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Subanuns 1.0
A Study of the Subanuns of Sindangan Bay
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Chapter 1 – Habitat and History
Subanuns of Sindangan Bay
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SUBANUNS OF SINDANGAN BAY: CHAPTER I — HABITAT AND HISTORY by Emerson Brewer Christie, published 1909^

NAME

The name Subanun means river-dweller, from the word suba, river, common to several Philippine dialects, including Sulu and Bisaya. “Nun” or “non” is an adjective postfix indicating origin or habitation. Thus we have bukidnon, from bukid, hill or mountain, hill-dweller; Dapitanun, native of Dapitan, etc. This term was applied to the tribe because its members are met with in going up the rivers from the coast, in distinction to the Moros and Christians of Zamboanga Pe- ninsula, who are coast-dwellers. Probably the term was first applied to the Subanuns by Christians and Moros, but it is now well known to the tribe, and used by it. It is not, however, the only term applied by these people to themselves. A Subanun, when questioned as to who he is, will often answer, tau bukid or tan buid, “hill-man.”

HABITAT

The home of the Subanuns is the Zamboanga or Sibagai Peninsula. which extends westward like a long, misshapen finger from the poin body of the Island of Mindanao and at Point Kipi crooks starpiy southward, pointing at Basilan and furnishing the northern terminus to the natural route between Borneo, together with the Malayan world beyond it, and the Philippines, over the closely strung islands of the Sulu Archipelago.

  • In this home, the Subanuns have long been cut off from intercourse with the other pagans of the island. Iligan Bay, nar- rowing into a wedge under the name of Pangil Bay, thrusts deeply into the land from the north, and Ilanun Bay curves deeply into it from the south, so that the width of the peninsula narrows at one point to about 20 kilometers. At this place General Weyler completed in 1890 a trocha or line of fortified posts from north to south, to prevent the westward raids of the Lake or Ilanun Moros. This trocha marks the eastern boundary of the Subanun country. Beyond it, the powerful Lake Moros form an insurmountable barrier between the Subanun and other pagan populations of the island.

There can be little doubt but that before the arrival of the Mohammedans and Spaniards the Subanuns held the entire country west of the line indicated above, sharing it only with the Negritos, who as far as known have now disappeared from the whole region.^^

However, at the present time the Subanuns have been crowded out of a considerable portion of their inheritance, and the displacement of Subanun culture has been even greater than that of the Subanuns themselves, through the conversion of many Subanuns to Christianity and Mohammedanism, a change which carries with it adoption of Christian-Filipino and Mohammedan-Malayan customs, and final absorption into the body of the “Filipino” or “Moro” population. Missionary enterprise has been an important factor in the situation in this quarter. At the present time, there are villages of Subanun “new Christians” along nearly all the northern and northeastern fringe of the Subanun population. It is true that many of these villages of converts, formed by the missionaries, have disintegrated owing to the change of sovereignty and policy in the Philippines caused by the Spanish-American war, but some have survived these changes and bid fair to represent permanent losses of territory on the part of the Subanun culture area.

    • Subanun culture has also lost ground to Filipino in the southwest. About 25,000 Christians live in Zamboanga and its barrios. These have not yet encroached as much on Subanun territory as the Filipinos of the northeast. Still, Filipino settlements are found at Nueva Reus and after a considerable interval at Port Santa María, on the west coast, and as far as Buluan on the east. It is true that the Filipino settlements on the east coast of the peninsula are not important north of Kuruan. Thus the Christian invasion advances both from the northeast and the southwest. A population of some 70,000 Christian Filipinos adjoins the Subanuns in the former direction, from Dapitan to Misamis. This population is expanding not only by natural increase, but also by the gradual immigration of settlers from the comparatively densely peopled Bisaya Islands to the north.

The southern outpost on the west coast of the invasion from the northeast is a small village with a chapel, very near the mouth of the Sindangan River, on the bay of the same name. Zamboanga also has been a base of missionary effort. “New Christian” Subanun villages, however, hardly exist in this region. Nueva Reus, the principal “new Christian” settlement in this part of the peninsula, has practically reverted to paganism as far as its Subanun inhabitants are concerned. As the Christian Filipinos hem in the Subanuns from the sea on the north, northeast, and southwest, so a line of Mohammedan villages borders the sea on practically all the south coast of the Subanun country and part of the west. The Mohammedans in the peninsula number approximately only about 25,000, but as they are confined to the coast and live for the most part in small villages, their settlements form a line of great length. On the west coast Mohammedan settlements are numerous and important as far as Kipit. North of Kipit they are rare and of very small size, never exceeding three or four houses. The town of Zamboanga itself at the time of the last census had a Moro population of about 700, and Mohammedan settlements stretch east from there along practically the whole southern border of the Subanun country. This population, while in frequent contact with the Subanuns, lives in settlements of its own. It is settled on small islands and at the mouths of the rivers, within sound of the waves, while the Subanuns may be found farther up along the same streams.The Mohammedan element is not homogeneous.

  • From Zamboanga to Buluan it is chiefly Samal; beyond Buluan the Magindanau group, or its branch, the Ilanuns, are prominent. Along the south coast also are many settlements of Kalibugans, who, moreover, probably form the largest element in the Mohammedan population on the west coast from Zamboanga to Kipit.
  • The name Kalibugan deserves a word of explanation. It is built up from the root li-bug, which in Bisaya means “to be of mixed blood,” and is applied to the offspring of persons of different race or of unequal social status, as of slave and free. The term is also applied to animals. The word kalibugan is used, for instance, in speaking of the offspring of a wild cock and a domestic fowl, or that of a domestic pig by a wild one. In Panay I have heard it applied to people of mixed Malayan and Negrito blood. In the Zamboanga Peninsula it is the name univer- sally given to people of mixed Subanun and Moro blood. As a matter of fact, many of the people included under this name are of pure Subanun blood. Personal observation of many of them has convinced me that in most of them the Subanun strain is much stronger than the Samal, the Ilanun, or the Magindanau. Indeed the majority of Kalibugan settlements are of Subanun speech, though close intercourse with Moro groups has led to the adoption of some foreign words; the economic life is Subanun, the Kalibugan making a living by agriculture of the kaingin or forest-clearing type.

Many Kalibugans, in fact, are merely Subanuns converted to Mohammedanism, and mark the line of contact of Subanun culture with Islam just as the “new Christians” mark that with Christianity. Kalibugan settlements are started usually by the marriage of some Samal, Ilanun, or Magindanau fisherman or trader with one or more Subanun girls. This necessitates conversion on their part and the family or families, if there are several Moros-serve as the nucleus of a Mohammedan community. Mohammedanism presents itself to the Subanuns with the prestige of a superior civilization, and first the relatives of the Subanun wives of Moros and then other neighboring Subanuns are apt to be attracted to the Mohammedan religion and culture. For a long time the customs and beliefs of such a community are mixed the writer has seen pagan religious ceremonies performed in Kalibugan villages but the drift is constantly toward complete assimilation by the “Moro” culture. In the Kalibugan settlements of to-day we see going on before our eyes the process which constituted the various Moro tribes of Mindanao. An account of the origin and growth of the Kalibugan villages of the peninsula might correctly be entitled “How a Moro tribe is made.”

  • From the foregoing paragraphs it appears that the only part of the peninsula where the Subanun country is not fringed on the coast with Christian or Mohammedan settlements is the region on the west coast between Kipit and the Sindangan River. A walk of an hour or two from the beach along this strip of coast will often lead to Subanun houses. Along the southern coast, also, owing to the sparseness of the Moro population and its confinement to tide water, Subanun houses can in many places be found near the coast. The Kalibugan settlements, which as a rule follow the Subanun mode of making clearings in the forest, are often set a little back from the sea, but the tendency is for the Kalibugans to settle nearer the shore than the unconverted natives, as their conversion to Mohammedanism set them at liberty to trade by sea and freed them from the necessity of paying tribute to the Moro rulers; there was thus removed a fruitful cause of abuses, which long tended to make the pagan shun the sea, for by the sea came the collectors of tribute.

Even with so much of the best part of the peninsula occupied by Mohammedans and Christians, there is land enough for the Subanuns, and to spare, In fact, a considerable part of the country is uninhabited. Diseases, such as cholera and smallpox-the infection most dreaded by the Subanuns and centuries of slave-raiding by Moros, among whom the Samal pirates attacked the Subanuns by sea and the Lake Moros- Ilanuns-by land, have so ravaged the people that the pagan Subanuns to-day probably do not number over 30,000. I was informed by Su- banun chiefs on Sindangan Bay that a good day’s march into the inte- rior in that region would lead to the end of the Subanun settlements, and by the deputy governor of Zamboanga District at Tukuran that the upper valleys of the Lintokud and Mipangi Rivers were unoccupied. A large portion of the more rugged and broken parts of the country is also devoid of inhabitants, so that the Subanun settlements are only scattered sparsely over parts of the peninsula, and in other regions form a mere fringe of population, within the Christian and Mohammedan fringe where those elements exist, and nearly on the coast in others.  

Reference:

  1. ^ The Subanuns of Sindangan Bay by Emerson Brewer Christie, published 1909 (public domain)
  2. ^^ There are in this island [Mindanao] black negroes, who recognize the authority of no one, like those of the Island of Negros and the Aetas of the mountainous regions of Manila. They live more like brutes than men, doing harm to as many as they can. They have no town, nor, in a land of so much inclemency of the weather, do they have any other shelter than trees. On Pangull Bay, they are seen every day, and in the pueblo of Layauan [now Oroquieta] when I was on a visit, many of them appeared before me.” Combés, History of Mindanao and Joló. ^Public Domain. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.