Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Spunjer · 13th May 2005, 01:45 PM

ian, here you go:

Scorched earth policy, germ warfare and the Americans in Davao in the early 1900s

DAVAO CITY -- “Huwes de kutsilyo,” mass poisoning, germ warfare.

A book launched here last Friday at the University of the Philippines-Mindanao’s city campus has an entire chapter that deals with accounts of how US forces nearly a century ago countered resistance from natives of Davao with ‘huwes de kutsilyo’ or scorched earth policy similar to what happened in Samar in 1901, mass poisoning and germ warfare.

The book, “Davao 1890-1910: Conquest and Resistance in the Garden of the Gods,” written by Dr. Macario D. Tiu of the Ateneo de Davao University, was initially intended only as a research to fill the gaps of the 1906-1908 period in Davao history about the unrest in the Davao Gulf highlighted by the assassination of Davao District Govenror Edward C. Bolton on June 6, 1906, by Mangulayon, the deputy headman of the Tagacaolo.

Its working title then was “Lumad Struggles in Davao: 1906-1906.” But Tiu’s research would expand in its scope and time and place and took more than two years to complete instead of the project timeframe of one year.

The book, published by the University of the Philippines’ Center for Integrative and Development Studies, has seven chapters, the first three classified as “Hard Documents,” as it relied mainly on written Spanish and American documents, the last four as “Memory Documents” as it “relied mainly on the documents archived in the minds of the local people.”

Oral accounts were gathered from some 200 informants from 20 towns and cities along the Davao Gulf, representing 14 tribes and some settlers.

The first three chapters deals with the 1890-1899 contest for territory; the 1900-1910 establishment of American hegemony; and resistance and the assassination of Bolton; the last four chapters on plantation economy, forms of resistance, and the death of Bolton; an entire chapter on Mangulayon; American Atrocities in Davao: Huwes de Kutsilyo and Germ Warfare; and the Dance of Resistance.

Chapter 6 begins with a description of how Americans occupied Davao “peacefully in 1899 as the inhabitants did not offer any resistance.”

“But when the Americans began to transform Davao into plantations and forced the natives to work in these plantations, they began to resist. By late 1905, unrest was sweeping Davao Gulf. From Lupon, Datu Tomaros and Datu Compao spread a dance that alarmed the Americans, while in Malalag, the datus were meeting in early 1906 to discuss how to kill all the American planters from Digos down to Malita. The uprising was signaled by the assassination of District Governor Edward C. Bolton by Mangulayon on 6 June 1906, and the looting of planter McCullough’s store in Kibulan. In response, the Americans unleashed the scorched-earth policy on the natives of Davao del Sur.”

Tiu noted that American atrocities in many parts of the country during the Philippine-American war are well-documented, including the wars against the Moros, “but nothing about these atrocities in Davao were ever recorded.”

Tiu said the first hint came from Anita Hughes Diel, daughter of American planter Orval Hughes of Malalag, who, in an interview on December 6, 1999, said, “my father told me that when Bolton was killed, the Americans launched a huwes de kutsilyo from Digos to Malita. All males from 14 and above were killed.”

Tiu said that when researcher BJ Absin reported the Diel account, “I was skeptical and instructed Absin to check the date of this so-called huwes de kutsilyo” Diel’s father may have been referring to the 1901 Balangiga massacre in Samar.

But more accounts came up from other places. “To be sure, the accounts differed as to the duration and extent of the huwes de kutsilyo but there was no doubt about it: the Americans did conduct search and destroy operations, applying the scorched-earth policy in Davao del Sur” and based on the description of the informants, “the campaign bordered on ethnocide.”

Domingo Rodriguez of Malita described the American retaliation as “severe. When they declared an area under huwes de kutsilyo, they would leave with no living thing behind, whether old or young, women or children. All those who were not able to flee were killed.”

Accounts about the Americans conducting mass poisoning of the Lumads also surfaced in Leleng, Hagonoy in Davao del Sur and Lupon in Davao Oriental.

Lorenzo Perez, the current tribal chief of Hagonoy, Florencio Tan, Dumumpan Isam, and Anita Ingkili “provided fragments of this particular incident in their local history. According to them, the Americans poisoned their wells and the Balutakay River. At night the Americans also surreptitiously sprayed their kitchens with poison. As a result, there were so many dead they could not all be buried. Isma says the old native cemetery was located near the cockpit, and that many skeletons were dug up there. This period in their history thy call the korentina sometimes pronounced the kolantina, which I would later understand to be an indigenization of the English word quarantine.”

“It was in Lupon that I fully understood why they called this poisoning episode the korentina. According to the informants, the people were forbidden to leave the community as the disease, obviously an epidemic, ravaged their settlement. The Americans had apparently imposed quarantine, and therefore the term, indigenized into korentina would come to mean the entire poisoning incident,” Tiu wrote.

At the beginning of 1908, some 200 Americans had settled in Davao. Their main problem aside from labor was to attract more investments to develop the plantations they had carved out from the forests. To entice investors, they dangled the idea that the Moro province, of which Davao was a part, would soon become “the white man’s country” of the Philippines.

But no investor would come because there were no land titles and the planters also faced continuing challenges from the local tribes, particularly the Kalagans who resisted encroachment into their territory by the then largest plantation, the 285-hectare Mindanao Estates Company in Hagonoy.

By November 1908, cholera would strike Davao with the Kalagan Moros apparently the most affected.

“The circumstances surrounding the sudden appearance of cholera in Davao strongly suggest the Americans did conduct germ warfare in Davao, or mass poisoning as alleged by the natives of Davao,” Tiu wrote.

As a disease, cholera, an infectious and often fatal bacterial disease of the small intestine, typically contracted from infected water supplies and causing severe vomiting and diarrhea,

had plagued the Philippines even during the Spanish era “but it had never affected Davao in the way it was affected in 1908.”

Tiu noted that one reason why cholera could not decimate the population was the migratory habit of the natives. “If plague occurred in a place, the natives would immediately abandon it, thus limiting its damage. But the korentina, which the Americans imposed supposedly to contain the disease, allowed the plague to do its utmost damage.”

13th May 2005, 01:45 PM	#28
Spunjer Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Witness Protection Program Posts: 1,730	ian, here you go: Scorched earth policy, germ warfare and the Americans in Davao in the early 1900s DAVAO CITY -- “Huwes de kutsilyo,” mass poisoning, germ warfare. A book launched here last Friday at the University of the Philippines-Mindanao’s city campus has an entire chapter that deals with accounts of how US forces nearly a century ago countered resistance from natives of Davao with ‘huwes de kutsilyo’ or scorched earth policy similar to what happened in Samar in 1901, mass poisoning and germ warfare. The book, “Davao 1890-1910: Conquest and Resistance in the Garden of the Gods,” written by Dr. Macario D. Tiu of the Ateneo de Davao University, was initially intended only as a research to fill the gaps of the 1906-1908 period in Davao history about the unrest in the Davao Gulf highlighted by the assassination of Davao District Govenror Edward C. Bolton on June 6, 1906, by Mangulayon, the deputy headman of the Tagacaolo. Its working title then was “Lumad Struggles in Davao: 1906-1906.” But Tiu’s research would expand in its scope and time and place and took more than two years to complete instead of the project timeframe of one year. The book, published by the University of the Philippines’ Center for Integrative and Development Studies, has seven chapters, the first three classified as “Hard Documents,” as it relied mainly on written Spanish and American documents, the last four as “Memory Documents” as it “relied mainly on the documents archived in the minds of the local people.” Oral accounts were gathered from some 200 informants from 20 towns and cities along the Davao Gulf, representing 14 tribes and some settlers. The first three chapters deals with the 1890-1899 contest for territory; the 1900-1910 establishment of American hegemony; and resistance and the assassination of Bolton; the last four chapters on plantation economy, forms of resistance, and the death of Bolton; an entire chapter on Mangulayon; American Atrocities in Davao: Huwes de Kutsilyo and Germ Warfare; and the Dance of Resistance. Chapter 6 begins with a description of how Americans occupied Davao “peacefully in 1899 as the inhabitants did not offer any resistance.” “But when the Americans began to transform Davao into plantations and forced the natives to work in these plantations, they began to resist. By late 1905, unrest was sweeping Davao Gulf. From Lupon, Datu Tomaros and Datu Compao spread a dance that alarmed the Americans, while in Malalag, the datus were meeting in early 1906 to discuss how to kill all the American planters from Digos down to Malita. The uprising was signaled by the assassination of District Governor Edward C. Bolton by Mangulayon on 6 June 1906, and the looting of planter McCullough’s store in Kibulan. In response, the Americans unleashed the scorched-earth policy on the natives of Davao del Sur.” Tiu noted that American atrocities in many parts of the country during the Philippine-American war are well-documented, including the wars against the Moros, “but nothing about these atrocities in Davao were ever recorded.” Tiu said the first hint came from Anita Hughes Diel, daughter of American planter Orval Hughes of Malalag, who, in an interview on December 6, 1999, said, “my father told me that when Bolton was killed, the Americans launched a huwes de kutsilyo from Digos to Malita. All males from 14 and above were killed.” Tiu said that when researcher BJ Absin reported the Diel account, “I was skeptical and instructed Absin to check the date of this so-called huwes de kutsilyo” Diel’s father may have been referring to the 1901 Balangiga massacre in Samar. But more accounts came up from other places. “To be sure, the accounts differed as to the duration and extent of the huwes de kutsilyo but there was no doubt about it: the Americans did conduct search and destroy operations, applying the scorched-earth policy in Davao del Sur” and based on the description of the informants, “the campaign bordered on ethnocide.” Domingo Rodriguez of Malita described the American retaliation as “severe. When they declared an area under huwes de kutsilyo, they would leave with no living thing behind, whether old or young, women or children. All those who were not able to flee were killed.” Accounts about the Americans conducting mass poisoning of the Lumads also surfaced in Leleng, Hagonoy in Davao del Sur and Lupon in Davao Oriental. Lorenzo Perez, the current tribal chief of Hagonoy, Florencio Tan, Dumumpan Isam, and Anita Ingkili “provided fragments of this particular incident in their local history. According to them, the Americans poisoned their wells and the Balutakay River. At night the Americans also surreptitiously sprayed their kitchens with poison. As a result, there were so many dead they could not all be buried. Isma says the old native cemetery was located near the cockpit, and that many skeletons were dug up there. This period in their history thy call the korentina sometimes pronounced the kolantina, which I would later understand to be an indigenization of the English word quarantine.” “It was in Lupon that I fully understood why they called this poisoning episode the korentina. According to the informants, the people were forbidden to leave the community as the disease, obviously an epidemic, ravaged their settlement. The Americans had apparently imposed quarantine, and therefore the term, indigenized into korentina would come to mean the entire poisoning incident,” Tiu wrote. At the beginning of 1908, some 200 Americans had settled in Davao. Their main problem aside from labor was to attract more investments to develop the plantations they had carved out from the forests. To entice investors, they dangled the idea that the Moro province, of which Davao was a part, would soon become “the white man’s country” of the Philippines. But no investor would come because there were no land titles and the planters also faced continuing challenges from the local tribes, particularly the Kalagans who resisted encroachment into their territory by the then largest plantation, the 285-hectare Mindanao Estates Company in Hagonoy. By November 1908, cholera would strike Davao with the Kalagan Moros apparently the most affected. “The circumstances surrounding the sudden appearance of cholera in Davao strongly suggest the Americans did conduct germ warfare in Davao, or mass poisoning as alleged by the natives of Davao,” Tiu wrote. As a disease, cholera, an infectious and often fatal bacterial disease of the small intestine, typically contracted from infected water supplies and causing severe vomiting and diarrhea, had plagued the Philippines even during the Spanish era “but it had never affected Davao in the way it was affected in 1908.” Tiu noted that one reason why cholera could not decimate the population was the migratory habit of the natives. “If plague occurred in a place, the natives would immediately abandon it, thus limiting its damage. But the korentina, which the Americans imposed supposedly to contain the disease, allowed the plague to do its utmost damage.”