Chapter XXVI

THE SULU PIRATES

"MORO" is the Spanish word for Moor.

The Spaniards, when they entered the Islands in the latter part of the sixteenth century, applied the name to the people of the southern archipelago. This they did because the people of the southern archipelago were Mohammedan, and because, to a Spaniard, the words "Mohammedan" and "Moro" were synonymous.

Between the Moros and the "Indians," as the Spaniards called the tribes of the northern archipelago, the newcomers found a wide difference, both in character and in status. The "Indian" was a docile, light-brained child-savage, cribbed in his own small jungle range, without well-formed religious beliefs, without law or organized government, without books or written records, without any art save the most rudimentary.

The "Moro," on the other hand, was a fighter, a sea-rover, a reader of the Koran and a devotee of the Prophet. His civil laws, like those of his religion, with which they inseparably interlocked, were fixed and clear. His scheme of government and of official control, though simple, was mature. His better classes read and wrote their own languages, using the Hindu syllabaries and the Arabic alphabet. He had a definite system of education. His written records, histories, genealogies and religious works had been preserved for many hundreds of years, and the pride of a chief was in his collection of manuscripts.

He displayed much skill as a carver of wood and of ivory, as an inlayer of precious metals, as a worker in gold, iron, steel and bronze. He had a well-developed productive sense

of beauty in form and line. His weaving was remarkable both in quality of fabric and in decorative design. He fought in metal armour of his own making, cast bronze or brass cannon for his fortresses, and made side-arms and gun-powder.1 He built excellent swift boats of various sorts and sizes, and was a master navigator.

He dealt in fine pearls, which his great men possessed in quantities. His light-winged craft distributed silk, amber, silver, scented woods and porcelains, from China and Japan. From Luzon and the Visayas he took slaves-many slaves to do his menial work. In fact he permanently incorporated the word "visaya" into his language as meaning "slave." From Borneo and Malacca he carried home brass, copper, iron, rubies, diamonds and spices. And his town of Jolo in the island of Sulu was a centre of trade and the one city of the Philippines. He cultivated his soil with skill, dwelling among gardens and well-tilled fields and lived well on his own products. His principal personages had sizable wooden houses decorated and equipped, after their taste. The masses also lived in wooden dwellings and were better lodged and fed than were the northern islanders.

The Moro had a strict moral code and obeyed it. Public opinion, resting on the decrees of the Koran, was exceedingly strong. By it the chastity of women was held inviolable. And any infringement was visited, by law, with the swiftest and fiercest of punishments. The Moro's code as to property rights, as to punishments, penalties and compensation for murders and for injuries, as to inheritance, as to the protection of children, as to debts and debtors, as to slander, was circumstantial, clear and plain. And it absolutely governed his daily life.

He was a polygamist, a slave-holder and a most accomplished pirate. But, according to his religious teachings, each of these things was right. His piracies and his slave-raids he exercised

1 Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to Felipe II, July 25, 1570, Blair and Robertson, Vol. III, pp. 109-112.

upon infidels only. He seldom weakened his fibre by a disloyalty to the commands of his own severe law.

Historically, the "Moro" was an original Indonesian pagan, whom the Chinese had known, traded with and economically influenced since the first century A.D. and upon whom the Hindu sovereigns of Java had laid their hands before the thirteenth century. This latter contact had coloured his thought with Brahminic or Vedic beliefs and had given him the elements of Hindu civilization.

It was about the year 1380 that the first Mohammedan teacher, an Arab, visited Sulu and the neighbouring islands— to find in the nature of the people a strong natural sympathy for Islamic doctrines. The seeds so planted made easy the way of succeeding Mohammedan princes-missionary conquerors from Borneo. These while retaining their suzerainty over north Borneo and their possessions therein, became lords of Sulu, and, before another century had passed, firmly established their rule in the whole southern archipelago. Here the faith of Islam, assimilated by the native stock, developed therein a wild strength and daring, a vigorous spirit of independence, with the frankness that comes from long enjoyment of militant civil liberty and of obedience to law.

The people thus formed by fate-passionate religionists, tremendous fighters, prosperous, proud, and free as the wind-carried the standard of Islam north through the Islands. The Sultans of Sulu, in particular, supported the advance of a remarkable succession of Mohammedan missionaries. Yet, even without the convictions of the sword, the creed itself would have won the island peoples. But for the sudden appearance of Spain, and the clash and deadlock that resulted, in a very few years more the whole Philippine archipelago must have been Mohammedanized.

As to the methods and motives of the two contending forces -Spain and Islam-Crescent and Cross-essential differences were few. Both acted from sincere and intense conviction, to the glory of God. In that cause both burned towns. Both

slew with enthusiasm. Both died as martyrs. Both took loot and tribute. Both commandeered and enslaved the vanquished. Both demanded acknowledgment of the one True Faith essential to salvation.

When the two met, head on, Spain drew the first blood. This was at Manila-then a Moro outpost. Rajah Soliman, governor of the town, returned to the Spanish overture a stiff answer- ... they should understand," he said, "that the Moros were not painted Indians. . . . They would not tolerate any abuse, as had others. On the contrary they would repay with death the least thing that touched their honour." 2 But Spain surprised the fort, destroyed it, killed the garrison, burned the town and seized the territory for His Most Catholic Majesty.

In 1578, having with little or no difficulty established control of the childlike lowland population of the northern islands, Spain turned her mind to sterner work. She sent a fleet against Jolo, rich market of the Malay East. The errand of the fleet was to demand that the Sultan of Sulu surrender all his ammunition and artillery and all his fighting ships, and cease trade with all countries other than Spain; to exact control of the Sulu pearl fisheries; to destroy all mosques; to seize and bring away all Mohammedan priests and teachers; to denounce the doctrine of Islam as wicked and false; to explain the heaviness of the costs incurred by His Majesty of Spain in conveying this information; and finally, in view of those costs, to collect a tribute of the best pearls in hand, as an earnest of more pearls, hereafter continuously to be produced by Sulu for the satisfaction of His Most Catholic Majesty.

These demands, presented out of the blue, to a strong, old and unconquered people, produced no fruit other than the rousing of fierce resentment and the opening of a state of war. Continuing for three hundred years, that conflict was to arrest the progress of the "Moro" peoples, draining their strength and resources and turning it all to arms. And it was to cost 2 Martin de Goite and Juan de Salcedo. Voyage to Luzon, 1570.

Spain herself a great and profitless loss of men and treasure. The fortunes of the struggle swung to and fro. Once and again Spain planted her flag on Sulu soil, only to be dislodged by Moro valour. In 1635 she secured a bare foothold, held it for nine years, and was then forced out. Before her evacuation, however, she effected an offensive and defensive alliance with the Sultan of Sulu, professedly to secure peace between the two signatories, and to insure the aid of each power to the other in case of foreign attack.

Spain, in this treaty, recognized the sovereignty of the Sultan of Sulu in his own territories of Borneo and the southern islands. Not for two centuries thereafter did she re-establish herself on Sulu soil.

Meantime, nevertheless, she hacked and worried at the lesser towns of the Sulu coast and at the lesser dependent islands, forever looting, burning, destroying; forever killing such life as she could reach by means of swift raids from her hovering ships; and sometimes storming Jolo itself. In return, the vintas of the Sultan would surprise the Spanish ships and board them, to kill and be killed, while other vinta fleets, darting away to the north, raided the "Christian" islands and wiped out coast settlements. To these, though her flag floated over them, Spain could give small protection against the arms of the south. And the ships of the Moros, returning from swift sorties to Luzon and the Visayas, came laden with cargoes of picked women and of boys-for they counted it too wearisome to teach the "Indian" men to work. Of both they kept the best, and sold the remainder in the markets of Borneo.

Raiding back and forth thus continued during the first hundred years. Then, in 1737, Sultan Alimud Din I ratified a new treaty, in which both Spain and Sulu again pledged themselves to mutual assistance in time of need and to new efforts for order. Alimud Din faithfully kept his word, doing his best to keep his people in hand. He revised Sulu's law code and judicial system. He caused the translation into Sulu of various Arabic books on law and religion. And he encouraged, mean