Datu Puti

Ten boats come up out of the south with their sails patched and their water jars nearly dry. They have crossed from Borneo, past Palawan, with families packed between the rowing benches and everything worth carrying lashed down under mats. In the lead boat stands the man the other nine chiefs have agreed to follow. His name is Datu Puti, the white chief, and behind him is a king he would rather not see again.

The king is Makatunaw, ruler of Borneo, and by most tellings he is Puti’s own relative. He takes what he likes from the men under him: their goods, their gold, and in the darker versions their wives. Ten datus decide that they have had enough. They do not raise an army. They load their boats by night, the long plank-built craft called barangays, and slip out with the tide. A name sticks to that choice later. The Tagalog word for a village is still barangay, and people like to say that each one began as a boatload.

Landfall comes on the south coast of Panay, at the mouth of the Siwaragan River in what is now San Joaquin. The island is not empty. It belongs to the Ati, a small, dark-skinned, curly-haired people, and their chief Marikudo has only lately taken over from his aged father. Puti goes ashore to talk. He says the newcomers want to live in peace and are ready to pay.

What follows is the scene everyone remembers. Marikudo calls his people together and a feast is laid out on the sand, with fish roasting over driftwood and the Ati dancing to their own drums. The Borneans bring out their price. It is a wide-brimmed hat, a salakot, made of beaten gold. Marikudo sets it on his head and is pleased. His wife Maniwantiwan is not pleased, because she has seen what one of the datus’ wives is wearing: a necklace of gold beads so long that it brushes the ground. She will not agree to anything until she has one too. The necklace is handed over. Some versions add brass basins and bolts of cloth. The Ati take their gold up into the hills and the forest, and the ten datus take the plains, the rivers and the coast.

It is one of the politest conquests on record. That is very likely the point of it.

With the bargain made, Puti divides the island. Sumakwel, the wisest of the ten, gets the western side, the country later called Hamtic and now Antique. Paiburong takes Irong-Irong, which becomes Iloilo, and Bangkaya takes the north. Then the white chief does something leaders in stories seldom do. He leaves. He names Sumakwel as head of all the settlements, takes two of the datus and their people, and sails north again. They pass Mindoro and come to the shores of Taal in the south of Luzon, where those two settle. The Maragtas calls them forefathers of the Tagalogs, a claim nobody now defends. Puti himself turns his boat around and goes home to Borneo by way of Mindoro and Palawan. The story does not say what Makatunaw did when he saw him. It does not say anything more about him at all.

How old this tale is has been argued for a century. It reached most readers through a book called Maragtas, printed in Iloilo in 1907 by Pedro Alcántara Monteclaro, a local writer and official. He wrote in a blend of Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a, and he said plainly that he had put the book together from what the old people told him and from a few written papers he had seen, which he did not think very old. He gave no dates. An earlier and shorter account of the Bornean chiefs had been taken down by an Augustinian friar, Tomás Santarén, at Janiuay in Panay in 1858, so Monteclaro did not invent the story. He gave it its lasting shape.

Later writers did the rest. In 1947 the American anthropologist H. Otley Beyer described the Maragtas as an ancient document from before the Spanish came, and school textbooks followed him for decades. A date for the voyage, 1212, was attached from a separate and still later text. The historian William Henry Scott went through all of it in the 1960s. He found no manuscript older than the nineteenth century and no evidence for the dates. His judgement was that the legend may well keep the memory of some real crossing from Borneo, and that nothing more exact can be said. Puti is a hero of folk memory, written down late.

His strengths are the ordinary ones of a good chief. He can hold ten proud men together on open water, read a strange coast, and judge that a gold hat is cheaper than a war. He knows when a job is finished. His limits are just as plain. He cannot beat Makatunaw, so he runs from him. He founds nothing that bears his name, rules no part of Panay, and vanishes from the tale the moment his people are safe. He also has no say over what later ages did with him. Children across the Philippines learned his voyage as dated fact for two generations. A popular brand of vinegar carries the words Datu Puti too, though its makers say the name comes from a family surname and the colour of the product, and has nothing to do with him.

Each year at Malandog in Hamtic, on the Antique coast, boats put in to the grey sand and the landing of the datus is played out again for a crowd. The festival is called Binirayan, after the word for a sailing boat. A stone marker stands near the beach. The hat changes hands, the drums start, and the white chief buys the island all over again.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Datu Puti?

Datu Puti is the leader of the ten Bornean chiefs in the Maragtas, the founding legend of Panay in the Philippines. He leads the group away from the tyrant Makatunaw in Borneo and bargains with the Ati people for land. His name means the white chief.

Was Datu Puti a real person?

Datu Puti is a figure of legend, and no record of him is older than the nineteenth century. The story is best known from the Maragtas, a book printed in 1907 by Pedro Alcántara Monteclaro, and a shorter account was written down by the friar Tomás Santarén in 1858. The historian William Henry Scott judged that the legend may preserve the memory of a real crossing from Borneo, but that nothing exact can be proved.

What did Datu Puti pay for the island of Panay?

In the legend Datu Puti and the other datus paid the Ati chief Marikudo a salakot, a wide-brimmed hat, made of gold. Marikudo’s wife Maniwantiwan also demanded a gold necklace long enough to touch the ground. Some versions add brass basins and cloth.

What happened to Datu Puti after the datus settled in Panay?

Datu Puti left Panay once the settlers were safe. He put Datu Sumakwel in charge, sailed north with two other datus to Taal in Luzon, and then went back to Borneo by way of Mindoro and Palawan. The story says nothing about him after that.

Is the Datu Puti vinegar brand named after him?

The makers of Datu Puti vinegar say it is not. The brand began in 1975, and its name is said to join a family surname, Datu, with puti, the word for white. Many people still connect it with the legendary chief.

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