KIDAPAWAN CITY (MindaNews / 28 October) The past two months have been very eventful for this historian (one major reason why this column has not seen an article in a while).
And among the noteworthy events that took place was my meeting the Monuvu Inda family in Baguio.
I was in the summer capital earlier this month with Kublai Millan and Stella Estremera for the Tam-awan International Art Festival.
To my delight the Tam-awan organizers had invited Boi Edmarie Inda, her sister Boi Edralyn, and family friend Frienzy Batingkay to perform Monuvu dances for the opening of their satellite exhibit in SM Baguio.
It was a mini-Kidapawan reunion in Baguio: Frienzy is of Tagabawa descent and has roots in Bulatukan, Makilala, while the Indas are one of the most historical families in the Greater Kidapawan Area.
Bo-i Edmarie and Bo-i Edralyn are the daughters of the late Datu Eduardo Inda, an influential mover in the struggle for IP rights in the 1970s and one of the founders and namesakes of Sitio Puas-Inda in Baranggay Amas, Kidapawan.
But it is Datu Eduardo’s grandfather – the man who is most often called “Datu Inda” – who is most celebrated in history.
Datu Inda of Kuaman was first recorded by the anthropologist E. Arsenio Manuel, who did ethnographic work among the Monuvu in what is today Arakan and parts of Davao in the late 1950s.
In his 1973 book Manuvu Social Organization, Manuel describes a “Datu Indo” of “Kuaman” (following his orthography, which spells the final vowel /ɒ/ in the name with an “o”), a celebrated datu who “deceased sometime before the recent war” (World War II).
He describes the datu as one of the last known Pohohana, the most revered and most powerful spirit medium in the Monuvu spiritual tradition (Manuel translates the term to “diviner or prophet”). The Pohohana “prophesised the coming of the Americans, the airplane, the roads, and World War II. Miracles were attributed to them and they were believed to live with the diwata or other deities of the skyworld after death.”
About Datu Inda in particular (whom he uses as illustrative of the Pohahana) he records these miraculous deeds and anecdotes:
“[Datu Inda] can remain in health without eating for months. And the members of his household can remain for days without eating. It is known that he would not urinate. [Manuel’s] informant saw Datu Indo, after eating, shake his jacket and rice and eggs supposed to have been eaten would fall from his jacket. He can walk even when it is raining without getting wet, and when he took a bath he would not take off his clothes; and when he got out of the river his clothes were not wet.”
When his house needed repair, he would ask his followers to get cogon grass, and when the cogon was already gathered the house would get roofed without human intervention. The husband of [Manuel’s] informant was the one who saw this happen, and the one who narrated the story later.”
He would stretch two rattan vines in the house as lines, and would as from above clothings which would be given by two hands, but one saw nothing more, and the clothesline would be lined with clothes. At one time the people scrambled for the clothes, but in so doing the rattan snapped, and the clothes disappeared. He was helpful to the people, settling cases. He was also a medicine-man.”
It is clear in Manuel’s work that although Datu Inda was strongly associated with Kuaman (a historic area in the Greater Kidapawan Area that figures in epics), his influence – and the respect people accord him – extend far beyond his territory. Manuel’s primary informant in his ethnography, the influential Datu Duyan Suhat, cites Datu Inda as one of his many mentors.
To what Manuel has documented, we add Itulon (oral history) I’ve gathered from his great-granddaughter, Bo-i Edmarie (who herself cites as source of Itulon her own father, the late Datu Eduardo Inda).
We learn from Bo-i Edmarie that his family associated another name with Datu Inda, “Pundarat.” Whether “Pundarat Inda” was a rare two-part Monuvu name, or “Inda” was a patronym from a father now lost to memory and conflated with his son (not an uncommon occurrence in Monuvu history) is now beyond us, but the family itself reserves the phrase “Datu Inda” to their Pohohana ancestor.
She does recount a clue on Datu Inda’s ancestry – her father once described Inda and Suhat as “siblings,” although he never clarified if this was literal, or a general description of kinship.
The affinity would explain why Datu Duyan (as Manuel described him) would grow up running errands between his father and Datu Inda. Manuel was able to record from Datu Duyan the genealogy of his father Suhat. Suhat’s father (and consequently Inda’s, if indeed he was a brother of Suhat) was named Salikuyan, who was born in Kuaman.
Seeking further elucidation from family elders, Bo-i Edmarie gathered from a Matigsalug elder, Malibatu Cosme Mongcal (her late father’s closest confidante), that Datu Inda’s father was a man name Apu Libuan, a first cousin of Suhat. It is also Malibatu Cosme who names Inda’s mother, Apu Ingges.
Today the Inda and Suhat clans occupy distinct spaces, with the Inda clan concentrated in what is present day Upper Roxas while the Suhat clan is concentrated in the town of Arakan.
But most fascinatingly, it is Malibatuan Cosme who articulates something I had long suspected – oral traditions say Datu Inda was a descendant of the epic hero Tuwaang (or Tulalang in other cultures). Many tribes and clans claim descent from Tuwaang, but it is the Inda clan which would have the strongest claim because they remain to this day the ruling family in Kuaman, the very land where Tuwaang is said to come from.
Datu Inda, according to Manuel, “had eight wives,” but this is complicated by the family’s tradition, which gives the eight wives number to his son Datu Kalimpitan Inda (father of Datu Eduardo). Only one wife of Datu Inda himself is remembered, Boyunan Pagayaw, an Obo Monuvu from Marilog District. Boyunan was the one who raised the late Datu Eduardo Inda, and much of the information transmitted to Bo-i Edmarie is from her.
The Pohohana himself played a part in raising his grandson, but Datu Eduardo was far from the only ward in his household. Another figure that Datu Inda raised was Datu Lorenzo Gawilan, the celebrated Matigsalog leader.
The Inda family has anecdotes of its own about Datu Inda’s miracles.
They recall him being a celebrated healer, with political leaders coming to him to seek his healing, and he was often offered vast tracts of land as payment for his healing (an offer he consistently refused). Among the people he was known to have healed was the wife of the late Bukidnon governor Manolo Fortich, who according to the Inda family tradition was terminally ill and could not be saved even by foreign medicine, but was healed by the Pohohana.
The family recalls that he could transform rocks into root crops, and most spectacularly he was said to have been able to bring the dead back to life.
Bo-i Edmarie does not recount this as flattery, but as explanation for the troubles and persecution Datu Inda had to suffer.
This persecution is recorded in the other published document which mentions Datu Inda, the 1996 book Arakan: Where Rivers Speak of the Manobo’s Living Dreams by the Kaliwat Theatre Collective.
Citing the community leader in Arakan Mamerto Sugoy, Kaliwat describes how Datu Inda’s troubles began when he foresaw the ills brought by the Americans.
“Datu Inda’s contemporary the Arumanen Manobo leader Datu Puntungan, was approached by the Americans who suggested to put up a school in his farmland. Datu Inda became worried and asked, “what does a school mean? Why do we need to go to school?” Stories then came out that it was dangerous for the Manobo to go to school because a giant would be waiting for them there to eat them. Soon after, government soldiers pursued the Manobo claiming that the latter had plans to rebel against the American government on the issue of the institutionalization of education.
“The Manobo people evacuated into Mt Sinaka and the Balayog ranges. After several years, Datu Inda and his people came down from the mountains and settled in Datu Hila (now Bangko-Bangko).”
The Inda family through Bo-i Edmarie has a different version of events. They recall that Datu Inda did not flee to Sinaka, but was actually imprisoned.
She put emphasis on the role of Christianity in his persecution.
“The priests and pastors saw that he could see the future, that he could heal and help, and so was being praised and trusted by people, so they envied him, and they conspired and succeeded in getting him imprisoned somewhere in Bukidnon.
But even in prison people came to him to ask him for healing. This angered Manolo Fortich, who ordered him be taken out of prison to be shot. But then the guns would not fire.
It so happened that around that time Governor Fortich’s wife was very ill, and they had sent her to Manila and even abroad but she could not be cured. In desperation, they asked my Apu to heal her, and she was immediately healed. Fortich set him free in gratitude and granted him vast tracks of land, but he refused it and chose to return to Bangko-Bangko.”
Mamerto Sugoy echoes the persecution of Datu Inda in Kaliwat’s recording of his account.
“When Christianity came, the balyans started to lose their respectability. Before Datu Inda died and was buried in Bangko-Bangko there were rumours coming from the Christians that he was a yawa.”
With that last detail, the family’s version contrasts even more sharply with Sugoy’s account –they say Datu Inda was never buried, because he never died, his body simply vanished.
“My father said Apu Inda never died. He had built a very tall house with no walls in Bangko-Bangko, and one day, while wearing white clouds and being seated in front of a crowd of people, he suddenly vanished.” This phenomenon – what the Monuvu of Kidapawan call “Tuwadnus” (akin to the Japanese “kamikakushi”) – is also implied to have happened to Datu Inda in Manuel’s account, where a Pohohana is only said to be determined as such if “his body does not decay, as was the case with Datu Indo.”
Sitio Bangko Bangko would much later on be created a Baranggay of the Municipality of President Roxas (one of Kidapawan’s daughter towns) and given the name “Baranggay Datu Inda.”
The story of Datu Inda remains incomplete (I am repeatedly told that the elders in Bentangan and Arakan have more to say than what is documented), but what is clear is that this Pohohana both left behind such an immense impression on his people that he has now passed into legend. And the story of how his later life unfolded – how he warned against coloniality, how the coming of foreign religions led to his persecution, and how despite these odds, the indigenous still persists – offers so much lessons for future generations.
Today, save for his blood (which flows in his descendants’ veins), Datu Inda has only three remaining relics. Before he vanished, he had given to his grandchildren an Ahung (a large old gong), a Kulintang (a standing set of nine small gongs of varying sizes), and a Kris (a wavy sword, more associated with the Moro cultures). The provenance of these three Pusaka (sacred heirlooms) beyond Datu Inda is unknown, but like most Pusaka they may well have been some of the many items gifted to him in gratitude for his healing or his arbitrating cases.
In a long process of acknowledgement, Datu Inda named Datu Eduardo his successor (the grandson is himself a character worth his own article!). Before he died, Datu Eduardo in turn gave some of the Pusaka he inherited to Bo-i Edmarie, who has had them kept by relatives in different locations. The identities of these relatives and these locations cannot be disclosed for their protection.
Although Datu Eduardo – one-time provincial head of the Office of Southern Cultural Communities, took over his grandfather’s leadership (and Bo-i Edmarie, who now works for the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, has after him), none of the Pohohana’s magic has been transmitted to his descendants.
No one, at least, has shown any signs of it yet.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Karlo Antonio G. David has been writing the history of Kidapawan City for the past thirteen years. He has documented seven previously unrecorded civilian massacres, the lives of many local historical figures, and the details of dozens of forgotten historical incidents in Kidapawan. He was invested by the Obo Monuvu of Kidapawan as “Datu Pontivug,” with the Gaa (traditional epithet) of “Piyak nod Pobpohangon nod Kotuwig don od Ukaa” (Hatchling with a large Cockscomb, Already Gifted at Crowing). The Don Carlos Palanca and Nick Joaquin Literary Awardee has seen print in Mindanao, Cebu, Dumaguete, Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, and Tokyo. His first collection of short stories, “Proclivities: Stories from Kidapawan,” came out in 2022.)
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