The Teduray and Their History

The history of the Teduray is shared by the Maguindanao, as they were once one and the same people. These two peoples believe that they were descended from two brothers—Mamalo and Tabunaway.

During the Islamization of Mindanao, Mamalo the elder refused to be converted, while younger brother Tabunaway embraced the Islamic faith. With this major turning point in their lives, the brothers made a pact: Mamalo would go to the mountains, Tabunaway would make his living near the lowlands and delta of the big river now known as the Rio Grande, and their peoples would trade.

The brothers thus went their separate ways, with their respective followers. This happened around the 13th century. From the elder brother came the Teduray and from the younger brother came the Maguindanao.

Historically, institutionalized trading pacts did exist between the Teduray headsmen and the Maguindanao datus of the coastal area and valley. During the pre-Spanish period, a system of trade between the Teduray and the Maguindanao flourished. The former traded tobacco, beeswax, rattan, gutta percha (sap from the tree that the Teduray called tefedus, used as ingredient for insulation), almaciga and crops. The Maguindanao traded clothing materials, iron tools, and salt. This trading relationship may have originated from the early ties of these two peoples based on the legend.

Based on later developments, it seems that the Tedurays’ trading arrangement with the Maguindanao had inhibited the development of manufacturing among the Teduray. Very much unlike the other peoples in Mindanao, the Tedurays have no weaving, pottery or metal works. These basic needs were secured through the trading system with the Maguindanao.

Spanish influence in the area occupied by the Teduray came rather late. It was only sometime in the 19th century, towards the end of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines, that the central government in Manila and the Roman Catholic church were able to establish a stronghold in Cotabato, when a Jesuit school and mission were built near Awang close to the mountain region. The Spaniards were able to convert a number of Tedurays to Catholicism.

The outbreak of war between the American occupation forces and the Muslim people of Mindanao in the early part of the 1900’s signaled the beginning of another phase of colonization. The Americans, through the efforts of a Philippine constabulary officer named Irving Edwards who had married a Teduray, built a school in Awang in 1916 and an agricultural school in Upi in 1919. The building of roads which ran into Teduray territory opened up the region to numerous lowland Christian settlers, mostly Ilocano and Visayan. Upi Valley became the site of many homesteads—a program the Americans introduced perhaps to “tame” Mindanao.

In time, many Tedurays were persuaded to give up their traditional slash and burn methods of cultivation and shifted to farming with plow and carabao. This was the beginning of the dichotomy in Teduray culture; many Teduray refused to be acculturated and retreated deeper into their ancestral mountain habitat, while others resettled in the Upi Valley and became peasants. Many of the resettled and modernized Teduray had been converted to Christianity as a result of years of evangelization work by American missionaries, Filipino clergy from Luzon, or profoundly westernized Tedurays (Schlegel 1970:9).

During the centuries of fighting between the Spaniards and the Moro people, some of the latter fled to the neighboring heights and joined the Tedurays there. The Spaniards and later the Americans sought to contain the Moro influence by making the Teduray Christian and sedentary through missions and schools and protected them with soldiery. They also established plantations along the coasts and used Teduray labor on them. Since 1900, Christian Filipinos, land speculators and logging interests have entered the Teduray uplands along with Chinese storekeepers in the valley.

Today the Teduray share a common fate with many ethnic peoples in Mindanao. The rapid change in their social and physical environment, brought about by the onslaught of different cultures, has changed their way of life. Tedurays who have settled in the valleys and maintained intense contact with both Christian and Muslim lowlanders have been assimilated. Their adoption of sedentary agriculture has necessarily drawn them deeper into the market and cash economy typical of the rural economy of the entire country.

Teduray peasants are rural, yet live in relation to market systems. (Krober 1948:284) Although they still have some loyalty to their distinctive ethnic identity, they have become constituent elements of some larger political integration. They usually must speak some language other than their own to get along in the larger social whole, of which their society is merely a part. Many of them have had formal education, and a number of them have settled in the cities and nearby provinces to seek greener pastures. Little by little, they are aspiring for leading roles in local governance, although they still constitute the constituency of those Maguindanao who have, through the years, made their presence felt in local politics.

A glaring contrast to the acculturated Teduray are those who refused to embrace these changes and were forced to go deeper in the mountains due to the onslaught of logging and other economic interests. These Teduray continue to practice and preserve the beliefs and culture that define their community.

(Blogger’s note: This post is the second part of a nine-part series on the Teduray people. Each part is posted every Monday starting October 6, 2014. The text is copied as it appears in Defending the Land: Lumad and Moro People’s Struggle for Ancestral Domain in Mindanao. The book, published by a consortium of non-government organizations, has an “anti-copyright” notice and may thus be freely reproduced.)