Shelton Woods's "Governor of the Cordillera"

Shelton Woods is the author of seven books and numerous articles. He earned his MA in Modern Chinese History from California State University, Northridge, and his PhD in Southeast Asian History from UCLA. Born and raised in the Philippines, Woods spent his first eighteen years in Baguio City, an urban center within Luzon’s highlands. He has served as a dean and associate dean at Boise State University since 2000, while also winning numerous awards including the university’s highest teaching honor the Foundation Teaching Award.

Woods applied the “Page 99 Test” to his latest book, Governor of the Cordillera: John C. Early among the Philippine Highlanders, and reported the following:

The 99th page of The Governor of the Cordillera: John C. Early Among the Philippine Highlanders reads:

alliance because, as he later wrote, “A school of thought had arisen in the Philippines which based its creed upon the postulate that you must first use force to the uttermost, then when the opponent is crushed extend him gradual leniency. Here we found people coming in contact with government for the first time, eager and willing to conform because personal safety and ordered government appealed to them. This dissipated all arguments of the advocates of flattening punishment as a matter of policy.” Early’s conviction did not align with Hale’s ideas. The Apo of Kalinga was on the move from Lubuagan, and nothing and no one was going to stop him from destroying Bacarri. A showdown between the two lieutenant governors was now just two days away.

Page 99 of The Governor of the Cordillera slightly passes the Page 99 Test. The text only takes up one-third of the page because it is the end of chapter thirteen, “The Bacarri Problem.” Most of the text is a quote from the book’s main character, John Early. But that quote encapsulates his unpopular position that the Philippine indigenous, head-hunting, highland peoples (Igorots) were neither the noble savage romanticized in Western novels nor representatives of the inferior Darwinian evolutionary species. Early fought against the prevailing racism that characterized American colonial officials in their newly-acquired Southeast Asia colony.

For more than three centuries Spain attempted to control the fiercely independent Igorots. Living in the Cordillera range in northern Luzon—the Philippine’s main island—the Igorots’ seven tribes successfully repelled hundreds of attempts by Spanish soldiers and priests to integrate them into the colonial paradigm that lowland Filipinos accepted.

When America purchased the Philippines from Spain in 1898, it succeeded in the highlands where Spain had failed. But some of its methods were illegal and ignored human rights. While many accepted these depredations as the price for “civilizing the wild tribes,” John Early—an obscure American teacher with a checkered background—rose to defend the Igorots against colonial exploitation and carnage. He was fired for doing this and banished from Luzon. But just a decade later, the Igorots demanded that Early be returned—not as their teacher—but as the governor of the entire Cordillera. Three years into his governance, the US press declared that Early was the best governor in the Philippines. But cancer cut Early’s redemptive career short and his story was lost to history, until now.

Page 99 is the showdown between Early ‘s conviction in the equality of all humans, and the impending destruction of entire villages by American-led forces.

Visit Shelton Woods's website.

--Marshal Zeringue