Let us consider
the facts.
In all countries feuds between highlanders and lowlanders have been
common. Although the inhabitants of the hills and those of the lowlands
in the two islands under discussion are probably of identical blood
and origin, they long since became separated in thought and feeling,
and grew to be mutually antagonistic. The ignorant people of the
interior have always been oppressed by their supposedly more highly
civilized brethren living on or near the coast.
The killing of Otoy by the constabulary in 1911 marked
the passing of the last of a series of mountain chiefs who
had exercised a very powerful influence over the hill people
and had claimed for themselves supernatural powers.
Manila hemp is the principal product upon which these mountaineers
depend in bartering for cloth and other supplies. The cleaning of
hemp involves very severe exertion, and when it is cleaned it must
usually, in Samar, be carried to the seashore on the backs of the
men who raise it. Under the most favourable circumstances, it may be
transported thither in small _bancas_ [494] down the streams.
The lowland people of Samar and Leyte had long been holding up the
hill people when they brought in their hemp for sale in precisely the
way that Filipinos in other islands are accustomed to hold up members
of the non-Christian tribes.
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