Treacherously Attacked Him [title of news article]… the doctor told me to have Dumabatu Ilongots come and guard him that night as he was afraid the Kagadyangan and Panipigan Ilongots would come to take his head.
—Final wishes of Dr. Jones as narrated by servant Romano Dumaliang
My concern with the Ilongots of northern Luzon, Philippines began … when Michelle Rosaldo and I were given a copy of Henry Milner Rideout's biography of William Jones … I became at once more intrigued and more apprehensive as I reached the end of the biography and learned that after nearly a year of ethnographic research Jones was murdered by the Ilongots on April 3, 1909.
—Renato Rosaldo
These opening vignettes show early twentieth-century romanticism of the headhunting Ilongots and how this imagery continues into the present. The 1909 news article speculates that it was not enough for the Ilongots to have fatally wounded William Jones in battle, but that it was also the Ilongot headhunters’ intention to decapitate and retrieve Jones’ head as a prize. In 1980, well-known anthropologist and ethnographer Renato Rosaldo still referred to the Ilongots as headhunters who “murdered” William Jones (Rosaldo 1980: 20). The story of the murder of Jones is significant because the archival regenerative debris of this narrative reifies the romanticized image of Ilongots as headhunters.
This article revisits the case of anthropologist William Jones’ expedition in the Philippines and the controversy surrounding his death/murder by the Ilongots, using Ann Stoler's (2013) concept of “ruination.” Stoler defines the ruins of empire as “the wider structures of vulnerability and refusal that imperial formations sustain” (2008: 194). As such, ruination is a corrosive process that denies agency in the present and limits future outcomes. This is what Stoler refers to as the “enduring quality of imperial remains and what they render in impaired states” (2008: 194). The article argues that the death of Jones and its aftermath helps us understand how colonialism and anthropological expedition intersect and contest each other. Reading the archive of William Jones’ interactions with the Ilongots and his killing at their hands is a very relevant and useful way to illustrate how colonial relationships unfolded in the Philippines.
I conducted archival research using primary and secondary sources. Most of the materials accessed are organized within the R. F. Cummings archival folders in the archives of the Field Museum, in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Access was granted during my time as both a co-curation intern (Summer 2014) and a co-curation volunteer (Fall 2014) whose main tasks included working directly with the Field Museum's Fil-Am (Filipino American) co-curatorial partners to facilitate community engagement. Another important source is Henry Milner Rideout's biography of Jones (1912), which contains diary entries and other primary accounts surrounding the fieldwork. The method of analysis was informed by a more historiographic approach that seeks to read between the lines in the archival documents (Stoler 2009: 182). This approach calls for gathering incidental intelligence (Scott 1982) from the archives, which involves parsing out the motivations and, in some arenas, emotions that fuel the generation of the archival accounts (data) as well as the generation of racialized relations.
During colonial rule in the Philippines, the Spanish used a putative “divide and rule” strategy. This resulted in the differentiation of a cultural minority from a cultural majority. The former included highland tribes (i.e., Igorots, including Ilongots) in Luzon as well as Moros in Mindanao (Mateo 2004; Azurin 1991; Scott 1982). The cultural minorities were widely seen as disenfranchised. Therefore, recent Philippine legislation has attempted to champion their interests through the negotiation of their political autonomy against the grain of the Christian cultural majority (Gatmaytan 2007). While this is hailed as a big step in empowering the cultural minorities, a connective tissue still binds these cultural minorities to degraded environments, degraded personhoods, and to the material refuse of imperial projects (Stoler 2013: 8).
I begin with a discussion of how Jones’ fieldwork occurred at a time when some interiors of the Philippine archipelago were slowly being integrated into colonial rule. Here I also show how an exposition in Missouri sparked the interest of a wealthy investor (R. F. Cummings) who would eventually fund the ethnological collecting expeditions to the Philippines. Then I look at the early accumulations of regenerative debris in the Jones archive. This includes Jones’ diary entries during his fieldwork, his observations, and his attitudes towards his hosts, the Ilongots. In the third section, I discuss archival regenerative debris immediately before and after his death at the hands of the Ilongots. The fourth section discusses the months following his death and the archival regenerative debris that speaks of the incident, including letters exchanged between the colonial officers and agents in the metropole. Finally, I conclude by arguing that the Jones expedition, Jones’ death, and the archives surrounding it give us insights into colonial relationships in the Philippines. I understand these relationships as ruination because of how this set of archives continues to recreate the Ilongots as colonial subjects predisposed to headhunting and murder by virtue of prima facie interpretation.
As a caveat, the article seeks to avoid essentializing the dichotomy of colonized and uncolonized. Rather, it uses this as a springboard to provoke consideration of how this perceived relationship fed the narratives of othering. It should be noted that a kind of agency gets manifested when the Ilongots, the colonial officials, and the Field Museum officials manipulate the news cycle and the court proceedings and, ultimately, directly or indirectly cause the accused Ilongots to escape their guards.
Changing of the Guards, the R. F. Cummings Expedition, and William Jones
Jones’ fieldwork took place against the backdrop of the Philippines becoming a newly acquired territory of the United States, with some interiors of the archipelago slowly becoming open to the colonial government (Kramer 2009; Halili 2006). It should be emphasized that, for most of the four hundred years of Spanish rule, these highland interior rancherias or ungoverned areas of the colony were havens for independent, non-colonized groups. Gold and copper prospecting, however, catalyzed several efforts to integrate these areas into the new US colony. While the last decades of Spanish colonial rule established military garrisons that ruled over Commandancia Politico Militar (CPM, military provinces) with variable borders, these were only minimally controlled. With the transition to a US colony, Secretary Dean Worcester launched several ethnological expeditions in the Philippines through the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ethnological Survey as a platform to typologize the interior tribes of the Philippines. This was used as a means to find ways to govern these frontiers in the archipelago, an effort that has been seen as a form of social engineering (Sinopoli 1998; Castellanos 1998). Later, ethnologists who came to study Philippine tribes were given affiliations with the Department of the Interior in order to have access to the government's resources.
An exposition in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1904 featured tribes from the newly acquired US colonies, including the Philippines. R. F. Cummings, who was a wealthy grains industrialist in Illinois, became interested in the Philippine tribes. He was convinced by Field Museum curator George Dorsey to sponsor ethnographic work in the Philippines. To this end, he wrote a check that funded the Philippine ethnographic work of curators Stephen Simms, Fay-Cooper Cole, Laura Benedict, and William Jones (Bronson 1982).
William Jones, like George Dorsey, was trained at Columbia University by Franz Boas, who is revered as the father of American anthropology. This new school of cultural relativism was hailed as the antidote to an earlier, more evolutionist school of anthropology. Later work, however, pointed out that racialized discourse was still latent and at times manifest in the fieldwork of this new breed of cultural relativists (Stocking 1992). Jones was sent to an area that was the heartland of the Ilongot ethnolinguistic group in the mountains of the Sierra Madre in Luzon, where he spent almost a whole year among the Ilongots doing fieldwork. In a letter to Marlborough dated 25 February 1909, Jones boasts: “The military haven't subdued this neck of the woods yet. That is one reason why I made a bee-line for it. My friends still hunt heads as they've done since days far back in time” (Rideout 1912: 199). The quote shows how a sense of adventure was the draw for Jones to conquer these wild Sierra Madre hills. It also reveals how Jones, as an anthropologist, has embedded ruinous images that romanticize his subjects as others who are unchanged from their headhunting ways. It is as if a main objective of his fieldwork is to conduct an ethnography of headhunting, a fast-disappearing tradition.
In this section we have seen how the R. F. Cummings ethnological collecting expedition to the Philippines took shape in the background of the US taking possession of the Philippine Islands. The section also touched on the social engineering that was taking shape in the US colony. I have shown that Jones’ eagerness to conduct fieldwork was driven by the belief that his subjects were still active headhunters far from the control of the colonial government. In the next section, I look at some day-to-day entries of Jones as installments that contribute to the archival regenerative debris.
Construction of the Ilongot Archive
Here I look at the early formation processes of the Jones archive. What is notable is how the Ilongot congeals as the headhunter. According to Stoler (2008:201), “stories congeal around imperial regenerative debris as do critiques.” It is important to note that these diary entries are now part of the archive and are published and open access. The snippets give us more personal insight into the fieldwork of Jones. Several entries show how he denigrated his own research subjects by pointing out what he thought of as their uncivilized ways.
The area where Jones conducted his fieldwork could be considered a rancheria or ungoverned area of the colony in the true sense of the word. This is illustrated by a letter to Bill (his college friend) dated 8 August 1908:
… You won't find these names on the maps because the makers of maps know nothing about them yet. Your letter was fetched with a bunch of other mail by some Filipinos who came to trade with these Ilongots. These Filipinos follow in my wake; they have been doing it since I came among these people. They were afraid to do it before. They fetch salt, cheap cloth, knives, and pots. They get in return chickens, beeswax, wild honey, mats, baskets, and various sorts of foods. (Rideout 1912: 160–161)
In the same letter, he emphasizes that the site is still far from colonized (at peace): “When Taft says that peace reigns throughout the islands, wink the other eye. I'm in an ideal spot, far from officials of any sort …” (Rideout 1912: 163). In a letter to Simms dated 1 February 1909, Jones boasts that a constabulary element (typically comprised of Filipino enlisted personnel led by a US officer) tried to follow after him: “ …the Constabulary once tried following my track but got no farther than a second town. I helped them to get there; but at that point the Ilongots quit them cold, whereupon they beat back for home and comfort” (Rideout 1912: 182–183).
In a letter to Curator George Dorsey dated 19 March 1909, Jones reveals his eagerness to witness the Alikod Ilongots out on their headhunting: “The point is this—warfare among the wild men of Luzon is rapidly being checked, and this is practically the only territory where the mice have free play. And so all I've desired and still desire is to observe and note what happens” (Rideout 1912: 189). These diary entries show the romanticized Ilongot headhunter as congealed in the archives, just as Stoler has described stories around imperial regenerative debris getting congealed (2008:201). Arguably, a casual reader of these primary documents or even the published biography itself confronts a putative archival regenerative debris field riddled with dangers of misinterpretation. While the historiographic lens will allow the scholar to see this as regenerative debris (Stoler 2009: 189), the untrained eye may take the accounts at face value. This historiographic parsing out can be termed incidental intelligence (Scott 1982), a tool that I actively employed during my research. Incidental intelligence moves a way from prima facie interpretation of primary historical accounts. It specifically tries to interrogate entries made through dominant or western points of view. Instead, it encourages us to read between the lines and to look for the voices of the silenced colonial subjects through the archive. It also entails rising above singular agentive accounts and to see all accounts in the aggregate. More specifically, we can relate this to what Stoler argues is nascent, disjointed, and perplexed colonial imagination, far from an omniscient colonial apparatus (2009: 189).
It was becoming apparent towards the end of his fieldwork that Jones was repulsed by the Ilongots and began to describe them in very derogatory terms. In a letter to Boas dated 25 August 25 1908 he writes about the lousiness of the Ilongots: “When not gazing blankly into space, they are scratching their lousy heads; for of all the lousy people that I've ever seen these are the lousiest” (Rideout 1912: 169). In the same letter he comments that the Ilongots are “a people more given to nonsense” (171). And then he begins to rant about how the Ilongots lie: “It was at first annoying to have them smile good naturedly when I caught them in a barefaced lie” (Rideout 1912: 172). In his diary entry 4-10 October 1908 at Tamsi village, Jones laughed at his host Inamon, who was distraught (as was the rest of the village) during the onslaught of a typhoon: “I went down to a shelter where Inamon was, when the storm was pushing over the granaries and sending down big trees. He sat hugging a few coals that were almost dead; he shivered as if he were suffering from cold; but as a matter of fact he was much frightened. His manner somehow struck me as funny, and I broke out into laughter. ‘Don't laugh, don't laugh!’ he exclaimed” (Rideout 1912: 173). In a footnote, Rideout says that three typhoons in fact swept through Isabela between 4 October and 15 October 1908 (1912: 172). In the same diary entry at Tamsi Village, Jones continued to criticize the Ilongots: “Their aspect is most repelling. Hands, faces, and bodies are smeared with blotches of various kinds of dirt; and their stiff hair is disheveled. As they sit and scratch their lousy selves they seem more like beasts than human beings. These women suckle puppies. I saw one woman giving suck to two, one at a time, while she wove a bag and gossiped with another woman” (Rideout 1912: 176).
This section has shown that Jones, playing a dual role as both colonialist and anthropologist out doing his fieldwork among the Ilongots, continually maintained his moral and physical distance from them, the Others. His descriptions of the natives and these images of dirty, repulsive tribal people are a part of the living archive. The next section shows the sequence of events immediately before and after Jones’ death.
Jones’ Death in the Archive: Pre-mortem and Peri-mortem
At this juncture we look at Jones’ death and how this is recorded in the archives. What is apparent is that there are several instances when certain personalities dominate the recordings and even instances when emotions are at play.
In a 25 February 1909 letter addressed to George Dorsey, Jones talks about the closing of his fieldwork. He begins to lament that he “dislike[s] leaving this field” (Rideout 1912: 186) and that he should have had more time to do more studies. There was also an outbreak of cholera in Echague, which was one of the reasons he had to leave the area so soon. He had planned to leave even sooner, but a string of typhoons ravaged the area, delaying his trip.
A typhoon struck the Ilongot area and destroyed Ilongot huts and some balsas (rafts) as the rivers swelled. A few days after the typhoon (probably as part of recovery operations), Captain Bowers, the colonial officer, commandeered all remaining rafts from the Ilongots. Jones was to board a ship in Appari at the mouth of the Cagayan River that was leaving for Manila, and he needed several rafts to transport his ethnographic collections. Thus he requested that rafts be made for him by the Ilongots. In a letter of 19 March 1909 addressed to George Dorsey, Jones writes: “When Bowers left here last fall he cleaned up all the balsas; and though the river has fallen two months earlier than last year the men have not been able to build other balsas. The bamboo material is just far enough away to make it and risky to go for it” (Rideout 1912: 188). In a letter to Dorsey dated 25 February 1909, Jones writes:
On coming back to the river, I found that the districts had been pretty well knocked out by the typhoons. They are gradually recovering, but not sufficiently to enable me to get the stuff I wanted. What I have is representative, but it would have been of better quality had I been able to take it out six months ago, or if the typhoons had not been so destructive. They say that these storms were the worst in their memory or that of their fathers. Be that as it may, I never saw anything like ‘em. Though the sight of trees going down, timbers flying, and houses crashing to ruin was somewhat disquieting, and though the prolonged din and roar of the tempest became at length a weariness to the spirit and the flesh, it was yet a wonderful thing to behold all nature awake and in anger, an experience thoroughly worthwhile withal. (Rideout 1912: 185–186)
After waiting to no avail, Jones kept pressing the Ilongots to produce rafts for him. The Ilongots repeatedly promised to bring rafts but Jones became even more agitated because the Ilongots could not keep their promises. Finally, at Punggu landing (see Figure 1) he confronted the Ilongots and took their chief by his arm, suggesting that he would take him by force. What followed was the attack on Dr. Jones.
Map showing Punggu landing in the present day Province of Quirino, Island of Luzon, Philippines, where Dr. Jones was attacked. (World Imagery from ArcGIS Online. Sources: Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, i-cubed, USDA FSA, USGS, AEX, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS User Community).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
Map showing Punggu landing in the present day Province of Quirino, Island of Luzon, Philippines, where Dr. Jones was attacked. (World Imagery from ArcGIS Online. Sources: Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, i-cubed, USDA FSA, USGS, AEX, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS User Community).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
Map showing Punggu landing in the present day Province of Quirino, Island of Luzon, Philippines, where Dr. Jones was attacked. (World Imagery from ArcGIS Online. Sources: Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, i-cubed, USDA FSA, USGS, AEX, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS User Community).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
There are many renditions of the story surrounding the death of Jones (Rideout 1912; Stoner 1971). But perhaps the most reliable account is the court testimony given by Romano Dimaliang, who was Jones’ servant, because it was given under oath before the Court of First Instance presided over by Isidro Paredes, Judge-at-Large in the Mountain Judicial District. His testimony begins with Dr. Jones’ frustration at not getting balsas from the Ilongots to ferry him downstream. After several opportunities to deliver the balsas passed to no avail, he forcefully grabbed Takadan to bring him along as a surety of sorts:
We reached the sitio of Pinapagan and Dr. Jones called the Captain of the Ilongots [Takadan]. The captain came there and where Dr. Jones was at the sitio of Pinapagan, and he was ordered by Doctor Jones, saying, that he would bring the balsas but that his polistas were still looking for some of them, and that they were not all prepared yet. Then the Doctor asked him why he had not prepared the balsas as he had ordered him to prepare the balsas many days beforehand. Then the Doctor told the Captain that he would have to sleep there with us [Saturday evening] and get the balsas the following day [Sunday]. On the following morning, Dr. Jones in company with the Captain went to the river and there he said to the Captain that as the balsas had not yet arrived, we would all go to the place called Punggu and there wait for the arrival of the balsas which the Captain's people were to bring for him. And then we at once went to Punggu, the Doctor, myself and the Captain of the Ilongots. Here at this place we waited for one half of a day and at about one o'clock the Ilongots arrived with only four balsas. The Ilongots prepared chow for the Doctor and he ate and after he had eaten I told the Doctor that it would be better for us to go back to Dumabato, but the Doctor answered me saying we would wait a little longer and see if the Ilongots would arrive with the other balsas. As the other balsas did not arrive, the Doctor said that we would all have to leave for Dumabato and that we would have to take the Captain of the Ilongots along with us. And the Doctor told the Ilongots that we would wait for the other balsas in the sitio called Dumabato. After this we went to the place where the balsas were with another Ilongot who was our companion on our trip up to this place in Pinapagan. Doctor Jones took hold of the arm of the Captain and said that he would have to go along with us to Dumabato to make sure that your people will bring the balsas. He carried the Captain of the Ilongots to the bank of the river and tried to force him onto the balsa but the Captain of these Ilongots did not want to go and resisted.1
What followed was the fatal assault on Jones by Palidat, Magueng, and Gacad. Preliminary court proceedings under Governor W. C. Bryant, who was also the Justice of the Peace, Ex-officio, concluded that the death was murder:
The three accused above named, at the place called Punggu, on the Cagayan River, two miles north of the Ilongot rancheria Cagadyangan, did murderously attack Dr. William Jones; that Ilongot Palidat did strike said Dr. William Jones on the head over the left eye with a bolo; that Ilongot Magueng did strike said Dr. William Jones in the right arm with a spear; that Ilongot Gacad thrust a spear into the abdomen of said Dr. Jones, death resulting four hours later. And the three accused above named being asked to plead “guilty” or “not guilty” to said charge, they each responded “guilty.”2
As to why the rafts could not be produced by the Ilongots, it may be because freshly felled bamboo could not be made into rafts immediately because it is not buoyant and would sink. Raft making entails setting the bamboo out in open weather (especially the sun) for weeks to months to get rid of moisture.
Rideout, the author of Jones’ biography, argues that his dear friend Jones was murdered (1912: 211). On the other hand, Stoner points out that there was no premeditation and that the attack may have been made after Jones forcefully grabbed Takadan, the Chief of the Ilongots (1971: 13). Stoner presents this assessment of Jones’ state of mind during his fieldwork:
For the first few months his diaries relate almost daily his observations of near-nudity and the open performance of natural functions, as well as of the bantering back and forth on sexual subjects. He did not judge this behavior, but the frequency with which it is mentioned in the diaries suggests that he obviously needed to adjust to it. Only when the behavior of the llongots infringed on his ability to carry out his work and made frustrating demands on him did he begin to make mistakes… The year was wearing on and Jones’ patience was wearing thin. He began to make more mistakes, lost his temper more often, and tried to teach the llongots “lessons” in ethics. (Stoner 1971: 11–12)
Jones’ discipline and punishment of his Ilongot ethnographic subjects is revealed in one incident in which Jones tried to give the Ilongot headman Takadan a lesson because of his failure to deliver balsas:
Then I told them in sharp language what I thought about people who lied to me as they had done, that they had better not return but go on down to [Dumabatu] where I would see them tomorrow. Then I had Panakat get in the banquilla and come on with us to his town. We arrived here about four or a little after. Immediately upon my arrival at Cipdut's house I sent for Takadan and [Magueng] to come this evening. A heavy shower was pouring at the time. I then lashed him with my tongue. I tried to shame him for lying to me, for making bitals with me and not keeping them, for ignoring my requests which he said he would fulfill, and so on. (Stoner 1971: 12)
As mentioned above, it is possible the Ilongots were short of weathered bamboo to fasten into a raft. This could have been one of the possible reasons why the Ilongots could not produce the six rafts. After the string of typhoons, the remaining rafts in the district were commandeered by Captain Bowers, the chief colonial officer. In ending her article Stoner states:
Why was Jones killed? The evidence does not point to much premeditation, although the decision to kill him may have been made when Jones detained Takadan. Jones had been understandably irritated. Travel conditions in 1908 were not such that he could get down to Manila for a weekend respite. He had spent sixteen long and arduous months with the llongots. He had lost his temper before with no serious repercussions. But Takadan was an elder, and the llongots had a great respect—almost a reverence—for their elders. (Stoner 1971: 13)
Logically; however, the decision to attack Jones may have been reached Saturday evening as a reprisal to Jones’ forceful detention of the Ilongot Chief Takadan-—not allowing him to return to his village. Echoing Stoner's assessment, well-known Ilongot scholar Renato Rosaldo also believes that Jones may have had a hand in angering the Ilongots who attacked him: “Jones in large measure brought about his own murder. The entries from his field diaries (1907–9) reveal his utter frustration with Ilongot delays in transporting his collections of material culture to the lowlands. Jones’ impatience gave way to verbal abuse of his companions and then a threat to imprison an old man” (Rosaldo 1980: 2).
All these interpretations of the incident are published secondary accounts intermixed with direct citations from the archives. These are readily accessible to any person interested in the topic today, open access. And this is where one can be likened to someone wading through a minefield. Some accounts directly or indirectly contribute to the characterization of the Ilongots as savages who murdered a friend and colleague. While this characterization of the event could be expected from people close to Jones, these statements wrought out of high emotions would end up as permanent entries in the archives. More than a century after the event, these characterizations congeal a savage and murderous Ilongot at prima facie reading. The next section looks at the months and years following Jones’ death and how that time is presented in the archives.
Jones’ Death in the Archive: Post Mortem
I now look at how the archives are configured in terms of documents pertaining to the period immediately following Jones’ death. In interpreting Jones’ death and the circumstances surrounding it, we see how colonial relationships unfolded at the time. I argue that this reveals the messy or chaotic nature of a colony, which can only be unearthed by going beyond the notion of fully functional colonial law and order presented in the archives. While several accounts below show that an orderly and swift legal response followed Jones’ death, there are indications that such responses were superficial and were perhaps mitigated with deals between colonial agents, their Filipino principalia (the appointed ruling class of colonial officers), as well as the Ilongots and the members of the Philippine Constabulary, including both Filipino enlisted personnel and their American officers. While a close reading of the archives through incidental intelligence (Scott 1982) reveals this aspect, it is also equally notable that a reading of the current archive today would lead the untrained eye towards interpretations that allow the ruination to persist. It would do so by allowing the regenerative debris of a romanticized, exoticized notion of the savagery and incivility of the Ilongots from a century ago to persist.
Friends and colleagues of Jones from the mainland US treated his death as an act of murder on the part of the Ilongots. This categorization as murder carried with it all the legal implications associated with this kind of crime. However, incidental intelligence on the archival accounts indicates that colonial officials treated it more like a homicide. But they had to bow to the sentiments coming from these stakeholders from the metropole. What is created in the archive after the death of Jones is a comprehensive folder of documents showing what appears at face value to be a strong-arm response to the incident. This includes court hearings that ultimately lead to the death sentence given to the three accused Ilongots and punitive expeditions to the villages of the Ilongots. These are illustrated in detail in reports filed by the constabulary officer, the court proceedings, and letters from the top colonial official, Dean Worcester.
Incidental intelligence reveals that this façade of fully functioning colonial law and order presented at face value in the archives actually crumbles when certain scattered details are analyzed in totality. While the colonial officials documented strong-arm responses made immediately after the event, later developments reveal that either some accommodations were made toward the plight of the Ilongots by the colonial officials, or they were just utterly not in control of the situation. First to note is the expedient court proceedings undertaken toward the three accused, which became useless when the three managed to escape during transport. Second is the failure to recapture all three, since only one prisoner was eventually re-apprehended. Third is the Supreme Court's reversal of the murder decision, with a lighter sentence given to the lone Ilongot who was recaptured. One crucial incident that should be noted is that Field Museum curator Stephen Simms, who was charged to recover Jones’ Ilongot ethnographic collections for the Field Museum, was even told he would be handcuffed if he insisted on travelling to the site of the incident. These are illustrated through the archival accounts below.
Upon the news of the death of Jones, a punitive expedition was immediately organized and commanded by Captain Bowers, the Senior Inspector of Isabela, Lieutenants Logan, Bruner, and Agdamag with two squads of soldiers from Nueva Viscaya (fifteen), and another similarly sized detachment from Isabela. They were joined by the Nueva Viscaya Governor, W. C. Bryant.
Later in a letter, Captain Bowers admitted that, in fact, Enamo, an influential Ilongot Headman, and the Christian Bernardino duped the Cagadiangan Ilongots into believing that if they came out from hiding, the constabulary would agree to a settlement or covenant with them: “It was annoying to learn that Enamo and the Christian Bernardino had encouraged the people of Cagadiangan in the belief that they would be able to settle as they offered. This was according to their custom and no doubt both were honest in their belief.”3 Here we see how Ilongot customary law was evoked as a mediating mechanism in Jones’ death. However, the archival record as compiled reveals that it was the panoptic law of the (colonial) land as well as the ruling colonial and subject relationship that superseded this local custom (local law), and so the archives at face value show the proverbial colonial whip lashing down on the Ilongots. Historian Alfred McCoy (2009) reads the archives and talks about the use of the Philippine Constabulary in the operations:
In March 1909, for example, Worcester's tribal domain was shaken when Ilongot tribesmen in northeastern Luzon murdered Dr. William Jones, an anthropologist from Chicago's Field Museum. As the constabulary unleashed its usual punitive campaign against the six thousand Ilongot who remained unsubdued in the rugged headwaters of the Cagayan River, Lt. Wilfrid Turnbill swept through the hills burning crops and houses, bringing the Ilongot to “the verge of starvation,” and inducing villages implicated in the killing to deliver eleven severed heads as tribute. (McCoy 2009: 221)
Such an interpretation may be informed by prima facie treatment of the archival records; later actions and, once again, incidental intelligence on the archives reveal a somewhat less forceful response and a rather more conciliatory tone by the colonial officials. Several archival photos show how the Ilongots were being deputized into the colonial administration by Worcester and his officers (See Figures 2, 3, and 4). In fact, McCoy adds:
Worcester found a way to take a conciliatory approach in August [1909] by enlisting the help of the youthful Manuel Quezon who unbeknownst to Worcester was part Ilongot and to be president in a few decades later to broker dialogues with the Ilongot at Baler, Aurora. During these dialogues with an assembly of Ilongots he promised that they will benefit from a special effort that will protect them from abuses but at the same time “swift and severe punishment for raids.” (McCoy 2009: 221)
(top) D. C. Worcester's party and a group of Ilongot chiefs (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D043. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
(top) D. C. Worcester's party and a group of Ilongot chiefs (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D043. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
(top) D. C. Worcester's party and a group of Ilongot chiefs (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D043. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
D. C. Worcester's party at Dumabato (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D042. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
D. C. Worcester's party at Dumabato (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D042. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
D. C. Worcester's party at Dumabato (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D042. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
Governor George Curry presenting official cane to a group of Ilongot chiefs (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D040. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
Governor George Curry presenting official cane to a group of Ilongot chiefs (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D040. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
Governor George Curry presenting official cane to a group of Ilongot chiefs (January 1900 D. C. Worcester). (Picture ID 02D040. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan).
Citation: Museum Worlds 9, 1; 10.3167/armw.2021.090102
Moving on with the archival accounts post mortem, it is apparent that upon news of the demise of Jones, the top colonial officer Worcester wanted to explain to Field Museum curator George Dorsey that this was not expected and that they had been confident about the safety of Jones being out alone with the Ilongots: “It is needless to say that I am profoundly shocked by the receipt of this dreadful news. Dr. Jones had been among the Ilongots so long and had always gotten on with them so well that we had long since ceased to worry over the possibility that he might come to grief.”4 In the same letter he described the efforts undertaken by the colonial government in taking care of the situation, attempting to convince the curator that a strong-armed response was underway:
I asked Governor Claravall to make a special effort to recover Dr. Jones’ effects as soon as practicable… I had an interview with General Bandholts, the Director of the Constabulary who chanced to be at Baguio and requested him to make every effort to secure Dr. Jones’ notes and other personal effects, as well as to apprehend the murderers…I have also ordered Governor Bryant to assist to the extent of his power, and do not see that anything more can be done from here at present.5
He emphasizes that the incident was “one of those things which could not have been foreseen nor avoided” (ibid). But, interestingly, he alludes to Spanish colonial period ruination (Stoler 2013) when he admits that he initially thought it was the Christianized Filipinos who may have committed the crime: “In fact, when I first heard of his death and learned that it was ascribed to Ilongots of Dumabatu, with whom I know he had lived in friendly terms, the idea immediately occurred to me that the real murderers might not improbably be Christian natives whose abuse of the wild people he had reported.”6 This speculation is symptomatic of the perceived animosity between the Christian cultural majority and the tribal cultural minorities. Notable enough is Worcester's notion that Jones was a type of action anthropologist championing the cause of the Ilongot cultural minority. The reality, however, is that Jones died at the hands of his Ilongot hosts.
Retaliatory sentiments seem to have been running high about Jones’ death, as well as the escape of his “killers.” Curator Stephen Simms, who came to the Philippines to take charge of transporting all of Jones’ ethnographic collection and ethnographic documents, wanted to proceed to ground zero, the Ilongot heartland. He attempted to proceed to the village where Jones was killed without any constabulary escort to allegedly carry out ethnographic work there. Worcester reported this to George Dorsey: “I found a series of telegrams from which it appeared that he had expressed a determination to go back without an escort, into the country where Dr. Jones was killed and to work there… Colonel Taylor, ranking Constabulary officer in the district, had requested authority to detain him if he insisted on doing this.”7 It is also in the same letter that Worcester reiterates that the colonial government meted out the strongest possible response not only to the accused but their villages. He illustrates to George Dorsey the extent of the punitive expedition arising out of the death of Jones: “The people of the barrio from which the murderers of Dr. Jones came probably had full knowledge of the proposed attack on him and in consequence have been severely punished. Many of their houses were burned, growing crops have been destroyed, etc. It is hardly to be anticipated that this will put them in a friendly frame of mind.”8 A prima facie reading of this account seems to paint an extreme action on the part of the colonial officials. Notable, however, is that Worcester was also attempting to alleviate the rage felt by friends, colleagues, and in general, stakeholders in the metropole following Jones’ death.
However, incidental intelligence of the archival record indicates that this may not have been as strong or as harsh as it seems. The fact that the accused Ilongots managed to shake loose from their trappings and escape their armed guards was quite revealing. It could suggest an unofficial deal to perform an image of orderly colonial law and order in public but then allow prisoners to be released after the performance. It could also reveal the weak control of colonial subjects who were members of the guard detail by the colonial officials. Either way, the post mortem archive reeks of messiness and negotiations between several people. This counters the notion of total colonial control.
Worcester admitted that the eventual escape of the three convicted Ilongots was totally unexpected. He later began to build up the credibility of the constabulary detail guarding them during the prison transport:
They were sent out from Bayombong with a guard of three Constabulary soldiers commanded by a corporal. The latter had seven years of good record behind him. The three men were chained together with two pairs of handcuffs, the man in the middle having his right and his left wrist to the right wrist of the man on his left. Leg irons were also sent along for use at night. Two of the Constabulary soldiers seem to have been armed with carbines and one with a riot gun.
The progress made by the men while ironed in this fashion seems to have been too slow to suit the corporal, who took the handcuff off one of the end men and attached him to the other two with the chain of a leg iron, which was fastened to his arm. He complained that this was fastened too tight and persuaded the corporal to loosen it.
On the way one of the soldiers became very ill and was left. When in the limits of Pangasinan province on the Villaverde trail the three prisoners concertedly jumped over the bank in a place that was quite steep and was somewhat sparsely covered with brush and tall grass.
The guards fired at them eleven shots in all, but several cartridges misfired, including two that were snapped in the riot gun. Two members of the guard then jumped down to the bank after the men and claim to have fallen below. They further claim that before they could get back up to them they disappeared in the bush.9
Worcester argued that the story of the constabulary seemed incredulous, and he offered a more realistic scenario of what may have really happened: “The likely thing is that a deer ran across the trail and that they all went off to hunt it leaving the prisoners to care for themselves, or that they were deliberately turned loose.”10 Worcester then explained that one of the prisoners was recaptured while the other two were still tied together, and that one was apparently wounded. To convince George Dorsey that everything was still being done to recover the other two convicts, he outlined the plan: “I ordered Lieutenant Turnbull back to Bayombong instantly and impressed on both men, to the best of my feeble ability, and especially on Turnbull, that this escape reflected very seriously on the province and that the only way to redeem themselves was to get the escaped prisoners or to prove them dead. [Governor] Bryant personally believes that they are dead now, but this may not be the case.”11 Interestingly, he presents a hypothetical situation in which the colonial government would have no way of verifying the death of the escapees: “If these men live they will doubtless make their way back home and if the people of Dumabatu continue friendly and helpful we shall doubtless be able to get them again. If they die from lack of food or from the effect of wounds while wandering through the forest it will be excessively difficult and may be impossible to recover their remains and actually prove the fact of their demise.”12
The speculation that the prisoners may have escaped because the guards tried to hunt a deer could be a reflection of Worcester's best practices out in the field, wherein hunting becomes a means to reify colonial order among his colonial subjects (Canilao 2018). Toward the end of the accounts, we see how Worcester begins to admit that the turn of events are out of his hands. Here we see some admission of chaos or mess in the internal affairs of the colony. In fact, this might be a motivation for Jones’ colleague and friend Stephen Simms to attempt to take control of the situation himself. Worcester argues this is not feasible: “The fact that these men [the fugitive Ilongots] are perhaps heading toward home and that another Constabulary expedition is going in to recapture them affords further reason that this may not be a very profitable place for Dr. Simms to work just at present.”13 While this account shows how a colonial official is trying to control a metropole agent who wishes to micromanage the colonial response to the Jones incident, it is notable that these actions created a set of archives that show an internal conflict or tension between the two actors played out publicly in the metropole that were published in US-based newspapers. There was public exchange between colonial official Worcester and Assistant Curator Stephen Simms about the decision of the Supreme Court. In a letter to Worcester, Simms admonishes him to be careful about responding to unvalidated statements from him: “I am painfully surprised to hear, in an indirect way, of your unjust and unwarranted criticisms of me, arising from an alleged interview with me, which was published shortly after my return from the Philippines.”14 He reiterates that this dispatch from San Francisco was unauthorized. The report allegedly detailed his hardships in the Philippines, including the fate of Jones, the escape of the convicts, the recapture of only one, and ultimately the reversal by the Supreme Court of the lower court's death sentence. He concludes that the dispatch was a product of an imaginative writer. While castigating the reporter, Simms also justifies some of the statements that came out in the dispatch: “That I was and am disappointed in the decision handed down by the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands in relation to the prisoner now incarcerated in Bilibid and implicated in the murder of Dr. Jones is true, and I ask you, in all fairness, if you were placed in the position of having a dear friend and co-worker assassinated, would you not be equally disappointed?”15 He then lectures Worcester to double check his office files (his own archives) to see that he was cooperative with them: “Should you take the trouble to refer to your and other office files, or cause to be made known to you the fact of my several P.P.C. [Philippine Police Constabulary] calls on various officials, I am sure that you would believe that I left the Islands with most pleasant recollections of these officials and of the very valuable aid and advice given me by them.”16 These exchanges indeed reveal another interesting regenerative debris in the colonial archives, one that shows how internal conflicts and tensions emerge within metropole-colony relations of power.
Agents in both the colony and the metropole struggled to make sense of the Jones incident. The latter agents attempted to micromanage the imperial reaction to the incident. The former apparently protected his field of power by threatening the latter with detention. This messiness in the internal affairs reveals itself as regenerative debris quite manifestly rather than latently in how the archives have been created. It is notable, however, that the initial compulsion on the part of Worcester is to put up a superficial façade of control in the face of the unexpected death of Jones out in the field. It should also be mentioned that the Supreme Court First Division in the 21 March 2010 decision, as penned by J. Moreland and concurred by Arellano C.J., Torres, Johnson, and Carson, decided to modify the sentence from death to just cadena temporal lasting seventeen years, four months, and one day, plus payment of one thousand pesos to the heir of Jones.17
Conclusion: Archive as a Regenerative Debris Field
I have argued that the reading of the archives as organized above shows how regenerative debris (Stoler 2013) is distinctly seen in the William Jones affair. The regenerative debris is never erased but is preserved in the archives, and all kinds of old and new colonial relationships can be read through them at face value. Further, colonial regenerative debris continues to haunt the empire, the metropole, and the colony due to the fundamental role that museums play in preserving the material instantiations of this regenerative debris. These archives are seen and read outside the colonial contexts in which they were produced. Therefore we see how these archives are read and interpreted, including peri-mortem and postmortem.
At the time the records were being created, the regenerative debris is seen in the responses to interpretations of the news of Jones’ death that reached colonial officials and metropole stakeholders. These interpretations congeal several aspects of the colonial order. These include antagonism between the cultural majority and the cultural minority and romanticization of a headhunting Ilongot tribe capable of naturalized murder. Several decades later, a re-reading of the archives presents a more nuanced assessment of the events, which takes into account Jones’ demeanor while out in the field and how his actions shaped the reactions from his Ilongot hosts.
Jones went to the heartland of the Ilongots fascinated by accounts of headhunting unchecked by the colonial government. He stayed among the Ilongots until his hosts attacked him when he forcefully grabbed their chief by the arm. Directly after his death we see how ruination affects the interpretation of the incident, and we also see this played out in the way an apparent conflict between the colonial officials and the metropolitan stakeholders re-emerges. The former took steps to send a message that reaction was swift and that justice was served. However, incidental intelligence as demonstrated here reveals either an elaborate backchannel arrangement with the Ilongots to perform retribution or, at worst, total chaos and lack of control in the aftermath of Jones’ death. One final note is the divide and rule ruination that distinctly reveals itself specifically in one of Worcester's letters. Upon hearing second-hand information about Jones getting killed, Worcester immediately assigned blame on Christianized Filipinos as the (only) possible perpetrators of the attack on Jones. Again, this followed the logic that Jones was becoming an action anthropologist who was advocating for the interests of the Christian Filipinos’ enemy—the Ilongots. Also worth recalling is the incident where the Christian Filipinos effectively duped the Ilongots into coming out into the open to discuss customary law with the colonial officials carrying out the punitive expedition. They were given assurance that the colonial officials would negotiate based on their customary law.
This article has shown the colonial/ethnographic production of the Ilongot archive, the proliferation of different archives/stories about Jones’ death, and the resurrection or reproduction of a postcolonial archive prima facie by several stakeholders. These imperial ruins, so to speak, were and continue to be propagated by friends and colleagues of Jones, colonial officials, later generations of historians and anthropologists, and now (arguably) the diasporas of source communities who read the archives at face value in its present repositories. I argue that the concept of ruination tells us a lot about pieces in the puzzle of Jones’ death. This includes the pre-mortem circumstances that were packed with racializing and othering during Jones’ Ilongot fieldwork, the peri-mortem circumstances that feature the lashing of the colonial whip by the colonial anthropologist, and the postmortem circumstances. The latter includes the expeditious court judgment, the prisoner escape, and ultimately the reversal by the colonial Supreme Court on the findings of the colonial Lower Court. Archival ruination and its regenerative debris is read and manifests itself through contradictory reinterpretations over time, with some assigning blame squarely on the Ilongots while others assigned blame to both parties.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Field Museum for providing access to the documentary archives in 2014. The author also wishes to thank the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan, for the archival photographs. This article was also developed through the course Anthropology 594 Proseminar: Advanced Writing and Publishing in the Discipline at the University of Illinois at Chicago in Fall 2018. The author would like to thank Dr. Tarini Bedi for her mentorship and guidance during the course. The author also appreciates the comments and support given by fellow cohorts in the course: Elizabeth Obregon, Alize Arican, Caitlyn Dye, Ava Meux, and Jacob Gold. The author is also grateful for comments given by Dr. Laura Klein during the writers’ workshop. The author is also grateful to Curator John Terrell and Collection Manager Jamie Kelly for their mentorship at the Field Museum.
Notes
Dumaliang, Romano, Testimony of witness given 27 May 1909 before Judge Isidro Paredes, Court of First Instance.
United States versus Palidat, Magueng, and Gacad, Criminal Complaint presided over by W. C. Bryant, Justice of the Peace, Bayombong, Nueva Viscaya, 25 April 1909
Capt. G. B. Bowers to the Adjutant of Constabulary 3 May 1909, R.F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 33.
D. C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 2 April 1909 R. F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D. C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 2 April 1909, R. F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D. C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 2 April 1909, R. F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D. C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 9 July 1909, R. F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D. C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 9 July 1909, R. F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D. C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 9 July 1909, R. F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Field Museum Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D. C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 9 July 1909, R.F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Field Museum Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D.C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 9 July 1909, R. F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D.C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 9 July 1909, R.F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
D.C. Worcester to George Dorsey, 9 July 1909, R.F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 34.
Stephen Simms to D.C. Worcester, 17 September 1910, R.F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 40.
Stephen Simms to D.C. Worcester, 17 September 1910, R.F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 40.
Stephen Simms to D.C. Worcester, 17 September 1910, R.F. Cummings Philippines Expedition, Archives, Field Museum, Box 4, Folder 40.
United States V. Ilongots, Palidat et al.G.R. No. L-5620 21 March 1910.
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