MOPPIYON KAHI DIID PATOY | Kidapawan’s Real Foundation Date
KIDAPAWAN CITY (MindaNews / 18 August 2026) — When was Kidapawan really founded?
Since 2017, the city government has been celebrating 18 August as Kidapawan’s Foundation Anniversary.
The basis of this date is Executive Order No. 82 of 1947, which formally created — among other towns — the Municipality of Kidapawan. To the extant Municipal District of Kidapawan was added areas that are now the towns of M’lang, Tulunan, and portions of Makilala — then nominally under the jurisdiction of the Municipal District of Buluan.
Setting Kidapawan’s founding year in 1947 (and foundation date on 18 August) would make it 79 years old this year.
But it did not always celebrate that date.
Before 2017, Kidapawan had been celebrating 12 February — the date of its conversion into a city — as its “foundation anniversary.”
This did not sit well with many who had lived in the town long before 1998, the year of cityhood. They felt that history was being unwittingly erased — one old timer pointed out the incongruity of him being older than the town where he was born.
Indeed, there is a reason why many in Kidapawan still call City Hall the “Municipio” to hark back to the days before cityhood.
Much of these grumblings, however, remained in private — that is until I spoke out about it publicly online in 2016. To my delight, the City Tourism Office (then headed by former Municipal Councillor Joey Recimilla) was responsive to the public feedback, and the year after, 18 August — which had already been celebrated as Timpupo (Kidapawan’s now iconic fruit festival) — was labelled “Foundation Anniversary.” 12 August became “Charter Day.”
In truth, Kidapawan had been celebrating its “foundation” on February long before 1998. For reasons now lost to collective memory, the municipality started celebrating its annual festival on 13 to 14 February in the 1970s (my theory, based on the minutes of one municipal council session, was that they moved it to these dates in order to celebrate it with Valentine’s Day).
A hypothesis worth interrogating — and one still up for answering as the people involved are still alive — is that 12 February may have actually been timed as the date of cityhood in order to align with the already extant schedule of the town’s fiesta.
So is Kidapawan’s foundation date 18 August 1947?
As far as the municipality goes, that date would be accurate. I have no intention of pushing for a change on the date of the festivities.
But I do find the need to recall the history of the town before it became a municipality.
That would take us back to the beginnings of the Municipal District of Kidapawan, the political entity from whence the municipality — and subsequently the city — was created.
There is clear administrative continuity between the municipal district and the municipality. Kidapawan’s only municipal district president, Datu Siawan Ingkal, would go on to be elected Kidapawan’s first vice mayor, while several of the known municipal district councilors would also become municipal councilors (although no full list of the municipal district’s officials survives, so what is known is based on oral tradition). EO No. 82 of 1947 also makes it clear that the municipality is being created out of the municipal district.
If we were then to base foundation on the municipal district, what would be Kidapawan’s foundation date? Things, from here, get murkier.
There is an extant law creating the Municipal District of Kidapawan: Department of Mindanao and Sulu Executive Order No. 9. Issued by then Department Governor Ponciano Reyes, it is dated 8 March 1917.
The law defines the territory of the municipal district as “beginning at the northeastern corner of the Municipal District of Kabakan, following a line approximately east through the summit of Mt Tinanon to the crest of the Apo mountain range, then following the crest of the Apo range along the Cotabato-Davao boundary line generally south to the sitio of Bulatukan, thence approximately northwest to a point at the junction of the Palugan and Saging rivers, then approximately west following the Saging River to the eastern boundary of the Municipal District of Liguasan: said territory being bounded on the west by the Municipal Districts of Kabakan, Pikit-Pagalungan and Liguasan.” This area would today encompass all of North Cotabato’s Second Congressional District plus portions of Matalam.
Would 8 March 1917 then be Kidapawan’s real foundation date?
This would be problematic, because documents earlier than 1917 already mention Kidapawan, implying it had already been created before EO No. 9 was enacted. The Executive Order itself suggests there were earlier creating laws — Executive Orders No. 14 of 1915 and 7 and 14 of 1916 — which were repealed in lieu of EO No. 9 (I still struggle to get hold of copies of those orders).
So while EO No. 9 of 1917 may be the oldest law we know to date creating Kidapawan, it is almost certain that Kidapawan was created earlier.
Local archival data strongly indicates this: the 1951 account of Kidapawan history briefly narrated by Datu Siawan Ingkal to the Municipal Council (the earliest account of Kidapawan history extant) states that he was appointed in 1914. Indeed, on 1 September of that year the Province of Cotabato was created, and the law creating it — Philippine Commission Act No. 2408 — also mandated the organization of municipal districts.
Which is why, while EO No. 9 puts the legal founding of the Municipal District of Kidapawan on 8 March 1917, I find it more plausible to put it on 1 September 1914.
So is this Kidapawan’s foundation date at last?
Again, evidence suggests otherwise. While “Kidapawan” does not appear any earlier in documents than 1914, we get American anthropologist Faye-Cooper Cole’s mysterious word “Tigdapaya,” which appears in his 1913 book The Wild Tribes of Davao District.
“‘To the south and southwest of Mt. Apo,” writes Cole, “and west of Digos, are seven settlements, the inhabitants of which are known as Obo or Tigdapaya.” That location corresponds roughly to what would become the Municipal District of Kidapawan — and indeed, the area is home to the Obo Monuvu. The word “tigdapaya” sounds remarkably like “tigdapawan,” one of the proposed etymologies of the town’s name (transmitted by the late Datu Basinon Ebboy).
The identity of those Seven Settlements of the Tigdapaya is a big mystery, and their establishment an even bigger question mark.
Datu Siawan Ingkal himself, in his 1951 account, indicates Kidapawan history does not begin with him, but with his father, the enigmatic Datu Ingkal Ugok.
In Datu Siawan’s account, Datu Ingkal had been “appointed Capitan” by a certain Col. Stevens in 1908. The identity of this Col. Stevens is another big mystery, as is the nature of this “appointment.” Although it is known that in the years leading to and following 1908 the Americans had been organizing what are called Tribal Wards (colonial administrative units for largely unconquered areas, nominally headed by a local leader friendly to the Americans). No document has yet emerged naming Kidapawan a tribal ward, although the Geological Reconnaissance Survey Map of 1915 (with data gathered the years preceding) labels the area of what is today Kidapawan with “Datu Incal” (in the manner of tribal wards).
Kidapawan’s real foundation date, then, would be the exact date in 1908 when Datu Ingkal Ugok was appointed to this colonial position his son calls “Capitan” — and it is a date that has remained elusive.
What we can be certain of, however, is that in 2028 Kidapawan would be a century and a score in formal colonial existence as a local government unit. And because its roots go back to its indigenous political structure, it has existed in the area in one form or another since time immemorial.
Our roots, while we may not see it, run very deep.
[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Karlo Antonio G. David has been writing the history of Kidapawan City for the past thirteen years. He has documented seven previously unrecorded civilian massacres, the lives of many local historical figures, and the details of dozens of forgotten historical incidents in Kidapawan. He was invested by the Obo Monuvu of Kidapawan as “Datu Pontivug,” with the Gaa (traditional epithet) of “Piyak nod Pobpohangon nod Kotuwig don od Ukaa” (Hatchling with a large Cockscomb, Already Gifted at Crowing). The Don Carlos Palanca and Nick Joaquin Literary Awardee has seen print in Mindanao, Cebu, Dumaguete, Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, and Tokyo. His first collection of short stories, “Proclivities: Stories from Kidapawan,” came out in 2022.]
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