Road Building Among the Moros

AN ignorant and savage but spirited people are passing the eddies, and are being drawn into the outer lines of the current of the world’s civilization and progress. Their hour of fate is of interest.

In the interior of Mindanao, two thousand feet above sea level, in one of the most inviting regions of the tropics, lies a lake, Lanao. Its waters, shores, and framing of difficult mountains have fostered and protected a numerous race of savages who call themselves the Malanaos, the People of the Lake. When the Spaniards came to the shores of the Philippines, they found tall watch-towers looking out over the sea at the coast towns, and the coast people of all the Philippines, from the south to as far north as Manila, told fearful tales of a savage people who often came suddenly upon them from the south by the sea in their long sail and row boats, robbed and burned their towns, killed their men, and carried away their women and girls. These people were already in possession of some of the southernmost islands, and were spreading northward by sea and land. The Christian Spaniards found them Mohammedans, and straightway gave them the name of the people they best knew as Mohammedans, Moros, or Moors. Of this aggressive race of pirates and robbers are the Malanaos, whose highest shame was not to bear arms, and whose highest misfortune was to fall without them.

From the days of the discoverer, Magellan, down to the very day when the last Spanish soldier disappeared from the Philippines before the Americans, the Malanaos, whose advance posts and villages had gradually crept to the north shores of Mindanao, were a standing threat to Spanish authority in the South Philippines and a terror to all neighboring tribes and peoples. How great was that terror may be judged by the fact that Spain’s sending Filipino soldiers to try to hold in check the savage Malanaos was declared by Filipino leaders one of the causes of the great insurrection. During the centuries of her occupation of the Philippines, Spain made three efforts to penetrate and subdue the country of the Malanaos, but they resisted. Their jungles and mountains aided them, and on the coming of the Americans, the Malanaos were, and are to-day, an unconquered, wild people. The resources of their country are unappreciated, neglected, and serve little purpose to man. Its products spring up, mature, and go to waste under the all-devouring decay of tropical heat and dampness. Nature and savagery have prevailed against civilization. Christianity has failed before the motto of the steadfast Mohammedan Malanaos, “ Never change your religion.”

The Moros, on account of their religion, marked characteristics, savagery, and political conditions, compel attention and interest. Their political system is the town or groups of towns, which, however, hang together in nothing but a common tribal name. Their little governments are primitively Oriental. Power lies in the personality and force of character of thousands of petty chiefs, sultans, and dattos of different grades. They have little law but the Koran, and government is inseparable from religion. Though they have a written language, it is of little general value to the people because it is taught to but few. They have no literature. They work in metals, iron, brass, silver, and gold, but the main use to which they apply their art is the fabrication of arms for local petty aggression and strife. Every freeman, even the priest, goes armed. Polygamy, slavery, and tribal incoherency prevail. Robbery, piracy, and a general reciprocity of suspicion, distrust, and jealousy mark their relations. To find out what another has, and to devise means to take it away from him, — robbery, — is the very first Moro characteristic. The security of personal property lies only in the ability of the possessor to save his own. A couple of changes of hand of stolen property is generally accepted as extinguishing the title of the true owner. As death is practically the only punishment in use among them, all crimes that do not merit death go unpunished.

Withal, it is manifest that the Malanaos are savages. To reach our civilization they must pass a great gulf. In its crossing they may, like the Indian, be lost. Why, then, try to make them cross it ? Why open their country and try to civilize them ? “ Because civilization has better things for them.” Because many of them are not only ready to receive it themselves, but are helping to fetch it to their whole country. Because they are part of us, we must fetch them forward with us ; we cannot leave them behind. Because savagery and civilization cannot exist side by side ; either all Mindanao must be turned over to the savagery of the aggressive Moros, or all be taken over to civilization. Because, finally, as savages the Moros stand in the way of our destiny, and we cannot permit that. They are too poor to tempt cupidity.

In two of their efforts to open the Malanao country the Spaniards failed from lack of vigor. In the third, which was very elaborate and consumed six years, they were overtaken by Aguinaldo’s insurrection and the Spanish-American war. Spain’s failures strengthened the Moros’ military spirit, and when the Americans appeared the Moros at once began to harass them, and quickly showed the impossibility of civilization and savagery existing side by side. It was necessary toopen the Malanao country. Two military roads, passing, one from the south and one from the north coast of Mindanao into the very heart of the Moro country, and meeting there on the waters of Lake Lanao, were conceived and located by the soldier-engineer, General George W. Davis, at that time commanding in Mindanao. The making of these means the civilization of the Malanaos.

In the spring of 1902, General Baldwin began to open the southern half of this trans-Mindanao road. A few Moros near him on the south coast at first eagerly joined in the expedition against their brothers of the interior, but finding that the Americans were not willing to employ savages as soldiers even against savage enemies, and soon tiring, no matter how well paid, of the labor of felling trees and rolling logs to break through the forest, they struck and left the whole work to the stalwart American soldier. The soldier opened his way laboriously through the jungle to the battle and victory of Bayan. By his labor, also, what he had at first made but a bridle-path grew in a few months to a great highroad to the south shores of Lanao. The work was done in the face of the hostility, and in spite of the savage stealth and craft, of the Moros. Naked and noiseless, they crawled into the very camps and snatched the soldiers’ arms and ammunition, and escaped ; or, perfectly concealed in the vegetation along the narrow trails, they pounced upon sentinels and small parties with savage fury; or, under the guise of friendship, approached treacherously to sudden hand-to-hand encounter with their famous cris or more deadly campilan.¹ Two soldiers met a Moro. He made friendly signs, but, in passing, whirled, and with one swing of his campilan lopped off at the shoulder a soldier’s arm with its rifle, seized the rifle, and disappeared like a rabbit in the forest. Treacherous encounters like this came often.

On this side the opening of the Moro country found no friends among the Moros, but bitter resistance. The road was, however, completed. A camp was established on the south shore of Lanao. From there three expeditions were subsequently made to punish various Moro aggressions, and many of the Malanaos of the south shores of the lake have settled down to peace, and are building houses and transporting supplies for the American troops. Some have, however, continued resentful, and the troops must forever be on guard, though conditions are steadily improving.

One half of the work was done. The more difficult part, that which should reach and open up the far more populous and important tribes and towns of the northern shores of Lanao, remained. It was the writer’s fortune to be selected first to begin it with the labor of troops, afterward to take charge of relations with the Moros, and at last to end the work with the labor of Moros on the north shores of Lanao.

The general said, “ Open the country and subdue the Moros ; do it without fighting.” No harder injunction could have been laid upon soldiers. Sickness and disease can be borne. Labor under the most withering heat that Americans have known, labor with only the inadequate makeshift appliances of a far backward and distant country, scratching a way with tooth and nail through the rocks and mountains, — all were accepted with equanimity. But troops whose very reason for existence is fighting saw themselves in the midst of aggressive, savage enemies, who constantly lay in wait to rob and kill, and were required to hold their hand. That they obeyed is the wonder of discipline, — I may not say the honor of soldiers, for there is no honor for soldiers but in fighting, and these knew it. It was the hard sacrifice of opportunity to duty.

After crawling for a few miles along the north coast of Mindanao, the road plunges into a deep mountain forest southward and climbs along the course of the picturesque and noisy Agus, which, so rapid is its fall, literally spouts the waters of Lanao into the Sulu Sea. Moros love the water. Their villages lie upon lakes, coasts, and streams. They struggle thus along the Agus from Lanao to the sea, and the new Moro road thus touches almost from the start the purpose for which it was conceived, the opening and enlightenment of the Moro country. Just in advance of the Americans went the mighty Asiatic cholera, mowing down the Moros in swift fearful deaths, yet leaving the Americans almost unscathed. To the superstitious Moros this meant that the Americans had at least brought the dread disease, perhaps even were in league with it. The thought embittered them. Many disappeared into the forests of the interior, until a valiant Moro, some said, met and slew the Cholera Man, a tall dark stranger, and the disease was stayed. As it waned, the Moros returned and found the American soldiers busy at work on the road. At first they came from curiosity, afterwards to seek opportunity by stealthy attacks on sentinels and small parties to secure firearms, which they prize above all things, and for which to risk their lives is nothing. They saw the big white man felling trees and hurling great boulders into the air with a mighty roar by the mere touch of a button. They saw his beautiful arms and abundant ammunition. They saw horses and wagons whose great size and loads struck them with wonder. They saw the soldier eat in one meal more than a Moro eats in three, and do in a day more work than a Moro can do in three. They saw him going about almost alone without fear, and living in the open without thought of the shelter of earthwork or fort. They attacked him alone, unarmed, in the dark, and were driven off like children. They found him, notwithstanding his great strength and power of destruction, kind, considerate, ready to joke and be friends. When they gave him fearful warning of stealthy attack, he smiled and said, “ Good.” They saw him come without the missionary spirit of the Spaniards, and unaccompanied by their traditional enemies, the Filipinos. They saw the cholera almost pass him by ; saw him live where Moros died. They almost saw the seasons change to favor him and the rains fail that would have stopped him. There is no doubt that these things powerfully affected the minds of the Moros.

They could not understand the man who prefers to fight in the open and cares nothing for forts and earthworks; whom the dread cholera itself seemed to respect; who knew how to do so many strange and wonderful things ; who could kill so swiftly, and yet did not; who could drive many to work in slavery, yet offered them pay for their labor. Above all, as Moros, they could not understand the man who could, if he pleased, rob with impunity, yet did not; who could, if he pleased, almost with impunity kill men and carry off women to his harems and boys into slavery, yet did not. Without a better understanding they could not decide to fight at once. Besides, the invader did not march forward; he worked forward. This gave them time to observe and consider. Some prowled around camp day and night, watching us from the woods and jungles, occasionally shooting into camp and attacking small parties and sentinels. A few came in a friendly manner, and by them I invited others to come and talk with me. They did not rush to friendship and welcome in Filipino style. They were deliberate. They began to visit me only after about three months, coming always in parties, and armed to the teeth. I assured them one by one, man and datto, hour after hour, all day, week after week, a thousand times: “ We wish to be your friends, not to fight you, nor rob you, nor disturb your religion. You are brown men and we white. For so little should we be enemies ? Why should we wish to rob you ? You have nothing we would rob you of. We already have more and better things than you. See our few hundred soldiers and these at work upon the road. Had we come to fight or enslave you, we would have brought thousands, as did the Spaniards. Ask the Moros whose homes have been near our camps and road. Have we killed or robbed any, or molested or frightened their women and children ? Now speak freely what is in your heart, any doubt or suspicion, that we may understand one another and be friends.” The general, almost invariable, answer to this invitation showed the Moros’ keen appreciation of the prime characteristic of their people, love of robbery and consuming desire for firearms : “ My people are all good, but if one day some bad Moros should lie in wait near my town and kill or wound some of your soldiers and take their arms, will you come and kill my people and burn my town ? ” I answered : “ We will try to care for these bad men on the spot. It is not our custom to involve the good in the punishment of the bad.” The weight lifted from their minds, they talked on for from one to five hours, jumping from one trifle to another, listening attentively, observing narrowly, recurring ever to our coming, trying to fathom our motives, and reach a basis of judgment of us and an estimate of our intentions with regard to themselves. Cutting short such a parley only sent them away unsatisfied and suspicious. It could not be done if we wished to make them our friends. As no datto was ever represented by another, each had to be satisfied for himself. There were days, weeks, months of talk, involving the consumption of bushels of betel nuts and thousands of bad cigarettes. This was repeated at each new advance into the interior. Satisfied upon all points, the datto declared himself a friend, perhaps took an oath of friendship with me by cutting a split of the bejuca vine over the Koran, and then demanded an American flag as large as the largest any datto had ever received ; or, under the impression that I would pay for his peace and friendship, asked the “ loan ” of money. The flag he received after satisfactory observation ; the money, never. Thereafter on the market days of nearby towns he was likely to come to call and present me with such rotten eggs and sick chickens as he may have been unable to sell in the market.

It was thought that if a few Moros could be induced to work, the flock would follow. They have no traditions of work. Among them labor is generally the part of slaves, women, and children. It is accordingly looked upon with contempt by the Moro freemen. They heard my offer, demanded about two prices, and waited and talked days to secure their demands. At last a few accepted the prices offered, and began to work under the supervision of officers and soldiers selected for their intelligence, patience, and judgment, who might be relied upon to recognize the difference between a Moro and an American, and who would not expect, as most men do, of the wildest savage all the qualities of honor and faith and manhood of the man whose inheritance and traditions have for hundreds of years been those of civilization.

The first comers were a scabby lot of boys and slaves. Agreeing to work for three days, some wanted pay at the end of a couple of hours; all at the end of a day. Some were prevailed upon to work until the end of the time agreed upon, when they were paid. The briefest hour of labor was sufficient basis to demand a day’s pay. At first no direction except the most considerate and respectful was tolerated by them. One datto, who went to sleep during work hours and was waked by the soldier overseer, was offended beyond all power of apology to mend. He took his little pack of slaves and boys and went off in a huff. When the hour for the first payment arrived, a much larger number of Moros than had worked came to witness it. It was plain that many never believed that payment would be made. They were surprised. Some had also feared that the Americans would herd them together at some good opportunity while at work and shoot them to death. This had not happened, and the news went forth. It had some effect; the numbers grew, but not sufficiently. To many who, while professing great good will and friendship, were still standing off, I thought it a good time to say, “ Talk means nothing. My friends work with me on the road.” It was effective. In a short time I had more Moro laborers than I could conveniently supply with tools.

The forward movement of the work quickly developed the fact that it was in derogation of the authority of the datto of the locality for another’s people to dare touch his soil with pick and shovel. There was bad blood and surliness for a long time, and the matter gave me much trouble until I made plain to them another sovereignty, that of the United States, over the road wherever it fell. Absurd jealousies like this constitute the most striking and difficult features of Moro politics. A town cannot grow to respectable size before jealousy between its dattos splits it into half-a-dozen miserable villages, whose head men are ever afterward either at war or maintaining an armed and suspicious peace verging on war. Like result follows the death of a datto. His late realm, no matter how mean, is torn up and divided among the rivals for his honors. Thereafter all trifles become standing enmities. The net result, among a numerous people of the same blood and other common bonds, is as bad an example of political disorganization and incoherence as can be found in the world. Few villages are so small as not to be torn by such jealousies. Our meanest Indian tribes hold together better.

These jealousies and the datto’s absurd pride of rank and love of prestige complicated and made difficult all my attempts to deal with them. One of the first things to which I became accustomed was to see each datto, as he came to talk for the first time, strike a level between the tips of his two forefingers held side by side and declare : “ So it is with dattos. If another claim that he is higher than I, he lies, and I will fight him.” If I gave one a contract, the next day half-a-dozen appeared and insisted on having an exact duplicate in all respects without any regard to whether they were at all able to execute it. To make a start on a certain work, I allowed to one datto a day’s pay for his people for half a day’s work. All others demanded the same, not for the profit, because many of them actually offered two or three days’ work to the road, gratis, but because they thought they saw in my act a recognition in the first datto of some higher grade which jealousy could never permit them to pass without challenge. Another who had not, like some of his neighbors, received a contract to cut poles, went out, and for mere show and effect upon the Moro mind made his people cut and prepare the same number of poles as others whether I desired to use them or not. Another still, who, in the division of the road work was somehow left out, in order to preserve his public prestige laid out a piece of road according to his own ideas,and had his people execute the work. It made no difference to these that they were not to receive pay for their work. They were guarding their datto’s prestige in the public eye, — a sort of Moro form of the most favored nation clause in our treaties. Yet there was a favoring side to this jealousy. Upon occasion I have got his last man and his utmost effort out of a datto by touching him at this point, talking admiringly in his hearing of the great service being rendered by some neighbor of his of whom I knew him to be jealous. He was generally unable to stand it, and proceeded to do his best in rivalry.

As the road advanced deeper and deeper into the Moro country, the number of Moro laborers grew steadily. With wider experience I saw that he who has only talked to Moros of friendship and our benevolent intentions, who has not worked, paid, and fed them, has not even scratched the surface of Moro character. Work, money, food, — these stand for something. We employed, worked, and paid them always through the datto. Paid by the day and at work under the datto alone, the slight regard in which they held this gentleman quickly became manifest. Acknowledging always some datto, no freeman ever obeyed any. He worked if he pleased, he trifled if he pleased, and the datto might whistle. Only children who stood in fear of superior strength could be made to work. As a consequence among our laborers there were many children. I would not have had it otherwise, for the hope of the Moros is not in the present but in the rising generation. Promptness ? Hours ? Time ? What were they ? In the Moro tongue now and to-day are the same word. I found it out after weeks of impatience, observing that an order to go to work now was taken in apparent good faith to mean any time to-day.

Paid by the job, the Moro sat down by his work, camped, ate, slept by it. Thus I saw him work when he pleased, early and late and by moonlight, with his own tools, in his own way, loosening the earth with a sharp stick and throwing it with his hands ; or, sitting, push it with his feet before him to its place on the road. I have seen him during the hours of his rest from his labor, ill done by the day, cut and split cordwood by contract and carry it in bundles on his head a mile to the Quartermaster. It detracts nothing from his industry to add that he generally took advantage of these unusual hours and freedom from observation to attempt some easily discovered but provoking trick, like padding the “ fills ” in his road with straw, brush, or rotten wood, or changing the grade or course of his road to make his work lighter, or crisscrossing his wood in the cord until it contained more air than wood.

But patience and contact with the Americans were all the time telling with them, and after three months they were organized into large gangs under soldiers and worked as regularly by bugle call as soldiers, and during longer hours because they stood the heat. All this time the consequence of the datto was waning. Some who were slow in coming to the Americans lost their following with their people who came with other dattos. In all, probably three thousand from far and near worked side by side with the Americans. From being a mere adjunct to the soldier labor they came to do the great bulk of the work. Impatience at first had not driven them away, desire to earn had brought them to work, and work had kept them from war. The civilizing, educational effect was marked. Contact with one another was wiping out animosities of long standing. Contact with the Americans was wiping out prejudices and opposition to American ways. Altogether it was a great stride for savages. They had become peaceful workers. They finished the road and opened the way to their own civilization.

With so favorable a start, and with the lessons of their severe defeats by punitive expeditions fresh in their minds, are we hereafter to expect trouble with Moros ? After our Revolutionary war an expedition was organized to settle the Indian question. A hundred years later that question was still a very live one. The American public learns of the severe punishment given lawless Moros yesterday in Mindanao. The papers and the public declare, “ That will teach them a lesson.” But, for a lesson to be a lesson, it must be learned, and other wild Moros just over the hill have neither seen nor read the lesson of that slaughter ; and had they seen or read, they would not have been so sensibly affected as the public thinks. Among the Moros human life is cheap, — ten or twelve dollars, — and scenes of blood and tales of carnage are not so rare as to be very affecting. Almost every manly Moro bears the scars of combat, and in defeat all Orientals expect far more slaughter than Westerners have ever been willing to make or even think of. Punitive expeditions are necessary and valuable, but let us not overestimate them. As for peaceful methods alone, the Filipino insurgent general, Rufino Deloso, well provided with funds, visited the Lanao country in 1901 to try to make allies of the Moros. There is a suggestion in Rufino’s report that as long as his funds held out, the Moros were friendly; no longer. Still Rufino’s method was largesses, ours the profit and discipline of work. It can hardly be expected that we shall be able to bring the Moros under full control without further serious difficulties, perhaps wars. The differences between them and us are too great. Occidental and Oriental have met, and the witness feels a new strange meaning in the words, “ As far as the East is from the West.”

To many who know much of the Moros these differences seem so great that they cry out against any early movement to bring the Moros to our views or under our system. Let alone, they say, the bearing of arms, slavery, polygamy, citizenship, and any attempt at government based on citizenship or on anything else than the one man’s rule of the datto or sultan. With this, except as to polygamy, I strongly disagree.

The Moro custom of going always armed to the teeth is deep-rooted, traditional, national, and not to bear arms is a sign of slavery or tribal disgrace ; but, despite all this, I have induced hundreds of freemen, Moros, to come without arms to work on the road with the Americans. Results cannot be denied nor theorized against. Further, the very ineffectiveness of these arms, knives, and spears, as compared with new firearms now coming into sight, yet but little into Moro hands, will help to their abandonment.

Slavery is generally declared mild among the Moros and without slavery’s usual concomitants. I have known the traditions and effects of slavery in our own country, — broken families, mother and child separated, concubinage, immorality, degradation, contempt of human rights. They are the same among the Moros without the compensating civilizing effect passing from master to slave as in America. Slavery, I believe, is not so much a Moro as a Mohammedan institution. That the Moros care but little for it is shown by the fact that when runaway slaves have claimed the protection of the United States and been declared free, as they frequently have been, their late masters have accepted the decision with equanimity, and by the further fact that slaves are valued so little, — twenty dollars per head. Among a total population of perhaps 300,000, they cannot be very numerous. For probably a million dollars I believe it would be practicable to buy and liberate them all, — an opportunity for a philanthropist. Nor is it probable that with the little attachment which the Moros display for slavery there would thereafter be any difficulty in preventing a serious return to the institution.

With slavery would go concubinage, open and serious concubinage, I mean ; for concubinage, as a general evil, does not exist without slavery. This brings us to polygamy, a related but more serious question.

Polygamy appeals to the Moros. It has appealed to mankind in all ages. To know it we have only to call to mind the strength and popularity of every religion that has approved or allowed it, and especially in our own time and country to note the ready reception by both men and women, and the marvelous growth of that religion which has made polygamy a cardinal doctrine and practice. Of course polygamy is doomed under American rule, and it will have to go from among the Moros. When and how are the only questions. I cannot answer them, yet it would seem that we ought not to expect better or prompter results with the Moros in far Mindanao than we have had with our Indians and Mormons at home.

As for the possibility of a citizenship and civil government for the Moros, there already exists a tendency among them, of which I have spoken, to individualize, an undoubted tendency to personal freedom and independence. Here is something to lay hold of, something on which to begin. The datto system of one man’s rule is moribund. Contact with Americans is already pushing it into its grave and putting the freedom of the individual in its place. Such has been the plain results before my own eyes. When the datto failed to lead his people to the Americans, they acted independently and he lost his influence and following. Further, the Moros already exercise some of the functions of citizens. They depose and elect their own sultans and dattos. Among them, also, there is a general recognition of the white man’s superiority which makes them more ready to accept the white man’s dictum in their affairs. The word of white military authority extinguishing the right of a datto to his slave has been accepted many times without murmur. Two dattos fought in my presence over a question of ownership of an old Spanish blockhouse. I declared it United States property. Said a deputation of neighbors who next day brought the aggressor before me, “ If you say he is at fault, we will kill him.” Many requests, with some of which I have complied, have been made upon me by Moros to settle controversies between them about arms, debts, thefts, runaway and stolen slaves, and what not. As my camps have advanced into their territory, chief after chief has said : “ I ruled here ; now you have come, what is your will ? ” Again, there are among them many men of common rank, many dattos too, who will gladly accept under the white man’s powerful government the opportunity to gain distinction among their people. Some have already been doing this. The young Sultan of Marahui risked his life at Bacolod to prevent his people from fighting the Americans ; later he risked and lost his life by the horrible disease cholera at Teyaca with the same high purpose. He was our friend. In the world he would have been a hero.

From such conditions — their inclination to throw off the datto system, their tendency to personal freedom or citizenship, their readiness to accept our dictum in their affairs, their existing custom of electing their own dattos — it ought to be no difficult passage to civil government. These things are necessary : the skill to take hold of and turn to account favoring conditions and characteristics, the patience and consideration to allow for Moro ideas and customs, yet the tact and firmness not to allow them to defeat our ends.

R. L. Bullard.