The Career of Leonard Wood

by Joseph Hamblen Sears

Here again space is too limited to permit of an account of the work done by Wood which made a group of pirates into a relatively law-abiding community. Yet some attempt to picture the situation is necessary in order to give a slight idea of what the problem was.

It should be borne in mind that the country over which he was made Governor-General consisted of two-thirds of the Island of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago--a long chain of large and small islands extending almost to Borneo. The inhabitants were principally Mohammedans, known to the Spaniards as Moros. Along the coast of Mindanao were scattered small Philippine settlements--Christian Filipinos. Widely {186} separated back in the islands were numerous tribes speaking different dialects. In appearance they were not unlike the Diacs of Borneo. Some of them were headhunters. Among some of them cannibalism still existed in the form of religious ceremonies.

The Moros were the masters of all the seas in this vicinity. They were the old Malay pirates so well known in books of travel. The Spaniards had waged intermittent war against them since early in 1600, but they never effectively conquered them. They would send down a large expedition, win a victory and withdraw. This procedure, however, made little or no impression on the pirates, who shortly returned to their trade when the Spanish victors had returned home.

The Moros were all fanatical Mohammedans, intolerant of Christians or Christian influence, and when the Spaniards arrived in Manila about 1687 they dominated all the seas about the Philippine Islands. They were armed with all kinds of firearms, ranging from the old Queen Bess muzzle-loader to the most modern rifles. Their artillery ranged from the broadside guns of battleships of {187} the 18th Century to a smaller cannon of bronze, made principally in Borneo. They were bold, adventurous sailors, slave traders and slave hunters and successfully terrorized the hill tribes. Indeed, they were greatly feared along the coast of Mindanao.

Early in the American occupation a treaty had been made with the Sultan of Sulu, who claimed the headship of Moros from the Island of Sulu northward to the great Island of Mindanao. In Mindanao there were different sultans who claimed headships in their own districts, and foremost amongst these was Datu Ali, who had waged a long and successful war with the Spaniards.

Here then was a difficult problem: to establish civil government among these wandering hill tribes, Filipino settlements, and piratical Mohammedan groups, each fearing and hating the other. General Wood's first task as he conceived it was to stop slave-trading and establish relations of tolerance, if not friendship, between the Filipinos and the Moros on the one hand and between the Moros and the hill tribes on the other; to stop the Christian Filipinos from imposing {188} on the hill tribes; and to begin some method for substituting respect for law and order, for government and authority in the place of terror and hatred. The ending of the slave trade resulted in many heavy, long-drawn-out fights with the principal Moro bands. The Sultan of Sulu had not lived up to the Bates Treaty and he had to be deposed, therefore, as a sovereign in Sulu.

The next step was to organize some form of government that would fit the situation. To start this Wood divided the entire Moro area, including the islands, into districts and appointed American officers of experience and ability as governors of the districts.

He then visited Borneo and studied carefully the laws and regulations under which that chartered colony governed the Malays within its borders. The policy laid down by him for the district governors was to stop slave-trading and the taking of life and property at once; to establish next friendly relations between the people living on the coast and the timid tribes up in the hills; to build up commerce on a fair basis; to open up trails and lines of communication between {189} villages; to assure to every one, no matter what his religion, a fair deal. He also laid great stress on the necessity of bringing the headmen of the different tribes into contact with the district governors and of doing all that could be done to build up and increase commerce.

At the same time the new and energetic Governor-General instituted a strong policy to stop forever the inhuman practices and customs highly repugnant to what Americans considered humane conduct. Every effort was made to insure better treatment of women, who up to that time had been nothing more nor less than chattels. On the seacoast trading stations were built and put in charge of men who spoke the dialect of the wild people. At these stations there was always a provincial agent who had authority to see that the hill people got fair prices for their products and just treatment from the Malays. Little by little as a result of this wise and sane policy they were all induced to come to the stations and make their head-quarters there during the trading period. In former times they had been accustomed to bring down their heavy loads of jungle products on their {190} shoulders and rather than stay in the neighborhood of the pirates over night they would sell their goods for anything they could get and hurry up into the hills again before dark. Moro, Filipino and Chinese traders had for centuries systematically robbed them. Money was of little use to them and therefore all trading was by barter. It was a long campaign of education which Wood instituted to build up confidence amongst these timid people, and he sent young American officers among them, traveling often-times hundreds of miles on foot and practically without any protection to help them and give them confidence.

Little by little confidence was built up; great peace meetings were arranged among the different tribes; old grudges were wiped out; scores were balanced and old feuds settled. It took time and brains and painstaking patience, but it was done and done well.