Filipinos: Civilized or Primitive?
Saint Malo was the first settlement of Filipinos in the United States and quite possibly the first of any Asian people in the United States. The Saint Malo settlement was established in 1763 by Filipinos who deserted from Spanish ships during the Manila Galleon Trade. It existed in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana on the shore of Lake Borgne from the mid 18th century into the early 20th century, until it was destroyed by the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915. The people who settled in the bayous were called Manilamen and later on as Tagalas. They governed themselves and kept their existence a secret from mainstream society for over a hundred years. The diet in the village was mainly fish.
It wasn’t until journalist Lafcadio Hearn published an article in Harper’s Weekly in 1883 that their existence was finally exposed to the American people. Hearn’s article is the first known written article about the Filipinos in the United States. Saint Malo was only one of the Filipino settlements in the Southern United States. The other settlements included the Manila Village on Barataria Bay in the Mississippi Delta by the Gulf of Mexico; Alombro Canal and Camp Dewey in Plaquemines Parish; and Leon Rojas, Bayou Cholas, and Bassa Bassa in Jefferson Parish, all in Louisiana. The oldest of these settlements was Saint Malo. Among the legacy introduced by the Filipinos was the production of dried shrimp, which is still produced by the Cajuns of Louisiana.
The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, also called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the purchase of Louisiana from France by the United States. As in the previous American World’s Expositions, the emphasis on the “civilized” verses the “primitive” resulted in its reinforcing racial stereotypes. The so-called anthropological exhibits were arranged to emphasize the superiority of Caucasian accomplishments. The Philippine Exhibit took the honor of being the largest and most popular one at this Fair. It occupied 47 acres of land, had 100 buildings and was the most expensive to build at a cost of two million dollars. There were about 1,100 Filipinos at the Philippine Exhibit that included the Tagalogs, Visayans, Muslims, Igorots, Tinguianes, Pampangans, Kalingas, Mangyans, Negritos, and Bagobos. The epitome of this view was the Philippines exhibit which included a group of Igorot Tribesmen living in a small reservation on the fairgrounds. They were displayed as savages in need of the civilizing presence of the white man. The head-hunting, dog-eating Igorots were the greatest attraction at the Philippine Exhibit, not only because of their novelty, the scanty dressing of the males and their daily dancing to the tom-tom beats, but also because of their appetite for dog meat which is a normal part of their diet. The “civilizing” force was the American government who had taken over that country, officially at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1899, and in fact after the Philippine-American War of 1899 to 1902.
