The Position of the tribal minorities in the Philippines is fundamentally different from that of comparable populations in other parts of Asia. The manner in which they have been enabled to run their own affairs and retain many features of their traditional culture while simultaneously acquiring Western education and familiarity with certain modern technological achievements is indicative of an approach to minority problems which distinguishes the Philippines from most other Asian countries. Whereas in the former colonial territories of Britain, France and the Netherlands a centrally controlled service of professional administrators endeavoured to impose on all populations, advanced as well as backward, a minimum respect for law and order as seen by the colonial power, in the Philippines neither the Spanish rulers nor the American authorities set up a type of district administration such as existed, for instance, in British India. When in 1898 the Americans replaced the Spanish régime, they did not give high priority to establishing throughout the islands an administration capable of dealing effectively with problems of law and order. In the lowlands they could build on a political system set up by the Spanish, but in the mountains of Northern Luzon, the area with which I am here concerned, they found not even the skeleton of a colonial administration. The entire hill-region was inhabited by warring tribes, torn by feuds and passionately addicted to the practice of head-hunting. Faced with a similar situation in such areas as the Naga Hills on the Assam—Burma border, the British had set about pacifying the tribes, stage by stage, and area by area, establishing outposts of military police and creating administrative units in charge of high-powered and specially selected members of the Indian Civil Service. Village elders were made responsible to these district officers, who administered summary justice in their capacity of magistrates, and this paternalistic system worked well as long as British rule lasted, but was hardly intended to prepare the ground for a system of representative democracy.