The Dagohoy Revolt, led by Francisco Sendrijas, is the country’s longest rebellion against colonial rule. It happened in Bohol and lasted eighty-five years (1744-1829), including the years when the rebel leader’s members supposedly propped up his dead body on top of a horse during raids but without the knowledge of the Spaniards.
The Dagohoy legend, even more, has also found its place in Datu Bago narratives, claim-ing the Moro chief of Davao had crossed paths with the Boholano in one of the raids he par-ticipated in Bohol. This assertion, though, does not fly, is shot with holes, and is mainly a his-torical embellishment promoting the datu’s legend as a leader of the pirates.
There are also obscurities that prevent us from connecting the dots to create a clearer pic-ture of how this supposed involvement of Datu Bago in the Visayan piracies occurred.
First, the Moro genealogy, despite its comprehensiveness, does not provide the exact date of birth when the datu was born. Even his place of the nativity is imprecise. By reckoning, most accounts place his birthdate after 1775, making him seventy-five years old by the time he died in 1850. Even the descendants of Datu Bago are not clear how old he was when he passed away.
Second, the date of his arrival in Davao is also unclear. An early historian pins the date of the datu’s coming in the 1820s, which contrasts with the 1800 letter addressed to the Caraga Province governor that carried his name and that of Datu Damuli.
Third, though the Dagohoy rebellion lasted until 1829 when the datu was already in his fifties, the records do not mention the involvement of Davao region in the Visayan raids, not once, and the principal actors in the piracies were from the sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu.
And fourth, by all indications, Datu Bago did not rule the entire gulf during his Davao watch. In short, he was one among numerous Moro enclaves found in the littorals of the gulf, most of them controlling the vital waterways that led to the interior regions.
Linking Datu Bago to Dagohoy, to say the least, is presumptuous. Even on his own, the Davao chief could not have contributed much to the raids even if he had some resources to boot given the distance his flotilla had to travel in the conduct of raids in the Visayan region and Luzon.
Even in published accounts found in scholarly write-ups, Datu Bago’s involvement in the Visayan raids is not cited. By deduction, the sultanates conveniently relied on men who were under their direct control; otherwise, if the Davao chieftain was a principal actor, that would make him quite an important personality the sultanates highly recognized.
Even Filipino historian Cesar Majul only cites a certain Sultan Bago from Sulu ‘who after years of fighting the English and Spaniards, had decided to carve out a kingdom for himself in Davao.’ Nowhere does it claim the sultan actually refers to Datu Bago.
Historically, the use of sultan, an Islamic title, predates the introduction of datu or rajah in the Moro hierarchy in the archipelago. As a rule of thumb, the title of sultan belonged to the highest rule of a sultanate, with the datu as the highest lieutenant next to the ruler.
If Sultan Bago was indeed a sultan, why would he leave his domain and show up in the gulf of Davao as a demoted datu? Unless, perhaps, he acceded to personally reduce and en-throne himself as head of a smaller territory we now know as the Davao River.
Traditions may be a rich source of tell-tale particulars of events in the past, but a close and deeper appreciation of the details embedded in them can at times yield contradictory in-terpretations. Nevertheless, they are essential facets of research in the search for clues to un-derstanding the contributions of popular folk heroes, like Datu Bago, in nation-building.
