United States or Romania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The warning had come in time had come before the advancing column had marched between the forces hidden on both sides of the ravine. The Tagalogs could not face the fire with which the Americans met them. They fled up the ravine, and up both sides of the gorge, into the shelter of the forest, and were gone.

If in Pangasinán Province, where there are many Tagálogs, organizations opposed to the rule of Aguinaldo could cause serious disorders, as was the case, it must have been considered expedient for the success of the attempt of the Tagálogs, who form only a fifth of the population, to dominate the archipelago, that all provinces in which an effective majority of the people were not of that tribe, should be kept under military rule.

These 14 were Tagálog provinces or provinces which the Tagálogs controlled. The other provinces were still under military rule, and, indeed, even the provinces under civilians were dominated by their military commanders.

It is not without significance that it was these same Tagálogs who organized in the past the chief insurrections against the domination of Spain, principally, as is well known, because of the misrule of the friars. It is also a fact that the farther one removes from Manila the feebler becomes the cry for independence.

Many families fled from the town and took refuge in the mountain villages inland. Others lived in boats, lurking about the rivers and the innumerable waterways which criss-cross the swampy coast plain. When the Tagalogs withdrew, the wanderers returned to their homes, only to make a fresh exodus when the Americans came.

They are Muhammadans in religion and are the last of the Malays who came to the islands. Of all the Malay peoples, the Tagalogs of Luzon have been the foremost to learn the arts of western civilization. They have surpassed their near relatives, the Visayans, who live in the central part of the islands.

The Tagalogs protested, alleging their better right to it, as the genuine sons of the country, not to mention the historical precedent, but the friar, who was looking after his own interests, did not yield. W. E. Retana, who was a journalist in Manila at the time, in a note to this chapter.

In his barbarian mind there was no absurdity in trying to persuade a gentle Virgin or a pure-minded Saint to deliver into his hands the goods and persons of those who knelt before their effigies. A sacred image was "good medicine" for Spaniards and Tagalogs, and should, therefore, be good medicine for Mahometans.

The schoolhouses had been used as barracks by the Tagalogs. The chaplain of the Eighteenth Infantry, the children told me, was their first teacher. The opening of the schools was a great surprise to the Filipinos, who were clever enough to appreciate the national standards which the act implied. At the time of my arrival the foregoing facts were, in the rush of events, almost ancient history.

As the crew of the cutter was entirely composed of Tagalogs and Visayans, from the northern Philippines, who, being Christians, regard the Mohammedan Moro with contempt, not unmixed with fear, when I called for side-boys to line the starboard rail when his Highness came aboard, there were distinctly mutinous mutterings.