In 1915 an unnamed hurricane ravaged the vast marshy confines of Lake Borgne in Southeastern Lousiana. It left a trail of $13 million in damages (the equivalent of nearly $320 million today) and 275 casualties in its wake. Among the many things it destroyed was Saint Malo the first permanent Filipino and Asian-American settlement in the United States. Its settlers, known as the Manila Men, were left homeless and had to start from scratch.
The Manila men or Tagalas from the Philippine Islands were among the early Filipino settlers in the United States. It is unclear why and how they arrived in Louisiana, but various sources claim that they were either castaways, deserters, or marooned from the wrecked galleons they were on.
The Manila men were among the first native Filipinos to set foot in the Americas as early as 1765. However, there seems to be no consensus on the precise date of the Manila men’s arrival or when they began gradually settling in the area. Regardless, they would go largely unnoticed by the majority of the population living in the region, and it wasn't until 1883 that the American public was first introduced to the Manila Men through an article published in Harper's weekly by Lafcadio Hearn, a writer-journalist who visited and documented the Manila men's way of life. This would then go on to become the first written account of the Manila men in the United States.
According to Hearn's report, the Manila men's houses were said to be on stilts, and the men had learned to improvise on anything they needed because living on the marshes meant living alongside erratic weather and unforgiving wildlife. They were also described as establishing their own rules and laws that the inhabitants of the settlement had to follow. The oldest person in the community is the one who settles a dispute or mediates a certain disagreement. If a person refused a verdict then he is jailed in a makeshift cell.
Hearn's report also notes that the Manila men spoke Spanish as well as a Malay dialect. They possessed no furniture and slept at night among barrels of flour, folded sails, and smoked fish. The Manila men rarely ate rice and their diet was mostly comprised of seafood. All of them are Roman Catholic.
Aside from Saint Malo, there are also other Filipino settlements established later in the area. The Manila Village on Barataria Bay in the Mississippi Delta, for instance, is one where houses were built on stilts on a 50-acre marshland. This was, however, destroyed by the 1965 Hurricane Betty.
At present, the descendants of the Manila Men maintain a solid Filipino community, and despite widespread intermarriage, many Louisianans of Filipino descent have maintained strong ties to the Philippines, their language, and their culture.
Read Hearn's Full 1883 Report Here.