Yet, as they made annual raids, it would have appeared to be good policy to leave the dwellings, the fruit trees, and the crops, in order to tempt the natives to re-occupy the town and accumulate material for subsequent plundering.
Commonly, very ignorant of his own religion, he is none the less a fanatic in its defence, and nourishes a traditional and fervent hatred against the Christian, whether European or native.
Looking upon work as a disgrace, his scheme of life is simple; it consists in making slaves of less war-like men, to work for him, and taking their best looking girls for his concubines. His victims for centuries, when not engaged on a piratical cruise, have been the hill-tribes of the island, the Subanos, the Tagacaolos, the Vilanes, the Manguangas and others.
Originally immigrants from Borneo, from Celehes or Ternate, with some Arab admixture, the Moros have for centuries filled their harems with the women of the hill-tribes, and with Tagal and Visayas and even Spanish women, taken in their piratical excursions. They are now a very mixed race, but retain all their war-like characteristics.
Cut off from the sea by the Spanish Naval forces, they turned with greater energy than ever to the plundering and enslaving of their neighbours, the hill-men. These poor creatures, living in small groups, could offer but little resistance, and fell an easy prey. But now the devoted labours of the Jesuit missionaries began to bear fruit. They converted the hill-men, and gathered them together in larger communities, better able to protect themselves, and although the Moros sometimes burnt whole towns and slew all who resisted, carrying off the women and children into slavery, yet, on the other hand, it often happened that, getting notice of their approach, the Jesuits assembled the fighting men of several towns, and, being provided with a few fire-arms by the Government, they fell upon the Moros and utterly routed them, driving them back to their own territory with great loss. Of late years the Moros have found their slave-raids involve more danger than they care to face, and even the powerful confederation of Lake Lanao was, till the Spanish American war, hemmed in by chains of forts and by Christian towns.
Moros of the Bay of Mayo.
[To face p. 367.
But they have by no means entirely renounced their slave-raiding, and in order to give a specific instance of their behaviour in recent years, I will mention that on the 31st. of December, 1893, a party of 370 of them, under the Datto Ali, son to Datto Nua, accompanied by seven other Dattos, all well armed, and forty of them carrying muskets or rifles, and plenty of ammunition, made an unprovoked and treacherous attack on Lepanto, a Christian village in the Montés country, near the confluence of the Kulaman River with the Pulangui, between the Locosocan and Salagalpon cataracts. This is the extreme southern settlement of the Jesuits, and the nearest missionary resided at Linabo, whilst the nearest garrison was at Bugcaon, some four leagues distant.
The inhabitants, not being provided with fire-arms, sought safety in flight, but the Moros captured fourteen of them. They profaned the church, hacked to pieces the image of Our Saviour, and cut up a painting of Our Lady of the Rosary, smashed the altar, and with the débris, lighted a bonfire in the middle of the church, which, strange to say, however, did not take fire.