The Swish of the Kris (Part 1)

This book is part of a selection of rare Filipiniana books which have long been out of print and are no longer available. Through the admirable efforts of concerned groups such as the Filipiniana Book Guild, the Historical Conservation Society, Cacho Hermanos and the Eugenio Lopez Foundation, more Filipiniana materials have been reprinted and made available to the general public. These rare books, selected by Professor Renato Constantino, form part of the Filipiniana Reprint Series published by Cacho Hermanos.

"It is to be expected that American author Vic Hurley would regard Muslim leaders and resistance groups as bandits and terrorists. But if we read his graphic accounts of Muslim resistance from the people's point of view, we will see these battles for what they really were -- a determined heroic defense by the Muslim of the integrity of their societies. "And despite the colonialist bias, there is in the author's accounts a grudging acknowledgement of the fighting prowess of the Filipino Muslims."

The kris may be of any length and two or three inches wide. All of the knives, no matter what shape, are encased in wooden scabbards, and have a keenness of edge equaling that of a Damascus blade."

Anthropology has failed to agree upon a classification of the primitive peoples who inhabited Mindanao and Sulu prior to the coming of the Moros. We know that first settlers in this islands were tribes of dwarf blacks or Negritos, a broad-headed, broad-nosed, frizzy-haired race. There appears evidence that human life existed in the Philippines at least 20,000 years ago, in the Pleistocene Age. The antiquity of man in the East Indian Archipelago has not been fully established, but skulls of the Talagai Man of Australia, of the Java Man found at Wadjak, together with Stone Age culture of the Dutch found in Tasmania, seem to suggest a possible lower Paleolithic culture in the Philippine islands.

The original tribes of black pygmies were driven back into the mountains, to be displaced by a first wave of brown people who swept over the Philippine Archipelago probably as early as 5,000 years ago. The primary black inhabitants have survived, however, to remain as a negligible proportion of the population of the islands.

Padre Crevas, the early historian of the Philippines, preserves for us a description of these Negritos as the Spaniards found them in 1645:

"There are in this island (Mindanao) black, nomadic tribes who recognize no subjection… they live more like brutes, fleeing from all who approach them, doing harm too when they can. They do not settle in villages, nor do they, in these inclement wilds, have other shelter than the trees. They do not use any other ornament than that which they inherited from nature, covering their modesty so meagerly that they altogether fail in the endeavor. Their arms consist of a bow and arrows, tipped with a poison known only to themselves and it appears that this is the first people who occupied them (the islands) -- that these are the original inhabitants of the soil and being the primitive race, no one can account for their origin."1

In the traditions of a people with a history as misty as that of the Negritos, it is interesting to find references to the Deluge. The Aetas say that Manama, the great God, made men from blades of grass, weaving the grass into human forms. They tell of a great flood which covered the face of the earth and of the drowning of all of the people except two men and a woman.

These survivals of pre-history still remain in the Philippines, represented by various tribes of Bataks, Aetas, Mamanuas. They are interesting as carry-overs from the Paleolithic culture period.

We pass on to the race of brown people who succeeded them in Mindanao. The Negritos were the first victims of the wholesale redistribution of population which was accomplished by the waves of incoming people who swept over the islands.

The history of the human occupation of Mindanao and Sulu is one of constant raids and overlapping cultures. With the first of these series of raids from the mainland of Asia, we find the Negrito falling back to the inhospitable mountains and his place on the pleasant seacoast pre-empted by a race of brown-skinned Indo-Australians.

An understanding of these Indo-Australian invaders of Mindanao must always remain an impossibility. Their roots are buried in the mist of pre-history. Anthropological research can speculate, but we can never hope to roll away the fog which envelops the long trail these people have trod which ends in Mindanao. To understand their origins we should have to go back to ancient myths of white men in the Pacific, and it would be necessary to accept certain speculations involving a science which might well be called "synthetic anthropology." For these long-haired mountaineers of Mindanao are brown-white men misplaced in the silent hills!

Their history involves a consideration of our most remote ancestors. Max Muller, delving into the origins of the Aryan race, states that Vedic literature may go back for 5000 years. The Vedic hymns show the Indian branch of the Aryan race on the march to the southeast. The Rig-Veda is believed to antedate BC 3000. It is made up of a collection of 1017 short poems in which mention is made of the black aborigines who preceded the Aryans to India. It is here, perhaps, that we might probe for the origins of the pagan Indo-Australians of Mindanao.

It is believed that a race of people called Armenoids trickled down through India from a country north of Macedonia. There are indications that these people preceded the Aryans to India. A much later invasion of the Aryans pushed the Armenoids out into Burma and Malaya, and down through Indonesia into the Pacific. They entered the pacific at an early date, as is shown by the absence in their language of Sanskrit words which came into use after their departure from India.

The Armenoids became the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean, setting up the maritime cities of Acre, Sidon and Tyre. In the Pacific, the Armenoids became the Polynesians, and possibly were the basic ancestors of the Mindanao hill men. It is at least a pleasant conjecture, and it places the antiquity of the Indo-Australians at a well deserved early date.

These Indo-Australian people of Mindanao survive as very ancient fragments of a race which was gradually and partially absorbed by the dominant Caucasian and Mongoloid elements with whom they came into contact. It has been suggested by anthropologists that this premier brown stock of Mindanao is "a branch from the Caucasian stem dating from a time when the Caucasian race was not as white as it is now, and that probably the dark strain in India is due to these aborigines rather than to Negroid influences."2

Kroeber, in his "Anthropology", has this to say of the hill people of the East Asian Archipelago:

"In the lapse of ages, the greater number of Caucasians in and near Europe took on, more and more, their present characteristics, whereas, this backward branch in the region of the Indian Ocean, kept its primitive and undifferentiated ways."

Today, these dark-whites live in scattered groups in the swamps and jungles of interior Mindanao and other islands of the Philippines. Intermixture with succeeding invasion of Indonesians and Malays has greatly diluted the original blood and given rise to great differences of opinion among anthropologists.

"Closely allied to the them, and equally as primitive, are the Moi of Indo-China, the Sanoi of the Malay States, the Toala of Celebes, the Kolarian tribes of India and the Vedda of Ceylon."

A glance at the ethnology of these people might be in order. Somewhere in the period of about BC 30,000, the Cro-Magnon man, a true Homo Sapiens, originated as the ancestor of the living races of mankind. To the Cro-Magnon is credited the beginnings of the Caucasian race. Shortly after the rise of the Cro-Magnons, the human race underwent a certain degree of specialization, and we find the Caucasian stem forking into two main branches.

One branch forges ahead to form a race of light people, the ancestors of the modern European; the other strain falters to emerge as the Indo-Australian. These Indo-Australians, a race of dark, short, slender, wavy-haired people with long heads and broad noses, were in the first wave of emigrants from Asia. They have been in Mindanao for a long time. A sketch of their occupation of the islands is part of the pre-history of Mindanao.

In order to understand the setting for the earliest battles of the Moros, we must have a clear picture of these Indo-Australians who preceded the Moros to Mindanao.

Mindanao today is a vast area of 38,000 square miles, fringed by a thin ring of plantations along the coast line. Scattered at wide intervals, miles apart, are the few towns of the island. Even after more than thirty-five years of American occupation we find few roads, and those only in the immediate vicinity of the settlements. There is no steamship or other transportation service except to these few towns. The Sulu Archipelago is still a closed book to the tourist.

The year 1935 finds 2,000,000 acres of land remaining unexplored in Mindanao, 5,000,000 of standing jungle, and less than twelve per cent of the land under cultivation.

Along the coast line, planters have hacked out a bite from the jungle wall, there to plant coconuts, hemp and rubber. Inside is jungle, black and empty. There in the inner mountains of the island, live the long-haired wild people, Indo-Australian survivors of another day.

These pagans live in a world apart, which is peopled with dreams of ogres and ghosts and demons,. They still practice rites and customs which originated in the dawn of man. Among these practices are the ancient arts of hepatoscopy and haruspicy, of which there is a widespread knowledge.3

In the legends of the Indo-Australians are to be found many references to their origin. It is interesting to note that many of them agree in tracing their ancestors to a continent which sank beneath the sea. There is no place in this volume for a discussion of sunken continents, but the traditions of the Indo-Australians bring to mind the stories of the lost Atlantis, of Mu and of Lemuria. The presence of these brown-white men in the jungles of Mindanao makes it easier to believe the stories of lost civilizations and vanished peoples dating from before some awful catastrophe in the Pacific.

Geologists tell us that the original population of the Philippines could have emigrated as a fragment from early civilizations of the geological continent of Gondwana Land. The lost continent of Lemuria, now covered by the waters of the Indian Ocean, could have been the center of dispersal or a stopping place on the road from India. Even the highly debatable sunken colony of Mu, presumably located in mid-Pacific in ancient times, could have been the homeland of the Indo-Australians of Mindanao.

The story of these aboriginal settlers of Mindanao is not within the province of this book. They were but an interlude, the lull before the storm which ushered in the Malay.

With these comments on the two prehistoric populations of Mindanao, we leave them there in their forested hills. They are an eternal people, endless as time itself. They remain as survivors of an earlier time when the world was new, and they have lived on and on without change in the face of a changing world. Over their silent heads has swept wave after wave of Indonesian, Malayan, Spanish and American invasion. They represent a mysterious anthropological riddle that can never be fully solved. Back of them is unwritten and misty history. Back of that is pre-history, inscrutable and ageless. Four hundred years of white rule has affected them not at all. It is but an incident on the hoary edges of an ancient past.

With imagination we can picture a dim stream of brown figures coming from a far-away home to settle in Mindanao. Where they came from we can never establish with certainty. They have preserved no records. We can only know them as two vague races of black Negritos and brown Indo-Australians who fell from the ranks to linger in Mindanao on that day when civilization took the march.

We have seen the Negritos pushed to the mountains by the brown horde of incoming Indo-Australians. On the pleasant coasts of Mindanao brown pagan replaced black pygmy. This brown nomadic tribal existence must have persisted along the coast for many centuries, for it extended up to the turbulent period of Mongoloid-Malayan invasions, which began apparently with the coming of the Moros about BC 100.

It is not possible to fix a date for the original invasion of the Moros. We now that the great Polynesian migration from the East Indian Archipelago to the islands of the Pacific Ocean began about AD 100, and that this flood did not reach the eastern Pacific until late in AD 700. The tempo of the early migrations was not a fast one and it might be assumed that at least two hundred years were required to settle the East Indian region sufficiently to make necessary the removal of the Polynesians to the Pacific islands.

As a part of the confused scramble of the races flowing eastward out of Asia, it appears that the Moros first came to Mindanao and Sulu not later than the first century before Christ. 1 "Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago" -- Francisco Combres

3 Hepatoscopy is the divination of the future by examination of the livers of animals. Haruspicy is the foretelling of the future by the study of the flight of birds. They are practiced today by certain tribes of Bilaans, Manobos and Bagobos of interior Mindanao.

The primitive Indo-Australian civilization which had been established as the successor of the aboriginal Negroid culture set the stage for the series of mysterious migrations which developed in the following centuries.

On the continent of Asia we find another great family forming which was to disrupt the peace of the East Indian Archipelago. At some distant period in the impressive history of man, probably in the ages between the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men, a great race of Mongoloids came into being. This race, represented by the modifications of true Mongol, Amerind, Eskimo and Oceanic Malay, developed somewhere along its line an offshoot from the Malay stem called Indonesian.

The Moro, originally an Indonesian pagan, could be properly classified as Malayan-Mongoloid, a branch of the true Oceanic Malays. In the first century before the Christian era, there was great unrest on the continent of Asia, which culminated in extensive migrations of the population. The Indonesians, wearied of the wide valleys of the mainland, or facing resistance at arms from an unknown enemy, lifted the sails of their praos and ventured into the Sulu Sea.

Under the leadership of their war chief, a fleet of their praos, comprising the first wave, touched at some nameless island in Sulu. They noted a sea swarming with fishes. There were sea tortoise floating on the water and the forest at the water's edge were filled with deer. The Indonesians looked down over the sides of their vessels and saw beneath them the rich pearl beds of Sulu. It was a fitting spot for the home-seekers.

They sailed through the lovely islands to one of the great bays, rimmed with a beach of white coral sand. Here, on that day centuries ago, their king ordered a halt. The Indonesians reached into the hammocks of their outriggers and brought forth their weapons. A new land was to be contested. In the trees at the water's edge they could see now the slender, brown figures of the Indo-Australians -- fearful yet curious. The peaceful Indo-Australians had awakened to find their seas dotted with the sails of the fierce Asiatics.

The movement of the Mongoloid element began as a gradual constricting wave, enveloping first Java, Ceylon and Sumatra, to be eventually extended into Borneo and the Philippines. This movement apparently continued for about 1500 years, until its northern expansion was checked at Manila with the destruction of the Moro stronghold of the Rajah Soliman by Legaspi in 1571.

Looking back cross the centuries, we can dimly visualize the first landing of the Indonesians. They find a knot of timid little brown men waiting on the sand. They are conducted to the Indo-Australian king who is eager for a parley -- anything to postpone the fate of his people. Sitting there on the sand, naked and ill-armed, the gentle hosts see in the fierce glare of the Indonesians the destruction of their race. Farther back in the shadows, remain the Indo-Australian women, treated to a preview of their new masters.

It is all over soon. Shouts grow fainter and die out as the destruction goes on. The little brown men who remain alive flee to the hills. The little brown women are led to the boats of the conquerors. The island is cleared of all of the original inhabitants except the captive women and children. New houses appear upon the ruins of the old.

The coming of the Moros brought swift tragedy to the Indo-Australians. Their primitive weapons proved no match for the krises1 of the Indonesians, and the land was swept clean with a circle of steel.

Little can be written of these early conflicts other than to state that the Indo-Australians shared the fate of the Negritos. They were buffeted back into the forests of the interior, to be replaced on the coasts by successive waves of Indonesian invaders.

With the exception of the Manggayans of Mindoro Island and the Tagbanuas of Palawan Island, none of the aborigine pagan tribes possessed a written language. There remains today not even folklore to lift the veil from the fierce conflicts of nineteen centuries ago.

The Manggayans and the Tagbanuas had a syllabic language incised upon tablets of bamboo of which only a few fragments are known to exist today.

We know that the Indonesian conqueror, the ancestor of the Moro today, was engaged in the consolidation of the southern islands of the Philippine group for a period of several centuries. On the smaller islands of the Sulu Sea, the original Indo-Australians were completely exterminated, with the exception of the women who were taken into the harems of the Moros. On the larger islands, the aborigines sought the refuge of the highest mountain ranges where pursuit was difficult, and were able to survive the sporadic raids of the Moro slave parties. The Moros quickly gained possession of all of the coast line of Mindanao and the Sulu group, and their spread was gradually northward toward the present site of Manila.

The Moros have always been a people of the sea. In their bright-winged sailing vessels, they pirated the coasts, extracting a toll from all who crossed their path. By instinct they were pirates, long before Magellan's voyage. Many years before the arrival of the Spaniards those Sulu sailors had made their presence felt from Manila to Thursday Island.

As seafarers, this branch of the Oceanic-Malay has no superior. They carried the cargo of that early day. The famous Venetian traveler, Eben Wahab, wrote in 898 of the city of Confu in China, which was the gathering place of southeastern traders. Arabian geographers of the tenth century mention the island of Malai, where a brisk trade was carried on in spices.

The Phoenician sailed the Mediterranean. The Indonesian voyaged the wide Pacific from Africa to Easter Island, from China to the coral seas of the south. The wanderings of these early Malays were remarkable achievements of navigation. They brought the sail into the Pacific nineteen centuries ago. The reading of the stars was known to them, as was the making of charts. That these voyages took place at an early date is suggested by the fact that as early as BC 2300 the Chinese had charted the heavens to pave the way for the navigator. The Arabic "Book of Miracles" describes a voyage of three hundred ships made to Madagascar in 945. It is possible that the African coast was reached at this early date.

These early sailors had a share, too, in the colonization of the mainland of Asia. The earliest legends of the Annamese in Siam say that Annam was first peopled by men coming from the islands of the Pacific and belonging to the Malay race.

More than 1100 years ago, the Malays had sailed over a region approximating two-thirds of the circumference of the earth. There appears faint evidence that the praos of the Malays reached the coast of America.

It is small wonder that with such a heritage, the Indonesian retained for himself the reputation of producing the greatest pirates of all history.

A pirate has no time for agriculture. A nomadic life precludes the possibility of permanent crops. The Moro has never been a farmer and, prior to the coming of the Mohammedan priests, he disdained agriculture to a marked degree.

Synonymous with the words Indonesian are the words slave trader and fisherman. The Indonesians were the first "black-birders." They filled their harems with the women of many races. They cultivated the harvest of the sea, ranging far into rough waters for the pelagic fishes of the open sea.

This early nomadic civilization of the Moros was not a stable one, and the history of the period must have been one of constant warfare between rival tribal groups and feudal organizations of the coast. The Moro's code was a primitive pagan law based upon the kris, and his tribal organization was a succession of minor kingdoms which flourished, crumbled and were pre-empted by other kingdoms.

In this loosely knit tribal existence is to be found the greatest weakness of the Indonesians and the Malays in general. In the Philippine Islands particularly there has always been a lack of concerted action among the Moro tribes. This lack of cooperative spirit was a contributing factor to whatever successes the Spanish had later in the field against the Moros. If the Mohammedans had presented a unified front to the enemy it is doubtful if Spain could have established a foothold in Mindanao.

All through the history of the Moros, we find evidences of a great deal of intertribal warfare during periods when they should have been united against a common foe. Each island possessed a minor Datu or chief, surrounded by a few followers and independent of other minor Datus. The unit of organization was a cluster of thirty or forty families called a barangay, and it consisted of a strictly community government under the Datu.

While admitting the obvious disadvantages of this form of community government, it should be pointed out that the system offered equally obvious advantages. An invasion of the Moro territory did not imply a successful assault on the capital city and a subsequent conquest of the country. The subjugation of Mindanao and Sulu by a foreign invader necessitated the reduction of every village in the region by hand-to-hand combat. The fall of the capital meant nothing. The Spaniards learned this to their sorrow.

We find the early history of the Moros marked by several periods of partial dependency upon foreign empires. The influence of Hindu civilizations prevailed for several centuries, although at no time was the connection a strong one. At no period in the entire history of the Moro is there evidence that he paid tribute!

History is full of amazing testimonials to the prowess of these Indonesian sailors. Wallace, the great English naturalist, records his impressions after a trip through the Malay peninsula:

"The maritime enterprise and higher civilization of the Malay races have enabled them to overrun portions of the adjacent region in which they have entirely supplanted the indigenous races… and spread much of their language, their domestic animals and their customs over the Pacific."

"Inhabited by Portuguese and by natives of the country called Malays. It is the market plce of all Inidia and East with their ships arriving incessantly."

The Portuguese Admiral, Diego Lopez de Sequerira, appearing on the Sumatra coast in 1509, learned to his sorrow of the fighting ability of the Malays. His four ships, well-armed vessels of exploration, were attacked in the harbor of Malacca and escaped annihilation with difficulty. In the hand-to-hand fighting which occurred on the beach and upon the decks of the ships, Sequerira lost six hundred men before he was able to beat off the attack of the Malays.

By peculiarities of temperament and a terrific fortitude of soul, the Malays are eminently adapted to survival, even when badly pressed by outside influences.

With the passing of the Hindu influence, the Philippines experienced a century of contact with the Javanese. From about 1330, the brilliant-winged praos of the invading Javanese empire of Madjapahit touched the shores of Sulu for a period of seventy years, to sail off eventually on the northeast monsoon and return no more. The blue seas of Sulu ran red with the blood of the invader and the invaded, but the kris prevailed and the Moros clung to their island homes.

After the Javanese came other peoples from southeastern Asia and Oceania. The Moros paid a perfunctory allegiance to many Malayan empires of Sumatra, Celebes and Borneo. It is doubtful, though, if any of these early connections were binding, and it is certain that at no time was the Moro's freedom of action seriously curtailed.

Always the trend of the Indonesian expansion was northward, and it is apparent that several centuries before the arrival of Magellan the sphere of influence of the Moros reached as far north as the region of Manila Bay and Batangas.

1 Figuratively speaking. At this early period it is doubtful if the modern steel kris was known.

The earliest legend of Mindanao and Sulu appears to be that Sinbad the sailor visited Mindanao on one of his voyages. In Sulu we have Moro legends to the effect that Alexander the Great held court in Jolo in BC 320. Many of the Moros proudly trace their descent from the great Macedonian conqueror.

We find Philippine regions mentioned in Chinese writings as early as the third century, but it appears that the Moros did not come under the influence of China until a much later date. The Chinese writer, Chao-Ju-Kua, writing in 1280 but referring to a much earlier period, describes the people of the Philippines, and it is known that the Chinese mapped and named the principal islands at an early date.

It has been maintained by some writers that Ptolemy, the Egyptian geographer, included the Philippine Islands in his tables under the name Maniola Islands.

Trade relations were carried on between China and the Philippines as early as the fifth century, for the annals of the Liang dynasty mention Malacca, and trade with Java had developed by the year 600. By AD 1000 trade was well-developed on regular lines.

Chinese traders greatly influenced the culture of the Moros. We find examples of vases in Mindanao and Sulu brought from China centuries ago by these hardy traders. The Moros have imitated the dress of China in the sleeved jackets and wide trousers worn by both sexes today. The grass helmet of the Moros is identical with the coolie hat of China.

Chinese trading junks visited the Philippines at least three centuries before the coming of Magellan and they brought to the islands porcelain, silk cloth, metal ware and jade in exchange for pearls, wax, tortoise shell and betel of the South Archipelago.

The Chinese came to conquer and they remained to trade. There is evidence of a futile clashing of the Chinese two-handed swords against the krises of the Moros.

Among the most interesting survivals of the old China trade is the Bagobo custom of sewing tiny bells to their jackets. The Bagobos, a tribe of long-haired hill men of southern Mindanao, have continued this custom. In their barrios may be seen jackets sewn with ancient bells from China. Yellow is the royal color of the Maguindanao Moros of the Lake Lanao district of Mindanao, indicating an early contact with the Chinese.

The ordinarily placid disposition of the Chinese is very well suited to contact with savage tribes. During the early days of the Spanish conquest, isolated Chinese merchants were able to maintain their tiny stores in districts which were untenable to the Spaniards. Occasionally the storekeepers were bushwhacked by Moro bandits, but another Chinese would blandly open on the same site and the trade went on.

It appears that about the year 1400 Chinese adventurers returned to the islands in force, and for a time the Philippines came under the domination of China as a part of the empire of the Mings. This connection, lasting officially for about forty years, has a profound influence upon the islanders.

Siamese trading junks also conducted an early trade with the islands, and it has been noted that a few days before the arrival of the squadron of Magellan, a Siamese vessel entered the harbor of Cebu. Pigafetta tells us that the King of Cebu demanded the payment of port dues from the ships of Magellan. "I make no exceptions," said the king to the Spaniards. "Four days ago a ship from Siam brought to me concubines and it paid dues."1 Borneo, the Moluccas and Sumatra also participated in this early trade, drawn by the magnet of the rich pearl beds of Sulu. The extent of the activity of Portuguese traders is not clearly known. It is certain that they had relations with Mindanao and Sulu at an early date, far in the van of the Spaniards.

The Chinese taught the Japanese the use of the sail about AD 100 and there is faint evidence that the newly manned ships of Nippon sailed to the Philippines during that period.

As early as the year 1500, we find the city of Brunei in North Borneo a thriving trade center of more than 70,000 inhabitants. The commerce of this city was augmented by a constant stream of Malay boats pouring in from the ports of the South Pacific.

Marco Polo sailed from Chinchow in 1292, carrying a royal bride from the court of Kublai Khan to the the Khan of Persia. His ship spent many months on the coast of Sumatra waiting for a favorable monsoon, and Polo probably utilized the time to explore the coasts of Mindanao and Sulu.

From the Malay sailors Polo learned of Zanzibar and Madagascar and Abyssinia, carrying back to Europe geographical knowledge of the absorption of which was far beyond the capacity of European nations of the period.2

The world was in a commercial frenzy and the Malays were leading the way to new products and exotic shores.

When Albuquerque conquered Malacca in 1511, he reported the presence in the harbor of two trading vessels from the Philippines. These early commercial voyages must have been extensive journeys, and they were a supplement to the illicit pirate and slave trading expeditions conducted by the Malays.

History is reluctant in placing credit for the first white man to visit Mindanao. In 1512, nine years after the "discovery" of the Philippines by Magellan, unnamed Portuguese sailors effected a brief landing on Mindanao.

During the year 1523 we find evidence of the death of Barbosa and thirty-five men before the krises of the Moros of Mindanao.

In February 1579, we see Juan Arce de Sadornil conducting a brief and disastrous campaign against the Moros of Borneo and Sulu.

During the same year we have a picture of Captain de Ribera toiling through the forests of Mindanao to reach the mouth of the Rio Grande River in Cotobato. An ascent is made up the river to a point well within the Moro territory. With De Ribera at the head, the malaria-stricken Spaniards wade ashore, holding their arquebuses above their heads to keep their powder dry. The forces of Sultan Correlat fall upon the white men with terrible suddenness. Ribera calls to his men to hold their fire until the maddened Moslems are well with range of the spreading fire. The arquebuses thunder, and clouds of white smoke drift through the tree tops. The Moros do not hesitate before this terrific hail of iron. "What manner of men are these Moslems?" cries De Ribera, "who fear not the hail of the arquebus?" The Moro charge comes on to close grips. Kris rings on steel helmet. Toledo blade shears through carabao-horn armor.

Harassed by Moros on all sides and bearing his ill and desperately wounded men with him, this doughty commander retires to Manila, a victim of the two potent "M's" of Mindanao -- malaria and Moros.

In December, 1579, Sir Francis Drake careened his vessel on the shores of a small island south of Celebes, and it is probable that this famous explorer touched the shores of Sulu.

To the Portuguese appears to belong the credit for being the first white men to reach Mindanao. These early visits of white men were little more than parties of exploration. They accomplished nothing except to give a pre-view of the military prowess of the Moros.

The main struggles of this early period were between races of the East. The white men were incidents. In most cases the white men were accidents.

The closing years of the old pagan civilization found the Moros engaged in desultory conflict with Japanese corsairs in the north. The Moros had gradually extended their sphere of influence to include Luzon and the northern islands of the Philippines. A bridge of sailing vintas connected Luzon with Sulu.

In the face of attacks from all quarters, the Moros came to the year 1400 and awaited the coming of Mohammedanism.

Mohammedan conquests from Arabia reached India and Sumatra about AD 700. Thence the religion spread slowly across the Netherlands East Indies to envelop all of the islands of the East Indian Archipelago. Sumatra was converted by 1200, and Java came under the influence of Islam by 1500.

It appears that in the year 1380 the first Mohammedan missionary, a noted Arabian judge named Makdum introduced the religion to the Philippines. The ruins of the mosque he built at Tubig-Indangan on the island of Simunul are still to be seen.

Later, about 1400, the Rajah Baguinda continued the work of Makdum. The remarkable campaign of this missioner ended on Sibutu Island where he lies buried today in the village of Tandu-Banak. The work of Baguinda appears to have been confined to the islands of the Sulu Archipelago. To Shereef Kabungsuwan is credited the conversion of Mindanao.

The followers of Mohammed were zealous in spreading the faith. They conquered Asia Minor and Africa. Then the robed priests entered Europe, first by way of Spain and through the Red Sea southward to Madagascar and eastward to India. No hardship was too great, no people too savage. From India, the Star and Crescent were carried to the Malay Archipelago. A Mohammedan settlement was established in Borneo as early as 1400, and Malacca was penetrated in 1276. The Portuguese Moluccas was converted by 1456.

The early Mohammedan missionaries were a sturdy lot. They came into raw countries without ships or armies or governments to back them. They must be numbered among the most sincere disciples that any religious faith has produced. They sought nothing but the privilege of converting the unbeliever. Gold they wanted not. Trade routes were not the object of their search. They came alone into the heart of one of the most savage countries on the globe, buoyed high by a faith which protected them well.

They had all the fanaticism of the Spanish priests without the accompanying greed for gold. They were the most purely altruistic preachers in the world. Their utter sincerity inspired the confidence of their savage hosts. The priests of Mohammed were among the most potent spreaders of civilization in the history of man. Their religion did not tear down and strip and destroy as that of the early Christians. The priests of Mohammed brought culture and writing and the arts, and they added these things to the culture they found in their new lands. They were not destroyers, but were satisfied to improve the old culture.

And so to the island of Simunul came the missionary Makdum in 1380, to land unarmed and unafraid in the group of brown krismen who came down the strip of white beach to meet him. The Moros were puzzled and in awe of this man who came unannounced among them, asking nothing but the privilege of being heard. The iron of the Koran had arrived to fortify the souls of the Moros.

Through the islands spread the word of the man who told of the true God and of the warriors slain on the field of battle, reclining on damask couches with houris with "large black eyes."1

The Mohammedan missionaries found a receptive field in Mindanao and Sulu. The tenets of the martial religion of Mohammed appealed to the warlike instincts of the Moros. Through the islands sounded the new battle cry, "La ilaha illa'l-lahu." There is no God but Allah.

The year 1450 marked the coming of Abu Bakr. Abu married Paramisuli, the daughter of Baguinda, and upon the death of his father-in-law, Abu succeeded him in authority, later proclaiming himself as the first Sultan of Sulu.

The Sultanese carried on though the years, and it was during the reign of the sixth Sultan that Governor De Sande sent the first expedition to Jolo in 1578.

The attempted Spanish conquest of Mindanao and Sulu was an accident of history. It is doubtful if Spain would have seriously considered the occupation of these islands could they have known the difficulties attendant upon the subjugation of the Mohammedans.

Mohammedanism in the Philippines preceded the Spaniards by only sixty years, and the northern islands were but lightly touched by the priests of Islam. The only conquest effected by the Spanish arms was among the pagan peoples of Luzon, Panay, Cebu and other of the northern islands. The Mohammedans remained unconquered to the end.

When Legaspi blasted the Moro Rajah Soliman from his fortress at Manila in 1571, he destroyed forever the prospect of a united Mohammedan state in the Philippines. With this defeat of Soliman, Catholicism came to the northern islands, accompanied by a great withdrawal of the Mohammedans to their strongholds in the southern islands. Spain's original foothold in the Philippines came through conversion of pagan tribes and not after contact with the Mohammedans. The conversion of the north was a simple matter, and it was accomplished by very little bloodshed. The easy reduction of the pagans inspired by the Spaniards with false confidence when they first began the assault of Mindanao.

The Spanish conquest of the northern islands was a repetition of the conquests of Mexico and Peru. The conquistadores met with little resistance. Legaspi, with four ships and about 600 men, reinforced at times with levies from Mexico, successfully reduced the north in a period of eleven years.

Juan de Salcedo, a valiant gentleman and veteran at the age of twenty-four, successfully explored the island of Luzon (larger than Mindanao) with a force of forty-five men. History has neglected this remarkable soldier, who should take his place alongside Sandoval, the "terrible infant" of Cortez. Salcedo led his tiny company of ill-armed troops through the swamps and jungles of Luzon in safety, to finally die of fever in 1576 at the age of twenty-seven.

In pre-Spanish times the Manila Bay region was known as Lusong and was held by a Mohammedan force under the leadership of Rajah Nicoy. Manila was defended by a cotta, or fort, constructed of nipa and bamboo. The Mohammedans were there as missionaries, their station being surrounded by pagan hill men.

Nicoy was succeeded by Kanduli, who in turn gave way to Lakanduli. Lakanduli claimed descent from Alexander the Great. The ruler at the time of Legapi's conquest was Soliman, who had succeeded Lakanduli. Soliman, a Borneo prince of royal blood, was killed in the unsuccessful defense of the cotta of Lusong. His death destroyed the Mohammedan state in the north.

At Mambarao, on the central island of Mindoro, a Mohammedan pirate stronghold remained so well defended that it survived until the late eighteenth century, to be eventually wiped out by a strong naval flotilla from the base at Cavite. With a few exceptions, however, we find the Moros retreating to the south, where the three strong states of Maguindanao, Sulu and Zamoboanga were established.

On the Sarangani Island, at the extreme southern tip of Mindanao, the Moros built a great slave trading market which supplied the harems of the East. Organized and systematic raids were made upon the northern islands and the Moro buccaneers took captives from the very wharves of Manila.

Shortly before the death of Legaspi in 1572 we see this truculent soldier coming to grips with the Moro corsairs. On one of his expeditions Legaspi surprised and captured a Moro prao after a savage battle. Forty-five Moros defended the prao against an equal number of attacking Spaniards. In the engagement that ensued, the Spanish boat was boarded by the pirates who, kris in hand, defied the arquebuses of the Spaniards. The shattering close-range fire of the Spaniards exterminated the pirates before many could come to close grips with the Spanish soldiers.

After witnessing the ferocity of the Moros' attack, there must have come to the old soldier forebodings of the disasters which were to meet Spanish arms in Mindanao, for we find in Legaspi's official report of the battle the following statement:

"I have been assured that they fought well and bravely in their defense was quite apparent for besides the man they killed, they also wounded more than twenty of our soldiers."

During the early days of the conquest, Spain was in no condition to carry the wars to the Moros in Mindanao. The Moros brought the war to the Spaniards. In 1574 a Moro fleet of one hundred garays and one hundred small praos, manned by more than 8,000 warriors, attacked the city of Manila. All of the resources of Spain were called upon to beat this attacking force, and Manila was saved after a savage defense which cost the lives of many Spaniards. The Moro charge into the cannon fire of the fortified Spaniards resulted in an enormous loss of life before the order was given to return to the pirate ships.

Violent and repeated pirate raids required the attention of the Spanish soldiery, and they were badly pressed by the Moro raids during the consolidation of the northern empire. In spite of these attacks from the Mohammedans, the subjugation of the northern pagans rolled on to a successful conclusion. One by one, the tribes of Luzon and the Visayas fell before the Toledo blades of the Spaniards.

With the conversion of the northern islands complete, and the consequent development of the Missions, a restless desire for expansion came, intensified by the goadings of the militant priests.

In the closing years of the sixteenth century the Spaniards turned confidently to Mindanao and Sulu. The Padres were now eager for martyrdom in Mindanao. The northern islands were conquered, converted and subject to tribute and forced labor.

Vic Hurley was an American with wide experience in the pre war Philippines. He also was an expert in the use of edged weapons. "Swish of the Kris" printed neraly 70 years ago details the arrival of Islam in the Philippines and the course of the relations of the Islamic (Moro) islanders with the other inhabitants and the later Spanish and American conquistadores. If there is any interest I will post the rest of this work in smaller sections. I do believe it offers some insight into an area the US military is once more engaged in and into how Islam impacts on non Islamic people. Please pardon some inevitable transcription errors.

From www.dictionary.com:

hepatoscopy: Divination by inspecting the liver of animals.

haruspicy: The art or practices of haruspices. See Aruspicy.

haruspicex: A priest in ancient Rome who practiced divination by the inspection of the entrails of animals.

Auruspicy: Prognostication by inspection of the entrails of victims slain sacrifice.

Now you know...

Hepatascopy is the examination of the livers of sacraficed animals to divine the future.

Hiruspicy is essentially a synonym defined as "divination from the entrails of animals".

definitions found in the Random House Unabridged

Any errors are minor matters, easily enough noted and corrected. Yes, please do post the work in its entirety, perhaps linking the additional *chapters* from this post as well, and I suspect a sizable ping list will develop as well.

And thank you for your effort. It certainly is worthwhile.

-archy-/-

Swish of the Kris

The kris may be of any length and two or three inches wide. All of the knives, no matter what shape, are encased in wooden scabbards, and have a keenness of edge equaling that of a Damascus blade."

Major O. J. Sweet 22nd Infantry U.S. Army

There was of course a wide variety of styles and versions of these weapons, depending on the source material, the desires of the customer, and the abilities and skill of the blacksmith who did the work. But as a representative sample, consider:

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