1. In addition to the materials cited below, see, e.g., Beckett (1982), who quotes a 1927 report from a colonial administrator entitled "Who's Who among the Datus (1982, 405). See also the chapter on "Moros" by former Governor General Forbes in his 1928 work entitled The Philippine Islands . [BACK]

2. In his Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable , Dale Eickelman offers a more general methodological justification for the use of "capsule social biographies," noting that they are a particularly useful means of "understanding wider social and political realities" in complex historical settings (1985, 14, 15). [BACK]

3. Evaluating the events at Bud Dajo twenty-eight years later, Vic Hurley, a writer generally supportive of American military efforts in the Philippines, had the following to say: "By no stretch of the imagination could Bud Dajo be termed a 'battle' . . . There appears to be no justification for the intensity of the bombardment at Bud Dajo, and many Americans who witnessed the battle concur in this belief" (1936, 186). [BACK]

4. In 1913, the last large-scale military action by American troops against Philippine Muslims took place, also in Sulu. At the battle of Bud Bagsak, approximately five hundred Muslim rebels (who were resisting an American disarmament policy) died after their fort was bombarded and stormed. American casualties were limited to fourteen killed and thirteen wounded (Gowing 1983, 240). [BACK]

5. The short-lived tribal ward system seems to have been a compromise between the views of colonial administrators such as General Wood, who generally disdained Philippine Muslims and had little use for the traditional nobility, and those, like General George W. Davis, who in a 1901 report argued: "It seems to me that the worst misfortune that could befall a Moro community and the nation responsible for good order among the Moros would be to upset and destroy the patriarchal despotism of their chiefs, for it is all they have and all they are capable of understanding" (Report of Brigadier General George W. Davis to Luke E. Wright, Vice-Civil governor of the Philippine Islands, 4 December 1901, Bureau of Insular Affairs Records, file No. 5075-2, National Archives). [BACK]

6. The "ama ni" form of reference is itself an honorific sometimes used as an alternative to the term "datu." [BACK]

7. The very first armed challenge to American rule in the entire Muslim Philippines occurred in 1902 at Parang on the Cotabato coast, where Iranun fighters fired upon an American military patrol, killing one of them (Gowing 1983, 84). That initial attack was followed by a series of guerrilla-style raids over the next two years against U.S. forces (1983, 154). Sporadic Iranun armed resistance continued under various local leaders into the 1920s, meaning that Iranun insurgency began earlier and lasted longer than any other armed anti-American opposition in the Muslim Philippines. None of the Iranun efforts, however, attained the scale of Datu Ali's uprising or of other movements elsewhere in the South. American reports typically characterize Iranun armed defiance as "banditry" (see McKenna 1994). [BACK]

8. Volkman (1985) reports very similar occurrences of elites substituting slave children for their own in colonial schools during the early years of the Dutch occupation of the Toraja highlands in South Sulawesi. Datu Adil informed me that certain of the slave children sent to American schools in Cotabato in the early colonial period went on to become some of the very first Magindanaon teachers and bureaucrats, and that their slave origins are a very closely kept secret.

Collaborating datus such as Balabaran also sent their slaves when asked to provide recruits for the Philippine Constabulary, a colonial police force with American officers, organized in Cotabato in 1904. The principal mission of the constabulary throughout the Philippines was to apprehend insurgents, identified officially only as "brigands" or "outlaws" after the inauguration of civil government in 1901 (White 1928). [BACK]

9. A similar story is told that Sarip Kabungsuwan, the legendary founder of the Cotabato sultanates, could kill a man simply by pointing his finger at him. While Kabungsuwan ruled Cotabato on his own, Piang required external assistance. In the story about Piang, finger-pointing alone is not enough to kill a man. Also needed is an incantation (in Spanish) marking the intended victim as an enemy of the colonizers. [BACK]

10. Letter of Joseph Ralston Hayden to Dr. Barr, September 21, 1926. Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Box 28, Folder 26, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In the same letter, Hayden reports making the acquaintance of "Sunset" Cox, a colorful American colonial character—former American soldier, Philippine Constabulary officer, mercenary, and journalist—who had recently sold his services to Datu Piang as a publicist. [BACK]

11. The Hayden Papers contain an unpublished manuscript on the life of Bai Bagungan by C. Montera (Box 27, Folder 30, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). While the prominent participation of Magindanaon women in economic and political life in the modern period is not an uncommon occurrence (see below), there is disappointingly little information available about the economic and political roles of Magindanaon women in the precolonial period. A Jesuit missionary writing in 1888 did offer the following intriguing comment about the wife of the Sultan of Barongis (a small upriver sultanate uncolonized at the time), giving indication that prominent public roles for women (aristocratic women at least) are not just a "modern" phenomenon: "The sultana is still young, very alert, and speaks with great self-assurance. She attends all the bicharas [political consultations] of some importance, and as a matter of fact, she is the one who wields the baton in the sultanate" (Ramon Bea to the Mission Superior, October 4, 1888, quoted in Arcilia 1990, 282). [BACK]

12. While I have been unable to verify Datu Adil's account, it seems fairly certain that Datu Ortuoste was raised at the Jesuit mission in Tamontaka on the southern branch of the Pulangi River. That mission operated from 1862 until the end of the Spanish occupation of Cotabato. In 1872 the mission opened an orphanage for "ransomed slave children" (Arcilla 1990, xx). In that year a severe famine forced a number of Cotabato datus to sell their juvenile slaves. The mission continued the practice of purchasing children from Chinese

middlemen or directly from Muslims, usually in periods of epidemic or famine, for more than twenty years.

Datu Ortuoste's surname is of interest because it is identical to that of one of the most important officials of the Spanish colonial period in Cotabato, Don Pedro Ortuoste. Don Pedro was the official interpreter for the colonial government in Cotabato. While not an especially high-ranking office, the position carried a significant amount of actual power (Arcilla 1990). Don Pedro spoke Magindanaon and is reported to have been on very good terms with Cotabato Muslims (1990, 31), but it seems unlikely that he was the natural father of Datu Ignacio Ortuoste and there is no indication of any such connection. He was more likely a foster father or godfather. Missionary letters from Tamontaka note that the prominent Spanish families of Cotabato town sponsored "ransomed" children, acted as godparents at their baptisms, and provided them with both Christian names and Spanish surnames (Arcilla 1990). [BACK]

13. An article in the Philippine Herald from September 11, 1933, describes in detail the funeral of Datu Piang and notes that Ignacio Ortuoste acted as "toastmaster" at Piang's "necrological service" at the burial ground (Bureau of Insular Affairs Records, File No. 5075 (post-1914), National Archives). [BACK]

14. Datu Adil is referring here to spirit crocodiles ( mga pagali ); see chapter 8. [BACK]

15. An early marriage was to the daughter of the Sultan of Kabuntalan (Beckett 1977). [BACK]

16. An illustration of Datu Sinsuat's regional influence is found in a story told by Datu Adil of an event witnessed by his father circa 1930.

After the death of Sultan Mastura, all the leading datus of Cotabato gathered in the gambling house of Datu Sinsuat in Cotabato City to decide who the next Sultan of Magindanao should be. As established by tradition, a special panel of the nobility had been chosen to find the best hereditary candidate. The panel reported that they were undecided and asked Datu Sinsuat his opinion. Sinsuat pointed to a young man in the back of the room, Datu Esmael. He said, "Esmael is the most handsome and fair-skinned of all the candidates and he has sufficient blood ties. He should be sultan." The others agreed and Esmael was named Sulutan sa Magindanao

17. Quoted in Provincial Circular No. 98, January 15, 1935, by D. Guitterez, provincial governor of Cotabato. Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Box 27, Folder 30, File 1, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A letter from Cotabato Governor Guitterez to Director Guinguna (contained in the same file) notes that Datu Sinsuat was "apparently worried" about the directive. I have found no evidence, however, indicating that the directive substantially curtailed the incidence of traditional adjudications by Sinsuat or other Cotabato datus. [BACK]

18. Datus Piang and Sinsuat each chose early on to collaborate with American authorities in order to gain an advantage over powerful and aristocratic competitors by allying with dominant outsiders. [BACK]

19. Beckett states that it is "difficult to locate the source of this expansion," noting that there were very few Christian settlers in Cotabato until the

1930s, that tenancy rates were quite low, and that very few datus emerged as major landowners (1982, 403). He suggests, and I agree (see below), that the expansion of production must have taken place within the framework of traditional production relations. [BACK]

20. Ileto (1971) suggests that the relative peace that existed between Datu Utu, the last independent Sultan of Buayan, and the Spaniards for roughly twenty years (ca. 1864-84) "was, to a great extent, due to the commercial rapport between them." After the Spaniards took control of the delta, commercial trade between sa laya and sa ilud went on much the same as before, with the Spaniards merely taking the place of the Magindanao Sultanate. Agricultural production was intensified upriver not only to supply Spanish garrisons but to compensate for the production shortfall in the delta caused by the migration of a great part of the delta's population upriver in advance of Spanish forces (1971, 30-31). [BACK]

21. American colonial discourse on Philippine Muslims is peppered with such expressions as "Moroland," "Moro Policy," "the Moro Problem" (see below), "Moro country," and "Moro bandits.'' Specific Muslim ethnolinguistic groups were virtually always distinguished by their geographic location—as "Joloano Moros," "Lanao Moros," or "Cotabato Moros"—rather than by the names they called themselves (see Gowing 1983; Thomas 1971). [BACK]

22. The use of this phraseology by representatives of the state to refer to various difficulties encountered in attempting to rule Philippine Muslims has exhibited remarkable longevity. Its first appearance in writing seems to have been as the title of Saleeby's 1913 essay. It was then used throughout the colonial and commonwealth period (see the various citations to the term in the index to Thomas 1971). In 1954, the Philippine Senate appointed a committee to study the "Moro Problem." The recommendations of that committee led to the creation of the Commission on National Integration in 1957 (Majul 1985; Tamano 1974). [BACK]

23. Saleeby was certainly aware that Datu Piang, Datu Sinsuat, and others of the leading datus of Cotabato during his stay there had little in the way of blood ties to the high nobility of the Cotabato sultanates. Nevertheless, he seems to have been much taken with the idea of a traditional Muslim aristocracy in Cotabato. He spent a good deal of time with Datu (later Sultan) Mastura, who, while a prominent member of the high nobility of the Magindanao Sultanate and a direct descendent of Sultan Kudarat, was little more than a local dignitary. Saleeby describes Datu Mastura as "the best-informed datu of Magindanao" and declares that he possesses "the most reliable of the royal documents that have been preserved" (1905, 36). Mastura allowed Saleeby to copy those documents (most of them tarsilas ), and they formed the basis of his 1905 Studies in Moro History, Law, and Religion . [BACK]

24. Thomas remarks that "Saleeby's approach to governing and integrating the Muslims was referred to as the 'ideal' by others involved in Muslim policy-making, but few put it into practice" (1971, 15). [BACK]

25. Carpenter to Secretary of the Interior Rafael Palma, January 27, 1919, Bureau of Insular Affairs Personal File—Tarhata Kiram, National Archives, Washington, D.C. [BACK]

26. Memorandum submitted to Mr. Jorge Bocobo, August 19, 1935, P. 7, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Box 29, Folder 24, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

27. Ibid., p. 9. It should be noted that in contrast to Saleeby, who made his proposals to American colonial authorities, Kuder is here making an argument to Christian Filipino officials that it is in their self-interest to maintain and expand education programs among Philippine Muslims. [BACK]

26. Memorandum submitted to Mr. Jorge Bocobo, August 19, 1935, P. 7, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Box 29, Folder 24, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

27. Ibid., p. 9. It should be noted that in contrast to Saleeby, who made his proposals to American colonial authorities, Kuder is here making an argument to Christian Filipino officials that it is in their self-interest to maintain and expand education programs among Philippine Muslims. [BACK]

28. Salipada K. Pendatun to Vice-Governor General Joseph Ralston Hayden, August 15, 1935. Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Box 27, Folder 32, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. [BACK]

29. Datu Adil told me that the initial "K" in Pendatun's name stood for Kuder, a middle name Pendatun had given himself to honor his former teacher. [BACK]