears she shed
were not of the crocodile kind.
The first native, Anastasio Alingas, whom we employed proved to be
the very worst we could have found. He not only stole from us right
before my eyes, but right before the eyes of our large household. He
took the captain's pistol, holster, and ammunition. We could not have
been more than five or ten feet from him at the time, for it was the
rule then to have our fire-arms handy.
With an air of innocence, child-like and bland, he diverted suspicion
to our laundry man and allowed him to be taken to prison. It was
only after being arrested himself that he confessed and restored the
revolver. He was allowed to go on the promise that he would never
come any nearer than twenty miles to Jaro. He had been systematically
lying and stealing. He used to come with tears streaming down his
face and say that some man had stolen market money intrusted to
him. He plundered the store-room, though it was hard to tell which
stole the most, he or the wild monkeys that were about the house. He
had pretended to be eager to learn, and had been so tractable that
we were greatly disappointed to have him turn out such a bad boy. We
found this true of every man that we tried, and most strongly true
of the ones who pretended to be the best.
All the servants, all the natives, prized highly our tin cans
from the commissary, as we emptied them. They used to come miles
for them. Cocoanut shells and hollow bamboo stalks are the common
vessels. A few old cans furnished a valuable ten cent store. The
variety of uses to which these cans were turned was remarkable.
None of the so-called better class work at anything. They all carry
huge bundles of keys at their side, and in most stentorian voice
call out many times during the day "machacha" to a servant, who is to
perform some very small service which her mistress could easily have
done herself without any effort, and these lazy machachas saunter about
in the most deliberate manner and do whatever they are asked to do in
the most ungracious way. These so-called ladies beat their servants. I
often interfered by pounding with a stick on the side of my window
to attract their attention; that was all that was necessary. They
were ashamed to have me see them. One time in particular, a woman
took a big paddle, such as they use for pounding their clothes,
and hit a small, sick looking creature again and again on the bare
shoulders. What the offense was I do not know, but certainly the
beating was such as I have never seen administered to anything.