The Igorot struggle for independence: William Henry Scott.

blockades of trees and branches in mountain passes where
they could roll down big stones and treetrunks. They often pretended to retreat until the invaders lowered their guard, or even
pretended -to surrender and then wiped out the supposed victors
by ambush on their way home. More especially, they tried to
keep all their trails and villages secret, and killed their fellow
Igorots who acted as guides for the enemy. A Spanish friar in 1789
wrote: "Those who come down to trade in the lowlands are only
men or chieftains in whom they have confidence, never women or
children or slaves. If you ask them for information about their
land or mines, they just act dumb, and if they say anything at all,
it is just lies or nonsense, and only leaves you all the more
confused."
But whether the Igorots were better fighters than the
Spaniards or not does not answer the question why they remained
independent and their. lowland brother submitted to Spanish
conquest-because the Spaniards were always so few in number the
lowlanders could surely have overcome them if they really tried to
do so. Between 1572 and 1872, the Filipino population paying
tribute increased from 500,000 to 5 million-yet there were never
more than 2,000 Spanish soldiers in the.whole archipelago! Jose
Rizal explained this phenomenon by saying, "The people were
accustomed to bondage and would not defend themselves against
the invader and would not fight-for them, it was just a change of
masters." 'And Professor Teodoro Agoncillo said it was because
the' natives would blindly follow anything the friars, their spiritual
advisers, told them to do. Certainly this was not true of the
Igorots. They were satisfied with their form of government, and
they were satisfied with their kind of religion.
The pagans of Tonglo, for example, told the idol-smashing
friar who came to convert them, "It's no easier for the people
to give up their ancient practices for the word of a priest,
than for him to give up what he believes." And their pagan
priestess told him, "If you're the priest of the Christians, so
am I of the- Igorots, and if you have your God, I have mine." In
1857, a Spanish priest in Ifugao told the following story: "When I
was in Bunhian, I wanted to catechize a 12-year-old-boy who
was very ill, in order to baptize him. But when I told him

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