H. Otley Beyer
1883-1966
Anthropologist
He Taught at the University of the Philippines
Something else happened in 1914. The ethnological work of the Bureau of Science to which the early survey was relegated finally was suspended in that year, thus throwing Beyer out of work. The young ethnologist was ready to pack his things and artifacts for home when a number of educators thought that the situation could be saved by opening up anthropology courses in the State University. But there was some opposition from among the members of the Board of Regents, especially in the person of the Archbishop of Manila who sat as one of the members. The young Beyer was eyed by Rafael Palma as the prospective candidate to handle the courses, but some regents were not sure of the kind of anthropology that was going to be taught. He was called to a meeting, and the Archbishop was able to extract a promise from Mr. Beyer that he was not going to teach evolution in any of the courses. In later years, H. Otley Beyer told me he just promised, but true to the profession he always discussed evolution in his introductory courses and whenever there was an occasion. It was diplomatic move, but it must he remembered that evolution was banned in many schools in the United States up and until the twenties.
In the second semester of the school year 1914-15, the introductory courses in anthropology were offered with 17 students to start with. This course and other anthropology courses that were instituted later were given under the Department of History, then under the headship of Austin Craig. Sometimes he was asked to teach a course in sociology or Oriental history during the absence of Craig. From 1924 to 1917 when the Department of Anthropology was created as an independent unit, Professor Beyer single-handedly conducted the anthropology courses.
However, in 1917, during the first semester, Encarnacion Gonzaga, who had just finished her M.A. in March of the same year, was taken in as assistant, and together with Cecilio Lim as instructor, formed the faculty. By this time the number of courses had expanded from one in 1914 to eight courses in 1916. As Miss Gonzaga resigned after one year, Mr. Marcelo Tangco was taken in to replace her sometime in November 1918. In 1916 new courses, the following were created in the undergraduate level; Philippine archaeology, Philippine folklore, Folklore of Eastern Asia and Oceania, and Physical anthropology. At one time Mrs. Hazel Clark Taylore, who was very assiduous in assisting Prof. Beyer in collecting material from students, taught folklore; and John M. Garvan, the anthropologist who went native, taught anthropology as lecturer in 1920-1921. In 1921, the Sociology was removed from that department and together with that of Anthropology the Department of Anthropology and Sociology was created, a joint arrangement which lasted until after World War II in 1951.
Aside from teaching, Prof. Beyer’s services were engaged by the Museum branch of the Philippine Library and Museum as curator from January 1, 1918 to December 31, 1922. In 1918 his services were further sought by Deputy Governor Frank C. Carpenter who sponsored a series of researches in Mindanao and Sulu to be carried out by Prof. Beyer and Dean Charles W. Baker of the College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines, because up to that time the American administrators were making little headway in controlling the Muslim groups. This gave Beyer a chance to make several trips to the south and to gather material from a rather neglected area, thus expanding his Philippine Ethnographic Series which by this time was reaching a hundred volumes. Much of the data gathered up to that period he condensed and used in writing "Non-Christian Peoples of the Philippine Islands, "a monographic work which got published in the Census of the Philippine Islands, 1918.
SOMETIMES IN 1919 Prof. Beyer accompanied the recently named Secretary of the Interior Teodoro M. Kalaw and Insular Auditor dexter on a fact-finding mission to the Dutch East Indies, a trip that took them almost three months visiting Java, Celebes and Borneo. Something meaningful resulted from this trip because Prof. Beyer and Architect Juan Arellano had the opportunity of viewing the monumental remains and archaeological collections in and around Djogjakarta and Surakarta. This trip in particular aroused Beyer’s curiosity about the prehistory of the Philippines and its possible relationship with the south.
Upon the return of the mission to Manila, Prof. Beyer busied himself with gathering the printed literature on Southeast Asia. This resulted in the following year of the termination of a two-volume work on The Philippines Before Magellan. Two chapters of this voluminous opus were published with the same title in Asia magazine in 1921.
In the same year, 1921, a great part of his time was spent with the wood-Forbes Mission which carried him to many parts of the country, thus enabling him to make observations of the different ethno linguistic groups at close range. Appendix 9 of the Missions’s report was written by him.
The period 1922-1924 found Beyer once more in the classroom, though he was acting in an official capacity as adviser to the governor-general on minority-group problems. In the later part of 1924 he was once more attached to another mission, the Munroe Educational Survey, which enabled him to make several long trips to the Visayan Islands and southern Luzon.
During the administration of Gov...Gen. Leonard wood, he was named a member of the Industrial Relations Survey which was created purposely to study labor and industrial relations of Filipino workers in Hawaii. He served for nine months, giving him at the same time the opportunity to examine the studies and collections being made in the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, data and material which were useful in rounding up his theory of the peopling of the Pacific basin.
His work in Hawaii having been terminated, he thought of visiting U.S.a. By this time he had already made a name. Aside from seeing his parents and relatives in Iowa, he paid a visit to the University of Michigan, Princeton, Chicago, New York, and harvard. He was offered a chair in antrhopology in Micihiga and Princeton and a research professorial at harvard. The Harvard offer was a tempting one and he was considering it even after he had returned to Manila. In fact, he had started to send materials to harvard in anticipation of occupying the research professorship, but something else detained him. Sometime in February 1926 Prof. Beyer received reports of an archaeological site in Novaliches, a little over 20 kilometers from the U.P. Campus in Manila. The government engineers or private contractors while excavating the foundation for the dam accidentally came across a rich deposit or prehistoric data. He visited the site immediately and her was convinced that here was an opportunity to decipher the prehistory of the Philippines.
As he was occupying a house on Santol Street, Santa Mesa, the time came when this was not enough to contain the material that was being unearthed in Novaliches. He rented a couple of apartments on Nebraska Street, close to the University campus and made these his storehouses and rooms. Later when specimens could not be accommodated in these apartments, he used the basement of the Bureau of Mines building on Herran Street; and as more material came from other sites, he rented two more apartments, one on Nebraska and the other on Florida Street. By this time he had a choice collection of Filipiniana which was housed in three of the apartments besides those that were shelved in the Rizal Hall Annex, the second floor of which being assigned to the Department of Anthropology.
It was Beyer’s habit to acquire at least two copies of any Filipiniana item that became available in print. He put in one volume three or four titles of the same author, such as the Tagalog novels that flooded the market and had these bound. With the metrical romances (the awits and corridos), he would put together some six or eight titles depending upon the thickness of the material. He bought bookcases made of narra and these lines up the walls of the departments, up and down. The periodicals he put them in boxes properly numbered and indexed.
Probably aside from the Novaliches site which kept him busy for the next few years, the discovery of many other sites in the vicinity, there were other things that he wanted to do. One of these was the building of a Flipiniana collection that could not be rivaled by anything of its kind in the world. He picked up anything in print up to movie programs, invitations, and posters. Whenever he went to the downtown area and he happened to be on the Escolta, Rosario or Carriedo Street, he could be seen dropping in any of the bookstores, buying anything to him of value, collectanea, or ephemeral print. He was an indefatigable and tireless collector. He made lists or catalogues of the items, but his collecting activity was faster than he could list them. His listing was a far cry from the real collection, for heaps, piles up in many places in the apartments on chairs, tables, and corners.
Beyer continued with his archaeological investigation which expanded to the Laguna de Bay district. This he called the Rizal-Bulakan Survey which lasted for five years., 1926-1930 and netted nearly a quarter of a million specimens: stone implements, pottery, iron tools, bronze artifacts, procelain, and all sorts of materials.
Beyer became a collector of artifacts, pottery and porcelain from other places. He had been receiving all sorts of news about accidental finds in provincial areas; sometimes he found time to visit these sites, especially those close to Manila; or he would establish collecting stations with native residents who did the gathering of specimens. Most of the time, however, he has to depend upon provincial collectors who brought the stone implements or porcelain to his quarters. He had collectors from many places in the country, Americans and Filipinos alike. He paid for all those brought to him. Thus, he made one of the most enviable collections of oriental ceramics ever assembled in Manila before World War II. He was very assiduous in having the specimens washed or cleaned, labeled or numbered and catalogued.
In the Manila area alone he collected from every excavation made for the foundations of buildings like those of the Ideal Theatre, The Philippine National Bank, the Cu Unjieng Building, the Post Office, and many other places. He discovers the Santa Ana site. Wile crossing the Pasig River in a banca during low tide, he saw specimens of porcelain sticking out of the river bank. This evidence became the clue to his discovery there. It was a significant site which gave Beyer basis for establishing chronology, typology based on diagnostic features. In and around the Laguna de Bay area he had many sites; those in Taguig, Pasig, Tanay, Morong among others. He had almost a hundred sites in Rizal provine alone which radiated from the Novaliches discovery and the survey he made of this area was a testimony on his deep inerest. He extended field work to batangas province where he collected thousands of artifacts.
Although he never had time to cover the entire Visayan Islands, he had collectors from Leyte, Samar, Cebu, Bohol, Negros, Panay and smaller islands who made deliveries to him in his office or apartments. He sent his own money almost in every instance, for he did not like making vouchers or requisitions for supplies which the government required. He did not have time to do these details nor reporting expenses incurred. He would rather pay any expenses from his own pocket upon delivery of the goods.