“The 1890s were a troubled time for the Philippines and marked by several conflicts, and the 1896 Philippine Revolution marked the start of the country’s fight for independence from Spain.”
“The United States would go on to acquire the Philippines from Spain in 1898 following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War.” (Gandhi, NPR)
“In the 1898 treaty ending the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States despite the fact that the islands had declared their independence the previous year.”
“The American military’s attempts to take possession was quickly met with violent resistance from a populace ready to throw off three centuries of colonial rule.”
“Many American troops in the Philippines had begun their combat careers in the so-called Indian Wars, domestic suppression of tribal insurgencies on the wide-open prairie lands of the Great Plains.”
“While American forces acclimated to prairies might still feel in control along the edges of an island, they found they were less safe as they proceeded inland, up into the dense forests and rugged terrain of an island’s mountains. (Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society)
“The Philippine-American War was a brutal conflict, resulting in the deaths of more than 4,200 American soldiers and over 20,000 Filipino fighters.”
“The Filipino combatants, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, adopted guerrilla warfare tactics in late 1899 after more traditional warfare tactics proved ineffective to them. The combatants would retreat into the jungles and mountains after the surprise attacks.” (Gandhi, NPR)
“Well over a hundred indigenous languages are spoken in the Philippine archipelago, but the 1930s Commonwealth government deemed Tagalog, language of the Manila area, a ‘national language.’”
“Filipino or Pilipino, a standardized form of Tagalog, is the lingua franca of the nation today, with English as the other of the Philippines’ two official national languages.” (Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society)
Veterans of the Philippines conflict took a Tagalog term to describe the jungles and rugged regions – “The Tagalog word bundok translates literally as “mountain,” but its larger meaning as wilderness bears the inscription of global forces of war and empire.”
“Bundok is plentiful in the Philippines. A volcanically active archipelago, the nation consists of a cluster of hundreds of tiny islands, many little more than a rocky peak, interspersed with large islands where steep-sided, forested ranges loom over the coastlines.” (Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society)
That term morphed into ‘the boondocks’ and the military brought that term back to the US with them. The term began to be used by military personnel both in the US and the Philippines. (Gandhi, NPR)
“‘Boondocks’ is a marine word that is as puzzling as it is pure. A marine is ‘out in the boondocks’ when he is practicing his profession in far places which are meanly endowed with comforts, overgrown with vegetation and overpopulated with savage enemies.”
“Recent marine boondocks are Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Gavutu, Tannabóga, Tasimbogo and other islands of the Solomon group, hitherto known chiefly to missionaries, lady explorers and soap manufacturers in need of coconut oil.”
“Although most of them are now in other boondocks, a few marines have returned from the Solomons, and these are mainly wounded. Some of them will never fight again.” (NY Times, Sep 12, 1943)
By 1944, the phrase ‘out in the boondocks’ was firmly entrenched in the lingo of the armed forces. “But while the phrase would occasionally appear in newspaper coverage of the military in the early 1950s, it wasn’t until the aftermath of the events of April 8, 1956, that the average American heard of ‘the boondocks.’”
“That night, Staff Sgt. Matthew McKeon roused his platoon and ordered the men to march to Ribbon Creek on Parris Island, in South Carolina. The sergeant then jumped into the creek and ordered the recruits to follow, forcing them to march across the creek with him.” (Gandhi, NPR)
Recruit Richard W. Asker, who was 17 at the time, gave this description of what happened: “We were all sitting around the barracks. The lights were on. Then the instructor said we were going out in the boondocks.”
“We thought he was kidding, because we were all laughing. Then he told us to fall out. We fell out in front of the barracks and went out through the dark”. (Daytona Beach Morning Journal – Apr 10, 1956)
“Chaos soon followed when many of the recruits were swept away. Six of the young Marines drowned.” (Gandhi, NPR) “The Ribbon Creek drownings created a media firestorm and a national conversation about how Marines were trained.”
“Several newspapers and magazines covered every detail of McKeon’s subsequent court-martial and trial. McKeon was charged with manslaughter, cruelty and drinking in violation of regulations.”
“The word ‘boondocks’ was frequently used in the coverage of the incident, with newspapers noting that McKeon led his platoon ‘out into the boondocks and eventually into tragedy.’” (Gandhi, NPR)
“Brought into nonmilitary use by returning soldiers, boondock was soon stripped of its military connotations. Boondock transformed into a descriptor of mysterious and remote, but not necessarily hostile, hinterlands.”
“Today, the American term boondock [or ‘boonies’] retains little of the specific ecological and topographical descriptiveness that it had in its military context.”
“Boondock’s wilderness today is societal and cultural rather than environmental. The wilderness of bundok, however, remains both mountainous and culturally remote, wild in spirit as well as in ecology.” (Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society)
