18 THE SUBANU. 
Placing the wandering Christians, Moros, and Pagans permanently 
upon homesteads by the government will do more to civilize them and 
add to their prosperity and that of the government than any other 
measure that can be undertaken for the development of these dependent 
people. The best method for this work requires most careful study and 
due consideration of all of the factors entering into the solution of the 
problem—such, for example, are the tribal relations, tribal customs, 
religious peculiarities, prescriptive land titles, acquired rights, surrender 
of weapons and interdiction of their use, the improvement of trails, the 
establishment of government exchanges and trading stores, the opera- 
tion of model tribal ward farms, and the harmonizing of all differences 
between the hill people and the coast dwellers or shore people. 
The dependent peoples of the various Moro and Pagan tribes are 
wards of the government and must receive instruction and supervision 
carried out by government officials in the most faithful and patient 
manner. They must be taught the advantages of a permanent home, 
the benefits to be derived from the legal possession of land, its proper 
cultivation, the maintenance and education of a family, the making of 
an honest living, respect for the rights of others, and obedience to the 
law. As these people must be developed along industrial lines, even 
before school training is provided for to any considerable extent, it is 
imperative that the government devise ways and means for promoting 
and maintaining agriculture, trade, and commerce among them, thus 
bringing their labor and the products of their labor to the markets of 
the world. To this end the writer has great faith in the exchanges, 
trading stores, and tribal ward farms organized by himin 1904 and 1906, 
while governor of the District of Zamboanga. 
The Subanu cultivate principally mountain rice, corn, camote, 
and tobacco. Next to rice their main dependence for food is upon the 
camote (sweet potato or yam). ‘Iwo other tubers or esculent roots 
are grown for food, known as gabi (gabe) and ubi (ube).* Both are 
cultivated like the potato and must be thoroughly boiled in order to 
destroy their poisonous constituent before being used for food. ‘The 
camote, gabi, and ubi are also made into preserves and sweetmeats; 
they are roasted as well as boiled. Gabi and ub: throw up stalks with 
large leaves, while the native camote produces a running vine that 
*Lack of botanical identification of these vegetables is quite sufficient complication in 
itself; the confusion is increased by the doubtful English names of camote. ‘The yam is 
properly one of several species of Dioscorea, the sweet potato Batatas edulis; the two articles 
of food are in no likelihood of being confused. But in the United States, more particularly 
in the South, yam is frequently applied to the sweet potato. I infer that here we are under 
the influence of this dialectic usage. The camote, so far as the philological record may 
instruct us, isclearly Batatas. ‘The name was transported by the galleons from Acapulco to 
Manila, for it is the Aztec camoil ibericized; the possibility that in yet more distant and 
far less readily comprehensible transport camoil of Mexico has become kumara of Polynesia 
is attractive but wide of the present inquiry. ‘The true Dioscorea yam is here identifiable 
as ubi, the Polynesian ufi. The gabi of this text is undoubtedly the Polynesian kape, the 
bitter giant taro, Colocasia.—W. C. 
