The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-02-11

Copyright, 1912, by Frank c. Carpenter)
 Washington, D. C. TdAVE entitled this letter Uncle Sam,
 Civilizer II deals with the wild tribes ! of the Philippine Islands and shows what we have done with them after l3 years of civil and military rule. The work so far has been that of our gov ernment, but the Filipinos would like to have a hand in it. Some of them are now attempting to make 1t a political is- sue and to have these saVages ruled by the native assembly at Manila But Cn- cle sam knows better. .EIe questions whether the Filipinos are able even to govern themselves. and the civilization of the wild men will be continued by the national government
 One Million Semi-Savages
 As it is now, fully one-eighth of the population of the Philippines is semi-sav- age. The people have been counted by our census enumerators and we find something like seven hundred thousand whc rank from the lowest stage of bar barism. as shown by the Negrito pig mics. up to the Igorrots and Ifugaos of Northern Luzon. who have irrigated rice fields. villages with public buildings and other things showing a considerable de- gree of civilization. We have also 100000 Moros who are sort of degraded Mo-
 
 later on.
 Let us first take the wild men outside the Moros. They are scattered all over the islands: they infest the mountainous districts, and vast tracts of country are devoted entirely to them. Some of them are head hunters, many have been slaves 9nd not a few are as savage as the poorest and meanest negro of the wilds of the Congo
 saw great many of these people during my stay in the Philippines. The little black pgmies peeped out from be" hind rocks at me as l rode through the mountains and away down in southwest ern Mndanao l had chance to buy a black slave girl for s15 She was an Aeta F years old, and she only reached 10 my shoulders. She was half naked, and I could see that she was as plump as a partridge, twithstanding her size.
 Among the Bagobas
 In that same region I was shown men belonging to tribes where one could not marry until he had killed human being These were the Bagobas. and as- sociated with them were the Guingas, a class of special murdefers appointed by the chiefs They had the right 10 wear d turban which looked for all the world like a red bandana handkerchief. The turban was license to kill and one of the wearers told me he had 20 heads to his credit.
 The Bagobas file their teeth and black en them. They are polygamists. and formerly beld human sacrifices on the slopes of Mount Apo the great volcano not far from Davao. I was told that they prayed to the mountains, and their eN- act methods of sacrificing humans to II were shown. They were very revenge ful and carried on vendetta from gen eration to generation, lancing or spearing their. enemies on sight.
 l have just gotten report from that part of the Philippines. Ii is from Maj. Henry Gilsheuser. the governor of the pavao district. He says that the Ba- pohas have stopped murderng their fel- lows and are taking to farming. Many of them have beer brought together iTl villages, where they have schools with regular teachers. In other places the wild boys arc taught by the scouts and