The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
History
The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)
Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
Philippines; Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946
Baj-ál. This is the name given to orphan children who have been
formally taken in charge by some well-to-do Ifugao and who are unable
to support themselves. The Baj-ál is a tentative Nij-cóp, for if he
turns out to be bright and industrious, he may become a member of
the family and acquire property rights.
Ta-gá-la. This is the name applied to servants who receive regular
compensation.
It is a matter of common knowledge throughout the sub-province that
there are living to-day in Isabela hundreds of Ifugaos who have been
sold to Filipinos as slaves.
In Nueva Vizcaya it has been possible to deal with the more flagrant
cases since the passage by the commission of the law above referred
to, but the commission is powerless to pass a law effective in Isabela.
The holders of slaves now seek to evade the law by nominally hiring
them at a monthly salary which is not paid. The promulgation of Act
No. 2071 prohibiting and penalizing slavery enabled Lieutenant-Governor
Jeff D. Gallman of Ifugao to liberate some forty boys and girls held
by Filipinos in Nueva Vizcaya. In no single case, however, could it
be proved that the child had been sold. The persons who held them
testified in each instance that they were "hired servants."
When they learned of the provisions of the above-mentioned act they
were easily prevailed upon to pay "salaries" long overdue to their
"servants" and the latter were allowed to return to their homes.
It was found that some of the persons originally sold into slavery in
Nueva Vizcaya had run away from their masters and become vagabonds. Few
really wanted to return to their parents, whose language in many
cases they had almost forgotten.
I wish this were the worst, but the worst is yet to come. Not only
do the Filipinos buy, sell and hold the wild people as slaves, but
Filipino children have been kidnapped, or enticed from their homes, by
other Filipinos, and sold as slaves to their own kind. Young girls have
been sold outright to Chinese who purchased and kept them for immoral
purposes. They have been sold to panderers and keepers of houses of
prostitution and compelled to enter upon lives of shame. Filipino
children and young women have been sold to Chinese who have taken them
to China. God only knows what fate may have befallen them there. In
such cases the victims disappear from these islands, never to return.
Some slaves are well treated. Others are half starved, brutally beaten,
injured or even killed. The Manobos and Manadayas of Agusan and
Surigao, and the Bagobos of the Moro Province, have been accustomed
to sacrifice slaves to appease their heathen deities. The Manobos
on occasion even have their boys take lances and try the effect of
different thrusts on slaves tied to trees or posts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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