Moros as new converts

Though majority of the converts drawn by the missionaries to the fold of Christianity were tribesmen, there were also prominent Moro chiefs who supported the founding of reductions.

In March 1895, Datu Nonong, the Moro chief of Hijo, conveyed to Fr. Saturnino Urios, SJ, his interest to establish a village near the mouth of Madaum, part of an old riverine kingdom. Some 50 Mandayas, the subordinates of Datu Lasan that relocated from the mouth of Tagum River, which was ruled by Datu Porcan, populated the newly organized community. In months to come, new reductions were also opened at Santa Isabel, a territory past Balutacay (Vera), in the southwestern sector of Davao, and Melilla, in Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur.

On April 1, the governor led the opening of a Sunday school supervised by the missionaries in Davao. The institution, with the help of the teachers, was designed to educate the new con-verts with knowledge and skills, most of them former slaves. That same day, the elections for gobernadorcillo and other local officials were held. Many of those who won were affluent mem-bers of the community. Two and a half months later, on June 16, another election was held in Davao to choose the village officials of the new settlements of Oran, Guernica, and Garellano.

From Davao, Fr. Urios and Fr. Antonio Benaiges, on their way to Tagum and Rosario (Iho), dropped by the reduction of Belen (Lapanday), where they baptized 80 new converts, mostly Moros. The conversion continued for months. By September, the Moro leader who was respon-sible for Don Oyanguren’s woes in the area, showed up with his entire family in Davao to be christened. Similar conversion took place in Lapanday, this time involving 40 more Moros who were working in a hacienda. The new Christians were ‘very docile, attentive, spontaneous and friendly with the missionaries, and were also faithful and devout in attending the Mass, the sermons and instructions of the priests in their little chapels.’

The conversion of tribesmen prospered even more with the founding of the settlements of Aviles, Santillana and Roquestas, in Sarangani, where Fr. Urios baptized Bagobos and Atas, mostly residents near the gulf, and in mountains and valleys adjacent to the coast. On board the gunboat Calamianes captained by Teodomiro Sanjuan, the missionaries led by Ft. Urios proceeded to Samal to conduct more conversions by visiting the settlements of Malipano, Carmona, Cervera (Kaputian), San Jose, Tarifa, Peñaplata (formerly Casulucan), Alcira, and San Ramon.

In Davao Oriental, Fr. Salvador Giralt, the resident priest of Caraga, was reassigned to Sigaboy, at La Concepcion, the largest among the reductions in the gulf of Mayo; it was here that he met Fr. Juan Llopart, the caretaker of the reductions lining ‘the bay of Mati and along the Pacific coast up to punta San Agustin.’ During the most part of November 1895, the in-spired missionaries established the new reduction of La Guia near Cuabo Bay before dropping by the village of Macambol, in Mati, where they distributed rice to hungry residents, baptizing 62 natives and Moros, and healing a sick Tagacaolo woman.

Fr. Giralt’s experience in Sigaboy was tearful. In a letter dated October 25, 1895, he wrote about the poverty the people were experiencing and the famine that affected the residents of Luzon (Pilar). Still, the misery did not detract him from baptizing a total of 96 new converts, including adults and children and a locally popular priestess, who was a charlatan.

That same month, Fr. Jaime Estrada arrived in Davao on October 16, 1895, to join the ex-panding Urios clique. Along with Fathers Urios and Benaiges, his missionary travels brought him to Malalag where around 500 people, most of them natives, were baptized. He called his experience a consolation, and, in a November 13, 1895, letter, wrote ‘the devil was working hard to prevent that the prey [pagan native] which he held so safely in his claws, would not escape him,” but by the grace of Christ “the enemy had to admit frankly and shamefully that he had been beaten.’ (24)