Brigadier General Frederick Funston, a ruddy-faced, redheaded son of the Kansas plains, was attending to paperwork in his Manila office one evening in early February 1901 when a bedraggled insurgent who had just been captured was brought before him. Dressed in rags and a wide-brimmed straw hat, the rebel had been caught carrying letters from homesick fighters to friends and relatives around the islands. Among these Funston’s staff had discovered a few intriguing names. Some of the correspondence he carried was signed by one “Colon de Magdalo,” a false name known to have been used by Aguinaldo. Desperate to know more, Funston’s men subjected the courier to what were later referred to as “forceful” means—likely the water cure—to flesh out the story.1In due time, the rebel revealed that Aguinaldo was holed up in a tiny isolated village in northeast Luzon called Palanan. Funston began to ponder the possibilities.
The intriguing clue about Aguinaldo was the latest piece of good news for the Americans in the Philippines. McKinley’s reelection the previous autumn had delivered as devastating a blow to the insurgents as any they had suffered on the battlefield. Now, there appeared no hope that the United States would leave the islands anytime soon. Rebel troops either quit fighting or surrendered. In December, some two thousand insurgents gave up all at once, an unprecedentedly high figure. At the same time, the new American governor in the Philippines, a portly former judge from Ohio, William Howard Taft, was doing an admirable job of using a “Policy of Attraction” to make life with the Americans seem like a better alternative to remaining in the jungle and being shot at.2 Spain’s centuries-old legal system was replaced with one modeled on American jurisprudence. Infrastructure projects were begun. Soon shiploads of fresh-faced American college kids arrived, eager to start work as teachers and nurses. Like a proud father witnessing his baby’s first steps, Taft watched on February 22, 1901—George Washington’s birthday—when crowds gathered in Manila’s big park, the Luneta, for the formal birth of an American-backed political party. As brass bands played and the American flag flew overhead, Pardo de Tavera, the founder of the Partido Federal, told crowds “I see the day near at hand … when it shall transpire that George Washington will not simply be the glory of the American continent, but also our glory, because he will be the father of the American world, in which we shall feel ourselves completely united and assimilated.”3
Fortified with whiskey and coffee, Funston and two aides stayed up until the wee hours working to decipher coded letters confiscated from the courier that might corroborate his story. The pattern they discovered was simple, one that substituted numbers for the letters of the alphabet in reverse order. As they banged the correspondence out on a typewriter, their tired eyes brightened with the realization that not only did the story check out, but that Aguinaldo was in need of troops.4 It was all Funston, who loved adventure and the notoriety that came with it, needed to know, and he set about devising an audacious plan to capture the rebel.
The problem that most vexed Funston was how to get enough men to carry out the raid without being detected. All trails leading to his hideout in Palanan would surely be monitored by Negrito and Ilongot tribesmen, who knew the territory and would swiftly alert the insurgents. American troops would not be able to travel a mile without being discovered. Turning it over in his mind, Funston was struck by Aguinaldo’s call for four hundred men. If Aguinaldo needed troops, that’s what he would give him.
The “troops” would be Macabebe scouts, indigenous people who, because of their uncertain historical origin, had always been considered outcasts in the islands and were loyal to the Americans since George Dewey first landed at Manila. Lazaro Segovia, who had fought on both sides of the insurrection before joining the Americans—as a Spanish officer and a member of the Army of Liberation—would play the role of a senior insurgent officer. Funston and four other Americans would pose as prisoners.
The plan was as dangerous as it was clever. The expedition would land near the village of Casiguran, twenty-seven miles from the nearest American-held territory at Baler. They would have to march more than one hundred miles through unknown terrain solidly loyal to Aguinaldo. The odds were clearly not in their favor. Upon hearing the plan, Arthur MacArthur, Jr., confessed he didn’t think he would ever see Funston again.5
Put ashore in the stormy early morning darkness of March 14, 1901, the group of eighty-nine men began their march on Aguinaldo’s lair.6 For more than a week, they trudged along the beach and through rice paddies and traversed mountainsides under a canopy of rattan, bamboo, palms, and giant ferns. Carrying little food of their own, the men subsisted on dishes of moldy rice and stews of snail, limpets, and tiny fish—“a revolting mess” in the words of one.
Yet the group could so convincingly tell their story that they were without reservation treated as rebels. Villages loyal to Aguinaldo offered them lodging, and when word reached the insurgent leader that the group was looking for him, he dispatched scouts to guide them directly to his headquarters. There was but one complication. Aguinaldo’s scouts insisted that the American “prisoners” remain behind.
Cut off from the Americans who were supposed to give the orders, Segovia and his men arrived at Aguinaldo’s headquarters, a village of eighty or so thatched huts bounded by a river on one side and the jungle on all others, and prepared the final act of their charade. Marching into the town square, the men presented arms, paid their respects to the blue, red, and white Philippine flag hanging from a high pole, and did their best to appear friendly. Somewhat nervously, for he didn’t know how his men would take to being left in close proximity to their enemy, Segovia climbed the steps of Aguinaldo’s headquarters and was introduced to the most wanted man in the Philippines.
Dressed in a starched khaki uniform with Spanish riding boots, his dark hair in a pompadour over a high wide brow, Aguinaldo engaged Segovia and another spy, Hilario Tal Placido, in friendly conversation. Going through the motions of exchanging pleasantries, Segovia’s mind remained fixated on his men in the square, where the slightest provocation might trigger a confrontation and kill his chances of nabbing Aguinaldo, now so close at hand.
When the meeting ended, Segovia made his way outside where his anxious men, their eyes pleading for permission to attack, watched for a signal. Segovia raised his hat and shouted, “Now is the time, Macabebes! Give it to them.” Before the perplexed rebel honor guard realized they had been duped, the Macabebes delivered a fusillade at nearly point-blank range. Segovia, his pistol drawn, spun and ran back inside to find Aguinaldo, “You are our prisoner. We are not insurgents, we are Americans! Surrender or be killed.” Aguinaldo, pale and with tears in his eyes, could only ask, “Is this not some joke?”
Funston, who by now had tricked his guards into bringing him to the village, arrived just as Segovia was springing his trap. Assuming command of the group, Funston led the troops and Aguinaldo down the mountain trail and to the beach where, according to plan, the USS Vicksburgwaited. Using a white bedsheet as a semaphore, the landing party signaled WE HAVE HIM. SEND BOATS FOR ALL. After a brief pause the reply from the ship was signaled back: bully! A faint cheer echoed across the water from the ship’s deck.7
After months on the run, Aguinaldo suddenly seemed drained of his fighting spirit. Back in Manila, MacArthur gave the prisoner a comfortable suite of rooms with a view of parade grounds, from which he watched in confusion as American soldiers played pickup football games.
His dreams of playing the role of George Washington of the Philippines now shattered, Aguinaldo would write he was relieved that, finally, it was all over. “I had known for some time that our resistance was doomed to failure.… Now, it was over and I was alive.” He grew to grudgingly respect the Americans, concluding that the United States would prove better masters of the islands than the Spanish had. He would even develop an “undeniable admiration” for Funston.8