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26

THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 51

to check the incursions of the Moros. The pirates attacked even the coasts of Luzón in 1793, and an expedition sent out against them in December of that year accomplished almost nothing, being too late and ineffective. In the following year the governor called a council of the leading military officers and other persons experienced in Moro wars and the affairs of the southern islands, where it was shown that the Moros made captive some 500 persons a year, whom they rendered slaves – excepting the old, who "were sold to the inhabitants of Sandakan, who sacrificed these captives to the shades of their deceased relatives or of prominent personages,^[1] preserving the skull of the victim as a proof that they had complied with so barbarous a usage." It was shown at this council that during the time from the establishment

↑ Cf. Forrest, Voyage to New Guinea, p. 368: "They believe the deity pleased with human victims. An Idaan or Maroot [a tribe in northern Borneo] must, for once at least, in his life, have imbued his hands in a fellow creature's blood; the rich are said to do it often, adorning their houses with sculls and teeth, to show how much they have honored their author, and laboured to avert his chastisement. Several in low circumstances will club to buy a Bisayan Christian slave, or any one that is to be sold cheap; that all may partake the benefit of the execution. So at Kalagan, on Mindano, as Rajah Moodo informed me, when the god of the mountain gives no brimstone, they sacrifice some old slave, to appease the wrath of the deity. Some also believe, those they kill in this world, are to serve them in the next, as Mr. Dalrymple observes." He also says (p. 271), that they pay "perhaps five or six Kangans" for an old slave; and that the above mountain is "in the district of Kalagan [i.e., Caraga], a little way west of Pandagitan, which emits at times smoke, fire, and brimstone." This evidently alludes to Mt. Butulan, a volcano (now apparently extinct), in the extreme southern point of Davao province, Mindanao.

[1] Cf. Forrest, Voyage to New Guinea, p. 368: "They believe the deity pleased with human victims. An Idaan or Maroot [a tribe in northern Borneo] must, for once at least, in his life, have imbued his hands in a fellow creature's blood; the rich are said to do it often, adorning their houses with sculls and teeth, to show how much they have honored their author, and laboured to avert his chastisement. Several in low circumstances will club to buy a Bisayan Christian slave, or any one that is to be sold cheap; that all may partake the benefit of the execution. So at Kalagan, on Mindano, as Rajah Moodo informed me, when the god of the mountain gives no brimstone, they sacrifice some old slave, to appease the wrath of the deity. Some also believe, those they kill in this world, are to serve them in the next, as Mr. Dalrymple observes." He also says (p. 271), that they pay "perhaps five or six Kangans" for an old slave; and that the above mountain is "in the district of Kalagan [i.e., Caraga], a little way west of Pandagitan, which emits at times smoke, fire, and brimstone." This evidently alludes to Mt. Butulan, a volcano (now apparently extinct), in the extreme southern point of Davao province, Mindanao.

[1]