01/19/2026
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we stand in solidarity with the African American community. We remember and honor the legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers, whose shared history with Filipinos during the struggle for Philippine independence reflects a powerful story of courage, sacrifice, and interconnected fights for freedom and justice.
The Buffalo Soldiers & the Philippine American War.
Presentation Notes of Charity Bagatsing for the Spokane Public Library (2020) and City of Spokane's EXPO 74 Exhibit at River Park Square Mall in June 2024.
Photo credit: Joel E. Ferris Archives - Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture.
The legendary exploits of the Buffalo Soldiers are well known among historians and the African/American community, but the general public has heard little of their role in U.S. history.
Even less is known about the role of the Black troops in the Philippine War of Independence.
The so-called Buffalo Soldiers, made up of African American army units, were organized in 1866. They were led by white officers because it was believed that Blacks were not capable of leadership positions.
In the Spanish-American war of 1898, Black troops distinguished themselves in Cuba, taking part in the famous charge up San Juan Hill that also included future President Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. It was errantly assumed that the Black soldiers would be more resistant to the tropical diseases which they would encounter. By 1899, 18 Black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for bravery and gallantry above and beyond the call of duty.
During the 1899-1902 American-Filipino war the United States Army dispatched four Black regiments to the Philippines. Some sources indicate that 7,000 Black soldiers served in this conflict. Here the Black soldiers found themselves in the position of fighting against oppressed islanders who were seeking independence from foreign rule.
Perhaps the reason that the Buffalo Soldiers’ time in the Philippines is not so well recorded in U.S. history books is because of the relatively high number of desertions, which may besmirch the Buffalo Soldiers’ heralded exploits. Best estimates put the number of desertions of Black soldiers to number 15 to 30.
The black soldiers’ dilemma only deepened as they arrived in the islands. Just days before he was killed in action in Corregidor, Sgt. Patrick Mason of the 24th wrote home to a black newspaper:
“I feel sorry for these people and all those that have come under the control of the U.S. The first thing in the morning is ‘nigger’ and the last thing at night is ‘nigger.’ You have no idea the way these people are treated by the Americans here, I must not say much, as I am a soldier.
The natives are a patient, burden-bearing people.”
Many African American soldiers in the Philippines were treated as second-class citizens. The officers often ordered them to carry out the “dirty jobs” that no one wanted to do. Or they served as expendable shock troops in the frontline, where their lives were most at risk, while the White commanders stayed back at a safer distance from the enemy.
In their propaganda war, the insurgents used posters addressed to “The Colored American Soldier” in which they reminded the Black soldiers of the lynching's back in the U.S. and asked them not to serve the White imperialists against other people of color. The supposed "turncoats" of the 24th Infantry only proved one thing: that the systematic racism and oppression of the White Americans was enough to unite even the unlikeliest of allies.
Guerilla propagandists, one of whose flyers read:
“To the Colored American Soldier: It is without honor that you shed your precious blood. Your masters have thrown you in the most iniquitous fight with double purpose—to make you the instrument of their ambition, and also your hard work will soon make the extinction of your race. Your friends, the Filipinos, give you this good warning.
You must consider your situation and your history and take charge that the blood of… Sam Hose [a young farm hand lynched in Newton, Georgia earlier that year] proclaims vengeance.”
The Richmond Planet quoted a Nueva Ejica physician named Teodorico Santos thus:
“The white troops… began to tell of the inferiority of the American blacks–of your brutal natures, your cannibal tendencies, how you would r**e our señoritas, etc. Of course, we were a little shy of you… but we studied you, as results have shown. The affinity of complexion between you and me tells, and you exercise your duty much kindlier in dealing with us. Between you and him, we look upon you as the angel
and him as the devil.”
On November 17, Company I packed up for its new post in Cabanatuan. Using the confusion of the move as cover, Fagen gathered as many pistols as he could safely conceal and calmly walked out of his barracks. He had somehow sent word to the guerillas a few days before; a saddled horse was waiting for him. Fagen’s escape was effortless. He rode into the jungle, toward the headquarters of the rebels in the densely foliaged slopes of Mt. Arayat to his new life as an “insurrecto.”
Fagen led the way for more than 20 other black deserters to what military historian Anthony Powell calls a “higher morality.” About 12 of them joined Fagen in active service with the Filipinos, an unprecedented episode in black military history. “It was the first time that a large number of black soldiers defected to fight on the other side. “
Fagen fought “like a wildcat” as a first lieutenant in the Brigada Lacuña, the feared battalion under the command of General Urbano Lacuña. His first year with the Filipino forces went by largely unrecorded until September 6, 1900, when he was promoted to captain.
Journalists in the Philippines and the U.S. became fascinated with the mysterious rebel leader. In a New York Times headline story on October 29, 1900, they described Fagen as a “cunning and highly skilled guerrilla officer who harassed and evaded large conventional American units.” There were eight reported incidents of Fagen-led operations, the most famous of which was the daring raid of a supply barge on the Pampanga River.
Guerilla fighters now addressed him as “Heneral” Fagen, who became one of Aguinaldo’s most valued officers, becoming a media sensation and a fugitive with a $600 bounty on his head.
Fagen enjoyed a good time. He was a master of stud poker, having regularly relieved his fellow soldiers of several hundred dollars on payday. He was fond of carousals, played a guitar, and lived in camp with his Filipino wife. He was “often amusing” and voluble, supremely confident, and a natural leader.
The other defectors were also reported to have strengthened the Filipino cause as marksmanship instructors. White officers warned of the added danger in confronting native riflemen trained by the black soldiers.
The U.S. Army’s famed “guerilla catcher,” Col. Frederick Funston, became obsessed with the capture of the renegade and decried a missed opportunity: “I got a fairly good look at the notorious Fagen at a distance of 100 yards, but unfortunately, had already emptied my carbine. This wretched man had on two occasions written me impudent and badly spelled letters. Fagen is ‘entitled to the same treatment as a mad dog’.”
Funston captured Aguinaldo instead—through an elaborate ploy—on March 23. Two weeks later, the Filipino leader swore allegiance to the United States and ordered his forces to surrender immediately. In Nueva Ecija, General Lacuña and other guerilla leaders obeyed their leader. Lacuña, however, refused to surrender Fagen, and came down from the hills with his officers after releasing the American from his command. Funston now embarked on an all-out hunt for “the head of the American Negro.”
On the afternoon of December 6, 1901, it appeared that the wily Funston finally bagged his quarry. Anastacio Bartolome, a former guerilla, who now earned a living as a deer hunter, entered the Army barracks in Bongabong, Nueva Ecija, under Lt. R.C. Corliss. He laid a canvas sack on the floor and recited certain events of the previous days, which the American officer recorded as an affidavit.
The hunter claimed he was fishing with two companions in the Umiray River one morning, when Fagen arrived with two Negrito friends and his native wife. He invited Fagen and his party to share a lunch of fish and rice.
The affidavit reads: “While all were eating, Anastacio and his party suddenly turned on Fagen and his men with bolos. Fagen was mortally wounded and ran about 100 yards and dropped dead. The two Negritos escaped badly wounded.
Fagen’s wife ran for the ocean, jumped in and drowned herself.”
Bartolome said he buried Fagen’s body on the riverbank, after cutting off his head. He opened his sack to reveal the evidence, a “badly decomposed head, with Negroid characteristics.” As further proof, Bartolome submitted a worn photograph of Urbano Lacuña found in Fagen’s breast pocket and Lt. Alstaetter’s West Point class ring. The U.S. Army closed the book on Pvt. David Fagen.
The official military file on Fagen’s death was titled “The Supposed Killing of David Fagen.” It seems the American officers who had received the mutilated, decomposed head were not convinced but had ended the manhunt anyway.
While this has remained the official account, historians Michael Robinson and David Schubert published in 1974 an article questioning its veracity. In a war where every dime, nickel and mule was meticulously accounted for by the U.S. Army, there remains no record of a $600 bounty awarded to Bartolome. The historians also discovered several credible reported sightings of Fagen by Army soldiers' months after his reported demise.
Could the deer hunter’s account have been a well-conceived plot hatched by Lacuña and Bartolome to keep the black defector alive? Could he have lived in the jungles of Luzon free from Jim Crow and Frederick Funston, long after the cessation of hostilities?
As for the rest of Fagen’s comrades who remained loyal to the American flag, more than a thousand opted to remain in the islands upon their discharge at the war’s official end on July 4, 1902. Citing their “racial affinity” with the natives, many intermarried with Filipino women and settled all over Central Luzon. They became clerks, teachers, small farmers and storeowners.
Almost a hundred years later, their African American descendants can be found all across the Philippine diaspora, from Pangsinan to Pennsylvania—and San Francisco, where they began their historic journey and where a young black man sailed toward his unique place in Philippine history.
