The Manila Men: America's First Filipino Settlers (1763, Louisiana)
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Post 2 · The Manila Men: America's First Filipino Settlers (1763, Louisiana)
In 1763, Filipino sailors escaped Spanish ships in the Gulf of Mexico and disappeared into the Louisiana bayous. They built houses on stilts above the water, pioneered the American shrimping industry, and established the first Filipino settlements in North America — 112 years before the Civil War ended, 226 years before Filipino American History Month was established.
Most Americans learn that Filipino Americans are a relatively recent presence in the United States — immigrants who arrived in the 20th century to work in hospitals and fields and offices. That story is real. But it is not the beginning.
The beginning is 1763. It is a flat-bottomed boat pushing through saltwater marshes southeast of New Orleans. It is a group of Filipino sailors — called Manila Men by the Spanish who once owned their labor — choosing freedom over the galleon trade that had carried them across the Pacific. It is stilted houses rising above the bayou water, nets drying in the Louisiana sun, and a community taking root in the most unlikely soil imaginable.
It is the oldest Filipino settlement in North America, and almost no one has heard of it.
This is the story of the Manila Men — who they were, how they got to Louisiana, what they built, and why their story matters more than ever.
The Manila Men Collection
The Manila Men were the first Filipinos to plant roots in America. The Manila Men Collection at UGAT honors their presence, their resilience, and the 260-year lineage they began.
The Galleon Trade: How Filipinos Got to the Americas
To understand the Manila Men, you have to understand the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade — one of the most extraordinary commercial systems in human history, and one of the least taught.
From 1565 to 1815, a fleet of large Spanish sailing ships called galleons made annual round-trip voyages across the Pacific Ocean between Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico. This route — the first regular transpacific trade route in history — carried silk, porcelain, spices, and other Asian goods westward to New Spain, and silver eastward back to Asia. For 250 years, it was the spine of Spain's Pacific empire.
The galleons were crewed, in large part, by Filipinos.
Filipino sailors — skilled navigators, fishermen, and laborers from an archipelago of over 7,000 islands — were recruited, pressed, and conscripted into service on the Spanish ships. They were called Luzones Indios by the Spanish: indigenous men from Luzon. They navigated treacherous Pacific currents, handled the rigging in storms that could last for weeks, and arrived in Mexican ports having spent months at sea. Some made the crossing dozens of times over a lifetime.
They were essential to the Spanish empire's Pacific operation. They were also, legally and practically, its property.
The Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade: Fast Facts
📅 Duration: 1565–1815 — 250 years of continuous transpacific trade
🗺 Route: Manila, Philippines → Acapulco, Mexico (eastbound, 3–4 months) · Acapulco → Manila (westbound, 2–3 months)
⚓ Crew: Ships carried 200–500 crew members, the majority Filipino sailors and laborers
🌊 Legacy: The first regular transpacific trade route in history — predating the Panama Canal by 350 years
🇵🇭 Filipino presence: Filipinos arrived in the Americas via this route as early as 1565 — over 200 years before the United States existed
When the galleons arrived in Acapulco, Filipino sailors were sometimes left behind — through desertion, illness, or abandonment by Spanish captains who saw no obligation to return them home. Others deliberately chose to stay, slipping away from the docks into the dense interior of New Spain, where Spanish authority thinned and a man with no papers and no one looking for him could disappear.
By the 1700s, Filipinos had been making their way into the Americas — into Mexico, Central America, and eventually further — for nearly two centuries. They were not immigrants in the modern sense. They were escapees. Survivors. People building new lives in a continent that did not know them and did not name them.
1763: The Bayous of Louisiana
The year 1763 is significant for many reasons in American history. It is the year the French and Indian War ended, the year Britain acquired Florida from Spain, and the year the boundaries of colonial North America were redrawn by the Treaty of Paris. It is not, in most history books, associated with the Philippines.
But 1763 is also the year that Filipino sailors — traveling the Gulf of Mexico as crew on Spanish ships — first made their way into the Louisiana bayous southeast of New Orleans and began to settle.
Louisiana had only recently passed from French to Spanish control (also in 1763, as part of the same Treaty of Paris). It was a colonial backwater, a tangle of swamps, marshes, and river deltas that even the Spanish crown had limited interest in administering closely. For people who wanted to disappear, it was ideal.
The Manila Men — as they came to be called — navigated the shallow waterways, read the tides and currents with the instincts of lifelong sailors, and found in the Louisiana marshlands something that must have felt, in its own strange way, familiar: water everywhere, fish in abundance, and a world that rewarded those who understood the sea.
They built houses on stilts above the brackish water. They fished. They dried shrimp in the sun on elevated platforms called sèches. And over the following decades, they built something no one had ever built in North America before: a Filipino community.
Where Was Saint Malo?
The most famous The Manila Men: America's First Filipino Settlers (1763, Louisiana) — Saint Malo — was located approximately 40 miles southeast of New Orleans, accessible only by boat through the marshes of St. Bernard Parish. Named after the French port city of Saint-Malo, it sat in the shallow waters of Lake Borgne, on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Today, that land is largely submerged — the settlement was destroyed by a hurricane in 1915, and subsequent storms and coastal erosion have swallowed much of what remained. But in its time, Saint Malo was a functioning village, a real community, and the oldest documented Filipino settlement in North America.
Saint Malo: The Village That History Forgot
For most of its existence, Saint Malo was invisible to the broader world. The Manila Men lived apart — by choice and by circumstance. They had no legal status in Louisiana. Many had escaped Spanish ships without permission. They had no papers, no official names in American records, no protection from authorities who might decide their presence was inconvenient.
So they built their world in the margins, in the marshes, in the places no one else wanted.
What that world looked like was documented, remarkably, in 1883 — when a journalist named Lafcadio Hearn visited Saint Malo and wrote about it for Harper's Weekly, accompanied by an artist named Joseph Pennell. Their account was the first time most Americans had ever read about Filipino people living in the United States. It described the village in vivid detail: the houses on stilts connected by a network of wooden walkways above the water, the drying platforms covered with silver-pink shrimp, the men who spoke a mix of Filipino dialects, Spanish, and broken English, and who had been living in these marshes — some of them — for their entire lives.
"There are no women in the village of Manila men... It is their custom to pass the winter in New Orleans, returning to their fantastic sea-village with the first warm days."
— Lafcadio Hearn, Harper's Weekly, 1883
Hearn's account captured something that historians would spend generations trying to reconstruct: the texture of daily life in Saint Malo. The men were primarily fishermen and shrimpers. They had developed drying techniques for shrimp that were new to Louisiana — techniques brought from Southeast Asian fishing traditions, adapted to the Gulf Coast environment. Their method of sun-drying shrimp on elevated wooden platforms became widely adopted across the Louisiana shrimping industry and persists, in modified form, to this day.
They were, in other words, not just surviving. They were innovating. They were contributing. They were shaping an American regional industry that millions of people would benefit from — without ever knowing where the techniques came from, or who brought them.
What the Manila Men Built
🦐 The Louisiana shrimping industry: Manila Men introduced sun-drying techniques for shrimp — a preservation method from Southeast Asian fishing traditions that became foundational to Louisiana's seafood economy.
🏠 Stilt house architecture: Their settlements featured houses elevated above the water on wooden stilts — a design adapted from Philippine coastal architecture and perfectly suited to the Louisiana marsh environment.
🌊 Navigation expertise: As experienced Pacific and Gulf sailors, Manila Men contributed their deep knowledge of tides, currents, and weather patterns to the regional fishing industry.
🤝 Community: At its peak, Saint Malo and surrounding settlements housed dozens of Filipino men who maintained a distinct cultural identity — speaking Filipino languages, maintaining traditions — for over 150 years.
Beyond Saint Malo: Manila Men Across the Gulf Coast
Saint Malo was the most documented Manila Men settlement, but it was not the only one. Filipino sailors and their descendants established communities at several points along the Louisiana Gulf Coast — in the marshes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, in communities that carried names like Bassa Bassa and Alombro Canal.
Oral histories collected in the 20th century — primarily by Filipino American scholars and the Filipino American National Historical Society — suggest that the Manila Men communities were larger and more widespread than the written record captures. Many men married into local communities, their Filipino identities absorbed over generations into the Creole, Cajun, and mixed-race cultures of coastal Louisiana. Their descendants may not have known their Filipino heritage. Some may still not know.
There are also records of Filipino men — almost certainly connected to the galleon trade — appearing in other parts of early America. In 1781, a Filipino man named Antonio Miranda Rodriguez was among the twelve founders of what would become Los Angeles. In Alaska, Louisiana, and the Pacific Northwest, records from the 1700s and early 1800s document Filipino sailors arriving on Spanish, British, and American ships — and sometimes staying.
These are not footnotes. They are the first chapters of the Filipino American story.
Their Names Belong in the Story
The Manila Men built their lives in America without recognition, without legal status, and without anyone writing their names down. The Manila Men Collection is our way of writing their names — in fabric, in art, in the act of wearing who we are.
What Happened to Saint Malo?
The Manila Men's communities in Louisiana were not destroyed by laws or violence or forced removal — though they faced all three pressures across their history. They were destroyed, ultimately, by water.
Louisiana's Gulf Coast is one of the most hurricane-prone regions on Earth. Storm surges, flooding, and coastal erosion have reshaped this landscape repeatedly over the centuries. The stilt house communities of the Manila Men — built by design in the most exposed, marginal zones of the marsh — were uniquely vulnerable.
In 1915, a powerful hurricane swept through the Gulf Coast and destroyed Saint Malo entirely. The settlement was never rebuilt. The men who survived scattered — some into New Orleans, some into the growing Filipino communities forming in California and Hawaii as a new wave of 20th-century immigration began. The physical village was gone.
In the decades that followed, the land itself began to disappear. Coastal erosion, storm damage, and the slow subsidence of Louisiana's delta have swallowed much of the marsh where Saint Malo once stood. Today, the site of what was once America's oldest Filipino settlement lies mostly underwater — a ghost beneath the Gulf.
The oldest Filipino settlement in North America is gone. But the lineage it represents — 260 years of Filipino presence in America — is not. It never was.
The Erasure — and the Recovery
For most of the 20th century, the story of the Manila Men was known only to a small circle of historians and Filipino American community researchers. It appeared in academic papers, in the archives of the Filipino American National Historical Society, and in the work of scholars like Marina Espina, whose 1988 book Filipinos in Louisiana remains the definitive account of the Manila Men communities.
But in textbooks, in museums, in the public narrative of American history — nothing.
Part of the erasure was structural: the Manila Men left few written records of their own. They were largely illiterate in English, had no legal standing that would generate official documents, and lived in communities so remote that record-keepers rarely visited. What we know of them comes almost entirely from outsiders — from Hearn's 1883 article, from a handful of photographs, from census records that noted "Filipino" or "Manila man" in the margin of a column that barely knew what to do with the category.
Part of it was also the broader invisibility of Filipino American history in the American story. The same pattern that erased Larry Itliong from the Grape Strike, that left Filipino World War II veterans without benefits, that made Filipino nurses invisible in the COVID crisis — that pattern runs all the way back to 1763. Filipino contribution, Filipino presence, Filipino sacrifice: seen when needed, forgotten when convenient.
The recovery has been slow. Filipino American historians and community organizations have worked for decades to document and disseminate the Manila Men story. Filipino American History Month — established in 1992, federally recognized in 2009 — provides an annual moment to surface histories like this one. And a new generation of Filipino Americans, many of them encountering this story for the first time online, are sharing it — in social media posts, in classrooms, in conversations with grandparents who also never knew.
1565
The Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade begins. Filipino sailors start crossing the Pacific on Spanish ships — the journey that will eventually bring some of them to the Americas.
1587
The first documented Filipino landing in what is now the continental United States — at Morro Bay, California. A landing party of Luzon Indios arrives on a Spanish galleon.
1763
Filipino sailors begin settling in the Louisiana bayous southeast of New Orleans — establishing the first permanent Filipino communities in North America.
1781
Antonio Miranda Rodriguez, a Filipino man, co-founds the settlement that becomes Los Angeles. He is among the twelve original founders of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles.
1883
Journalist Lafcadio Hearn visits Saint Malo and publishes the first major American account of the Manila Men communities in Harper's Weekly. It is the first time most Americans read about Filipinos living in the United States.
1915
A hurricane destroys Saint Malo. The village is never rebuilt. The physical settlement — the oldest Filipino community in North America — disappears from the landscape.
1988
Marina Espina publishes Filipinos in Louisiana — the definitive historical account of the Manila Men communities, drawing on decades of archival research.
1992
Filipino American History Month is established by FANHS, creating an annual framework for recovering and sharing histories like the Manila Men story.
Today
The story of the Manila Men is still largely absent from mainstream American history — but it is being reclaimed, one telling at a time, by Filipino Americans who refuse to let it stay buried.
Why This Story Belongs in American History
The Manila Men were not immigrants in the way we usually use that word. They were not responding to an immigration policy. They were not filling a labor shortage or pursuing the American Dream. They were sailors who chose freedom over servitude, who navigated by instinct into a continent that had no name for them, and who built — with their hands, in the water, at the edge of the known world — the first Filipino home in America.
That is not a footnote. That is a founding.
When Filipino Americans say their community has been in this country since before the country existed — this is what they mean. When Filipino American History Month says the story begins in October 1587 — this is the lineage it is pointing toward. The Manila Men of Louisiana are the living proof that Filipino presence in America is not a 20th-century phenomenon. It is older than the Declaration of Independence. It is older than the Constitution. It is woven into the fabric of what this country is, even when that weaving has been deliberately hidden.
For Filipino Americans who grew up learning this history only from family stories — or not learning it at all — the Manila Men can feel like a revelation. A confirmation that you were always here. That your people's roots in this land run deeper than anyone told you.
That is worth knowing. That is worth sharing. That is worth wearing.
260 Years of Filipino Presence in America
From the bayous of Louisiana to the grape fields of Delano to the hospitals of every American city — Filipinos have been building this country for centuries. At UGAT, we make sure that history is visible. Wear it with us.
Shop Manila Men Collection →Delano Manongs CollectionBayani CollectionFilipino American History Collection
Their Names Were Not Written Down
We do not know the names of the first Manila Men who settled in Louisiana. The Spanish ships that brought them across the Gulf kept records of cargo, not crew. The marshes where they built their homes had no census-takers. The community they built — Saint Malo, Bassa Bassa, the stilt-house villages of the bayou — existed outside the record-keeping of empire.
But they were real. They were here. They built something that lasted 150 years, that shaped an industry, that left descendants who may still be in Louisiana today, carrying Filipino blood they may or may not know about.
They were the first. And the fact that their names were not written down does not mean their story is not ours to carry forward.
This is what Filipino American History Month is for. This is what UGAT is for. To say the names that history forgot. To wear the roots that were buried. To insist — every October and every other month — that this community was always here, always mattered, and will not be erased again.
💬 Join the Conversation
Did you know about the Manila Men before reading this? Do you have Louisiana roots — or Gulf Coast Filipino heritage in your family? Share your story in the comments. Every person who knows this history makes it harder to erase.
📖 Part of the FAHM Series: "Mga Bayani ng Kasaysayan"
This post is part of our Filipino American History Month series exploring the figures and moments that shaped the Filipino American story.
The Manila Men: America's First Filipino Settlers
Know Your Roots
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