Santa Cruz, home to the Bagobos, was also known for another tribal village leader who led the convivial welcome of the climbing team that conquered Mt. Apo on October 10, 1880. Prior to this, two tries made by Don Jose Oyanguren in 1852 and by Señor Real in 1870 failed.
The third expedition included Davao district governor Joaquín Rajal y Larré, a Spaniard, and a number of foreign scientists. To climb Mount Apo, the group chose the Santa Cruz trail where Datu Mani was chief. He greeted them, showed hospitality, and toured his houses.
Gov. Rajal, in his book ‘Exploración del territorio de Davao’ (1891), described the Bagobo chief, who was fun of rising his favorite mount, when they first saw and met him:
“[Datu Manib] was riding a beautiful horse and was armed with all weapons, leaning gracefully on his long spear. It looked like an equestrian statue mysteriously placed at the bottom of the tunnel of branches; motionless and rigid, it doubtless awaited our arrival… we distinguished in detail his charming figure, which by his gesture and attitude did not seem disposed to harass us… was morbid and slender in form and apparently of strong and robust complexion to the highest degree, of markedly Malay type, and a man of 45 to 50 years of age; his raised head denoted the seriousness of his actions, the decision, and energy of character.”
Because the datu could only speak Bagobo, the team enlisted an interpreter. The chieftain was unusually silent while the crew followed him on his horse. His left side was protected by a shield while his right hand held a lance, not turning even once to his visitors while negotiating the trail leading to his first house, a dwelling surrounded by verdant foliage. It was only after alighting from his mount that he started greeting pleasantly the visitors.
Remarkably warm, Datu Manib, who had two wives, toured the guests to his barns that resembled in appearance to small houses. Inside them were the bountiful harvest of rice, corn, and fodder; there were also large beehives of wax inside. He later presented the guests with drinking water mixed with honeybees to quench everybody’s thirst.
It was Datu Manib himself who led the group in its first stage of the trip, displaying without bluster his horsemanship, like descending a hollow so steep and rapid that the team had to dismount from their horses for safety. Clinging to his horse, the governor later wrote, the datu “descended like the genius of the desert, then gaining the opposite slope with the speed of a whirlwind. At every step, weedy undulations presented themselves, difficult to gain until reaching Sibulan, whose first houses were hidden in the steep forest like the nests of nightingales.”
Datu Manib’s second house was on a small plain covered by various palms; it stood on pillars of tree fern trunks fenced by reeds that preserved the cocoa and corn plantation and enclosed like a garden. The staircase had a kind of beam that split at intervals. The house had only one elevated floor and had a room with a bed festooned with curtains hanging like a canopy and erected on a platform. The house was assigned to the datu’s favorite wife.
Moreover, at one end of the room, occupying its entire front wall, there was a cot made of boards on which all those who entered the open shelter rested in a tight bundle. In front of it, on the opposite side, was the hearth, a kind of box filled with earth, around which the slaves slept.
Hanging from the walls, as an ornament, were numerous weapons and guns embraced with reeds, stacks of plates, and cups of various kinds, whose quantity signified the opulence of the owners. In one corner there were rustic looms that, skillfully managed by slaves and women, produced their usual native fabrics. Before the team left in earnest for Mount Apo with their guides, the datu, always cordial and modest, offered them a native wine.
