My Malay Ancestry

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS DATU IGNACIO ORTUOSTE (c. 1879 - 02 June 1936), my maternal great great grandfather who was also known as Datu Malako Mayanga was the most extraordinary member of the Cotabato triumvirate in that he was entirely a product of colonialism. His career, which spans the years between 1904 and 1935, illustrates most dramatically the disjunctions wrought by colonialism in Cotabato. There is very little written information available on Datu Ortuoste. Beckett (1982) does not mention him and Gowing (1983) assumes him to be a Christian Filipino. According to Datu Adil, Ortuoste was neither a Christian Filipino nor a Magindanaon nor originally from Cotabato. He was a Maranao from the Lanao Plateau who was captured as a child in a skirmish between Spanish soldiers and Maranao warriors. He was brought to the Jesuit mission at Tamontaka, on the south fork of the Pulangi River. There he was reared and educated, baptized and given a Christian name.

Like his contemporary Datu Piang, Ortuoste made a very successful transition from Spanish to American rule. Unlike Piang, his main assets were his ability to read, write, and speak Spanish as well as local languages, and his familiarity with colonial as well as local culture. Utilizing these attributes, Ortuoste became a highly effective intermediary between the local representatives of colonial authority and those who militantly resisted that authority. His singular personal background made him an ideal cultural and political broker, negotiating the subjugation of defiant local leaders to an occupying foreign power.

The first reported occasion for Ortuoste's mediation occurred in 1904 when he reportedly played a prominent role in dissuading Datu Ali from attacking the American military garrison in what was then the town of Cotabato (Millan 1952). Ortuoste's next recorded assignment for the Americans was in 1914, when he assisted in negotiating the surrender of Datu Alamada, an Iranun insurgent who had fought the successive colonial regimes for twenty years in the mountainous area between Cotabato and Lanao with a force of more than five hundred men (Gowing 1983).

American administrators again sought the assistance of Ortuoste in 1923 as a mediator in the surrender of another Iranun insurgent, Datu Santiago, the last leader of resistance to American rule in Cotabato. Santiago had rebelled against the imposition by the Americans of a head tax (cedula ), the compelling of Muslim girls to attend Christian schools, and the practice by school authorities of using forced labor without compensation to construct and repair school buildings (Hurley 1936; Tan 1982). Datu Adil remembers stories told by Ortuoste that, in this instance at least, he played a double role, simultaneously assuring colonial authorities of Santiago's imminent surrender and advising Santiago on the concessions he should demand from the Americans in return for his submission.

At some point after this, Datu Ortuoste was accorded the title Datu sa Kutawatu (Datu of Cotabato) by His Majesty Sultan Mastura, who was installed as Sultan of Magindanao in 1926. This was the reason why he was respected as one of the Royals of the Maguindanao Sultanate that he had this title "His Royal Highness" for the foreigners to greet or address him equivalent to the vernacular way of greeting or addressing a Royal in the Sultanate of Maguindanao and neighboring Sultanates (Smith, Roger and McArthur James, 1941 and Dennis John, 1935).

Sometime after helping secure the surrender of Datu Alamada he was also appointed assistant to the governor of Cotabato. In his political career, Datu Ortuoste enjoyed considerable influence among colonial administrators and gained the recognition of the Muslim elite of Cotabato. He accumulated large tracts of property in and around Cotabato City before he died, sometime before 1952. Two of his sons became civil servants in Cotabato.

That Datu Ortuoste was, in all important respects, a colonial creation is evidenced in the exceptional title bestowed upon him by the reigning Sultan of Magindanao. The office of Datu sa Kutawatu was unusual not only in that it was newly created—the creation of new royal offices was uncommon but not unheard of (see below).

It was also the first traditional title that in its very nomenclature acknowledged colonial domination. "Cotabato," after all, was the Spanish and American term for the territory locally known as Magindanao. As the ceremonial Datu sa Kutawatu; Datu Ortuoste personified the new colonial construct called Cotabato. He was the first purely colonial datu.

One of Datu Ortuoste's daughters, Bai Jacinta Ortuoste y Delos Santos (right picture), a Tiruray blooded-lady married Don Regino Joaquin y Felix, a pharmacist from Calle Real, Tacloban, and Maasin, Leyte, The Philippines. Jacinta and Regino Joaquin were my maternal great grandparents.

Citation: McKenna, Thomas M. Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Sources:

Reed, Thomas Royals of Mindanao & The Islands: 1935, Adamson University Library, Manila, Philippines

Smith, Roger and McArthur James The Colonial Royals of Mindanao. Manila: Maverick Press, 1941

Dennis, John The Oriental Royals. Manila: Maverick Press, 1935

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