284 NOTES ON SOME PRIMITIVE PHILIPPINE TRIBES 



infused with the. more modern ideas and methods of the Church 

 in Europe and America. 



Education is much neglected. Both the institutions for higher 

 education and primary schools are antiquated in their methods 

 and altogether behind the times, and although in nearly every 

 town and village that is under the control of the government a 

 school may be found, neither the quanthty nor qualit}^ of the 

 instruction it imparts is satisfactory. 



NOTES ON SOME PRIMITIVE PHILIPPINE TRIBES 



By Dean C. Worcester, 



University of Michigan 



Should the Philippine islands become a permanent possession 

 of the United States or of any other civilized nation, the prob- 

 lem of giving them good government and of developing their 

 enormous latent resources will be by no means a simple one, al- 

 though it will, in my judgment, be one that will richly repay 

 successful solution. Spain has never seriously attempted to 

 solve it. From the time of its discovery until now the archi- 

 pelago has been one vast plundering ground for her hungry 

 officials. She has conquered so far as greed of gain made con- 

 quest desirable or safet} r demanded it, but there she has stopped. 



Although it is 377 years since Magellan discovered the Philip- 

 pines and 334 years since Legaspi began his active campaign 

 against the islanders, there still remain in the great islands Lu- 

 zon and Mindanao, as well as in Palawan, Mindoro, and the 

 highlands of Negros and Panay, tribes which are as independent 

 of Spain as they were when the eyes of the famous discoverer 

 of the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific first rested on the 

 mountain peaks of Mindanao. 



It was primarily in search of rare or new birds and mammals 

 that I visited the Philippines, and as that necessarily took me 

 into the wildest and least explored islands, I was repeatedly 

 thrown in contact with representatives of these slightly civilized 

 or wholly savage tribes. While it would be idle to attempt to 

 give within the limits of the present article any comprehensive 

 account of even those savage peoples among whom I and my 

 companions actual^ lived, brief notes concerning the more im- 



