William Henry Scott was born July 10, 1921 died October 4, 1993.

 He was a
histroian of the Gran Cordiller Center and Prehispanic Philippines.
 He personally rejected the description anthropologist as applying to himself. During the
time when Ferdinand  Marcos declared Martial law in 1972, Scott was arrested as a
subversive and placed in military detention. Scott was given "a memorable and
triumphant welcome back in Sagada" following his acquittal. He continued to be critical
of the Marcos regime. Scott's first well known academic work is The Discovery of the
Igorots.
 
 
 
 
 
Who is Pedro Alcantara Monteclaro’s Maragtas?
 
Pedro Alcantara Monteclaro is the one who wrote Maragtas, or History of Panay from
the first inhabitants and the Bornean immigrants from which the Bisayans are
descended to the arrival of the Spaniards, was published by Kadapig sang Banwa
(Advocate of the Town) at the El Tiempo Press, Iloilo, in 1901. It is written in mixed
Hiligaynon and Kin-iraya, the author having been a native of the border region between
these two Visayan dialects. A second edition was published by the Makinaugalingon
Press in 1929, and a third edition in 1957 by Sol Gwekoh under a copyright held by the
author's son Juanito L. Monteclaro, which differs from the original only in certain
orthographic reforms and a more colloquial version of the title.
Pedro Monteclaro was born in Miag-ao, Iloilo, on 15 October 1850, graduated
from the Seminario Colegio de Jaro in 1865, was twice married, and had five children.
He served as Teniente Mayor in 1891, and Gobernadorcillo in 1892-1894, and became
a local hero during the Revolution and the American invasion both for his leadership
and diplomacy. He served as Liaison Officer during the American occupation of the
area, and was the first President of Miag-ao (1901-1903), during which period he began
the researches which resulted in his publication of the Maragtas. He was also known as
a poet in both the vernacular and Spanish, and a few of his Visayan songs have
survived. He died on 13 April 1909, and is memorialized in the name of the local
Philippine Constabulary base, Camp Monteclaro, at whose gate his statue stands.
 

The Maragtas
 
The word maragtas is used by the author as the equivalent of the Spanish
historia, and glossed in the 1957 edition with Visayan sayuron (account), though
commentators have regularly sought some Sanskrit origin for the word. (Guillermo
Santiago-Cuino, for example, considered it a corruption of a Sanskrit term meaning
"great people" or "great country.") Present-day speakers of Visayan, however, know the
word only as the title of this book or of some prehispanic manuscript believed to be its
origin. It is in consideration of this latter opinion that the provenance and contents of the
book must be examined in detail.
Provenance.: Consideration of the provenance (place where something originally came
or began, or a record tracing the ownership history that helps to confirm their authenticity
and value) of the Maragtas must begin with the author's own statement as set forth in
his "Foreword to the Readers," which is here quoted in full:
I wrote this Maragtas, a history of the first inhabitants of the island of Panay, with
great reluctance for fear I might be considered too presumptuous. I would therefore
have refrained from writing it but for my burning desire to reveal to the public the many
data which I gathered from records about the first inhabitants of the island of Panay, the
arrival of the Datus from Borneo, their possession and settlement of our land, their
spread to different parts of the Island, and their customs and habits until the Spaniards
came and ruled the Philippines.
In order that the readers of this Maragtas should not accuse me of having merely
composed this book from imagination, I wish to mention two manuscripts I found. One
of these was given to me by an 82-year old man, who had been the first teacher of the
town and who said it had been given him by his father who, in turn, got it from his father,
the old man's grandfather. The long years through which the manuscript must have
passed wore out the paper so much that it was almost impossible to handle. Worse yet,
it was only written in a black dye and smeared with sap which had burned the paper and
made it almost useless. The other manuscript I found in a bamboo tube where my
grandfather used to keep his old papers. This manuscript, however, was hardly legible
at all, and was so brittle I could hardly handle it without tearing it to pieces. Having
located one manuscript, I concluded there would most likely be another copy
somewhere, so I decided to inquire of different old men and women of the town. My
search was not in vain for I then came across the aforementioned old man in the street,
who even gave me the manuscripts dealing with what happened in the town of Miag-ao
from the time of its foundation. I copied these records in a book on 12 June 1901, as a
memoir for the town of Miagao, but did not publish them for the reasons stated.
Besides, I was waiting for someone better qualified to write a history of the Island of
Panay from the time of its first inhabitants.
I should like my readers to know that my purpose in writing this Maragtas is not
to gain honor for myself but to transmit to others what I read in the records I collected.
The author therefore claims the Maragtas as an original work based on various
data that he collected, which -considering its many ethnographic, linguistic and historic
details, its many Spanish terms, and such modern theories as a geological connection
between Palawan and Borneo, is exactly what it sounds like.
The publisher's introduction is equally clear: The following account of history
called Maragtas written by Mr. Pedro A. Monteclaro deseribes the different ways of life
of the first inhabitants of Panay Island... and] is of great importance as a collection of
many different passages which hereto fore have been scattered. The dramatic
description of the two nearly illegible documents among these data is intended, as the
author explicitly states, to show that the work is not sheer fiction: he carefully records
the exact date when he first copied them down but neither states nor implies that they
are transcribed in the present work; moreover, the contents of one of them-"what
happened in the town of Miag-ao from the time of its foundation"- does not directly
concern the subject matter and is relegated to the last page of the epilogue. n the same
epilogue, he emphasizes his having consulted "all the old men of every town" by giving
his reason-"my documents did not give me clear and complete data on the things of the
past."
 
  SUMMARY OF THE MARAGTAS
 
The Maragtas consists of a publisher's introduction by Salvador Laguda, the
author's "Foreword to the Readers,"
six chapters and an epilogue entitled, "Author's concluding statements to his
countrymen in the island of Panay." Although 
the author of the Maragtas did not provide any data or clues by which the authenticity of
this code could be established, an interesting parallel appeared in Cuillermo Santiago-
Cuino s "El Codigo de Maragtas" in the 20 February 1938 issue of FI Debate, which
professed to have been translated direct from "ancient Filipino writing."
It was based on written and oral sources then available, and contains three sorts
of subject matter folk customs still being practiced or remembered by old folks, the
description of an idealized political confederation whose existence there are reasonable
grounds to doubt and for which there is no evidence, and a legend recorded in 1858 of
a migration of Bornean settlers, some of whom are still remembered as folk heroes,
pagan deities, or progenitors of part of the present population of Panay. There is no
reason to doubt that this legend preserves the memory of some actual event itself or to
decide which of its details are historic facts and which are the embellishments of
generations of oral transmission.
 
The Boxer Codex
The Boxer Codex, sometimes known as the Manila Manuscript contains
illustrations of ethnic groups in the Philippines, ethnic groups across Southeast
Asia, East Asia, and Micronesia at the time of their initial contact with the Spaniards with
additional Taoist mythological deities and demons, and both real and mythological birds
and animals copied from popular Chinese texts and books in circulation at the time
The Boxer Codex depicts the Tagalogs, Visayans, Zambals, Cagayanes or
possibly Ibanags, and Negritos of the Philippines in vivid color. The technique of the
paintings, as does the use of Chinese paper, ink, and paints, suggests that the unknown
artist may have been Chinese.

 It is believed that the original owner of the manuscript was Luis Pérez Dasmariñas, son
of Governor General Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, who was killed in 1593
by Sangleys or Chinese living in the Philippines. Luis succeeded his father in office
as Governor-General of the Philippines. Since Spanish colonial governors were
required to submit written reports on the territories they governed, it is likely that the
manuscript was written under the orders of the governor.