Mindanao and Sulu

MAGINDANAO, 1860-1888: THE CAREER OF DATU UTO OF BUAYAN THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY SOUTHEAST ASIA PROGRAM The Southeast Asia Program was organized at Cornell University in the Department of Far Eastern Studies in 1950. It is a teaching and research program of interdisciplinary studies in the humanities, social sciences, and some natural sciences. It deals with Southeast Asia as a region, and with the individual countries of the area: Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The activities of the Program are carried on both at Cornell and in Southeast Asia. They include an undergraduate and graduate curri�ulum at Cornell which provides instruction by specialists in Southeast Asian cultural history and present-day affairs and offers intensive training in each of the major languages of the area. The Program sponsors group research projects on Thailand, on Indonesia, on the Philippines, and on the area's Chinese minorities. At the same time, individual staff and students of the Program have done field research in every Southeast Asian country. A list of publications relating to Southeast Asia which may be obtained on prepaid order directly from the Program is given at the end of this volume. Information on Program staff, fellowships, requirements for degrees, and current course offerings will be found in an Announaement of the Department of Asian Studies, obtainable from the Director, Southeast Asia Program, Franklin Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850. ii MAGINDANAO, 1860-1888: THE CAREER OF DATU UTO OF BUAYAN by Reynaldo Clemena Ileto Data Paper: Number 82 Southeast Asia Program Department of Asian Studies Cornell University, Ithaca, New York October 1971 Price: $3.50 C 1971 CORNELL UNIVERSITY SOUTHEAST ASIA PROGRAM 1V PREFACE The situation in which the "hero" of history finds himself is as important as his personality and his actions. The leader neither behaves in a vacuum, nor is he an en tirely free individual. He acts in a milieu which has been shaped by the past, and the success or failure of his career must, to some extent, depend upon his individual re sponse to historical and cultural forces which he encounters. The man ·around whom this study is built is Sultan Anwarud-din Uto, known in Spanish records and by his people as Datu Uto, a Magindanao prince who first appears in Spanish accounts in the year 1860. To understand him requires an examination of Magindanao society, whose political, eco nomic and social structures, values, and sentiments find expression in a nineteenth century situation dominated by this man. Furthermore, we must consider not only the times in which he lived, but also a span of the Magindanao past from as early as the sixteenth century. By uncovering the roots of conflict in his society and by understand ing continuities with the past, we can get beyond the less imaginative Spanish viewpoint that Datu Uto's career was an eccentric episode in a glorious era of Spanish conquest in the Muslim areas of Mindanao and Sulu. The Spaniards could grudgingly acknowledge Rizal and Aguinaldo as expressions of a budding Filipino national sentiment; Datu Uto, however, was to the bulk of Spanish writers and policy makers a stubborn, half-civilized "Moro,o" a descendant of dreaded pirate chiefs who brought terror to the Christian settlements, whose cunning and cruelty made h1m the leader of a rebellion against Spain. If we attempt to see Uto in the context of Magindanao history and society, a different picture emerges. He is seen to exhibit the attributes of an exemplary Magindanao datu. The con flict of which he was a part ceases to be merely an isolated rebellion against Spain. It takes on a wider significance as part of a complex situation involving tensions be tween various segments of the Magindanao world, between personal loyalties and Islam, and includes within its scope the external world with which Magindanao was linked. For this type of study, the traditional narrative approach in historical writing is inadequate, although it still plays an important role in giving life and substance to the treatment which follows. We must always bear in mind that the documentary materials used here are all European, mainly Spanish, and they do not reflect the Magindanao viewpoint, which is our primary interest in this study. Rather than shying awayo.from such sources, however, we can avoid writing "Europocentric" or colonial history by making use of ethno graphic accounts and by borrowing some analytical tools from related social science disciplines. Unfortunately, the study of Magindanao history and society has not progressed much since Najeeb Saleeby published his Studies in Moro History, Law and Religion in 1905. Jose Maceda's full-scale study of Magindanao music,o1 a landmark in Philippine ethnomusi cology, is probably the only in-depth study of some aspect of Magindanao society that has appeared in recent years. Some scholars have preferred to delve into the sociologi cal aspects of mission work and may sometimes have been influenced by their own. "Chris2 tian" biases and therefore3 unable to view Philippine Muslim society in its own terms.o Several Filipino scholarso have recently shown an interest in "Moro" history for its own sake, but so far they have hardly begun.to tap the vast amount of documentary materials in archives and libraries both in the Philippines and abroad. 1. "The Music of the Magindanao in the Philippines" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California in Los Angeles, 2 vols.o, 1962). 2. E. g. , Francis Madigan, S.J. and Nicholas Cushner, S. J. , "Tamontaka: a sociological experiment,o" American Catholic SocioZogical Review, XIX, 4 (1958), pp. 322-336; also, by the same authors, "Tamontaka reduction: a community approach to Mission work," Neue Zeitschrift fur Missions-wissenschaft, XVII, 2 (1961), pp. 81-94. Other works which show the "Christian" bias are: Rev. T. O'Shaughnessy, "Philippine Islam and the Society of Jesus,o" PS, IV, 2 (1956), pp. 214-245; Peter Gowing, Mosque and Moro; a Study of Muslims in the Philippines (Manila, 1964). An example of a study of colo nial policy is Clifford Smith, "A History of the Moros" (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1948). 3. F. Delor Angeles, Mindanao; the Story of an Island (Davao City, 1964); Mamitua Saber, "Four papers on Mindanao-Sulu,o" undated mimeographed copy in Olin Library, Cornell University. V 4 Horacio de la Costa's accounts have contributed a great deal towards bringing the Magindanao into the light of modern historical knowledge, but this Jesuit historian has only dealt with the Muslim peoples in a peripheral sense except for a5 notable article on an eighteenth-century Sulu Sultan. Cesar Majul's pioneering studieso have rightly stressed the need for looking at the Muslim Filipinos through less biased spectacles; Majul, however, has focused on Sulu rather than on Mindanao. A young scholar who, like Majul, has used a sociological orientation in viewing Sulu history is Anne L. Reber.i In the introduction to her work, she has acknowledged the influence of Melvin Mednick, an anthropologist who has written a seminal article on "Moro" history and society and also a thorough study 7 of the Maranao social system in which valuable references to the Magindanaos are made.o 8 Miss Reber also mentions John Gullick, whose study of indigenous Malay political systems has influenced a number of Southeast Asian specialists, includ ing the present author. In a way, most of the studies we have mentioned, while dealing only marginally with Magindanao, have contributed to the present work. But they by no means represent the entire list of modern studies of Southeast Asian history and anthro pology which have greatly stimulated the author's thinking about that tiny segment of the region which is Magindanao. The reader must bear in mind the limited scope of this study. 9 What follows is an attempt to explore a largely uncharted realm of Philippine history. We do not claim to have exhausted the store of materials in American archives and libraries, riot to mention those in the Philippines, Spain, the Netherlands and Great Britain which we have not even seen. The Newberry Library at Chicago, which is the most important source of mate rials for this study, contains an impressive collection of manuscripts and published works awaiting the perusal of the researcher;o10 only a fraction of these materials have been used by the present author. The most serious limitation, however, 'is the fact that the author lacks first-hand knowledge about the land and people of the Pulangi valley. This becomes particularly evident in the chapter on Islam. The available Spanish mate rials can give a limited and external perspective. A more accurate description can be had only when indigenous texts have been analyzed and when actual fieldwork has been carried out. Furthermore, the subject of Islam is a very complex one, the study of which necessitates familiarity with Arabic texts and with the extensive scholarship on Islam, particularly when it deals with the forms in which the religion has manifested itself in Southeast Asia. The author lacks these qualification. A significant step can, however, be made toward a fuller knowledge of Magindanao if the available Spanish sources are properly handled by the historian. Within the whole. range of sources at hand, one finds a gradation in degree of reliability and usefulness. Manuscripts, for example, tend to be more valuable than published materials for the sim ple reason that they probably have not been edited to suit the perspectives of the read ing public or prevailing government policies. And among the published sources, the more reliable ones are, naturally, those written by actual participants in the events them- 4.

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