LUKBAN fragmentation of Lukban ’ s base that supported the revolutionary cause .
THIS book also tries to present the side of the Americans who were faced with the difficulty of having to sell the idea of American governance amongst a population that was at the onset antagonistic . After all , the new conquerors were coming to replace their erstwhile Spanish masters , and no amount of using the Treaty of Paris to justify their presence would suffice . It was not a mere guerrilla band that they were up against but a band that enjoyed the support of the people . This was something new to them . Most of their officers were products of the Indian wars at home that used a different set of strategies and tactics . Even their earlier interventions in Cuba and China ’ s Boxer Rebellion did not prepare them for the people ’ s war in Samar .
They had to use all the dirty tricks they knew to subjugate the thousands of unarmed natives living in villages , including food blockade and confiscation , food rationing and all sorts of cajoling , threats , harassment and intimidation to erode the support for Lukban ’ s guerrillas . People were told to live in ‘ protected ’ camps , and those found outside were considered enemies and supporters of the guerrillas and , therefore , could be eliminated . Several villages were burned and farm animals killed because presumably they provided support to Lukban ’ s guerrillas . This ‘ kill-all ’ policy was implemented by the Americans employing its most notorious general , Jake ‘ Howling ’ Smith and his faithful officers represented by the ‘ butcher of Samar ,’ Maj . Littleton Waller . Smith and Waller would later figure in a court martial that was more of a show to appease the irate American public .
Indeed , their dirty tactics would serve the Americans in good stead . They were finally able to capture the elusive Filipino guerrilla chief Vicente Lukban in his mountain hideout , using native scouts to track him . The lessons learned in Samar would become useful to them some 40 years later in their Vietnam military adventure . But that is a different story altogether . Lukban ’ s capture ended a segment of the people ’ s overall struggle for nationhood and independence . Less than a year later , a more vicious war emerged from the unsurrendered elements of Lukban ’ s forces who had joined with the bolo-wielding cultists called the dios-dios , renamed as the pulajans .
Endnotes 1The Salt Lake Herald , Nov . 14 , 1899
11