04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Zamboanga. Four ethnic groups were within this jurisdiction: Sama, Tausug, Yakan and Subanon.[62] The Sultanate of Maguindanao spread out from Cotabato toward Maranao territory, now Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur.[63] The Muslim societies evolved an Asiatic form of feudalism where land was still held in common but was private in use. This is clearly indicated in the Muslim Code of Luwaran. The Code contains a provision on the lease of cultivated lands. It, however, has no provision for the acquisition, transfer, cession or sale of land.[64] The societies encountered by Magellan and Legaspi therefore were primitive economies where most production was geared to the use of the producers and to the fulfillment of kinship obligations. They were not economies geared to exchange and profit.[65] Moreover, the family basis of barangay membership as well as of leadership and governance worked to splinter the population of the islands into numerous small and separate communities.[66] When the Spaniards settled permanently in the Philippines in 1565, they found the Filipinos living in barangay settlements scattered along water routes and river banks. One of the first tasks imposed on the missionaries and the encomenderos was to collect all scattered Filipinos together in a reduccion.[67] As early as 1551, the Spanish government assumed an unvarying solicitous attitude towards the natives.[68] The Spaniards regarded it a sacred "duty to conscience and humanity to civilize these less fortunate people living in the obscurity of ignorance" and to accord them the "moral and material advantages" of community life and the "protection and vigilance afforded them by the same laws."[69] The Spanish missionaries were ordered to establish pueblos where the church and convent would be constructed. All the new Christian converts were required to construct their houses around the church and the unbaptized were invited to do the same.[70] With the reduccion, the Spaniards attempted to "tame" the reluctant Filipinos through Christian indoctrination using the convento/casa real/plaza complex as focal point. The reduccion, to the Spaniards, was a "civilizing" device to make the Filipinos law-abiding citizens of the Spanish Crown, and in the long run, to make them ultimately adopt Hispanic culture and civilization.[71] All lands lost by the old barangays in the process of pueblo organization as well as all lands not assigned to them and the pueblos, were now declared to be crown lands or realengas, belonging to the Spanish king. It was from the realengas that land grants were made to non-Filipinos.[72] The abrogation of the Filipinos' ancestral rights in land and the introduction of the concept of public domain were the most immediate fundamental results of Spanish colonial theory and law.[73] The concept that the Spanish king was the owner of everything of value in the Indies or colonies was imposed on the natives, and the natives were stripped of their ancestral rights to land.[74] Increasing their foothold in the Philippines, the Spanish colonialists, civil and elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/36882 19/148