Samal - History and Cultural Relations

Linguistic evidence suggests that Sama speakers began to disperse, sometime in the first millennium A.D. , from an original homeland located in the islands and coastal littoral separating southwestern Mindanao from the northeastern islands of Sulu. While some groups moved northward, settling on Sibuguey Bay and along the Zamboanga coast of Mindanao, most moved south and westward, establishing themselves along the main Sulu Archipelago, southward to Cagayan Sulu and the eastern Borneo coast. A major impetus behind this movement appears to have been a rapid growth of Chinese trade, beginning in early Sung times, and the attraction of the area's rich marine resources. When these migrations began, the Sama appear to have incorporated a wide range of ecological variation, from land-based to strongly sea-oriented groups. However, with the rise of Tausug hegemony in Sulu, beginning in the thirteenth century, ecological specialization seems to have intensified, with the dominant Tausug assimilating the more land-based groups, particularly in Siasi and eastern Jolo, leaving the Sama numerically dominant only in the smaller, mainly coralline islands near the northern and southern ends of the archipelago. The subsequent founding of the Sulu sultanate in the fifteenth century, and the related expansion of maritime trade, appear to have accelerated this southward spread of Sama speakers. While some groups settled the western coast of Sabah, where they came under the loose jurisdiction of the Brunei sultanate, others moved eastward through the Straits of Makassar to southern Sulawesi. From here, their subsequent scattering over much of eastern Indonesia appears to have occurred within the last 300 years and was closely bound up with the development of a trepang (bêche-de-mer) trade and the expanding economic and political influence of Bugis and Makassarese traders. Later, with the rise of the Tausug port of Jolo as a major entrepôt for slaves, Samal living in the islands of the Balanguingui group and along the southern shores of Mindanao emerged as a major piratical force. From bases, particularly on Balanguingui Island, Samal slavers carried out annual raids on coastal settlements from Luzon to the central Moluccas. In 1848 Spanish forces destroyed the main Samal bases on Balanguingui Island, and, by the end of the century, European intervention broke the power of the Sulu sultanate, ending its role as an independent polity. Following the imposition of American colonial rule in 1899, the sultanates of Sulu and Mindanao were shorn of secular power and their domains were brought under the direct administrative control of Manila. However, resistance to central rule has continued. Since the early 1970s the Sulu Archipelago has become the site of intense secessionist conflict. The ensuing civil war, which reached its peak in the mid-1970s, has resulted in a massive dislocation of peoples. Tens of thousands of Sama have migrated or fled to Zamboanga, Tawitawi, and the Sibutu island group or crossed the Malaysian border into eastern Sabah. At the same time, large numbers of Tausug have moved from Jolo and Siasi, centers of Islamic-secessionist fighting, into the formerly Sama islands of Tawitawi and Sibutu, forcing large numbers of Sama further westward into Sabah. Here their presence, as refugees, threatens an already precarious balance of ethnically defined political alignments.