West Visayas

Who holds it

Title

No overall chief: the datus (chiefs) and elders of the river-mouth and valley communities, each answering for their own people

Since

not pinned

Born

not known

Family

not known

Confidence

low

Nothing is written about the rulers or headmen of this country for 1200. The structure is read from geography and from ethnography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

What it holds

• Rice plains of the Panay rivers
• The Iloilo strait landings
• Gold work in the graves (the wealth of the coast)

Allies and rivals

The Panay datus (Oton and Panay datus).

How things stand that morning

Not described for 1200; the villages are presumed to be farming, fishing and selling what the rivers and forests give.

Wealth

Rice, gold work, cloth; no figures.

Military

Not known; boats, spears, shields and blowpipes in the later record. No numbers.

Threats

• Feuds and raiding between villages
• Flood, drought or fire
• A change in the trade that comes by sea

Places of note

• Oton: South coast burial and settlement site.
• Iloilo: Strait port (a later name).
• Kalibo: North coast (a later name).
• Bacolod: Negros coast (a later name).

Where the sources disagree

• The ethnic names used here (Ibanag, Ilocano, Tagalog, Bisaya, Maranao and the rest) are later labels, most of them recorded by the Spanish from the 1560s on; the ethnic map of 1200 is not known. The word barangay (a community under a datu) is also of the Spanish record.
• The Maragtas and the Panay 'confederation of Madya-as' are 1907 compilations, not read back.

Evidence: Geography and later ethnography only; no text of the period describes this country.

On the map: A rough outline of the people's country; the real extent of any village group in 1200 is not known, and nothing here is a border.