In 1917, after a storm and flash flood swept through eastern Mindanao, a woman from the Manobo people walked along the banks of the Wawa River near Esperanza. There, among the debris left by the flood, she found a small golden figure.
The object weighed around 2 kilograms and stood only 178 millimeters tall. More than a century later, it is known as the Agusan Image, or Golden Tara of Agusan.
It remains one of the clearest physical traces of the Hindu-Buddhist networks that once connected the southern Philippines with the wider Southeast Asian world, including the Nusantara.
A Discovery Washed Ashore
The image did not stay with its finder for long. It passed to local Vice Governor Blas Baklagon and later became collateral for a debt to the Agusan Coconut Company.
Its significance soon reached the academic world. In 1918, H. Otley Beyer, head of the anthropology department at the University of the Philippines, described it as the “single most spectacular find ever made in Philippine archaeology.” Beyer would later become known as the father of Philippine anthropology.
The image itself offered few easy answers. It was made of 21-karat gold, with small amounts of copper and silver. The figure sits cross-legged in a lotus position, wearing an elaborate headdress and body ornaments.
Its style resembles Hindu-Buddhist images found across Southeast Asia. Its age, however, remains disputed. Some researchers place it in the ninth or tenth century CE. Others date it to the 13th or 14th century.
Then there is the question of who the figure actually represents.
A Goddess Without a Single Name
For more than a century, researchers have offered different answers. Beyer believed the image was made by local artisans in Mindanao who had adopted the style of Nganjuk images from the early Majapahit period. He associated the figure with the Hindu tradition.
Art historian Juan R. Francisco later placed it closer to Mahayana Buddhism. He suggested that the figure was Tara, a bodhisattva of compassion widely worshipped across Southeast Asian Buddhist networks.
Rob Linrothe, a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, proposed another identification. He linked the figure to Vajralasya, one of four offering goddesses in the Vajradhatu, or Diamond Realm, mandala of Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism.
Linrothe based the identification on the figure’s distinctive pose, with both hands resting on the hips.
The debate has never produced a single agreed identity.
A Figure That Crossed a Maritime World
What is less disputed is the wider world reflected by the image. Its presence provides physical evidence of Hindu-Buddhist culture in the Philippines and of the maritime connections linking the islands with Southeast Asia. Those networks included Srivijaya, Majapahit, and other kingdoms of the Nusantara.
The resemblance to Nganjuk images in East Java raises another possibility. The image may have been made in Mindanao by local artisans who adopted Javanese artistic styles. Or it may have been made by artisans from Java who later settled in the region.
There is some historical context for the second possibility. Records indicate that miners from Java were active around Agusan-Surigao in the 14th century.
Either way, the image points to a southern Philippines that was connected to its neighbors by trade, religion, and culture. These links existed long before Islam and, later, the Spanish reached the Philippine islands.
From a Riverbank to Chicago
The image’s next journey was far removed from the Wawa River. After it passed into the hands of an Agusan resident who owed a debt, there were concerns that the object might be melted down simply for its gold.
Louise Wood, wife of Leonard Wood, the American Governor-General of the Philippines at the time, led an effort to save it. Curator Fay-Cooper Cole and professor Shailer Mathews also supported the fundraising effort.
In 1922, the image was purchased for 4,000 Philippine pesos. It was then sent to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where it remains housed and displayed today.
A Century Later, Still Far from Mindanao
The question of where the image belongs has not disappeared. Calls for its return to the Philippines have been made repeatedly, including by the late former Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and descendants of the Manobo woman who found it.
They argued that the image is a national cultural heritage object. Its purchase took place while the Philippines was under American colonial rule and in unequal economic conditions.
The Field Museum has reportedly been open to returning the image if it receives a formal and strong request from the Philippine government. As of October 2025, however, no such formal request had been submitted.
For now, the small golden figure from the banks of the Wawa River remains thousands of kilometers from Mindanao. In Chicago, it continues to preserve a material trace of the Hindu-Buddhist world that once reached the southern Philippines.
