Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 181, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1916 — The Remaking of Mindanao [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Remaking of Mindanao

THERE was one rich and unruly realm the Spaniards were glad to rid themselves of following the battle of Manila bay. The huge Island of Mindanao, pronounced as though spelled Mind-a-now, known In the Philippines as Moreland, had the reputation of being largely unconquered, as much by the military as by the missionaries. The Mores clung to their religious beliefs &8 tenaciously as they opposed Spanish domination in government, writes Monroe Woolley In the Utica Saturday Globe. But the More archipelago today is pot what It was when we first took np stewardship there. This means that it is not the unconquerable empire it was when the Spanish essayed to rule and run It. For a long time we sought to make the Mores obedient by whipping them —by killing them off. Hundreds, thousands of them, were slain in periodic campaigns, yet Hie' fiery Mohammedans lost no opportunity to treacherously murder our troops and officials at times when pacification seemed apparent. Military operations failing to a considerable degree, and mindful of the hopeless task of the Spaniards, another method was devised to win the people to new government and to new jrays of living. At first the Philippine government smoked a peace pipe with the sultans and dattos, chiefs of community factions, seeking in this manner to make itself popular with the masses. As much good will as possible was thus literally bought. Costly gifts and Junketing trips were bestowed on the tribal chiefs, and they were fawned upon as loyal subjects are wont to do with royalty. Later, brute force was wholly abolished. Kindness and diplomacy were finally substituted therefor, and with this enlightened new system we are gradually and thoroughly remaking Mohammedan Mindanao. Known to and thoroughly explored by white men for centuries past, Mindanao is today just beginning to be lifted from a savage past into the limelight of civilization. The rich realm has never been exploited because the Inhabitants were always hostile to any outside interference. Min-

danao, with the Sulu archipelago—the Mohammedan empire—is well worth reconstruction, and it is per- „ haps this fact which has made us so persistent. Largest of Philippine Islands. v Mindanao itself is the largest island ■sby far in. the entire Philippine archipelago. It is about the size of our own state of Mississippi, and is bigger than Indiana or Ohio. It would make seven states like New Jersey, and is by far much larger than several of our Atlantic coast states combined. To be precise, it has an area of 46,721 square miles. In ancient times the Moros had little, if any, business sense. They had a woeful lack of the appreciation of money. To overcome their antiquated Ideas of trade we have established markets for them in the leading towns where they meet to buy and sell. Some day Mindanao will be one of the leading countries of the world for the production of rubber. The rubber tree grows wild there in great profusion. Although the industry is as yet undomesticated, exports from a single locality have- reached nearly 1.000,000 pounds in a year. The island also produces much hemp, as well as tapioca, cocoanuts and other tropical fruits. We have been successful in giving railroads to that part of the Philippine archipelago occupied by the Filipino, even though foreign capital had to furnish the money, but we have yet to lay the first steel rail in Mindanao, the greatest and richest of the Islands of our insular frontier. Borneo, distant only a stone’s throw from Zamboanga, Mindanao’s metropolis. Is far ahead of Moroland in everything* pave natural wealth.

Mindanao has a larger colony of American planters, engaged mostly in hemp cultivation, than any other spot in the islands, notwithstanding that the people there have always been hostile to trespassers. Many of these have been wantonly murdered, but the fatality list is growing less right along, an evidence that the people are being converted to a new order of things. Many of these brave Americans started business on what they saved from a soldier’s wage, and today not a few of them are Oriental nabobs. Responding to Education. For centuries the More thought the only kind of effective government was that having force behind it. To be kind to him, in his pinion, meant that you feared him. But to be kind, with a means of making kindness acceptable through a standing military force, has completely wrought a change in the warlike people. Under good leaders th® Mores are. good people; under bad ones they, too, are bad. The Mohammedan religion teaches that to slay a white man, or a Christian, is a sure way to get to heaven. Therefore, in Spanish times, and during our early occupation, fanatical Mores used to run amuck, chopping down as many foreigners as they could with their wicked knives. Often it has taken a dozen bullets, wellaimed from a high-power army rifle, to kill the crazed followers of the Koran. AH Mores hate pork as a bull does a red flag, and the military officer who placed the dead body of a fanatic inside a pork carcas and strung the two up in the plaza for the inspection of others effectually kept “running amuck” within bounds in his territory. But today the Mores are laying aside their war krises and spears, are discarding their tight-fitting, gaily colored costumes for modern dress, similar to the Filipinos, and are sending their children for the first time to public schools. A decade hence there may be More professional men, such as lawyers, doctors and scientists. A committee of More chieftains who went to Manila recently to meet Resident Commissioner Manuel Quezos of Washington, himself a Filipino, told the commissioner that schools were

intensely popular, and asked him to say to congress that as long as that body was disposed to furnish school books that the Moros themselves would furnish the schools and the scholars. Datto Piang, one of the powerful chieftains, has himself erected two costly schoolhouses in Mindanao solely at his own expense. A Moro doing anything of this sort in olden times would have been hanged by his own people. Baseball Has Helped. Baseball has helped wonderfully with the Moros, as it did with the Filipinos, to cement affections for the Americans. It is claimed by a learned Filipino who recently toured Mindanao that in two decades the visitor in Moroland will not be able, so far as dress and manners are con? cerned, to distinguish a Moro from a Filipino. No American baseball fan really knows what fun is until he is privileged to see a hotly contested game of ball between Filipinos and Moros and gives an attentive ear to the game vernacular as it is spoken by our wards In the excitement of the sport With the awakening to civilization the Moro is acquiring some chivalry. One of the sultans thought he had reached the acme of politeness when lie asked the popular daughter of one of our ex-presidents, at the time visiting his palace, to become No. 1 in his harem. Of course, there was a blushing declination, at which the dusky ruler w r as probably chagrined. But the incident goes to Illustrate that the American, as well as the Christian Filipino, la for the first making himself and his institutions acceptable to the remade Mohammedans of our farthest-flung frontier.

VIORO D*TTO AND RETAINERS

Native. Base Bale team