The primitive Indo-Australian civilization which had been established as the successor of the aboriginal Negroid culture set the stage for the series of mysterious migrations which developed in the following centuries.

On the continent of Asia we find another great family forming which was to disrupt the peace of the East Indian Archipelago. At some distant period in the impressive history of man, probably in the ages between the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men, a great race of Mongoloids came into being. This race, represented by the modifications of true Mongol, Amerind, Eskimo and Oceanic Malay, developed somewhere along its line an offshoot from the Malay stem called Indonesian.

The Moro, originally an Indonesian pagan, could be properly classified as Malayan-Mongoloid, a branch of the true Oceanic Malays. In the first century before the Christian era, there was great unrest on the continent of Asia, which culminated in extensive migrations of the population. The Indonesians, wearied of the wide valleys of the mainland, or facing resistance at arms from an unknown enemy, lifted the sails of their praos and ventured into the Sulu Sea.

Under the leadership of their war chief, a fleet of their praos, comprising the first wave, touched at some nameless island in Sulu. They noted a sea swarming with fishes. There were sea tortoise floating on the water and the forest at the water's edge were filled with deer. The Indonesians looked down over the sides of their vessels and saw beneath them the rich pearl beds of Sulu. It was a fitting spot for the home-seekers.

They sailed through the lovely islands to one of the great bays, rimmed with a beach of white coral sand. Here, on that day centuries ago, their king ordered a halt. The Indonesians reached into the hammocks of their outriggers and brought forth their weapons. A new land was to be contested. In the trees at the water's edge they could see now the slender, brown figures of the Indo-Australians -- fearful yet curious. The peaceful Indo-Australians had awakened to find their seas dotted with the sails of the fierce Asiatics.

The movement of the Mongoloid element began as a gradual constricting wave, enveloping first Java, Ceylon and Sumatra, to be eventually extended into Borneo and the Philippines. This movement apparently continued for about 1500 years, until its northern expansion was checked at Manila with the destruction of the Moro stronghold of the Rajah Soliman by Legaspi in 1571.

Looking back cross the centuries, we can dimly visualize the first landing of the Indonesians. They find a knot of timid little brown men waiting on the sand. They are conducted to the Indo-Australian king who is eager for a parley -- anything to postpone the fate of his people. Sitting there on the sand, naked and ill-armed, the gentle hosts see in the fierce glare of the Indonesians the destruction of their race. Farther back in the shadows, remain the Indo-Australian women, treated to a preview of their new masters.

It is all over soon. Shouts grow fainter and die out as the destruction goes on. The little brown men who remain alive flee to the hills. The little brown women are led to the boats of the conquerors. The island is cleared of all of the original inhabitants except the captive women and children. New houses appear upon the ruins of the old.

The coming of the Moros brought swift tragedy to the Indo-Australians. Their primitive weapons proved no match for the krises¹ of the Indonesians, and the land was swept clean with a circle of steel.

Little can be written of these early conflicts other than to state that the Indo-Australians shared the fate of the Negritos. They were buffeted back into the forests of the interior, to be replaced on the coasts by successive waves of Indonesian invaders.

With the exception of the Manggayans of Mindoro Island and the Tagbanuas of Palawan Island, none of the aborigine pagan tribes possessed a written language. There remains today not even folklore to lift the veil from the fierce conflicts of nineteen centuries ago.

The Manggayans and the Tagbanuas had a syllabic language incised upon tablets of bamboo of which only a few fragments are known to exist today.

We know that the Indonesian conqueror, the ancestor of the Moro today, was engaged in the consolidation of the southern islands of the Philippine group for a period of several centuries. On the smaller islands of the Sulu Sea, the original Indo-Australians were completely exterminated, with the exception of the women who were taken into the harems of the Moros. On the larger islands, the aborigines sought the refuge of the highest mountain ranges where pursuit was difficult, and were able to survive the sporadic raids of the Moro slave parties. The Moros quickly gained possession of all of the coast line of Mindanao and the Sulu group, and their spread was gradually northward toward the present site of Manila.

The Moros have always been a people of the sea. In their bright-winged sailing vessels, they pirated the coasts, extracting a toll from all who crossed their path. By instinct they were pirates, long before Magellan's voyage. Many years before the arrival of the Spaniards those Sulu sailors had made their presence felt from Manila to Thursday Island.

As seafarers, this branch of the Oceanic-Malay has no superior. They carried the cargo of that early day. The famous Venetian traveler, Eben Wahab, wrote in 898 of the city of Confu in China, which was the gathering place of southeastern traders. Arabian geographers of the tenth century mention the island of Malai, where a brisk trade was carried on in spices.

The Phoenician sailed the Mediterranean. The Indonesian voyaged the wide Pacific from Africa to Easter Island, from China to the coral seas of the south. The wanderings of these early Malays were remarkable achievements of navigation. They brought the sail into the Pacific nineteen centuries ago. The reading of the stars was known to them, as was the making of charts. That these voyages took place at an early date is suggested by the fact that as early as BC 2300 the Chinese had charted the heavens to pave the way for the navigator. The Arabic "Book of Miracles" describes a voyage of three hundred ships made to Madagascar in 945. It is possible that the African coast was reached at this early date.

These early sailors had a share, too, in the colonization of the mainland of Asia. The earliest legends of the Annamese in Siam say that Annam was first peopled by men coming from the islands of the Pacific and belonging to the Malay race.

More than 1100 years ago, the Malays had sailed over a region approximating two-thirds of the circumference of the earth. There appears faint evidence that the praos of the Malays reached the coast of America.

It is small wonder that with such a heritage, the Indonesian retained for himself the reputation of producing the greatest pirates of all history.

A pirate has no time for agriculture. A nomadic life precludes the possibility of permanent crops. The Moro has never been a farmer and, prior to the coming of the Mohammedan priests, he disdained agriculture to a marked degree.

Synonymous with the words Indonesian are the words slave trader and fisherman. The Indonesians were the first "black-birders." They filled their harems with the women of many races. They cultivated the harvest of the sea, ranging far into rough waters for the pelagic fishes of the open sea.

This early nomadic civilization of the Moros was not a stable one, and the history of the period must have been one of constant warfare between rival tribal groups and feudal organizations of the coast. The Moro's code was a primitive pagan law based upon the kris, and his tribal organization was a succession of minor kingdoms which flourished, crumbled and were pre-empted by other kingdoms.

In this loosely knit tribal existence is to be found the greatest weakness of the Indonesians and the Malays in general. In the Philippine Islands particularly there has always been a lack of concerted action among the Moro tribes. This lack of cooperative spirit was a contributing factor to whatever successes the Spanish had later in the field against the Moros. If the Mohammedans had presented a unified front to the enemy it is doubtful if Spain could have established a foothold in Mindanao.

All through the history of the Moros, we find evidences of a great deal of intertribal warfare during periods when they should have been united against a common foe. Each island possessed a minor Datu or chief, surrounded by a few followers and independent of other minor Datus. The unit of organization was a cluster of thirty or forty families called a barangay, and it consisted of a strictly community government under the Datu.

While admitting the obvious disadvantages of this form of community government, it should be pointed out that the system offered equally obvious advantages. An invasion of the Moro territory did not imply a successful assault on the capital city and a subsequent conquest of the country. The subjugation of Mindanao and Sulu by a foreign invader necessitated the reduction of every village in the region by hand-to-hand combat. The fall of the capital meant nothing. The Spaniards learned this to their sorrow.

We find the early history of the Moros marked by several periods of partial dependency upon foreign empires. The influence of Hindu civilizations prevailed for several centuries, although at no time was the connection a strong one. At no period in the entire history of the Moro is there evidence that he paid tribute!

History is full of amazing testimonials to the prowess of these Indonesian sailors. Wallace, the great English naturalist, records his impressions after a trip through the Malay peninsula:

"The maritime enterprise and higher civilization of the Malay races have enabled them to overrun portions of the adjacent region in which they have entirely supplanted the indigenous races… and spread much of their language, their domestic animals and their customs over the Pacific."

We find Linschott writing of Malacca in 1584:

"Inhabited by Portuguese and by natives of the country called Malays. It is the market plce of all Inidia and East with their ships arriving incessantly."

The Portuguese Admiral, Diego Lopez de Sequerira, appearing on the Sumatra coast in 1509, learned to his sorrow of the fighting ability of the Malays. His four ships, well-armed vessels of exploration, were attacked in the harbor of Malacca and escaped annihilation with difficulty. In the hand-to-hand fighting which occurred on the beach and upon the decks of the ships, Sequerira lost six hundred men before he was able to beat off the attack of the Malays.

By peculiarities of temperament and a terrific fortitude of soul, the Malays are eminently adapted to survival, even when badly pressed by outside influences.

With the passing of the Hindu influence, the Philippines experienced a century of contact with the Javanese. From about 1330, the brilliant-winged praos of the invading Javanese empire of Madjapahit touched the shores of Sulu for a period of seventy years, to sail off eventually on the northeast monsoon and return no more. The blue seas of Sulu ran red with the blood of the invader and the invaded, but the kris prevailed and the Moros clung to their island homes.

After the Javanese came other peoples from southeastern Asia and Oceania. The Moros paid a perfunctory allegiance to many Malayan empires of Sumatra, Celebes and Borneo. It is doubtful, though, if any of these early connections were binding, and it is certain that at no time was the Moro's freedom of action seriously curtailed.

Always the trend of the Indonesian expansion was northward, and it is apparent that several centuries before the arrival of Magellan the sphere of influence of the Moros reached as far north as the region of Manila Bay and Batangas.

Filipiniana Reprint Series © 1985 Cacho Hermanos, Inc.

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