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
Credit for this happy result is chiefly due to the efforts of Jeff
D. Gallman, who speedily rose to be a captain in the constabulary and
at an early date was made lieutenant-governor of Ifugao. He has done
a monumental work for civilization in the Philippines.
The Kalinga country was at the outset administered as a
part of Bontoc. This made that subprovince so large that one
lieutenant-governor could not hope satisfactorily to cover it,
especially as there were no good lines of communication. Although a
constabulary garrison was early stationed at the town of Lubuagan,
comparatively little progress was made in bringing the Kalingas under
effective control until their territory was made a separate subprovince
of the Mountain Province and Lieutenant-Governor Walter F. Hale,
of Amburayan, was transferred to it as its lieutenant-governor.
Lieutenant-Governor Hale has now been in the special government
service longer than any other man who remains in it, and has an
admirable record for quiet efficiency. Like Gallman, he is a man with
chilled-steel nerve, and he needed it in the early days in Kalinga
where the people, who had been allowed to run wild too long, did not
take as kindly to the establishment of governmental control as had
the Bontoc Igorots and the Ifugaos. The Kalingas are a fine lot of
head-hunting savages, physically magnificently developed, mentally
acute, but naturally very wild. Hale soon made friends with many of
the local chiefs, and thereafter when he received invitations from
outlying rancherias to come over and have his head taken would quietly
accept to the extent of setting out accompanied by a few soldiers,
or none at all, and talking the matter over with the people who had
made the threat! In the end they always decided that he was too good
a man to kill.
Here, as in Ifugao, we felt our way, avoiding trouble with hostile
settlements as long as it was possible to do so. And here, as in
Bontoc and Ifugao, head-hunting was abolished and law and order
were established practically without killing. In a few instances
settlements which absolutely refused to come into the fold, and
persisted in raiding and killing in the territory of people who
had already become friendly, were given severe lessons, which they
invariably took in good part.
One of the pleasant things about dealing with people like the Kalingas
and the Ifugaos is their manliness when they fight. They let one know,
so plainly that there can be no mistake about it, whether they are
friendly or hostile, and even if thoroughly whipped they bear no ill
will provided they know that they deserve a whipping, but come calmly
walking into camp to tell you that they have had enough and are going
to be good. And they keep their promises.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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