Today in history: A Cavite cemetery, 1899
Hammock-style coffins and mummified friars on display
From the diary of John E.T. Milsaps, the Salvation Army missionary, describing a day’s excursion to Cavite on Tuesday, February 28, 1899:
The earthworks supported by plaited bamboo uprights & mounting 2 guns engaged my attention. Took a picture of the same. Detachments of the 51st Iowa, & Battery B. 1st California Heavy Artillery are stationed at this point which commands the causeway* (*Note: This causeway is called the Isthmus of Dalahican.) leading to Cavite Viejo (old C.) & the main land of Luzon Island. Private Frank Tarr, a Christian, who accompanied me on my rounds, Geo. Baker wanted to visit the San Roque Roman Catholic cemetery, because he heard bones were thrown out of graves & he had never seen anything like that. The 3 of us cut thro’ the forest to the cemetery. Visited unburnt native shacks & the burnt ones too en route. In San Roque under a verandah Baker showed me a wretched Filipino man, covered with syphaletic sores; a pitiable case. He gave him 10 cts Mex. & I 04. Tried to teach the poor creature to pray to Jesus.
When we entered the arched entrance to the San Roque cemetery we saw a box made in imitation of a coffin of box lumber. A sling was around it. Evidently the same had been brought out by 2 Filipinos slung to a bamboo pole. While we stood looking at the strange coffin an artillery sergeant –Ernest Koenig– hastened out of the cemetery & warned us to beware of the corpse as it was that of a 2 year old child who had died of small pox, in a casco down in the navy yard at Cavite. One Filipino was busy digging a shallow grave in the coarse black sea sand. With the sand he threw up the bones of other dead humans. Leaving the funeral party we went into the mortuary chapel. Confusion certainly struck this place since the war began. Boxes of bones had been dug up all over the floor & the remains scattered over the same. On either side of the altar at the back end were 2 tiers of tombs probably for priests. The tombs were open. A coffin containing a mummified priest dressed in a long drown robe was dragged out and dropped on the floor. The wood coffin broke open & the priest lay partly in & partly out, his hip bone got disjointed by the fall probably & broke thro’ his parchment-like skin, a ghostly, loathsome sight. The alter with its crucifix was a wreck & moved from its place. Between it & the wall was a litter of garments & smashed odds & ends. While engaged contemplating this scene, Sergeant Koenig entered the chapel & inquired if I would not hold some kind of service over the grave. Certainly! Taking our stand on the windward side of the little grave, the 2 Filipino men, holding one each end of the coffin, with Sergt Koenig & privates Geo. Baker & Frank Tarr as witnesses I consigned to mother earth the remains of little Damasa Garcia. While lowering the coffin of his child into the grave the poor father wept. It was a touching scene.
After the burial, we passed thro’ a back gate into a yard where were heaps of bones. Indeed they are everywhere under & on top of ground in this cemetery. A row of skulls from the limb of a tree faces the front gate, & outside the wall one surmounts a pole as if put there in derision. The very atmosphere of this horrible cemetery seemed to be saturated with death.