Comval: Golden Frontier of the Philippine South
Compostela Valley, one untouched by Spanish conquest
By Charlie V. Monforte
If Compostela Valley so suffers obscure and scarce records about its share of Spanish conquest as they now are, then at the moment all roads lead to a generalization that seven-year-old province was truly a Lumad and Moro land untouched by Spanish conquests in the yesteryears.
If the province was unconquered, then so what’s the point in celebrating Independence Day that the Katipuneros of the country’s north led in winning it in 1896?
Had the province’s making, carved out from Davao del Norte in 1998, not constrained by area requirement in the makers’ gerrymandering act in 1998, otherwise institutionalized by a law on the division of administrative jurisdiction, or had it officially stood as the six-town mainland, Comval could have been most consistent in the historical referencing of Spanish colonizers and chroniclers who originally referred the fertile plain as either Monkayo Valley or Compostela Valley.
It’s the annexed southern coast which provided Comval the mix of being also a Moroland. In fact, the rancherias (landholdings) in Hijo, Maco and Madaum, Tagum were considered as the last bulwark of the Moros at the time of the conquest of the early Davao City.
These rancherias were Moro settlements into where the legendary Datu Bago retreated in 1848 following his defeat in a three-month battle against Spain’s mercenary-cum-entrepreneur Don Jose Oyanguren from the Moro settlement that once thrived in the mouth of the Davao River.
EAST COAST
Like most of the rest of Mindanao, the province had only witnessed Spanish colonizing attempts - although they were too scant in Comval’s part- in the later part of the first century of Spanish colonization in the country. That, after the Spaniard conquistadors consolidated their rule in Luzon and Visayas chain of islands in 1572.
At hand, Comval has dearth of Spanish colonial attachment by sharing only brief historical incidents, bits of information from being a part of the bigger Davao geo-political configuration, and few mentions of Comval’s coast as inclusive part of the domain of Sultan Qudarat of Tamontaca, Maguindanao and about Quinquin (Kingking) in Pantukan - where the present Comval Governor Jose Caballero hailed from- having a river sweeping down gold, which the natives panned. "…Gold was extracted from the alluvial deposits coming from the mountain of Quinquin," writes Fr. Juan Bautista Heras, S.J. who visited Nueva Guipuzcoa (Davao’s first old name) around 1860.
Except for the Moros’ sporadic resistance and hostilities to the rule and pacification-build up campaigns in Davao City by Oyanguren and his successors, among which were instigated by the Moros in Tagum and presumably along with the Moros in Comval’s coast, the province had generally quiet and peaceful colonial associations than what other provinces and areas had gone through like Moro raids to cottas and slaves-taking, bloody battles between the Spanish colonizers and Moros and natives and revolts over the polo (taxes). Even then there’s dearth of chronicles about evangelization activities of missionaries in the province.
The east coast particularly bannered by the establishment of Spain’s mission station in Caraga, Davao Oriental that influenced Baganga, Cateel, Manay and Mati was the most prominent among other subject areas of Spanish colonization in today’s Davao Region. The east coast served as the base in the subsequent early conquest of Davao City and other Gulf areas and was also deemed the major entry point in the migration of people to Gulf areas.
But Caraga’s mission station was a by-product in the earlier evangelization and colonizing activities that took the northeastern route from Alubijid, Misamis Oriental then eastward to eastern coast of Surigao down to Tandag and Bislig and to the east of Davao Gulf.
NORTHERN DOOR
There was though that scarce mention in Corcino’s book that pointed the province’s Agusan door as the entry point of Spanish evangelization. In 1595 the first Jesuit mission house in Mindanao was established in Butuan City and from there, Jesuit missionaries "reached Fort Linao (the present-day Bunawan, Agusan del Sur) and Monkayo Valley in 1608."
But in the next breath it tells that just as the Jesuits were making "headways" in their missionary works they abandoned these as they had to be replaced by the Recollects to comply with the church order dividing Mindanao which directed the Jesuits to concentrate evangelizing in the western side of Mindanao.
We still don’t know if the Jesuits’ "headways" in missionary works had converted many native souls in Monkayo-Compostela Valley before they left or whether the Recollects who took over what the Jesuits left in Fort Linao had made more advances to the valley. It appeared to be a mission aborted as there was neither a Spanish mission station nor a Spanish fort that was mentioned to have been established in the valley. Perhaps the missionary works referred to were only brief forays and visits.
NAMING COMPOSTELA
Which brings us to the valley’s name. Is the name Compostela plainly mythical without the necessary colonialism in placed at the ground like in the postulated case of Comval? Or it might, most possibly, be semantical play of early Spanish explorers, chroniclers or conquistadors made from a distance and in reference to Compostela of Spain in their penchant to name frontiers they conquered and those yet to be conquered after the names of places and patron saints in their Spain homeland. The present Compostela town of Cebu may have gotten its name in like manner.
Ranged against the postulation that especially the mainland Comval was unvanquished one, the Kampo de Kastila version (read: that the town or the six-town mainland which was then collectively called as Compostela as a single entity was once a host of a Spanish camp or fort) stands to be farfetched than the version that Compostela name came from "a Spanish friar from the east coast bringing with him the statue of Santiago de Apostol, the patron saint of the friar’s birthplace," the town’s official profile avers.
Maybe, while we don’t discount the possibility that in the 260 years of the evangelization activities of the Recollects from Tandag to Fort Linao and to the east coast there was one among them who managed to visit the old and bigger Compostela. Or the friar, if ever he was for real, might have used Comval’s northern Agusan door.
Still the present Compostela town may not have been trekked on by friars given its remote and interior location compared to the proximity of Monkayo to Fort Linao. Besides why was Compostela Valley alternately called as Monkayo Valley?
The prominence though of the smaller Compostela area for being reported as the most lively and thriving throughout the valley due to its vast abaca plantations, which most probably started during the American colonial period just like the timeline of the Japanese-controlled abaca boom in Davao City, may have later subsumed the Monkayo Valley reference. It may have been fed also by the migrants’ quest for religiosity and township.
UNVANQUISHED
Comval coast was though better in prominence than the interior mainland as to the real spread of faith when many Moros in Hijo were touched and converted by the amiable and dialect-speaking Fr. Saturnino Urios, SJ in 1896. It was Fr. Urios who forged peace and cooperation between the Moros and the Christians in the Davao Gulf areas. Yet his headways in Comval coast only came when Spanish rule in the country was already about to end.
But the dramatic turning out of Comval municipios as bulwarks of Catholicism was not the making of the early friars in the yesteryears but by the already Catholic migrants from the early-colonized Visayas and Luzon who slowly trickled, trekking into the landlocked valley truly starting during the ensuing American colonial period. (The dominantly Visayan in-migration evidently came in faster rate especially after the construction of the road stretching from Tagum to Agusan in the late 30s). The organized Catholicism in the province was well mainstreamed only much later by the Maryknoll foreign priests starting in the 50s.
Thus, at hand and pending retrieval of more historical records possibly from foreign and national archives, libraries and convents, mainland Comval was one virtually untouched and one unvanquished land by Spain conquest, while the seven-year-old province as a whole was a quaint Lumad and Moro land during the country’s first colonial timeline.
By these, and sans a Katipunero presence, then the Independence Day celebration of the province’s inhabitants might well be given a different context. Perhaps it is better meant for the freedom gained by the settlers’ long-conquered home provinces in Visayas and Luzon, and by the sporadic resistance of the province’s Moros against an obscure Spanish colonial post in the old Davao City.
Celebrating Independence Day to mean that Comval was freed from the yoke of Spanish colonialism is hollow and misplaced as it was never been conquered nor its mainland natives converted and the province was one largely untouched by Spanish depredations and conquests just like the many other interior parts of Mindanao.
(E-mail: charliemonforte@yahoo.com)
By Charlie V. Monforte
If Compostela Valley so suffers obscure and scarce records about its share of Spanish conquest as they now are, then at the moment all roads lead to a generalization that seven-year-old province was truly a Lumad and Moro land untouched by Spanish conquests in the yesteryears.
If the province was unconquered, then so what’s the point in celebrating Independence Day that the Katipuneros of the country’s north led in winning it in 1896?
Had the province’s making, carved out from Davao del Norte in 1998, not constrained by area requirement in the makers’ gerrymandering act in 1998, otherwise institutionalized by a law on the division of administrative jurisdiction, or had it officially stood as the six-town mainland, Comval could have been most consistent in the historical referencing of Spanish colonizers and chroniclers who originally referred the fertile plain as either Monkayo Valley or Compostela Valley.
It’s the annexed southern coast which provided Comval the mix of being also a Moroland. In fact, the rancherias (landholdings) in Hijo, Maco and Madaum, Tagum were considered as the last bulwark of the Moros at the time of the conquest of the early Davao City.
These rancherias were Moro settlements into where the legendary Datu Bago retreated in 1848 following his defeat in a three-month battle against Spain’s mercenary-cum-entrepreneur Don Jose Oyanguren from the Moro settlement that once thrived in the mouth of the Davao River.
EAST COAST
Like most of the rest of Mindanao, the province had only witnessed Spanish colonizing attempts - although they were too scant in Comval’s part- in the later part of the first century of Spanish colonization in the country. That, after the Spaniard conquistadors consolidated their rule in Luzon and Visayas chain of islands in 1572.
At hand, Comval has dearth of Spanish colonial attachment by sharing only brief historical incidents, bits of information from being a part of the bigger Davao geo-political configuration, and few mentions of Comval’s coast as inclusive part of the domain of Sultan Qudarat of Tamontaca, Maguindanao and about Quinquin (Kingking) in Pantukan - where the present Comval Governor Jose Caballero hailed from- having a river sweeping down gold, which the natives panned. "…Gold was extracted from the alluvial deposits coming from the mountain of Quinquin," writes Fr. Juan Bautista Heras, S.J. who visited Nueva Guipuzcoa (Davao’s first old name) around 1860.
Except for the Moros’ sporadic resistance and hostilities to the rule and pacification-build up campaigns in Davao City by Oyanguren and his successors, among which were instigated by the Moros in Tagum and presumably along with the Moros in Comval’s coast, the province had generally quiet and peaceful colonial associations than what other provinces and areas had gone through like Moro raids to cottas and slaves-taking, bloody battles between the Spanish colonizers and Moros and natives and revolts over the polo (taxes). Even then there’s dearth of chronicles about evangelization activities of missionaries in the province.
The east coast particularly bannered by the establishment of Spain’s mission station in Caraga, Davao Oriental that influenced Baganga, Cateel, Manay and Mati was the most prominent among other subject areas of Spanish colonization in today’s Davao Region. The east coast served as the base in the subsequent early conquest of Davao City and other Gulf areas and was also deemed the major entry point in the migration of people to Gulf areas.
But Caraga’s mission station was a by-product in the earlier evangelization and colonizing activities that took the northeastern route from Alubijid, Misamis Oriental then eastward to eastern coast of Surigao down to Tandag and Bislig and to the east of Davao Gulf.
NORTHERN DOOR
There was though that scarce mention in Corcino’s book that pointed the province’s Agusan door as the entry point of Spanish evangelization. In 1595 the first Jesuit mission house in Mindanao was established in Butuan City and from there, Jesuit missionaries "reached Fort Linao (the present-day Bunawan, Agusan del Sur) and Monkayo Valley in 1608."
But in the next breath it tells that just as the Jesuits were making "headways" in their missionary works they abandoned these as they had to be replaced by the Recollects to comply with the church order dividing Mindanao which directed the Jesuits to concentrate evangelizing in the western side of Mindanao.
We still don’t know if the Jesuits’ "headways" in missionary works had converted many native souls in Monkayo-Compostela Valley before they left or whether the Recollects who took over what the Jesuits left in Fort Linao had made more advances to the valley. It appeared to be a mission aborted as there was neither a Spanish mission station nor a Spanish fort that was mentioned to have been established in the valley. Perhaps the missionary works referred to were only brief forays and visits.
NAMING COMPOSTELA
Which brings us to the valley’s name. Is the name Compostela plainly mythical without the necessary colonialism in placed at the ground like in the postulated case of Comval? Or it might, most possibly, be semantical play of early Spanish explorers, chroniclers or conquistadors made from a distance and in reference to Compostela of Spain in their penchant to name frontiers they conquered and those yet to be conquered after the names of places and patron saints in their Spain homeland. The present Compostela town of Cebu may have gotten its name in like manner.
Ranged against the postulation that especially the mainland Comval was unvanquished one, the Kampo de Kastila version (read: that the town or the six-town mainland which was then collectively called as Compostela as a single entity was once a host of a Spanish camp or fort) stands to be farfetched than the version that Compostela name came from "a Spanish friar from the east coast bringing with him the statue of Santiago de Apostol, the patron saint of the friar’s birthplace," the town’s official profile avers.
Maybe, while we don’t discount the possibility that in the 260 years of the evangelization activities of the Recollects from Tandag to Fort Linao and to the east coast there was one among them who managed to visit the old and bigger Compostela. Or the friar, if ever he was for real, might have used Comval’s northern Agusan door.
Still the present Compostela town may not have been trekked on by friars given its remote and interior location compared to the proximity of Monkayo to Fort Linao. Besides why was Compostela Valley alternately called as Monkayo Valley?
The prominence though of the smaller Compostela area for being reported as the most lively and thriving throughout the valley due to its vast abaca plantations, which most probably started during the American colonial period just like the timeline of the Japanese-controlled abaca boom in Davao City, may have later subsumed the Monkayo Valley reference. It may have been fed also by the migrants’ quest for religiosity and township.
UNVANQUISHED
Comval coast was though better in prominence than the interior mainland as to the real spread of faith when many Moros in Hijo were touched and converted by the amiable and dialect-speaking Fr. Saturnino Urios, SJ in 1896. It was Fr. Urios who forged peace and cooperation between the Moros and the Christians in the Davao Gulf areas. Yet his headways in Comval coast only came when Spanish rule in the country was already about to end.
But the dramatic turning out of Comval municipios as bulwarks of Catholicism was not the making of the early friars in the yesteryears but by the already Catholic migrants from the early-colonized Visayas and Luzon who slowly trickled, trekking into the landlocked valley truly starting during the ensuing American colonial period. (The dominantly Visayan in-migration evidently came in faster rate especially after the construction of the road stretching from Tagum to Agusan in the late 30s). The organized Catholicism in the province was well mainstreamed only much later by the Maryknoll foreign priests starting in the 50s.
Thus, at hand and pending retrieval of more historical records possibly from foreign and national archives, libraries and convents, mainland Comval was one virtually untouched and one unvanquished land by Spain conquest, while the seven-year-old province as a whole was a quaint Lumad and Moro land during the country’s first colonial timeline.
By these, and sans a Katipunero presence, then the Independence Day celebration of the province’s inhabitants might well be given a different context. Perhaps it is better meant for the freedom gained by the settlers’ long-conquered home provinces in Visayas and Luzon, and by the sporadic resistance of the province’s Moros against an obscure Spanish colonial post in the old Davao City.
Celebrating Independence Day to mean that Comval was freed from the yoke of Spanish colonialism is hollow and misplaced as it was never been conquered nor its mainland natives converted and the province was one largely untouched by Spanish depredations and conquests just like the many other interior parts of Mindanao.
(E-mail: charliemonforte@yahoo.com)
posted by Rural Urban News at 5:57 PM
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