Over a century ago, Davao region, home to dozens of indigenous tribes, was home to wild horses. Unlike the Mustangs, the scions of horses brought by the Spaniards to the United States, the native steeds were smaller and were used by Mandayas and Bagobos for transport.
American author-journalist Paul T. Gilbert, in ‘The Great White Tribe in Filipinia’ (1903), while travelling on foot along the shores of gulf of Davao, observed the presence of these untamed ponies: “Wild horses, taking flight at our approach, stampeded for the forest. Nothing could be seen in the tall grass. Even in our saddles it was higher than our heads. The trail became more rugged as we entered the big belt of forest on the foot-hills.”
Earlier, while in Sulu in 1775, Scottish navigator Thomas Forrest, who was working for the British East India Company, also recounted the presence of wild horses in the area. In ‘Remarks in the Phillippine Islands 1819-22,’ published in 1828, he wrote: “On this island, almost every spot is covered either with timber, brushwood, reeds, or grass; and streams are found everywhere in abundance. Nor can it be to avoid wild beasts; there are none on the island: a good cause why deer, wild horses and other wild cattle are found in so many parts of it.”
The Philippine pony, according to a 1916 research by David B. Mackie, who was with the Bureau of Agriculture in Manila during US colonial rule, originally came from Malaysia, chiefly brought in by Islamic preachers. As evidence of this claim are the local names used for a horse in Sulu (kuda) and Maguindanao (kura). Actually, kuda is the Malayan term for the same animal.
Interestingly, the Mansakas of Davao also call their horse koda, which could have been borrowed from the Sulu tradition.
Curiously, the Philippine yellow seahorse is also known scientifically as Hippocampus kuda.
The most popular horse-name kabayo, on the other hand, is a loan-word from the Spanish caballo, suggesting the Spaniards also introduced horses in Luzon and the Visayas, thereby making the animal not endemic to the islands.
Wild horses, like the elephants that once lived in the archipelago, abounded then. Sir John Bowring, a British diplomat who visited the country, wrote about the presence of wild horses in his book, A Visit to the Philippine Islands (1859). He even mentioned an incredible story told by natives of tails of wild horses used as nesting place for small black swallows.
In ‘Military Notes on the Philippines,’ published by the US War Department in 1898, a section of the animal kingdom provided a clearer description of the Philippine horse in the wild.
“Deer abound in the thickets of all the islands; flesh very nutritious. There are also many buffalo (‘caravaos’) and wild horses. The buffalo, called ‘karbo’ by the Malays, is the great beast of burden. It is very strong, and docile if domesticated, but dangerous in the wild state. The Philippine horse is small and of poor appearance, but it is a strong and sturdy animal. Fine specimens sell for $100 to $150; $15 or $20 will buy a pair for draft purposes.”
Mabel Cook Cole, an American anthropologist, also recorded her travels in Malaybalay, Bukidnon, where she saw wild horses. In her 1929 book, Savage Gentlemen, she wrote:
“The [Manobos] jumped up. They were excited; they cried out; they talked among themselves. The horse [named Strawberry] was in the West, they assured me. Sixto and two of the natives rode away on horseback. The next morning, they returned with ‘Strawberry.’ They had found him, they said, far to the west, feeding in the jungle with a herd of wild horses.”
Feodor Jagor, in ‘The Former Philippines Through Foreign Eyes’ (1875), was also ecstatic about the view of hundreds of horses roaming in the wilderness of Jalajala, in the old Laguna peninsula, especially at Mt. Sembrano, wrote:
“With the exception of the flat shore, the whole place is hilly and overgrown with grass and clumps of trees, capital pasture for its numerous hers—a thousand carabaos, one thousand five hundred to two thousand bullocks, and from six to seven hundred nearly wild horses.”
Thomas J. Vivian and Ruel P. Smith, in ‘Everything About Our New Possessions’ (1899), made special mention of Batangas, saying the province was “noted for its high mountains, thick woods, and wild horses.” The horseflies are also associated with wild animals as they were known to swarm wherever domestic and wild horses and cattle occurred.
In O. W. Coursey’s ‘The Philippines and Filipinos’ (1914), there was a passing mention of many Chinese ponies in large cities. They described as “small animals not much larger than our [the American] Shetland ponies; poorly fed, and so brutally misused by the Filipinos that the United States had had to extend [her] humane laws to the Philippine for their protection.”
Demand for animal meat, over-hunting, and diseases slowly decimated horse population.
On the other hand, elephants existed in Sulu until its extinction in the 1800s. According to a 1908 account by Syrian-born American author Dr. Najeeb M. Saleeby, who wrote extensively about the Muslims of Mindanao, the ruler of Java in 1395 sent the sultan of Sulu as gift a small number of elephants, an event that can be confirmed in British records and historical accounts.
Fr. Francisco Ignacio, SJ, who wrote ‘Historia natural del sitio, fertilidad y calidad de las Islas e Indios de Bisayas’ (1668), also confirmed the existence of elephants in the Visayas. The natives created bracelets, earrings and hilts of daggers from tusks. In Luzon, evidence of the animal’s presence is found in Tagalog terms gadya (elephant) and nangagadya (elephant-hunting).
Gadya originated from the Sanskrit gudja and the Malay term gadja, meaning horse.
In 2001, in what is now known as Elephant Hill in Rizal, Kalinga province, the first elephant tusk on Philippine soil was unearthed. Thirteen years later, another tusk was found in the same town along with the skeletal remains of a rhinoceros.
