To adopt the second or third course, then, only amounts to putting off the evil day.
The missionaries can be of the greatest service in pacifiying the Moros whenever the power of the dattos is broken and when slavery can be put an end to. The object of the expedition I have spoken of should not be to exterminate the Moros, but merely to break the power of the dattos and pandits, and to free their followers and slaves from their yoke.
It is generally taken for granted that a Moro cannot be converted, but this is not the case in Mindanao. Father Jaoquin Sancho, S.J., informs me that when the political power of the dattos has been destroyed, their followers have been found ready to listen to the teachings of the missionaries and beginning by sending their children to school, then perhaps sanctioning the marriage of their daughters with Christians, they have finally cast in their lot with the Roman Catholic Church, not in scores, nor hundreds, but by thousands. He says that his colleagues baptized in one year after 1892, in the district of Davao alone, more than three thousand Mahometan Moros. He adds that their religious receptivity is much greater than that of the heathen tribes, that once baptized they remain fervent Christians, whilst the Mandayas, Manobos, Montéses and other heathen are only too apt, with or without reason, to slip away to the forests and mountains and resume their nomadic life, their heathen orgies, and human sacrifices.
I have already spoken of the success of the missionaries on the Rio Grande and of their industrial and agricultural orphanage at Tamontacca, where they were bringing up hundreds of children of both sexes, mostly liberated slaves of the Moros, to be useful members of society. This noble institution occupied the very spot where the former Moro Sultan of Tamontacca held his court.
Two or three more institutions like this, established at points a few miles distant from Lake Lanao, and protected from aggression on the part of the Moro, would gradually undermine the power of the Dattos by affording an asylum to all fugitive slaves attempting to escape from cruelties of their masters.
For years past the Spaniards have protected all slaves who have fled to them from their masters. The Datto Utto applied to General Weyler to restore to him forty-eight slaves who had taken refuge at a Spanish fort on the Rio Grande, but Weyler refused, reminding the datto that he had signed an engagement to keep no slaves, but only free labourers, who had the right to fix their residence where they pleased.
I assume that no slaves who seek the shelter of the Stars and Stripes will ever be sent back again into bondage.
As a guide to the strength of the expedition which will sooner or later have to be sent against the Moros of Lake Lanao, I may say that the total war strength of the Moros of Mindanao was estimated in 1894 at 19,000 fighting-men, 35 guns, 1896 Lantacas and 2167 muskets or rifles. (See list, p. 387).
They have probably since then obtained a large supply of rifles and ammunition. This traffic in arms should be at once stopped.
Swords and spears they have in abundance.