The First Battle of Bud Dajo, also known as the Moro Crater Massacre, was a counterinsurgency action conducted by the United States Army and Marine Corps against the Moro people in March 1906, during the Moro Rebellion in the southwestern Philippines.
During the engagement, 750 men and officers, under the command of Colonel Joseph Wilson Duncan, assaulted the volcanic crater of Bud Dajo (Tausug: Būd Dahu), which was populated by 800 to 1,000 Tausūg villagers. According to Hermann Hagedorn (who was writing before World War II), the position held by the Moros was "the strongest which hostiles in the Philippines have ever defended against American assault." Although the engagement was a victory for the American forces, it was also an unmitigated public-relations disaster. Whether a battle or massacre, it was certainly the bloodiest of any engagement of the Moro Rebellion, with only six of the hundreds of Moro surviving the bloodshed.The Battle of Bud Dajo (archived from the original on 2008-05-09), chapter 19 of Swish of the Kris (archived from the original on 2008-02-02), by Vic Hurley. Estimates of American casualties range from fifteenPacifying the Moros: American Military Government in the Southern Philippines, 1899–1913 , Charles Byler, Ph.D to twenty-one killed and seventy wounded.
Whether the occupants of Bud Dajo were hostile to US forces is disputed, as inhabitants of Jolo Island had previously used the crater, which they considered sacred, as a place of refuge during Spanish assaults. Major Hugh Scott, the district governor of Sulu Province, where the incident occurred, recounted that those who fled to the crater "declared they had no intention of fighting, - ran up there only in fright, [and] had some crops planted and desired to cultivate them."The statement from Scott comes from: Gedacht, Joshua. "Mohammedan Religion Made It Necessary to Fire:" Massacres on the American Imperial Frontier from South Dakota to the Southern Philippines". In Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State. Edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009, pp. 397-409. Information on the use of craters as sites of refuge during Spanish attacks can be found in: Warren, James Francis. The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State, 2nd ed. Singapore: NUS Press, 2007. The description of the engagement as a "battle" is disputed because of both the overwhelming firepower of the attackers and the lopsided casualties. Author Vic Hurley wrote, "By no stretch of the imagination could Bud Dajo be termed a 'battle'". Mark Twain commented, "In what way was it a battle? It has no resemblance to a battle ... We cleaned up our four days' work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people."Twain, Mark. Mark Twain's Autobiography, volume 2. G. Wells, 1924. 199. A higher percentage of Moros were killed (99 percent) than in other incidents now considered massacres, such as the Wounded Knee Massacre. Some of those killed were women and children. Moro men in the crater who had arms possessed melee weapons. While fighting was limited to ground operations on Jolo, naval gunfire contributed significantly to the overwhelming firepower against the Moros.
Background
The first battle at Bud Dajo took place during the final days of General Leonard Wood's term as governor of the Moro Province. Wood's term was a time of great reform. Some of these reforms, including the abolition of slavery and the imposition of the cedula, as a registration poll tax, were unpopular with his Moro (Muslim) subjects. The cedula was especially unpopular, since the Moros interpreted it as a form of tribute, and according to Vic Hurley, Moro participation in the cedula was very low, even after 30 years of American occupation.The Formation of the Moro Province (archived from the original on 2008-05-12), chapter 18 of Swish of the Kris (archived from the original on 2008-02-02), by Vic Hurley. These reforms, coupled with the general resentment of foreign Christian occupiers, created a tense and hostile atmosphere during Wood's tenure, and the heaviest and bloodiest fighting during the American occupation of Mindanao and Sulu Province took place under his watch.
Although Moro hostilities died down during the latter days of Wood's governorship (the tenure of Wood's replacement, General Tasker H. Bliss, was a period of relative peace), it was in this tense atmosphere of Moro resentment that the events leading to the Battle of Bud Dajo played out. According to US President Theodore Roosevelt's friend and biographer Hermann Hagedorn, the Moros living in Bud Dajo were "the rag-tag-and-bobtail remnants of two or three revolts, the black sheep of a dozen folds, rebels against the poll tax, die-hards against the American occupation, outlaws recognizing no datto (ruler) and condemned by the stable elements among the Moros themselves." Vic Hurley, author of Swish of the Kris, adds that "the causes contributing to the battle of Bud Dajo were resentment over the curtailing of slave-trading, cattle-raiding, and women-stealing privileges of the Moros of Sulu." In contrast, Major Hugh Scott describes the occupants of Bud Dajo as harmless villagers seeking refuge from the upheaval on Jolo caused by the actions of American forces.
Road to Bud Dajo The chain of events leading to Bud Dajo began when a Moro named Pala ran amok in British-held Borneo. (The Moros differentiate between the religious rite of the juramentado and the strictly secular violence of the amoks; Pala's rampage was of the latter.) Pala then went to ground at his home near the city of Jolo (the seat of the Sultan of Sulu), on the island of Jolo. Colonel Hugh L. Scott, the governor of the District of Sulu, attempted to arrest Pala, but Pala's datu opposed this move. During the resulting fight, Pala escaped. He avoided capture for several months, setting up his own cotta and becoming a datu in his own right. Wood led an expedition against Pala but was ambushed by Moros from the Bud Dajo area with the help of Pala. Wood beat off the ambushers, and many of them found refuge in the volcanic crater of Bud Dajo. Wood determined that the Moros held too strong a position to assault with the forces at hand, and so he withdrew.
Bud Dajo lies from the city of Jolo and is an extinct volcano, above sea level, steep, conical, and with thickly forested slopes. Only three major paths led up the mountain, and the thick growth kept the Americans from cutting new paths. However, there were many minor paths known only to the Moros that would allow them to resupply even if the main paths were blocked. The crater at the summit is in circumference and easily defended. The mountain itself is in circumference, making a siege difficult.
Over the months that followed, the occupants of Bud Dajo were joined by more local Moros, bringing the population of the crater up to several hundred. Water was plentiful, and they began farming rice and potatoes. Scott sent the Sultan of Sulu and other high-ranking datus to ask the occupants of Bud Dajo to return to their homes, but they refused. Wood ordered an attack in February 1906, but Scott convinced him to rescind the order, arguing that the opposition of the surrounding datus would keep Bud Dajo isolated. Scott was worried that an attack on Bud Dajo would reveal just how easily defended it was, encouraging repeats of the standoff in the future. Unfortunately, occupants of Bud Dajo began raiding nearby Moro settlements for women and cattle. Although the datu of Jolo continued to condemn the occupants of Bud Dajo, popular support for a general uprising among the Moro commoners of Jolo began to develop.
The crisis at Bud Dajo occurred during a period of leadership transition in Moro Province. On February 1, 1906, Wood was promoted to the position of Commander of the Philippine Division and was relieved as commander of the Department of Mindanao-Jolo by General Tasker H. Bliss. However, Wood retained his position as civil governor of the Moro Province until sometime after the Battle of Bud Dajo. Colonel Scott was absent during part of the crisis, and Captain Reeves, the deputy governor of the Sulu District, served as his substitute.
Battle
On March 2, 1906, Wood ordered Colonel J. W. Duncan of the 6th Infantry Regiment (stationed at Zamboanga, the provincial capital) to lead an expedition against Bud Dajo. Duncan and Companies K and M took the transport Wright to Jolo. Governor Scott sent three friendly datus up the mountain to ask the Bud Dajo Moros to disarm and disband, or at least send their women and children to the valley. They denied these requests, and Scott ordered Duncan to begin the assault.
The assault force consisted of "272 men of the 6th Infantry, 211 [dismounted] men of the 4th Cavalry, 68 men of the 28th Artillery Battery, 51 Philippine Constabulary under the command of Capt. John R. White, 110 men of the 19th Infantry and 6 sailors from the gunboat Pampanga." The battle began on March 5, as mountain guns fired 40 rounds of shrapnel into the crater. On March 6, Wood and Bliss arrived but left Duncan in direct command. Captain Reeves, the acting governor of the District of Sulu, made one last attempt to negotiate with the occupants of the crater. He failed, and the Americans drew up into three columns and proceeded up the three main mountain paths. The columns were under the command of Major Omar Bundy, Captain Rivers, and Captain Lawton. The going was tough, with the troops ascending a 60% slope, using machetes to clear the path.
At 0700, March 7, Major Bundy's detachment encountered a barricade blocking the path, below the summit. Snipers picked off Moros, and the barricade was shelled with rifle grenades. The barricade was then assaulted in a bayonet charge. Some of the Moros staged a strong defense, then charged with kalises (the traditional wavy-edged sword of the Moros) and spear. About 200 Moros died in this engagement, and Major Bundy's detachment suffered heavy casualties. Captain Rivers' detachment also encountered a barricade and took it after several hours of fighting, during which a spear severely wounded Rivers himself. Captain Lawton's detachment advanced up a poor path, so steep in places that the Americans proceeded on hands and knees. They were harassed by Moros hurling boulders and occasionally rushing to attack hand-to-hand with krises. Lawton finally took the defensive trenches on the crater rim by storm.
Moro defenders retreated into the crater, and fighting continued until nightfall. During the night, the Americans hauled mountain guns to the crater's edge with block and tackle. At daybreak, the American guns (both the mountain guns and the guns of the Pampanga) opened up on the Moros' fortifications in the crater. American forces then placed a "Machine Gun... in position where it could sweep the crest of the mountain between us and the cotta," killing all Moros in the crater. One account claims that the Moros, armed with kalises and spears, refused to surrender and held their positions. Some of the defenders rushed the Americans and were cut down. The Americans charged the surviving Moros with fixed bayonets; the Moros fought back with their kalis, barung, improvised grenades made with black powder and seashells. Despite the inconsistencies among various accounts of the battle (one in which all occupants of Bud Dajo were gunned down, another in which defenders resisted in fierce hand-to-hand combat), all accounts agree that few, if any, Moros survived.