The Lost Tribe of Coney Island

by Claire Prentice

  The party would leave first thing in the morning in two days’ time. Anyone not waiting outside Truman’s hut shortly after sunrise would find his or her place had been given to someone else. They were to take only what they needed. They had a long journey ahead, including several hundred miles on foot, and they couldn’t be weighed down by unnecessary baggage. The rejected candidates were each given two pesos and a bag of rice to last them on the walk home. But many of them were not willing to give up that easily. That night they bedded down outside Truman’s hut, in the hope of persuading him to reconsider, or slipping unnoticed into his selected group before the time came to leave.

  With the recruiting complete, Truman insisted that his favorite Filipino join him in his hut to smoke a cigar. Maybe he’d even tempt the good-natured Julio to drink a little bá-si. The natives typically only drank the potent local sugarcane spirit at weddings. Truman took a seat at his desk and invited Julio to do the same. He congratulated his assistant on his good work and handed him a cigar. The American struck a match and held it out across the desk. Julio leaned in for a light. He sucked the end of the cigar before exhaling the rich smoke. It tasted sweet and strange in his mouth. In this corner of the Philippines only the Americans smoked cigars; the tribespeople packed locally grown tobacco into clay, wood, and metal pipes, which they typically began to smoke around the age of six, boys and girls alike.

  Without asking, Truman poured out two cups of bá-si and handed one to Julio. To the Igorrote Exhibit Company, said Truman, holding up his cup. Julio lifted his drink and joined Truman in the toast. The interpreter wasn’t accustomed to drinking liquor and the cane spirit burned the back of his throat.

  2

  First Steps

  BONTOC PUEBLO, MARCH 1905

  Approach to the Bridge of Spain in the New Town, Manila, 1899

  THE SUN WAS just beginning to rise and the air was cool as Julio got up and dressed. Outside his hut the atmosphere was festive and filled with expectation as the tribespeople packed up their belongings and gathered together to breakfast on rice and camotes, a local sweet potato. Julio picked up the gold watch he had bought in St. Louis and carried proudly every day since. The Igorrotes used the position of the sun to tell the time, but the interpreter preferred to be more precise. It was a quarter after six. He slipped the watch into his pocket and went to join the others, leaving his wife, Maria, sleeping in their hut.

  Some of the Igorrotes had returned to their homes the previous day to say their farewells and gather a few things. Others lived too far away or had chosen not to go home for fear their families would try to persuade them not to go to America. As they breakfasted, they chatted animatedly about the adventure ahead of them. Their conversation woke Maria, who lay for a while listening. She hated the idea of leaving her family behind, but before she had time to wallow, she heard Julio shouting to get everyone’s attention.

  Maria draped a blanket around her shoulders. As she stepped outside, Julio looked over and smiled. She smiled back at him affectionately. Julio was holding Truman’s list and had begun to call out each name in turn, just as the teachers had done in his Augustinian mission school. He ticked off the names of those who were there, then sent Friday and Tainan off to round up the others. Ed Callahan, Truman’s American right-hand man, emerged from a tent nearby and stood for a few moments watching as the interpreter handed out pieces of paper, which he explained were contracts. By signing them the Igorrotes were agreeing to go to America with Truman and to be part of a Filipino exhibit there for a period of one year. They would dance, sing, weave, perform mock battles, and give other tribal displays. They would earn fifteen dollars a month each plus tips and whatever they earned selling their handmade jewelry, pipes, and other souvenirs. When the year was up, Truman would arrange and pay for their return transport to the Philippines. Given that the tribespeople couldn’t read the English words on the contracts, let alone write their own names, Julio realized asking them to sign the documents was a pointless exercise, but he did as Truman had instructed him to do. Most of the Igorrotes scratched a cross; others made a scribble.

  Julio looked around at their piles of possessions, which were spread out on the ground. There were gongs, shields, spears, baskets, hand-woven clothing, and blankets. A few had brought head-hunting axes. They knew they wouldn’t be able to use them in their new home, but Truman had told them to bring them along to show the American people.

  Inside his hut Truman washed down his breakfast of eggs with a cup of hot, sweet coffee. Then he picked up his hat and walked outside to join his new employees. The first challenge was to get the Igorrotes 250 miles south to Manila, where he expected to find a telegram and a sum of money from his backer and business partner, Edmund Felder. There was no railroad in the region. They could walk to the west coast and take a boat, but Truman decided they would make the journey on foot. He called Julio and Callahan over and told them he was counting on them to make sure all the Igorrotes stayed together and on the right path. Julio nodded and, noticing Tainan and Friday appearing through a clearing with the final few members of the group, he informed Truman that they were ready to leave. Truman handed Julio a crudely drawn map showing him the route he should take, avoiding the major towns. It would take them longer that way, but Julio knew better than to argue. Truman told them to set off immediately. He would bring up the rear.

  Insects buzzed around the group as they walked, the sun beating down on the Igorrotes’ naked skin. A ragtag trail of volunteers who had been rejected by Truman followed behind, begging to be allowed to go too. Julio told them they were wasting their time, but his advice fell on deaf ears. Truman laughed at first. But as their pleas became more incessant and the sun got hotter, he grew annoyed. He turned around and shouted at them to go home. Many did. The more persistent ones walked on at a safe distance, hoping to replace any Igorrote who fell by the wayside or had a change of heart.

  All day, the group trudged through the harsh yet beautiful landscape of jagged pine-covered peaks, described by the earlier Spanish rulers as La Montañosa. High in the mountains the temperature was cool and pleasant, but in the valleys the heat was punishing. One of the men at the back of the group suddenly came to a stop and began to sway. Truman rushed over and, as the man stumbled to the ground, he noticed it was Falino, the tribal elder. A crowd gathered round. Truman shouted to them to stand back and give Falino some air. He is suffering from heat exhaustion. He will be fine. When Falino came around, Truman lifted a cup of water to his lips and told him to drink. He shouted to two of the young men standing nearby to help him move the sick man under the trees so that he could rest in the shade until he felt strong again. They could all take a break. The tribespeople were glad of the opportunity to rest. The trek was hard going even for their muscular limbs.

  Truman sat with Falino while the others smoked. He took the old man’s pulse and asked how he was feeling. Only when he was certain Falino was fine did Truman signal to Julio that it was time to get going again. They walked on and on for days. There were no roads, just thin paths leading through the forests, which were crisscrossed by thorn-covered creepers.1 The strongest men carried sacks on their backs filled with rice, beans, and other provisions. When they had to ford a river, the Igorrotes held hands to keep each other upright. Julio and an imposing man named Fomoaley Ponci walked at the head of the group. Before they set out, Truman had instructed the tribe to elect a leader. They didn’t understand why. Their communities were non-hierarchical, with no chiefs,2 but they did as Truman said and chose Fomoaley. He was popular, outgoing, looked to be in his thirties (he didn’t know how many years he’d been alive), and he had many heads to his credit. At around five foot six, Fomoaley was tall by Igorrote standards, most of the men being little more than five foot and the women a few inches shorter still. While the Igorrotes were typically lean from laboring hard in the rice fields, Fomoaley was plump. He was taken with the idea of being the leader and began imperiously ordering his countrymen and wom
en around.

  Julio and Fomoaley were soon joined at the front of the group by Feloa, a self-assured and outspoken young tribesman. The Igorrote men were accustomed to picking their way through the mountains when they went on head-hunting expeditions, and they clambered barefoot down steep, rocky slopes with the agility of mountain goats, sending stones and dirt flying in all directions. Callahan walked a short distance behind them. The Filipinos didn’t care much for Truman’s American right-hand man. He was surly, sullen, and rarely spoke to them except to bark out instructions. Julio regarded Callahan as ignorant and ill educated, though he did his best not to show it.

  Truman walked at the back of the group feeling every one of his thirty-nine years. He and Callahan frequently “tangled themselves up in the creepers,” which “held them back as if they were big snakes” as they gingerly picked their way along the paths.3 The sight of them struggling amused the Filipinos. Once the light of the sun began to fade, Truman sent Friday and Tainan ahead to tell Julio to set up camp when they came to a suitable spot. Delighted to have an important job to do, the boys set off at full speed. Friday had brought his skinny pet dog and it followed in hot pursuit. The Negrito clutched a small pocket mirror in his hand as he ran. He’d been given it by a woman in St. Louis and it had become his most prized possession, after his dog.

  When Truman and the other stragglers arrived, Julio, Callahan, Feloa, and Fomoaley had already rigged up blankets between the trees to create a makeshift camp and had built fires. Everyone was weary and, after a supper of rice and beans, they bedded down early.

  This was the first time many of the Igorrotes had been apart from their families. Several lay awake under the night sky and wept for their loved ones. Others dreamed of the opportunities that lay ahead, the chance to earn real American money, of the things they would buy with it and the ways they would use it to build a better life for their families when they returned. Julio pictured himself as a successful businessman, living permanently in America with Maria and their growing family. It was a scenario he had played out in his head many times before.

  Encouraged by Truman, Friday and Tainan imagined going to school for the first time. They knew a little bit about education from Julio and the local boys who had attended the missionary schools. Friday curled up beside his dog and nuzzled his face into its matted fur as he drifted into sleep. Maria, who was lying nearby, glanced over at the boy. She loved him dearly. He had been orphaned and then sold by his own relatives to an American newspaperman named George Fuller who had established the Manila Freeman, one of the earliest American newspapers in Manila. Despite the hardship and sorrow Friday had known in his short life, the boy was sunny and irrepressible. He was also “straightforward and truthful and absolutely fearless” and seemed “to know instinctively when he is right, and when he is no one can drive him.”4 Friday had told Maria that Mr. Fuller was going to visit them in America over the summer.

  A short distance away, Truman lay under a canopy of netting. The tribespeople didn’t seem to be bothered by mosquitoes, but the blasted creatures were hungry day and night for his American blood. Soon his skin stung all over from their bites. Truman was not athletic and his limbs ached from the trek. He looked up at the sky and thought of his wife.5 She had been just seventeen, less than half his age, when they met in St. Louis the previous year. She was a girl just out of school, and she was named Sara.

  Like thousands of young women and men, Sara had traveled to St. Louis to find work and excitement at the fair. She had left her widowed father, her brother, and her five sisters behind in her childhood home in Louisville, Kentucky, in the hope of making a new life for herself. She would get her dream, though she could hardly have imagined how her life would turn out. Truman had given her a job as his stenographer in the Igorrote Village. They married a few short months later, just days before Truman left America for the Philippines. On her wedding day she took new Christian and middle names to go with her new surname. From now on Sara A. Gallagher was Sallie G. Hunt.

  Truman was an educated, intelligent man and his choice of bride surprised those who knew him. Sallie was a common little thing, though pretty and lively. Truman’s airs and graces disguised the fact that he too was self-made, and friends and associates had imagined him settling down with a woman of learning and refinement. Despite their obvious differences, they were a happy couple. Sallie was in awe of her clever, worldly husband. Truman was madly in love with his beautiful wife, fiercely protective and quick to fly in to a jealous rage at the slightest (usually imagined) provocation. He had not been her only suitor at the fair, and with good reason. Sallie had a thick mane of chestnut hair, plump, kissable lips, and the most incredible emerald-green eyes he had ever seen. Truman found her looks and her youthful exuberance utterly bewitching. He had met many beautiful women in his travels, but none quite like Sallie. As he lay in the mosquito-thick mountains, he closed his eyes and imagined her warm embrace.

  Truman had been raised in a modest farming family in Iowa, but he had always had big dreams of becoming a doctor and making a name for himself by saving many lives. He went to the University of Iowa to study medicine, graduating in 1887. Three years later, his father died. That same year, on December 3, Truman married his childhood sweetheart, Myrtle Potter, who was a Sunday school teacher at the local Methodist church. In 1892, she gave birth to their first child, a beautiful baby girl, Calista. It wasn’t long after that Myrtle contracted the measles. She rallied but her body was left weakened and she died the following year. Truman was bereft. He sent Calista to live with his mother while he tried to pick up the pieces of his life. The handsome widower, who was still in his twenties, became a drifter, traveling across the continent in an attempt to heal his broken heart. It was that same wanderlust that led him to the Philippines.

  At the turn of the twentieth century, the Philippines was the last frontier, a place not just for missionaries and colonial administrators, but for adventurers, explorers, and opportunists. Truman Hunt was all of those things.

  In the distance, Truman heard Julio shouting at Tainan to quiet down and go to sleep. Truman was fond of Julio. He was ambitious and reminded Truman of himself. Admiring his sharp Western attire, Truman observed that Julio was the closest thing the northern Philippines had to a dandy. He’d always thought the young Filipino seemed different from the Igorrotes and recently he had learned that Julio was the son of an Igorrote mother and an Ilocano father, a tribe regarded by Americans as intellectually and culturally superior to the Igorrotes. In fact, Ilocanos were known as “the Yankees of the Philippines,”6 on account of their energy, industry, and ways of doing business. Julio’s father was a soldier turned trader and clerical worker who had once fought the Igorrotes. Despite this, the Igorrotes had accepted Julio as if he was one of their own. This was important to Truman—after all, his assistant had to be liked and respected by the group.

  Truman, Callahan, and the tribespeople journeyed from dawn till dusk for more than two weeks. On their last day, Truman called Callahan and Julio to one side before they set out. They would reach Manila that day. The area surrounding the city was full of ladrones, robbers and insurgents who were fiercely opposed to American rule. These armed men would probably leave the headhunters alone, not least because there were so many of them, but Truman told them to be vigilant. The tribespeople walked without incident until the early afternoon, when Julio looked up and caught sight of a distant spot on the horizon. Built for the most part on a mud flat at the mouth of the Pasig River, Manila was so low it was almost level with the surrounding water. Julio recognized it immediately.

  Truman was out of breath by the time he caught up with Julio and the others. Over the last seven years, Truman had come to know Manila well. The first time he visited, he had been struck by how ugly, gray, and dilapidated it looked. Despite its moniker of the Pearl of the Orient, Manila had none of the grandeur or beauty of other cities he had visited in the region, like Hong Kong or Kobe. Truman tripped over a cra
ck in the sidewalk. The roads were a mess, badly paved and full of potholes.

  The Igorrotes huddled close together as they walked. The streets teemed with people. Victorias, as the horse-drawn carts were known locally, clattered past, throwing up dust and dirt. They were laden with people and led by small, sturdy, thick-necked ponies, a crossbreed descended from Chinese and Spanish horses. Maria looked at one of the animals pulling a hired carriage. The beast looked fit to drop, but with one word from its driver, it took off at great speed. Carabao with huge horns snorted as they hauled carts laden with sacks of rice and tobacco. The city looked as if it had been thrown up in a hurry. To American eyes, there might not be much that was grand about the Philippine capital, but to the Igorrotes the scale and speed of life in the city was awe inspiring.

  Feloa looked up at the towering electricity pylons and the tangle of cables strung between the buildings overhead. The air was thick with the smell of horse and carabao dung. White-skinned men in khaki army uniforms and broad-brimmed hats strode purposefully down the sidewalk. Friday caught sight of something up ahead and ran off down the street, with Julio in hot pursuit. The boy came to an abrupt stop outside the window of Clarkes, an ice cream parlor opened by an American entrepreneur named Met Clarke. Friday pressed his face up against the glass. Inside, women in white blouses and long skirts and men in linen suits sat at tables topped with fresh flowers, enjoying sundaes, sodas, and floats. One of the women looked up and, noticing Friday, nudged her friends. Friday pulled funny faces in the window to make them laugh. Julio grabbed the boy by the arm and hauled him back to join the others.

  The tribespeople walked up the street, past Manila’s first department store—the American Bazaar—and Botica Boie, which dispensed everything from potent medicines to club sandwiches. They peered in the windows of Estrella del Norte, an upmarket store owned by a Jewish family that sold perfumes from Paris, watches from Switzerland, and the first automobiles ever to land on Philippine soil.