way in the matter.  The system of communications, so well begun and already so productive of happy results, would come to an end.  To turn the destiny of the highlander over to the lowlander is, figuratively speaking, simply to write his sentence of death; to condemn as fair a land as the sun shines on to renewed barbarism.  We are shut up to this conclusion, not by theoretical considerations, but by experience.  The matter is worth examining a little closely, covering, as it does, not only the hill tribes, but non-Christians everywhere else.

Certain persons have demanded from time to time that the control of non-Christian tribes shall be turned over to the Filipinos.  Now, pointing out in passing that the Filipinos and the non-Christians are distinct peoples, fully as distinct as the Dutch and the Germans, and that the Filipinos have no just claim to the ownership of the territory occupied by the wild men, let us ask ourselves if the Filipinos are able and fit to control the non-Christian tribes. [48]

Consider for a moment the facts set out in the following extracts: 

“With rare exceptions, the Filipinos are profoundly ignorant of the wild men and their ways.  They seem to have failed to grasp the fact that the non-Christians, who have been contemptuously referred to in the Filipino press as a ’few thousand savages asking only to be let alone,’ number approximately a million and constitute a full eighth of the population of the Archipelago.”

“The average hillman hates the Filipinos on account of the abuses which his people have suffered at their hands, and despises them because of their inferior physical development and their comparatively peaceful disposition, while the average Filipino who has ever come in close contact with wild men despises them on account of their low social development, and, in the case of the more warlike tribes, fears them because of their past record for taking sudden and bloody vengeance for real or fancied wrongs.”

“It is impossible to avoid plain speaking if this question is to be intelligently discussed; and the hard fact is, that wherever the Filipinos have come in close contact with the non-Christian inhabitants, the latter have almost invariably suffered at their hands grave wrongs, which the more warlike tribes, at least, have been quick to avenge.  Thus a wall of prejudice and hatred has been built up between the Filipinos and the non-Christian tribes.  It is a noteworthy fact that hostile feeling toward the Filipinos is strong even among people like the Tinguians who, barring their religious beliefs, are in many ways as highly civilized as are their Ilocano neighbors,”

“The success of American rule over the non-Christian tribes of the Philippines is chiefly due to the friendly feeling which has been brought about.”

“The wild man has now learned for the first time that he has rights entitled to a respect other than that which he can enforce with his lance and his head-axe.  He has found justice in the courts.  His property and his life have been made safe, and the American governor, who punishes him sternly when he kills, is his friend and protector so long as he behaves himself.”