Interesting Lumad sword

zamboanga · 13th May 2005, 10:03 AM

In the early 1900s when Americans came to Mindanao to grab its rich natural resources, a Tagacaolo leader took it upon himself to retaliate the foreigners.

In 1906, this lumad leader assassinated the American governor for Davao. What came next is never reported in Philippine history - the americans took a huwes de kutsilyo or scorched earth policy against the tagacaolos. no one was spared in the massacre - men, women, children, even animals. The massacre only stopped when the assassin himself was killed.

Ian · 13th May 2005, 12:25 PM

Z:

Great piece of history but not unique in the annals of US occupation of the Philippnes. I believe something similar happened in Samar after a US garrison was wiped out by local insurgents.

Do you have a good reference that describes the assassination of the US Governor of Davao and the subsequent massacre?

Ian.

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.”

tom hyle · 13th May 2005, 02:05 PM

The germ is mightier than the sword. And N Americans scoff at Africans for thinking an enemy poisoning or sickening them is the source of illness

War is not nice.

Bill · 13th May 2005, 03:39 PM

looks like an interesting book, as it is new, it will be interesting to see if "backed up" by any other research. at this time period I think the medical community in the US has a understanding of Cholera, but I would be amazed if there was any policy to use it as a weapon. Contaminating wells doesn't surprise me, but the thought that the military would be conscientiously trying to use cholera does. From what I have read, it is feared by American troops. Colonialists exploit many things in order to control a larger population, perhaps they simply did not act to stop an outbreak.

Ian · 13th May 2005, 08:58 PM

We are starting to stray off topic, but I do feel obliged to comment on the lengthy quote posted by Spunjer.

Public health and sanitation is one of my fields of expertise.

Cholera outbreaks are common, even now, wherever sanitation is compromised. Also, lengthy periods have often occurred between outbreaks of cholera in a particular place. Quarantining people during cholera outbreaks was common practice in the early 20th C. We did not understand the transmission of the disease, or its treatment, as well then as we do today.

I'm not saying the US Adminsitration was blameless in its handling of affairs in Davao, but there really needs to be more convincing evidence that this episode involved the deliberate use of infectious agents before labeling it an example of biological (germ) warfare. As Bill notes, cholera would have been a very unlikely "warfare agent" for the US to have used in 1908.

Ian.

MABAGANI · 14th May 2005, 12:13 AM

Wasn't cholera a worldwide epidemic at the time?
I haven't found any accounts of the disease being used as a weapon, but the "scorched earth policy", killing everyone in sight including burning civilian homes and food, was used against the Moros, written about in a biography of an officer, 2nd Lt. Cornelius C. Smith Jr. You'll rarely find published info about war crimes and atrocities, they were censored after the first few massacres when the US public learned of what was occurring in their new colonies through the media, it was easier to accomplish by the creation of the constabulary who could carry out campaigns unnoticed. Only problem was the soldier's valor were going unrecorded so the constabulary started writing their own history in diaries and later books, interesting reading if you want to find out about the warfare and swords- kris, barung, kampilan, garab, bolos etc...
Maguindanao Sultan Uto died of cholera and there was a recorded incident of an outbreak among soldiers.

zelbone · 20th May 2005, 09:09 AM

Very interesting thread...

I just got back from the Philippines and found this thread. It gave me quite a chuckle since it reminds me of when I was just in Davao bartering with a Maranao merchant in Aldevinco. The shop had hundreds of swords, spears, and lantakas. The salesgirls tried to sell me recently made krises but I was adamant that they were "tourist" quality and wanted to see the real antiques. Thats when the proprietor stepped in and offered me a cup of tea so we could actually discuss business. He could tell I was serious customer so he only showed me the "real" antiques. Most of the real antiques were Lumad swords with a few old krises, kampilans, and budiaks. After an hour or so discussing Maranao weapons, history, and folklore I ended up walking away with two Lumad swords: one B'laan sword and one Bagobo sword. The proprietor knew I was looking for Lumad swords so he steered me towards a few of his better examples. I got them both for a very fair price...in fact you could say I got them for a steal!

Anyways, he pointed me into the direction of another Maranao merchant that had a gunong that I would probably be interested in. I went to the shop to find a really nice old ivory and silver hilt gunong with a silver scabbard. This was a genuinely old gunong with a nice old damascus blade and slender hilt. The shop owner was not around, but his son was there. He quoted me 800 pesos which is about $15. I quickly agreed but I wanted a receipt and a letter from the owner stating that the item was over a hundred years old just in case customs decided to confiscate it because of the ivory. The son located his father who came quickly and then yelled at his son. He then started laughing and explained that this particular gunong's price was 18,000 pesos and not 800 pesos...around $333, a more realistic price. He also said that he probably wouldn't even sell it to me if I was going to leave the country with it because of the CITES ban on ivory and didn't want to see it confiscated. He apologized to me and offered me his other weapons at a good discount. I was only interested in the gunong, but I did pick up a nice old malong from him that I'll display my swords on.

Anyways, I digress...

Hopefully, the market for Lumad swords don't increase anytime soon now that I have reliable contacts for these weapons

! Plus, I've discovered a sword form that really hasn't been discussed here yet...but I'm keeping that to myself

.

13th May 2005, 10:03 AM	#1
zamboanga Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: zamboanga city, philippines Posts: 132	Tagacaolo's place in history In the early 1900s when Americans came to Mindanao to grab its rich natural resources, a Tagacaolo leader took it upon himself to retaliate the foreigners. In 1906, this lumad leader assassinated the American governor for Davao. What came next is never reported in Philippine history - the americans took a huwes de kutsilyo or scorched earth policy against the tagacaolos. no one was spared in the massacre - men, women, children, even animals. The massacre only stopped when the assassin himself was killed.

13th May 2005, 08:58 PM	#6
Ian Vikingsword Staff Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: The Aussie Bush Posts: 4,396	Cholera Outbreak -- OT We are starting to stray off topic, but I do feel obliged to comment on the lengthy quote posted by Spunjer. Public health and sanitation is one of my fields of expertise. Cholera outbreaks are common, even now, wherever sanitation is compromised. Also, lengthy periods have often occurred between outbreaks of cholera in a particular place. Quarantining people during cholera outbreaks was common practice in the early 20th C. We did not understand the transmission of the disease, or its treatment, as well then as we do today. I'm not saying the US Adminsitration was blameless in its handling of affairs in Davao, but there really needs to be more convincing evidence that this episode involved the deliberate use of infectious agents before labeling it an example of biological (germ) warfare. As Bill notes, cholera would have been a very unlikely "warfare agent" for the US to have used in 1908. Ian.

14th May 2005, 12:13 AM	#7
MABAGANI Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 221	Wasn't cholera a worldwide epidemic at the time? I haven't found any accounts of the disease being used as a weapon, but the "scorched earth policy", killing everyone in sight including burning civilian homes and food, was used against the Moros, written about in a biography of an officer, 2nd Lt. Cornelius C. Smith Jr. You'll rarely find published info about war crimes and atrocities, they were censored after the first few massacres when the US public learned of what was occurring in their new colonies through the media, it was easier to accomplish by the creation of the constabulary who could carry out campaigns unnoticed. Only problem was the soldier's valor were going unrecorded so the constabulary started writing their own history in diaries and later books, interesting reading if you want to find out about the warfare and swords- kris, barung, kampilan, garab, bolos etc... Maguindanao Sultan Uto died of cholera and there was a recorded incident of an outbreak among soldiers. Last edited by MABAGANI; 14th May 2005 at 05:55 PM.

13th May 2005, 12:25 PM	#2
Ian Vikingsword Staff Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: The Aussie Bush Posts: 4,396	Z: Great piece of history but not unique in the annals of US occupation of the Philippnes. I believe something similar happened in Samar after a US garrison was wiped out by local insurgents. Do you have a good reference that describes the assassination of the US Governor of Davao and the subsequent massacre? Ian.

13th May 2005, 01:45 PM	#3
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.”

13th May 2005, 02:05 PM	#4
tom hyle Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Houston, TX, USA Posts: 1,254	The germ is mightier than the sword. And N Americans scoff at Africans for thinking an enemy poisoning or sickening them is the source of illness War is not nice.

13th May 2005, 03:39 PM	#5
Bill Member Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Chicago area Posts: 327	looks like an interesting book, as it is new, it will be interesting to see if "backed up" by any other research. at this time period I think the medical community in the US has a understanding of Cholera, but I would be amazed if there was any policy to use it as a weapon. Contaminating wells doesn't surprise me, but the thought that the military would be conscientiously trying to use cholera does. From what I have read, it is feared by American troops. Colonialists exploit many things in order to control a larger population, perhaps they simply did not act to stop an outbreak.

20th May 2005, 09:09 AM	#8
zelbone Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: VISAYAS and MINDANAO Posts: 169	Very interesting thread... I just got back from the Philippines and found this thread. It gave me quite a chuckle since it reminds me of when I was just in Davao bartering with a Maranao merchant in Aldevinco. The shop had hundreds of swords, spears, and lantakas. The salesgirls tried to sell me recently made krises but I was adamant that they were "tourist" quality and wanted to see the real antiques. Thats when the proprietor stepped in and offered me a cup of tea so we could actually discuss business. He could tell I was serious customer so he only showed me the "real" antiques. Most of the real antiques were Lumad swords with a few old krises, kampilans, and budiaks. After an hour or so discussing Maranao weapons, history, and folklore I ended up walking away with two Lumad swords: one B'laan sword and one Bagobo sword. The proprietor knew I was looking for Lumad swords so he steered me towards a few of his better examples. I got them both for a very fair price...in fact you could say I got them for a steal! Anyways, he pointed me into the direction of another Maranao merchant that had a gunong that I would probably be interested in. I went to the shop to find a really nice old ivory and silver hilt gunong with a silver scabbard. This was a genuinely old gunong with a nice old damascus blade and slender hilt. The shop owner was not around, but his son was there. He quoted me 800 pesos which is about $15. I quickly agreed but I wanted a receipt and a letter from the owner stating that the item was over a hundred years old just in case customs decided to confiscate it because of the ivory. The son located his father who came quickly and then yelled at his son. He then started laughing and explained that this particular gunong's price was 18,000 pesos and not 800 pesos...around $333, a more realistic price. He also said that he probably wouldn't even sell it to me if I was going to leave the country with it because of the CITES ban on ivory and didn't want to see it confiscated. He apologized to me and offered me his other weapons at a good discount. I was only interested in the gunong, but I did pick up a nice old malong from him that I'll display my swords on. Anyways, I digress... Hopefully, the market for Lumad swords don't increase anytime soon now that I have reliable contacts for these weapons ! Plus, I've discovered a sword form that really hasn't been discussed here yet...but I'm keeping that to myself .