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?©, 1861-1896

"The Social Cancer"

There was no organized
priesthood to be overcome, the primitive religious observances
consisting almost entirely of occasional orgies presided over by
an old woman, who filled the priestly offices of interpreter for
the unseen powers and chief eater at the sacrificial feast. With
their unflagging zeal, their organization, their elaborate forms
and ceremonies, the missionaries were enabled to win the confidence
of the natives, especially as the greater part of them learned the
local language and identified their lives with the communities under
their care. Accordingly, the people took kindly to their new teachers
and rulers, so that in less than a generation Spanish authority was
generally recognized in the settled portions of the Philippines,
and in the succeeding years the missionaries gradually extended this
area by forming settlements from among the wilder peoples, whom they
persuaded to abandon the more objectionable features of their old
roving, often predatory, life and to group themselves into towns and
villages "under the bell.


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