General Dorey Leaves-Last of Mohicans!.pdf

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extracted text: October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 11 Farther with Franciscans in Samar (Continued from pa¿e 9) and plaza, then levying and collecting taxes for the carrying on of local government and the support of the crown government in Manila. Father Huerta describes Borongan as surrounded by fertile lands; Fr. Juan Navarrete introduced there the cultivation of Manila hemp, “all the products of this pueblo were doubled and tripled under the zealous direction of the oft-mentioned Navarrete.” Pavanas. This pueblo when taken over by the Franciscans from the Jesuits in 1768 had 310 tributos and a population of 985. The stone church which the Jesuits had built, under the advocacy of St. Peter and St. Paul, burned down, and a second built by the Franciscans met the same fate in 1835, but Fr. Leon de Tembleque built a third one which is no doubt that still in use. The terrain is fertile, the bordering mountains on the one side and the sea on the other abounding in products more than sufficient for the community. Laoang. “The first founders of this pueblo, about the year 1680, were three principales, headmen, of the pueblo of Palapat, Kahundik, General Dorey Leaves—Last of Mohicans! Brigadier General Halstead Dorey, U.S.A., left Manila, September 20, to return to the United States and assume command of the army divi sion which has its headquarters at San Antonio, Texas. Some of the newspapers honored his departure with stories on his army career; the Journal will not repeat the data recorded in Who’s Who in America, but will endeavor to furnish its readers with some of the more salient facts involved in America’s administration of Mohammedans in the Philippines—this being the work to which Dorey was devoted when first associated with Leonard Wood in Mindanao and Sulu in 1904 and thereafter for some years, and later, from 1925 to the time of Wood’s departure from Manila in the spring of 1927, when Wood was governor of the Philippines and Dorey was his chief adviser, handling Mohammedan affairs particularly. Dorey was absent from the islands during most of the time Vice Governor Eugene A. Gil more was acting governor, but returned to Manila to hold the same post under Stimson (and for three months under Davis) that he held under General Wood. His departure from Manila in September leaves no old-timer at Malacañang whose experience carries back through the whole period of America’s sovereignty over the Mohammedans of the Philippines. No capable lieutenant is left behind: Dorey, in Mohammedan affairs, is the last of the Mohicans, to overstrain a familiar allusion; and he is probably not to return to the Philippines. Governor Davis’s direct reliance will be, it would seem, Ludovico Hidrosollo, director of the nonchristian-tribes bureau created by pro vision of the islands’ organic act of 1916, the Jones law. This young man, first of the young Fihx :nos Taft pensioned to America for college trainmj is naturally very ambitious for con tinued success in his career, guided heretofore in measurable part by the counsel of American friends, Dorey being the last, who had first hand knowledge of our Mohammedan wards and, in most cases, a decided sympathy with them. Hidrosollo’s task is not an easy one, since it involves, by policy of the government, eventual abandonment of Mohammedan custo mary law and its entire substitution by the civil and criminal codes of the Philippines. In other words, it is the aim of the govern ment to leave the Mohammedans alone only in their religion; and even in the field of faith the proselyter will of course pursue his missionary labors under the protection of the law. This is no new thing, it began when the American regime began; the government feels that with the education of Mohammedans up to the point where they can scrawl their names upon notesof-hand and bills-of-sale, and the names of candi dates upon election ballots, transition from tribal practices to the formal legal instruments of Christian civilization will be the next and quite a natural step. And, rather unfortunately, sometimes, the Mohammedan has much the Surahan and Anodanod, who kept the pueblo in subjection to Palapat until 1768, at which time and as soon as we received the adminis tration of Samar from the Jesuits, the town was separated from Palapat and Fr. Antonio de Toledo was assigned there as the first parish priest.” The archangel St. Michael is the patron saint; the church, stone and timber, was built during the period from 1848 to 1852 by Fr. Sebastian de Almonacid, “who at the same time directed the construction of a town hall, tribunal, of stone and timber, and another build ing of the same sort where a primary school supported by the community fund is establish ed. . . The lands cultivated, fertilized by a multitude of small streams, produces much rice, tobacco, Manila hemp, coconuts and palms. The people are devoted to farming, producing hemp, coconut oil and nipa-palm wine, this palm abounding in the vicinity. Cattle raising and fishing are other industries.” The women, in Father Huerta’s time, were diligent weavers of native cloths which they sold in Catbalogan, while the rice not needed at home was sold in Albav. Cal viga is the next Samar town in the Fran ciscan list. Our next journey commences there. same feeling—that he is being led on to commit ments of whose consequences he is not fully aware. This is not to suggest insincerity, the govern ment seems very sincere in what it does; and it may be granted that it always has been. Some criticism adhered to the speed with which Frank W. Carpenter, succeeding Pershing in 1914 as Mindanao-Sulu governor, h.urried the process along; but the record indicates only a difference Bulletin Photo Halstead Dorey of degree in what he did and what the others did before him—Bates, Wood, Pershing. However much any of these governors wished to respect the Mohammedan people’s laws and customs, it must have been very hard to follow that which they did not know; the tendency was, and is, to follow what is known—our own laws. Nevertheless, Dorey witnessed a tremendous change during the 25 years he knew our Moham medans. When he went to join Wood, first Mindanao-Sulu governor, at Zamboanga in 1904, the Philippine Commission had just created that province and provided a legislative council, Wood at the head of it, to enact laws conforming as nearly as possible to the lawful customs of such peoples and leaving the chiefs the same authority over their people as they now exercise. The organic law even provided that the customary laws be codified, printed in dialect and Arabic as well as in English, and made applicable to all civil and criminal cases involving Mohammedan litigants only. There were five districts, each under an American governor, and the governors settled disputes between chiefs and had the power of enforcing their decisions upon such differences. Some remnant of this remains, justices of the peace are expected to have recourse to the customary law where its application is plainly indicated and would not conflict with what we have from Justinian. The original arrangement seems to have been very liberal, as is said, but it was in fact a drawing away from the Bates treaty (with the Sultan of Sulu) and really looked toward what has follow ed. The Mohammedans had not kept public order as the treaty pledged them to do, Congress had balked at slavery and had never ratified the treaty, and the President was considered absolved from executive observance of the treaty because the other party had failed of compliance. The treaty recognized the sultan’s civil and religious sovereignty over his people, and we see that the Mindanao-Sulu act placed civil power in the new government it created and aggrand ized local chiefs. Wood had everything to organize, of course, in 1904. Taft had a solid foundation upon which to erect modern administration in the other parts of the archipelago. It is not intended as a reflection upon what Taft did to say that Wood made his own foundations and patiently built upon them, gaining the confidence of the Mohammedans as Taft did that of the Christians; and it was upon Wood’s reports that the Phil ippine Commission depended in drafting the organic law for Mindanao-Sulu, the Moham medan province. These are proud memories for Dorey, devoted as he is to Leonard Wood’s patriotic achievements. For he was there helping his general, such being his invariable allusion to the comrade in civil and military duties whom he loved, as a son might love a father, and admired as a hero. Few men have ever endured more inconsolable grief than Dorey still endures over the death of Leonard Wood. But however benevolent the paternal government of the Mohammedans Wood advised, it long ago succumbed to the nationalism that pervades the land, and, therefore, to the policy, as already intimated, which made provision for it as an expedient. One of the most rational devices was the tribal wards, with ward courts on which the peers of the lit igants sat as assessors and authorities on the customary law. The wards have since become municipal districts, and the tribunals courts of justices of the peace—mostly Christian im migrants. The five districts are now provinces, Davao, Cotabato, Lanao, Sulu, and Zamboanga; four of them enjoy all the paraphernalia of democ racy, they are organized under the general provincial-government act. Only Sulu has an appointed American governor, the one now in office, pending confirmation of his appointment by the Philippine senate, being James R. Fugate, a Dorey selection, of whom reports are good. The Mohammedans were disarmed in 1911, by Pershing; the outlawry prevalent theretofore has since abated perceptibly, but is not entirely a thing of the past and heavy detachments of the Philippine constabulary are always on duty in Mindanao-Sulu. In Zamboanga, at Petit Barracks, a memento of old times, there is a garrison of Federal scouts, Filipino soldiers. The commander, Colonel Fletcher, is at this writing gravely ill in Sternberg hospital in Manila. On his sick bed Dorey had to bid him good-bye. The old order changes. “The Philippine government,” says one of Hidrosollo’s reports, “as well as the Filipino people is greatly indebted to the work of pacifica tion undertaken by the (American) military authorities with no less great sacrifice of life. This pacification which immediately followed the general disarmament (in 1911) undoubtedly paved the way for the implantation of civil government.” Lanao and Sulu were the most recalcitrant provinces; in Lanao the Moham medans are frugal, conservative, illiterate farmers, and in Sulu they are the immediate descendants of pirates and tribute-demanding headmen. With the abolition of the department has come a change in fiscal arrangements. The depart ment used to have all the local revenue and the 12 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 disposition of it, including the port collections. It was very little, but wonders were done with it. The prison building on San Ramon penal reservation, outside Zamboanga, was built of reinforced concrete for P 153,495.10; municipal markets were built for P6,000 each in most cases, either of concrete or hardwood. Now, for their major appropriations, the provinces take their chances in the general insular budget. Hence the current discussion concerning a Mindanao program; some legislators would be liberal in making the jungle accessible to settlers, others say the settlers should be there before the roads are built—to justify the expense. There is indecision, as in all things deliberated over by unwieldy bodies of men, but Mindanao and Sulu progress in the material sense anyway— on the stimulus of their commerce overseas. Procrastination may retard but cannot wholly stop Mindanao-Sulu progress. Out of the schools which Wood inaugurated has come the best system of rural schools, perhaps, in all the Philippines; there appear to be about 100 farm and settlement schools where peasant boys ply the hoe in the corn row part of the day and bend over the three r’s the remainder, these schools producing crops which help maintain them. Davao teems with industry, because of the American pioneers Wood encouraged to settle there and take up plantations on the slopes of Bud Apo, skirting the gulf. They have been followed by Japanese, who have imitated them in the cultivation of Manila hemp and coconuts. Now a modern experiment is being tried, an American corporation is turning a tract of nine square miles into a business unit as a hemp farm, building roads, providing drainage, choosing and cultivating the hemp carefully, and finally stripping, drying and baling it by machinery for overseas shipment. The Japanese have another economical unit devoted to hemp and coconuts, and word comes to Manila that they are install ing a paper mill depending upon the waste hemp for its raw material. A kutch factory and a coconut factory operate at Zamboanga, lumbering enterprises are mány, rubber is the prime crop on Basilan island. Dorey wonders about his oldtime friends, the Mohammedans. But they clamor for more schools, roads and bridges and if these are forth coming the chances are that they will reconcile themselves, even to such things as law codes and justices of the peace, and become diligent husbandmen. For a long time, though, it will be contended by some that the Mohammedans are one with the Christian people of the Phil ippines, and by others, who are not zealots of a cause, that they are a people culturally distinct from the rest. In March, 1915, Carpenter got the sultan to renounce in writing, duly witnessed, his preten sions to temporal sovereignty, and to recognize that of the United States. During Dorey’s last year here there were occasions when Moham medans came to him murmuring, even threaten ing to take matters into their own hands, alleging mistreatment. “But Leonard Wood would not want you to do that,” Dorey would say, “it would displease him.” And with their belief in the undying soul that beholds the conduct of the living, something they do not have from Mohammedanism, but from Buddhism perhaps, this would quiet them and off they would go— back to Mindanao to face it out. Two More Philippine Poems by Gilbert S. Perez Pokeresque Moonlight off Corregidor, And in the distance The towering heights Of Mari veles. On the holystoned table A lone pack of Crimson angel-backs And a saucer Of pearl white beans: Beans At a penny apiece. Morning off the Romblon coast, And the creaking Of chairs on deck; The glare of the sunlit Sea; Close eyes that are Sleepless and weary: Beans At five for a peso. Evening off the barren hills Of old Cebu; Cigarettes in ash laden Saucers, And the steady shuffle Of card on card: Beans At a peso ¿apiece. Dawn off the coast Of Mindanao, And rows of cots On deck; The slow steady grind Of the engine; A lone light, Red eyes, Grim, drawn faces: No beans—• And the sky the limit. —Gilbert S. Perez. Old-timer Huddled about his aching feet lie the lotus years Yellow and sear like autumn leaves in the forest; His weather-worn face—so old and so furrowed With the grim interlacings of pitiless time—• Smiles at the touch of little saffron hands, Baby fingers and tiny petaled hands That clasp his own in the thickening tropical twilight. I’m tired, grandpa, let’s go home. —Gilbert S. Perez. OVER YEARS tire building experience is behind every DIJNIOP tire you buy DUNLOP quality is built on this unrivaled experience, and today, Dunlop research ensures constant progress. Every possible improve ment is embodied in Dunlop Tires. Make them your choice always. 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Date: 1929
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