While the Spaniards had been putting out these tentative feelers in the expeditions of de Sande and Figueroa, the Moros had been engaging the enemy in the north. Fleets of pirate vessels sailed almost on schedule from the Samal stronghold on Balnguingue¹ Island to harass the coasts of Luzon and the Visayas. During the years 1595 and 1596, Manila suffered almost constant pirate raids. Spanish history has preserved one instance during this period of the capture of a Moro prao at the mouth of Manila Bay by the Spanish armed sloop San Martin.

The pirate vessel had been commanded by Datu Abdulla Carrahil, who had aboard with him his wife, Mahal, and two young daughters, Mildas, aged eighteen, and Lincad, aged sixteen. A search of the hold of the pirate ship revealed two Spanish priests, bound tightly with ropes of bejuco fiber. The pirate ship was loaded with a cargo of bolts of silk, gold dust and beads which had been looted along the coast.

After deliberation, the captain was found guilty of piracy and sentenced to death. The two young daughters were converted to Christianity and committed to a convent.

As the hardy Moro was being escorted under a guard of halberdiers to the public place of execution, he contrived to elude the piquet and escape to Sulu. Forthwith, with characteristic Spanish justice, the young daughters were haled from the sanctuary of the convent and hanged in the place reserved for their father.

These isolated captures had no effect on the pirate activities. The Moros accepted the non-return of a boat as part of the game. To them piracy was the profession of a gentleman; if they looked for loot and slaves on a pirate cruise, they also looked for death.

The closing years of the sixteenth century found the Mohammedan power to the south the only bar to a Christianized Philippines. Following the passing of Figueroa, a persistent stream of adventurers began to filter into Mindanao, encouraged by the exhortations of the priests.

In November 1596, Juan Ronquillo arrived at Caldera Bay, fifteen miles north of the present site of Zamboanga, where he built a block house as a base of operations against the Cotobato Moros. Captain Paches was left in the outpost at Caldera Bay with a small garrison which passed into historical oblivion. Repeated Moro assaults soon wiped out this small detachment of unknown martyrs and the place thereafter proved untenable to the Spaniards.

In 1598 a strong expedition was dispatched to Jolo. Severe fighting was experienced, and the company returned to Manila leaving nothing to show for the visit but a reddened beach stained with Spanish blood.

The government of General de Guzman, which came to an end in 1602, witnessed great piratical raids from Sulu. In 1599, a great fleet of fifty pirate ships plundered the coasts of the Visayas. The islands of Negros, Panay and Cebu suffered so horribly that many of the coast towns became depopulated, with the inhabitants either held in slavery in Sulu or fugitives in the mountains.

The century ended with the military status of the Moros still undefined. The fighting had consisted of a series of abortive raids, with the advantage very much in favor of the Moros. The serious conquest of Mindanao was not to begin until the seventeenth century. The Spaniards, sobered by the reverses of their arms in Mindanao and Sulu, made provision for the formation of a serious military policy against the Moros.

The first days of the year 1600 were filled with feverish activity on the pirates island of Balanguingue. Panglima² Abdulla had ordered a concentration of the mangangayao (pirates) of Sulu. Daily the swift-sailing vintas visited the outlying islands bearing the news of the rendezvous. In the citadel on the hill the women prepared rice cakes and filled long bamboo tubes with water for the fighting men soon to put to sea. Moro blacksmiths pumped their goatskin bellows, putting the final temper in the kris blades which were to soon cross with the swords of the Spaniards.

Down on the beach, the garays, the long, forty-oared outrigger boats of the pirates, were drawn up to be conditioned for the trip. Fresh bindings of bejuco vine secured the lashings of the outriggers, and the gaily colored sails were repaired and renewed.

At length all was ready and the pirate fleet put to sea, threading its way carefully through the knife-edged coral reefs that surrounded their fortress. The breeze of the northeast monsoon bellied the sails and the fighting ships, seventy in number, sailed in a huge crescent, with Abdulla's carved prow pointing the way.

Their course led them east of Basilan Island and the peninsula of Zamboanga, across the open sea to the eastern tip of Negros Island and thence through the straits to the capital of Panay.

Eight thousand Moro warriors fell upon the city of Ilo-Ilo without warning. A few fishermen, trolling for taraquita in the early morning hours saw the pirate armada bearing down upon the town. They fled to the shore, and raced through the streets crying, "El Moros, El Moros -- the pirates are upon us."

The defenses of the town were hastily organized under the direction of the Governor. Arquebusiers were posted at the walls and the brass cannon were rammed to the throat with iron fragments.

A heavy tropic rainstorm partially shielded the movements of the Moros. The arquebusiers at the walls shivered as the rain pelted on their leather jerkins. With their powder wet, the battle would develop into a contest of kris against the Toledo blade. "Holy Virgin protect us from death on the Kris."

In the first savage rush, the Moros scaled the walls. The mouths of the cannon blazed once and then were silent. There was no time to reload. The artillerists fell beside their silent pieces, struck down by the wavy-edged weapons of the Mohammedans. Discipline was forgotten and the retreat from the walls to the center of the town was a massacre.

At the door of the Government building the badly wounded Governor of the town rallied his men. With blood streaming from a ghastly wound in his shoulder, he grasped his sword for the last time. The wave of Mohammedans reached the small force, hesitated briefly, and engulfed it forever.

Abdulla then gave the town of Ilo-Ilo over to organized loot. Detachments of Moros looted the churches and rounded up the fleeing women and children. Krismen passed from house to house down the narrow streets, ferreting out the frightened women.

In the plaza of the ruined town, the plunder was collected in a great pile. White-skinned Spanish women mingled with the brown Visayan girls in the long line assembled for the inspection of Abdulla. The fairest of the women were selected for the harems of Sulu; the ill-favored were relegated to slavery, together with the children. The male survivors of the conflict were put to the kris. The citizens who escaped into the hills looked down that night upon a burning city as the krismen turned the prows of their garays back to Sulu.

The pirate raid was cruel but effective. It discouraged further Spanish aggression in Mindanao for thirty years. The expedition of Figueroa and the burning of the Mohammedan mosques had let down a hornet's nest about the ears of the Spaniards. For almost half a century Spain made no reply to the terrible raids loosed upon the north. Piracy grew worse with each succeeding year. Churches were plundered and priests carried away for ransom. The Spaniards were so helpless against this tide from Sulu that Moro corsairs raided to the very wharves of Manila. Visayan mothers frightened their crying children into silence by repeating the dread word "Moro".

However, a word must be said in defense of the Moros. They held no monopoly on cruelty in these seventeenth century days. The conquistadore was notorious for his vile treatment of the people he brought under subjection.

Batolome de Las Casa, the Spanish historian who died in 1566, indicts his own countrymen in his "History of the Indies". He mentions the seven year administration of governor Ovando in Hispanola which was "so full of horror that his name cannot be mentioned without a shudder." Ovando raped the wife of the Indian chieftain Caonabo and afterwards tortured her to death after making her witness the burning alive of her husband. Cortez murdered by treachery the military leaders of the Aztecs and took the daughter of Montezuma for a concubine.

John Fiske tells us in "The Discovery of America":

Reading further in Fiske, we find another example of the cruelty of the conquistadores:

In the Philippines the vile treatment meted out to the Negrito women by the expedition of General Primo de Rivera in 1881, delayed the subjection of these mountaineers for a decade, as the Negritos preferred to die rather than submit.

Foreman mentions in his book "The Philippine Islands":

"The license to indulge in by white men at the expense of the mountaineers -- and boasted of to me personally by many Spanish officers -- raised the veil from the Spanish protestations of wishing to benefit the race they sought to subdue."

The Spaniards put to death without mercy the occupants of captured Moro cottas. They had refinements in cruelty undreamed of by the Moros they opposed. Where the Spaniards worked their slaves to death, we have the pleasing picture of Moros treating their menials with kindness. Sawyer tells us in his "Inhabitants of the Philippines":

The Moro was the first foeman of the conquistador who understood equally well the fundamental Spanish principles of treachery and lust for loot. He was not to be misled by honeyed words of the Spaniards. His conquest had to be sought sternly at the point of the Toledo blade and the Spaniards proved unequal to the task.

In their dealings with the Moros, the Spaniards exhibited a treachery exceeding that of their Mohammedan antagonists. They attempted the old deceit, so successful in Mexico and Peru, of seizing the Moro leaders under the guise of friendship. What had succeeded in Mexico, however, was to fail in Mindanao.

The Moros were great anticipators. They met treachery with treachery; guile with guile. Most of all, they met steel with steel.

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the Spaniards had no answer to these Moro depredations for a period thirty years. They did, however, send a punitive expedition to Sulu during 1600, the same year which witnessed the terrible attack on Ilo-Ilo. This force, under the command of Juan Gallinato, made an unsuccessful attack upon the Moro capital at Jolo. Two hundred Spaniards floundered through the swamps and forests to be systematically butchered by the Moros.

Two years later, in 1602, another Spanish force was sent against Jolo. After three months of severe fighting, which ended in a rout of the Spaniards, the government abandoned for the time all attempts to subjugate the Mohammedans.

To preserve Spanish prestige in the East, a baffled government sent a strong force under Pedro Acuna against the Portuguese in the Moluccas. Ternate, Tidore, Marotoy and Herrao were captured and a Spanish garrison of 700 men was left to maintain order.

Encouraged by this success against the Portuguese, but still avoiding the Moros of Sulu, the Spaniards made the tactical error of attacking the blood brothers of the Moros in Java. They found these Mohammedans just as fierce as their brethren in Sulu. The expedition ended in a series of defeats for the Spaniards and the once proud party returned in disgrace to Manila.

These "red herring" expeditions only postponed the evil day when the Spaniards would be forced to return to Mindanao. The resumption of the assault in the Philippines began again in about 1629 when the Spaniards succeeded in establishing a foothold in the extreme northern part of Mindanao. This region was very lightly held by the Moros and was farthest removed from the kingdom of Sulu.

This Spanish settlement, founded near the present site of Surigao, was put to continuos fighting to preserve its existence from bands of wandering Moros. The garrison of the small fortress lived a ghastly life. At times it was impossible to relay food through to the beleaguered soldiers, and many of the troops died of starvation in the midst of a land of plenty.

With this new base on the edge of Moro country, expeditions against Jolo were launched in 1628 and again in 1630. No good resulted from either attack and the Spaniards were face to face with the unpleasant fact that the first century since Magellan had accomplished nothing in Mindanao. Mohammedanism had been established a bare fifty years before the arrival of Magellan, but the time had been sufficient to put iron in the already case-hardened souls of the defenders of the Faith of the southern islands.