To General Pershing must go the credit for the final disarming of the Moros. He not only broke down the organized resistance of the Mohammedans, but he collected some 7000 firearms from outlaw elements.

But though the massed resistance of the Moros was broken, there still remained considerable policing to be accomplished in Mindanao and Sulu.

A Moro outlaw named Japal occupied briefly the center of the stage. Captain Apperman led an American force against him. Apperman found Japal at bay in a strong cotta protected by immense boulders. The Moros fought like fiends, rushing from the safety of the cotta walls to assault the soldiers with bared kris. Twenty-five Moros were killed in the action and the cotta was leveled to the ground.

The troops then passed on to attack the joint cottas of Jahanal and Tahil, located in a ravine one hundred yards apart and less than five miles from the city of Jolo.

Captain King took the 16th and 24th Companies of Scouts against the cottas at daylight on the morning of July 5, 1913. Supporting the Scouts was a mountain gun detachment under Lieutenant Dillman.

The American troops found the cottas strongly built of bamboo with barricades of earth. The barricades were pierced with bamboo tubes through which the Moros directed their fire. The inner walls of the fort had covered trenches and subterranean rooms.

The Scouts advanced upon the cottas in the grey dawn and were promptly fired upon by Moros in the cotta of Jahanal. The mountain guns were set up across the ravine and a steady fire was poured into the Moro fortress while infantry under Lieutenant Conroy engaged the smaller cotta of Tahil. Demolition squads under Lieutenant Walker supported the advance of Conroy, doing most excellent work with rifle grenades which were dropped within the walls of the cotta.

When Conroy's men were almost to the walls, the demolition squad hurled dynamite bombs into the fort which was then taken with a hand-to-hand rush. Tahil himself escaped to surrender a few days later. All of his men died in the last assault on the cotta.

Meanwhile, the heavy fire of the mountain artillery was having no effect upon the strong cotta of Jahanal. While sharpshooters picked off all Moros showing their heads at the walls, a breach was made with axes and the Scouts rushed the fort. The Moros retired to the inner walls of the fort and picked off the Scouts by firing through the bamboo tubes.

Lieutenant Walker then brought up one of the mountain guns and fired it point blank, at a range of twenty feet, directly into the inner rooms of the fort. The terrific explosion of the shrapnel in the closed room, packed with Moros, wiped out the Mohammedans and the fort was soon silent. Fifty Moros were killed in the action and the Scouts suffered eighteen casualties.

In August, 1913, the Moros in the vicinity of Mount Talipao refused to pay the road taxes and fortified themselves on the mountain peak. They were routed by Major Shaw in a battle costing the lives of more than one hundred Moros. But they returned again in October to refortify the position and there occurred the last battle of the Moro wars. Captain McElderly was killed in the storming of the cotta of Talipao.

Juramentados and isolated cases of murder still persisted for more than a decade, but the resistance of organized bands had come to an end.

Two months after the battle of Talipao, Lieutenant Ernest Johnson took a squad to Basilan Island to investigate Moro disturbances in the interior. The party moved along a narrow jungle trail with Lieutenant Johnson leading the way. The soldiers walked squarely into an ambush laid down by the Moro leader Atal.

The first warning of danger was the hiss of a spear thrown from the bush, and Johnson went down, pinned through the shoulder with both lungs punctured. The soldiers fought their way out of the ambuscade, killing the Moro Atal. Lieutenant Johnson was carried to Zamboanga where he waged a courageous battle for life, but he eventually succumbed to the terrible wound four months after admission to the hospital.

The interior of all of the islands was still unsafe for travel or agriculture. In April, 1914, an American planter named Beeler was killed and his wife seriously wounded. A month later, Private Don Chambers was killed by an amuk at Tampanan near Lanao. This killing was followed in a few months by the death of Charles Schuck in Jolo at the hands of a Moro named Galbon.

The American forces were occupied during all of the year 1914 in the pursuit of Moros Saipul, Punglu and Salihudin. The last of these outlaws was killed late in that year. Two years later, in 1916, the last of the known outlaws were exterminated and peace came to Mindanao and Sulu.

Until 1917, however, ten strong posts were maintained in Mindanao, Late in that year American troops accomplished the reduction of the last Moro cotta in an engagement at Bayan cotta, the last remaining fort on the south shores of Lake Lanao. Fifteen hundred Moros participated, to be routed with terrific slaughter by the machine guns and mortars of the Americans.

America dropped the Moro campaigns to enter the World War.

In the course of the long struggle with America, the Sultan had taken no active part in the campaigns, which were waged without his authority or consent. In spite of this inactivity of the Sultan in the field, he still remained in the minds of the Moros, as the real ruler of Sulu.

It was decided, therefore, to terminate, once and for all, any pretensions of the Sultan to sovereignty. A formal agreement was entered into on March 22,1915.

By this agreement, the Sultan recognized without reservation the sovereignty of the United States in Sulu and over the Moro people. The government, for its part, recognised the Sultan as the spiritual head of the Mohammedan church and assured to Mohammedans the security of absolute religious freedom.

Meanwhile, the government of. the Moros had undergone modifications. By act of July 24, 1913, the old Moro Province had been dissolved and the Mohammedans came under the jurisdiction of a newly created Department of Mindanao and Sulu. Frank W. Carpenter relieved General Pershing on December 16, 1913, to become the first civil governor of the new department. The Moros made great strides during the governorship of this capable man.

Another governmental change came to Sulu with the Filipinization of the islands. The Department of Mindanao and Sulu gave way, February 5, 1920, to the present form of government under a Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes.

The Moros bowed to the Gatling guns and mountain artillery of America in the field. If their fourteen-year armed resistance of America failed in battle, they at least secured the safety of the cause for which they fought, Their religion and customs remain intact. It was by a careful policy of noninterference with the Mohammedan religion that America was able to accomplish that which Spain had failed to do.

With the birth of confidence and tolerance the epoch of Kris versus Krag came to an end.

Original publication © 1936 E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Filipiniana Reprint Series © 1985 Cacho Hermanos, Inc.

This page (HTML format)© 2001 Bakbakan International. Transcription courtesy of Ashley Bass.