New Britain Herald Newspaper, April 14, 1927, Page 19

Princess Tarhata Kiram, the Moro girl who seems to have resisted all our efforts to civilize her and is apparently just as near savagery WIDE, white smile broke out on the ebony face of Jaramul Kiram IT, Sultan of Suly, the other day hopped off his throne and kicked out an absurd and undignified buck-and- wing. His unkingly outburst of joy left him looking in the general direction of Mecca, so he delivered himself of these words “Praise be to Allah and to the Prophet Mohammed! Tarhata's gone Sulu at last. She Mas cast out the American levils. She forgets the United-States and remembers Jolo. Once a Sulu always a Sulu.” Thus did his royal highness announce t his niece, the Princesy Tarhata Ki- m, had suddenly reverted to type in spite of all the efforts of the University Hlinois and other agencies of Amer- culture to send her back to the Philippines thoroughly and incurably Americanized. He wanted the whole world to know that the crstwhile queen of an American campus is now the harem bride of a dark-skinned Moro chieftain and that she had forever repudiated “the land of the free and the home of the brave” by going on the warpath agai the Fili- pino Constabulary, really a part of the Cnited Tarhata's ma American friends :ould not believe their eyes when recent press dispatches from Manila brought them the news that so elated her royal could no? imagine their smiling schoolmate out in the jungles of Moroland helping a lot of savages shoot down the representatives of the country she had seemed to take to her heart. What had gotten into her that she -ould so soon forget the respect for law and order that the professor of civics had taught her in the classroom at Illi- nois? How could she, with all the Amer- ican culture that she had absorbed so eagerly, become the leader of blood- thirsty Sulus who turned killers just be- cause the tax rate seemed a bit high? And had she not been taught that harem wives were sinful and indecent creatures? For days and days the newspaper dis- patches said the Constabulary soldiers had held their fire for fear of shooting the pretty young wife of Datu Tahil. For they are quite familiar with the fighting frenzy that slumbers so lightly in the island empire of the Sulus, and they did not want to touch off a general uprising. Finally the Princess disap- peared from the zone of action and the Constabulary put the Datu’s 200 war- riors to flight, sending 35 of them to the outstretched arms of Allah. A few days later she was captured, ill and exhausted. The young men and women who knew the Princess during her days at the Uni- versity of Illinois recall the sensation that the comely girl from the Philippines caused by her appearance on the campus and her miraculous transformation from A as he ever a homesick and seclf-conscious Moro to as charming and sophisti- cated a co-ed as one would care to hang a fraternity pin on. They remembered how quickly and easily she took to American ways, and her delicious, ringing laughter when they jokingly called her “Hattie the head-hunter” and “the only and original Sulu flapper.” And there was more truth than jest in that description of little Tarhata, be- cause she had her long locks, black and glistening as a raven's wing, trimmed to a boyish bob, rolled her stockings below a pair of dimpled, coffee-colored knees, and manipulated her powder-puft and lipstick with the smartest of them. She could blow better rings than the slickest “campus cowboy” on the dean’s list. Everybody liked *Hattie,” and her dormitory room became a sort of salon where her admirers gath- ered to make her Americanization both swift and complete. She stood well in her classes and was the belle of the evening at many a fraternity hop. Particularly did she enjoy giving her new-found friends the low- down on far-away Sulu, and she insisted that her grandfather was the toughest pirate that ever roamed the South Seas. For no reason at all, she warned, she was likely to go “juramentado,” which means to run amuck among Chris- tians, killing as many as possible before some one sends the fanatic to the Mo- hammedan seventh heaven. Her uncle, the Sultan, had strenuously objected to her coming to America, she said, because he feared that she would come back to Jolo full cf ideas that might be all right in America but all wrong in Moroland. Many letters that came from Tarhata after she had earned her ‘“‘sheepskin” and gone back to live in the royal house- hold of her Uncle Jaramul, seemed to prove that the Sultan’s {ears were well- grounded and that the Princess’ days in America had completely changed her viewpoint. “Uncle insists that I marry a high- brow Moro,” she wrote, “but I have told him that the man I marry must be all mine, that I will not share him with two or three other wives. Also, that I'll marry for love or not at all. He’s pretty wild at my independence, but I don’t care.” Other letters attested to her warm feeling for America and her longing to see all her campus companions. “Uncle turns his face toward Mecea several times a day,” she wrote, “and he insists that I keep up this silly Moslem custom. 1 hate to think what would happen to 0 How Princess Tafhata Went Back to the Philippines With Her Bobbed Head Full of American Culture Only to Become a Harem Bride and Lead the Savage Moros on the War Pagzm On the right, the crudely Built houses which are regarded as man- sions in Moroland and which only the very well-to-do can afford Moro dandy decked out in all his finery and look- ing so different from the collzge boys Princess Tarhata knew in this country A me if he knew that I'm really ing oft toward Urbana, Illinois.” Little wonder that the college chums of Princess Tarhata read with unbeliev- ing eyves the newspaper stories of her sudden plunge back into the pagan and the primiti It was hard to imagine their beloved “Hattie” falling in love with a dusky datu and going into his harem as Mrs. Tahil No. 4, even before the wife she displaced had been legally divorced. And it was even more diffi cult to picture her fighting in the jungle with a gang of Moro black men bent upon murdering the representative the country for whick she had confe: so much love and respect. It was remembered that she had often been very emphatic in her cor of the Moslem marriage laws. “In Sulu- land,” she had said, “we are expected to marry very young—the boys when th are 15 or 1 d the girls even younger. If I should marry a Moro, I could not have the man I loved unless my family gave their consent. And if I married against their wiches, my relatives would ignore me and I would become a social outcast until ~ crept into the mosque and - bmitted to a torrible beating at the hands of a Mohammedan priest of of ed jfem: . by Johnson Fetures, Not quite all the mem- bers of one the large of families which are the usual thing in the Sulu Archipelago, where race suicide is a thing unknown “Then, if means, I w oth 1 many support ould di- ing me to get 11 came to rance of And twice bride and him ¢ to keep respect of m I like your American Sul ttle iled from her uncle “Once a ke e truth u always a rl who seemed to g her own primitive | Her col £ of mate rememn the chums | fun customs” Sulula her room- cred th lu last Unive i ed her little year at to get down in nightie and repeat the popular Chri which begins, “Now I lay n prayer lown to sleep.” Were ti that believe was them and that turned her face toward Mecca six mocking retly imes toe. hipful words to 1 If she were a od havem wife to Datu Tahil and a dutiful nicce to Sultan Jaramul, then she would be even now observing the Mohammedan *“P " one of th of Islam, which from sunrise to s demands ct for a month. This is a severe test for the faithful, for they must not take a drop of water, it of food. They cannot smoke, nor even swallow saliva to relieve their parched oats, nor do anything that produces a pleasant sensation. Surely ordeal would be painfu for the tho had found so much delight stories that ure appeared at the the Filipino em to confirm all the re- s really “gone native.” ught cut the Princess und her living in a shack on the > of the jungle. She looked not at e flapper who, but a by > trim lit short months ago, cut classes at the s with the most col- te of her studen Her pretty wh ) the University of Illinc been filed two unsightly rows to be seen 1 the mouths of the most ignorant and Moros. Her trim little bob had grown out to a bushy black mop aracteristic of the Sulu harem Her bare toes pl prin d in the dust That her home is a far cry from her comfortable quarters in University Hall Urbana, Illinois, is shockingly appar- ent. She lives, cooks, eats and sleeps in 's one room—and there is a baby that cries in a crib covered with netting to keep out the jungle insects. The Princess looks years older than a girl of twenty-two. the s During her stay in America, Princess Tar- hata learned to enjoy jazz and ‘*he classic symphonies, but in her native land the music she most often hears is the jangly notes pro- duced by this queer, native “piano” The Princess’ uncle, the Sultan of Sulu—a first-class fighting man in spite of the fun we make of him in our comic operas Tarhata, the ex-co-ed, smiled and ap- peared to be perfectly contented with her primitive mode of life as the newest wife of a dark-skinned, hot-tempered Moro chieftain. But when her inter- er how she could so sud- ide the civilized customs learned to like in America, she became very earnest and emphatic “I know that all this must seem very strange to my many friends across the Pacific, but if I am to use my educa- tion for the good of my people, I must live as th that she And then, with some displ; she added, the bolo: Sulu needs to v of heat, took away weapons that the old enemy, the Filipino, frem walki il over him, 1in his stand- ing in the I am going to do what I can As furth nce that she has s| 3 ng influence of a for the aboriginal cus- tom. ith Sea island, the Princess 1 a good old primitive wed and pounded a nd in the company She is said to be good at the Cain-and-Abel style of fighting. This surly Sulu gentleman, by the way, is now in the hands of the authori- ties and faces a long term in prison for the uprising in which his Japper wife took so active a part. Which would seem to prove that America might have taught Princess Tarhata a few things, but could not up- root the Mohammedan and the Moro that rushed to the surface soon after she got back in her native element, college car recently blew up bit, ¢ dusky siren she fc of her h rage and band