"Night patrols will be successful only when great care is exercised
in the matter of silence; lighting of matches, smoking, making
noises with equipment, etc., should be avoided."
--Constabulary Manual

WITH the passage of the weary years of patrol, the Constabulary was growing in strength and dignity. The year 1908 saw the corps of 4,573 men directed by 315 fine jungle-bred officers. The year also saw, for the first time, complete control of the Constabulary in Insular affairs. Not in a single instance did the regulars or the Scouts take hand in the preservation of the peace of the Philippines. Patrols traversed more than 230,000 miles of jungle trails, but the preservation of the peace was a weary task. The northern islands were quiescent, but not quiet. Forty-four heads were taken in the mountain province of LepantoBontoc . . . civilization came slowly to the head-hunters of northern Luzon.

The Insular government was again bubbling with optimism. The report for the year 1908 says: "It is eminently gratifying to state that from July 1, 1908, to date (November 3, 1908), a state of complete peace has existed throughout the Archipelago--with the exception of some slight disorders caused by raids of lawless Datus and brigands in the Moro Province."

The note of optimism was not sustained by the happenings of the year. Harry M. Ickes of the Bureau of Science was killed in Mindanao; a few weeks later, H. E. Everett and Tilden R. Wakely, with a party of three, were ambushed in Negros; Felipe Salvador was still at large on Samar; and Jikiri, greatest of all the Moro leaders, was cutting a swath of blood and terror in Moroland. In Lanao Province, in Mindanao, the "lawless brigands" of the report were composed of five well-armed Moro bands, fortified in well-defended cottas.

There was no question but that the rebellious factions were sputtering into extinction, except in Mindanao. Capable Constabulary officers in the north had seen to that. On Cebu was Matteo Luga, who had been a gallant Insurgent leader before donning the red epaulets of the Constabulary. No member of the corps wore the uniform of the jungle police with greater distinction than this swart, fearless Filipino.

Luga had fought Stacey in the middle islands, and there were other American officers to testify to the courage and cunning of this leader. He was an honorable soldier who earned the respect of the American army. They tell a tale about Luga. It happened during the days of the insurrection, when he had been one of Aguinaldo's most sturdy commanders. Filipino soldiers serving the American cause had been inflamed with the legends of the mighty Luga, and had deserted the American camp and sought service under their countrymen. Luga had heard them out and then had placed them under an armed guard. At daylight a small squad of men had appeared before the American lines. With them were the deserters and a message to the American commander from Luga. He had written, "I return to you deserters from your camp who sought service with me. I request that you do the same should any of my men weaken from their duty. It is my desire to wage honorable warfare."

That then, was Luga, who in 1908 was wearing the red epaulets of the Constabulary. He had been sent to Cebu Island with instructions to keep the island clean and bandit free. And Cebu was clean, under the administration of this capable and valiant native officer.

Before me lies Luga's accolade, written by an American officer who saw much service in the Philippines: "In Matteo Luga, you saw a man to remember as long as you lived."

As public confidence in the Constabulary had increased, the corps benefitted by arms and equipment. The old fear of arming native soldiers was fading now, and 3,365 Krag rifles came into possession of the force. With but eighteen desertions in the year 1908, the Constabulary was in high morale as it turned to the final battleground in the Philippines.

The army was beginning to give way in Mindanao and Sulu, as the Constabulary grew into power and needed strength. The Krag of the Constabulary moved in to replace the Springfield of the regulars. With the coming of the Constabulary the mode of warfare began to change. The massed troop movements gave way to the familiar system of patrols; the rapid fire was displaced by the rifles of steady individual marksmen.

The Moros deep in the hills and swamps were beyond the reach of any law save by that old method of infiltration by means of the patrol. And that was a manner of warfare that was foreign to the practice or the inclination of the American regular.

In Mindanao, old Ampuan Agaos and Amai-gin-dalungan were commanding a force of more than 400 men, armed with 134 rifles. It was against these leaders that the patrols were directed. In January, Lieutenant Wood and a detach ment went against Amai-gin-dalungan on the Romain River, forcing the Moros deeper into the hills. Two weeks later Amai came back with a force of eighty Moros armed with rifles, and made a bloody attack on the Constabulary headquarters at Dansalan.

The records show the Constabulary in daily action, with Wood, Tarbell, Hemmett, Fulton, Whitney, and Fort continually in the field. In April, Wood attacked Ampuanagaos in a cotta near Iligan, supported by men of the 18th Infantry under Lieutenant Endsley. Fort fought a red day at the same place a few weeks later, killing thirty-three Moros of the force of Amai. Whitney and Fulton repeated the hammer blows near Tugaya, lessening the outlaw strength by twenty-four. In each encounter the Constabulary casualties were severe. The Moros were warming to the encounter, testing the strength of the Insular Police.

And then Captain Elarth took ten men against a thousand! He was in the hills of Mindanao, investigating a report of Moro organization, and he came into contact with a thousand tribesmen, armed and ready for action. As a Constabulary officer, he was supposed to do something--and he did. He called for a parley with the headmen; and the Constabulary--ten men and the Captain--sat down on the summit of a hill, surrounded by the hillmen. Three Moros on the edge of the crowd began to mutter and the headmen rose from the ground and began to draw away. Then the trio of frenzied fanatics drew their weapons and rushed the Constabulary Captain. The Constabulary took refuge in a rally formation, with fixed bayonets. The leading Moro was almost upon them before Elarth could draw his pistol. "Pot-i-na" (Die now): the voice of the Moro was a scream as he hurled himself upon the Captain. At the same instant the hillmen released a shower of spears.

Elarth dropped the first two Moros with skull shots from his pistol, but there was no time to stop the third, who was armed with a spear. There was a movement behind the doomed Captain, and Sergeant Alvarez leaped forward to take the spear in his chest. Too late to save his Sergeant, Elarth blew the Moro's head away with a .45 calibre bullet.

Had the long-haired hillmen supported the three Moro leaders as they charged, the entire detachment would have been wiped out with the loss of eleven rifles. But the hillmen contented themselves with showers of spears before they melted into the jungle. Left on the field were eight dead Constabulary bodies bristling with spears.

Elarth, with his two surviving men, jerked the bolts from the dead men's rifles and plunged into the deep bush. All day and all night they marched, to return safely to the Constabulary post. Elarth had ably upheld that old fighting tradition of the Corps: "To be outnumbered always; to be outfought, never."

In 1908 occurred the last case of desertion in the Lanao companies. The 2nd Lanao had long been on station at Zamboanga on guard duty, and the morale of the men was low. At an outpost on Lake Dapao was one Sergeant Romandiar who had grown tired of the discipline of military life and longed for a career of banditry. One dark night Romandiar, a Corporal, and four privates passed through the sentry lines and took to the hills. They carried with them their rifles and a plentiful supply of ammunition.

Overnight, the band became full-fledged outlaws. In the weeks that followed they roamed all of the Dapao and Lake Nunungan country, eluding the Constabulary patrols who sought to apprehend them.

It was then that Captain Preuss, their old commander, returned to duty from an extended vacation. After chasing the men through the Nunungan mountains for some time with no result, Preuss suddenly threw a line of skirmishers across a district that was heavily populated with Moros under influential Datus. The Constabulary laid a path of rifle fire before them as they began a slow advance. The Datus came under a white flag to beg that Preuss cease firing into the villages. Preuss replied, "I am here for the heads of six deserters from my Lanao Company. By helping them escape, you have declared yourselves outlaws. Not a man in my path will be spared until the heads of those deserters are brought to me in a sack."

And brought they were, within a period of a few hours, to end desertion in the Lanao Constabulary.

On June 6, 1905, occurred the famous Davao Mutiny, which was to reflect discredit upon the jungle police. Davao, in the center of the hemp region in southeastern Mindanao, was garrisoned lightly with Constabulary, mostly engaged in the settlement of intertribal disputes among the hillmen. The constant, bloody action that was the lot of the Lanao and Cotobato posts was lacking in this quiet station, and the morale of the men suffered through lack of activity.

At ten o'clock of the evening of June 6, the forty-eight men in the post were quiet in barracks, when, at a prearranged signal, twenty-three Constabulary privates seized arms and broke from the barracks. Krag bullets spattered against the walls of the buildings of Davao as the factions fought through the streets. The firing was heavy, but the casualties were small. One American civilian was killed, trapped in the line of fire, and four loyal Constabularymen were wounded.

Lieutenant H. H. Noble rushed to the scene with a detachment of the 23rd Infantry, and Davao was placed under military law. All of the mutineers save five were captured in a brisk round-up that required the attention of the regulars for several days. No real damage resulted from the Davao mutiny save the loss of a few rifles, but the break came as a most unwelcome surprise to the Administration.

The old doubts were revived, and the army made capital of the fact that they had been called in to restore order. But public opinion could not be crystallized against this Insular Police force that had so successfully waged combat for a terrible decade. The re-arming measures proceeded, and the Constabulary built up to the years of Moro fighting that remained to their lot.

The casualty figures of regular army and Scouts for the years 1909 and 1910 are interesting. During this fierce era of cotta fighting against the Moros in Mindanao and Sulu, the army records show four regular soldiers and one Scout killed in action in 1909, and four regulars and no Scouts killed in action in 1910. Possibly indication enough of the relative jungle service of the Police and the Army.

We turn back the months now, to the year 1907, to witness the beginning of the career of the most terrible bandit that the Moros were to produce. In July of that year a young betel-nut bearer of the Sultan of Sulu gathered about him seven pirates of ability and set out on a patrol of terror. Jikiri was his name. Today he is a legend of the Moros, and with reason.

There was nothing in the career of Jikiri to warrant his elevation to the rank of hero unless it was that magnificent stand he made against the combined forces of army, Constabulary, and Scouts that reached across a period of more than two years. He was a wraith who struck and retreated, and he handled his campaign of death and looting and rapine with the skill of a professional soldier. With the possible exception of the Datu Ali in Cotobato, Jikiri was the ablest war leader produced by the Moros. He had all the qualifi cations for leadership. A great personal magnetism, the cunning of a leopard, the ferocity of a boar, and the benefit of Arab blood to give him prestige. He was tall and broad-shouldered for a Malay, with a hooked nose and a flair for fancy dress. He went into action with a white cloth draped across his face, and he was feared by American and Malay from the coast of Borneo to the north of Mindanao.

The night of November 1, 1907, a Chinese trader named Tao Tila had the dubious distinction of being the first recorded victim of Jikiri. The Chinese was sailing a vinta along the coast of the island of Jolo, engaged in trade with the Moros. Off the coast of Lumapid, in the blackness of night, a swift sailing boat sped out of the dark, and a voice aboard the Malay privateer called in the Sulu tongue, "Kill them."

A moment later the pirate ship was alongside, and the crew of the Chinese boat were stricken with krises before they could rise from their benches.

With the proceeds of this piratical raid Jikri clothed his men in distinctive garb, and a few weeks later, on Christmas Eve, he raided the American lumber camp at Kopuga, on Basilan Island.

In the raid on Kopuga, Jikiri demonstrated a cold-blooded ferocity that showed the Malay at his worst in the Philippines.

As we turn back to that day we see the two boats of Jikiri arriving at a point near the camp at two o'clock in the afternoon. The camp laborers have been paid off, and the camp is deserted except for Case and Verment, the loggers, Mrs. Case, her mother-in-law, a Moro woman, and a native foreman. Jikiri sent two men to reconnoiter. They entered the camp and approached Case, offering to purchase a vinta. Case replied that they had no boats to sell, and the Moros withdrew.

At five o'clock the raid began. The seven Moros deployed about the camp. On signal, one of the bandits entered the store where Mrs. Case was arranging the stock and asked for cigarettes. As the woman turned to the shelves she heard Verment scream outside and, looking through the window, saw the logger go down before the blades of two Moros.

The Moro in the store leaped for the woman, but the high counter was in his path and she managed to escape through the window and make her way to a Yakan village.

As Verment lay dying outside the store, Case was set upon by two other Moros, who severed his head with a stroke. The wife of the dead Verment received a ghastly kris wound that laid open her back from shoulder to hip.

After twelve dreadful hours in a vinta manned by Yakan sailors, the survivors reached Zamboanga, where Mrs. Verment died from her terrible wounds.

General Tasker Bliss, on station at Zamboanga, sent out an immediate patrol under Lieutenant Shutan, who found the bodies of Case and Verment, and scoured the countryside with no success.

A week later, reports began to drift into Constabulary headquarters from the island of Sibago, where Jikri and his men were spending freely and talking of the raid on Kopuga. When patrols arrived he was gone and his gang were disbanded to wait developments. Under orders from Jikiri a rendezvous was made on Patian Island, on the fringe of Jolo, and there the eight desperados met in January, 1908, to lay plans for the future. Captain Newbold went in pursuit with 200 men, but Jikri went into hiding in the swamps of Lumapid and for three months he played tag with the finest American forces in the southern islands.

In April, 1908, a troop of the 6th U. S. Cavalry were riding the rough country near Jolo as part of that ceaseless patrol after Jikri. In a ravine heavily wooded, they found him in position on a commanding slope. There was nothing for the cavalrymen to fight, save the white smoke from the Remingtons of the outlaws, and Jikri was away again after dropping Trooper Ferguson with a well-placed shot.

The swamps closed behind the outlaw; and then the swamps opened again and he came out to waylay Albert Burleigh, an American schoolteacher stationed at Maybun, on Jolo Island. Burleigh was ambushed on a lonely trail and cut into minute pieces by the krismen of Jikiri.

It was time for concerted, vigorous action against Jikiri, who was the most serious menace in Moroland to American prestige. The Mindanao Herald opened an editorial campaign, and military conferences were held to discuss the elimination of Jikiri. The Herald, in August, 1908, published this statement: "Jikiri has evaded the authorities for so long that the Moros are beginning to entertain a great respect for his prowess, and unless he is accounted for soon, he will be the cause of serious disorder."

The Sultan of Sulu entered into direct co-operation with American forces. The personal kris guard of the Sultan took the field, and Hadji Butu, Prime Minister of the Sultan, organized an official anti-Jikiri force which went into immediate patrol. But Jikiri was not to be taken so easily. His force had grown to a formidable, well-armed gang, and he was credited with at least forty successful raids. He made plans now for an ambitious career of piracy.

The sinking of a pearling schooner was his next objective. The night of August 22, 1908, this pearler was at anchor off Tonquil Island, making preparations for the return voyage to Zamboanga. The hold contained more than a half-ton of black-lipped shell. Six of the crew were asleep beneath deck, and it was near midnight when the lookout heard the approach of sailing vintas. Before he could hail the boats, a rifle shot from the night dropped him dead on the deck. As the six off-duty sailors rushed to the deck, the pirate boat came alongside the pearler and kris blades flashed in the moonlight. In a terrible, bloody half-minute four men died, and the cook and one badly slashed sailor escaped over the side to swim to safety.

The pirate ship then made off with the loot. The next morning fishermen found the silent pearler with five dead men on the decks.

Jikri's force had now grown to 100 men and he entered piracy on a scale that had not been seen in Sulu since the days of the Moro power in the sixteenth century. In January, 1909, the last year of his life, Jikiri opened operations with a massed attack on four pearlers. As the slim outrigger pirate boats bore down on the pearling fleet, two of the luggers made sail and escaped to Zamboanga. The remaining two, the Ida and the Nancy, were attacked at long range by rifle fire and portable artillery. Four pirate boats circled the pearlers, and a sea battle that lasted for three hours was waged before the Ida ran out of ammunition. Their guns empty, the crew of the Ida leaped overboard and swam to the safety of the bush. From there, they watched the looting of the vessel. The Nancy, meanwhile, was under attack from three pirate vessels, and the marksmen on the pearler were able to inflict severe casualties as the pirates drove to closer quarters. Jikiri himself gave the orders for that last frenzy of preparatory gun-fire, watching with veiled face as the bullets swept the deck of the Nancy and thudded into the planking below waterline. As the crew took refuge behind the bulwarks, the pirate boats surged in to come alongside, and the Moros leaped to hand-to-hand combat on the deck of the pearler. The four survivors on the Nancy went down in that savage shouting rush.

The next day the government cutter Atlanta arrived on the scene with Captain De Witt and Lieutenant Byram and a Constabulary detachment. The pirates were still alongside, removing the last bits of equipment from the dismantled and burning Nancy. Seeing the approach of the Constabulary cutter, Jikiri ordered a withdrawal, and the pirates took to their speedy craft and escaped without difficulty. The Nancy was fired by the Constabulary, and towed to sea to be sunk off Lagason.

This same Captain De Witt had permanent orders to keep his detail in pursuit of Jikiri. De Witt had been selected for that responsibility as being the best equipped officer of the district for the job as he spoke the Joloano dialect fluently. His tactics were to operate continuously with a small mobile force in the hope of catching Jikiri off guard. He came upon Jikiri near Parang, in Jolo, shortly after the sinking of the Nancy, and after a savage fight resulting in the deaths of four of the pirates, Jikiri again made his escape into the swamps near Lumapid.

He was then reported in British North Borneo, and two governments collaborated in search for him. Field forces of the North Borneo Constabulary went after him and succeeded in killing several of his band. Jikiri himself escaped in a vinta and returned across the strait to his old hangouts near Jolo.

Within a month of the sinking of the Nancy, Jikiri had claimed additional white victims. The Constabulary post at Siasi was assaulted in search of additional arms and ammunition. More than 600 shots were fired before the pirates were beaten off. Jikiri stood in a boat before the post, directing operations, with a white cloth concealing his features. In this engagement, M. H. Holmes, an American planter, was among the killed, and the pirates left four dead on the beach.

Three days later, Jikiri was eighty-five miles down the coast, attacking the town of Tugig-Indangan, which was the landing place of the first Mohammedan missionary in the Philippines in the year 1380. Lieutenant Hasemeyer arrived too late to prevent the sack of Tubig-Indangan. He found on the beach the bodies of two more white men who had fallen before the kris blades. Wolf, an English planter, was found slashed into thirty-two pieces; his partner, Cornell, was dreadfully mutilated.

A very doughty Constabulary officer now made his bid for Jikiri. Lieutenant Peake, in company with Hadji Usman's force of Moro guardsmen, boarded a suspicious vinta on the Tawi-Tawi coast. Believing the crew to be members of Jikiri's band, it was decided to remove them to Bongao for questioning. All went well until the boat was in the shallow water, approaching the anchorage at Bongao. Then, with a scream, the Moro pirates made a break for liberty. In the melee, the boat overturned and one of the most savage battles of the campaign was fought hand to hand, in the shallow water. Peake received a pistol bullet in the leg, and went down with pirates clutching his throat in an attempt to drown him. Hadji Usman shot Peake free from his attackers, dropping two with well-directed pistol shots and beating off the others. Peake, bloody and half drowned, stood up in the water then, and with pirates all about him, gave an astounding exhibition of coolness in action. As deliberately as if on a target range he drew bead on his attackers, dropping seven men with seven consecutive shots.

In May, 1909, Jikiri withdrew the remainder of his force into the swamps of Lumapid again and sat down to plan his last campaign. His force had been riddled by the constant pounding. With thirty men about him, he launched out again on a mad trail of destruction and death. Preceding him, he sent his messages to the American government, warning that "the fighting would not cease until no man of my men can longer bear a kris." He set as his goal the personal slaughter of a hundred men, and no man today knows how nearly Jikiri made good that threat.

He bobbed up at Lake Seit against Captain Rhodes, losing four men in a bitter afternoon struggle. Captain Byram cornered him on Patian Island, but Jikiri escaped. A few days later Byram, in collaboration with Captain Signer's gunboats, fought a savage battle with the outlaw on land and sea. Five more pirates were killed.

On June 30, 1909, Jikiri was at Maybun, and Captain Byram hurried thither with two squadrons of cavalry. As the horses thundered into the little town they saw the pirate vintas putting to sea in the direction of Patian Island.

Jikiri, at this point, seems to have been satisfied with a career of death eclipsing that of any of his fellows. He had reached for and received the ultimate in favorable recognition as a super-bandit. And with that, Jikiri, being a Moro, was content. In the opinion of the old-timers in the Philippines who witnessed Jikiri's spectacular career, he could have escaped the American forces as easily this day in June as he had in the preceding two years.

But Jikiri was willing and ready to die.

He held a last conference with his men . . . eight hardy krismen who were ready too to ascend the weary steps to Paradise. On Patian Island, the scene of some of his greatest triumphs, he took refuge in a cave within a volcanic crater. There he waited patiently for the approach of the government force.

Troops A, B, and D of the 6th Cavalry, supported by quick-firing guns from Signer's gunboats, closed in for the kill. In the cave with Jikiri were several women. They were given the opportunity to leave, unharmed, before the assault began. All but two of the women took advantage of the offer. Jikiri's wife and one other Moro woman elected to die with the pirates.

For two days and two nights the riflemen and quick firers poured volleys into the mouth of that cave. The smoke eddied and billowed. Jikiri was going out in style . . . with three troops of cavalry and a battery of field guns opposing nine men armed with edged blades.

It must have flattered the fighting ego of that remarkable, bloodthirsty bandit as he sat there in the crumbling cave under that terrific fire. It was the ultimate in cautious warfare that American troops waged that bloody week-end. There was to be no slip . . . Jikiri was to be killed . . . with no American casualties.

But the moment that Jikiri had lived for all his life was soon to come. Regardless of his misdemeanors against the law and his record of cold-blooded murder, there was something terribly magnificent about that Moro outlaw who terrorized the combined forces engaged in the pacification of Mindanao and Sulu.

There in his cave ... he waited.

On the morning of July 4, 1909, it was decided, after lengthy conference, that nothing could remain alive in the cave in the face of that terrible fire. As the smoke and dust eddied from the cave mouth, American soldiers fixed bay-onets and began a slow advance on the outlaw position. No shots came from the cave month, and they were reassured. The mountain guns were silent as the troops moved in ... closer and closer.

And then Jikiri came.

From that smoke and dust-choked cave came eight Moros, Jikiri at their head. Scorning the odds, the hasty rifle fire, and the bayonet points, they hurled themselves upon the startled attackers. The Krags began to roar at point-blank range. Spots of blood appeared on the tunics of the Moros but they stayed on their feet. The terrible krises were upraised ....

Jikri caught Lieutenant Wilson by the hair and raised his kris for decapitation. Lieutenant Bear rushed in and blew Jikiri's head into a bloody pulp with a full charge of buckshot. The kris blade deflected as Jikri died, and Wilson fell with the pirate, blood streaming from a terrible wound.

Behind the fallen leader his eight Moros were hand to hand with the cavalrymen. Eyes were gouged out. . . heads fell from shoulders to roll away in the bright sunlight . . . men were severed in twain as the eight Moros sought the rewards of Paradise. And then suddenly, the little valley was still and the shattered American force took stock. Lieutenants Miller, Wilson, and Kennedy were wounded. Twenty soldiers were stretched on the ground with kris slashes . . . a sailor from the gun crew was slashed from neck to waist. Beneath the body of Jikiri, Private McConnell was slashed out of resemblance to human form.

Jikiri was dead . . . but he was well equipped for the weary ascent to Paradise.

The Moros are incredible. No word picture could paint, in true colors, the ferocity and inherent fighting ability of these Mohammedans of the southern Philippines. As fighting men, they have no superior in any breed of men in the world, and it is as fighting men that we should judge them.

Their terrific valor enriches and strengthens the reputations of the fighting Insular Police who opposed them.

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Original publication © 1938 E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Filipiniana Reprint Series © 1985 Cacho Hermanos, Inc.

This publication (HTML format & original artwork) © 2001 Bakbakan International.

Transcription courtesy of Ashley Bass.