THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION 55 
In a broader view, the foregoing nationalities are 
remarkably alike. There are towns, roads, and per- 
manently cultivated fields in their territories, settled 
administration, schools, and devout’ adherence to 
Catholicism. Slavery has long gone out of use in form, 
but peonage, its economic substitute, prevails in many 
districts. The poor become the debtors and dependents 
of the rich man. The men wear trousers and shirts; 
the women gowns of cotton, or where they can afford 
the expense, of beautiful textiles woven of pineapple 
fiber with or without silk. The amusements are church 
festivals, cock fighting, and gambling. 
Much the greater part of the regions now Christian 
was subdued by the Spaniards within a few years. 
The land and natives were parcelled out into encomien- 
das, some of which went to the king or the church, but 
the majority to soldiers in the subjugating army. These 
men practically became feudal barons to whom the 
natives of their district paid tribute. A list of encomien- 
das and tributes made out in 1591, only twenty-five 
years after the Spaniards began their conquest, shows a 
large number of settlements which have persisted under 
the same name to the present time. The population 
was much smaller than now; but the nationalities were 
distributed substantially as at present, and with their 
relative strength approximating more closely to modern 
conditions than might be expected. 
1591 1916 
Bisaya 168,000 3,977,000 
Tagalog 124,000 1,789,000 
llokano 75,000 989,000 
Bikol 77,000 685,000 
Pangasinan (only partly reduced) 24,000 381,000 
Pampanga 75,000 337,000 
Cagayan (perhaps overestimated, and including 
Gaddang, etc.) 96,000 156,000 

