Chapter XII

Chapter XIIBeliefs and superstitions of these islandsThe general condition of these islands is paganism. From Sangil to Samboangan, the dwellers along the beach follow the law of Mahomet, as well as those of the islands of Basilan and Joló. This last is the metropolis of the false religion, and the Mecca of this archipelago; for there is the tomb of their first master, concerning whom the caciques [i.e., Kasis], for the credit of his deceits, have been establishing innumerable fables, which have already become a lying tradition in this century. One is thathe came from Paradise with three others, of whom one went to Java, and another to Burney, and the other two landed at Joló, and thence one went to Mindanao. He of Mindanao was ill received; and because of that, and of having been shipwrecked in the sea by driving on a reef, he went in anger to an island to become a hermit, walking upon the water. But he who was wrecked in a ship could ill keep his footing in the water. Such is the character of lies, that some are quite contrary to others. The outfit that he carried consisted of a net, and it is said that he caught fish on the mountain with it, by dragging it over the ground. But if he found fish on the mountain then the fish surely could not escape him, unless indeed it were a flying-fish. When his followers went to seek him, Satan had already carried him away, and they found only the net—and that stretched out, for it had been placed to dry. From that point they took occasion to discuss so disconnected bits of nonsense as we have mentioned. Thereupon he who remained in Joló obtained the chair of the evil [doctrine], and, as he is accredited with not fewer deceits, he was able to authorize his person and his doctrine with the barbarians; for he also gave them to understand that he could get fresh water from the sea, that he could sail on land, and could establish fisheries on the mountain, as did the other. The use of these errors gave authority for the common people to invent others. They believe that the enchanted boat which they never saw, and whose anchorage they never knew, still exists. The respect that his deceits gained him in life became ignorant and infamous adoration at his death. A sepulcher was erected for him, which became themausoleum of his memory, and the Mecca of his deceits. They erected it on the famous hill [of Joló], and it was very elegant.28At its foot they planted the singular fruit which they call the king’s fruit,29which is unique in this archipelago, and of which no one ate except himself, although for devotion the shells were given to the others. As we said, they planted many jasmines, and made their defenses there, so that animals might not defile the mausoleum. As an entrance to it, there was arranged in front of it a little house which was placed at the beginning of the stockade, as if it were an entrance into the well of St. Patrick. There they made their offerings, all of which went to the benefit of the prebendaries of the house, who were generally of the blood of the hypocrite. Thence they took their auguries for the war, for, putting water in a vase, together with some earth from the sepulcher, if it became bitter to the taste the outcome would be bad; but if sweet, it would be happy. It is said that this test was made for the war waged on them by Don Sebastian, in consequence of which the king was always inclined to treat for peace.By the entrance of our forces upon the hill, that place lost its worship and esteem; for the soldiers turned it all upside down, and dug it up in the hope of finding some treasure, and found no trace of a human body. The Indians were terrified at their boldness, and asked whether those who dared to do so much would not die. Thereupon, those peoplewere left with only the staff [of that teacher], which the Kasis [caciques] keep; for that is the staff of all virtues, and in going out with it (which is at the time of any necessity), all make it great reverence, and attend to all that is asked of them. For if they do not do so, he excommunicates them, with two blows with it which he gives on the house or the boat, and there can be neither health in the one or good luck in the other. All these are the artifices of cupidity, which holds them fast in a deceitful fear by vain terrors.The other relic is the cap,30which is the hereditary possession of the kings, and to swear by it is to use the sanction of a great sacrament.Notwithstanding so many lies that are made up to sustain this deceit, there are but few who esteem it; and in general they are all atheists, and those who have any religion are sorcerers. For as Moros, beyond not eating pork, and practicing circumcision, and [having] a multiplicity of women, they know not anything. They drink wine more than we do, and all their happiness consists in drunken revels—[to them] a positive act of greatness; and thus all their knightly deeds consist in emptying more or fewer jars [of wine], and there is a wedding in which they empty two hundred. All their festivals consist in this. They live in all respects like men without any law who do not know God, and without any mode of worship, and unmindful that there is suchin the world. All regard the law as little more or less, and, according to the land they inhabit, follow its customs and laws. Accordingly they are neither Moors, heathen, nor Christians, but barbarous atheists. Corralat, who has civilized his country somewhat, has his mosque, and makes his people attend it. But when they leave their village, each one does as he pleases—except some of the chiefs, who, following the example of the king, have made it a point of honor to appear to be Moors. But the common people, assuredly, lay no stress on that point.What they believe in thoroughly are omens, which are almost general in all the islands. There are many of them: of birds, like the limocon;31of insects, like the lizard; of accidental occurrences, like sneezing; of happenings, like deaths or earthquakes; of observances at time of sowing, and of reaping, and of the hunt—all of these have their observances, which they fulfil in order to have luck in the work; for they believe that without these it will be unlucky, and without any profit. Therefore, they do not undertake those things, since in many districts it is considered an omen when anyone asks for a portion of what may be caught (as for instance, of the hunter or fisher), if we say to him when he goes to try his luck: “Divide with me what you shall catch.” They consider that as a bad omen, and return to their house, for they believe that they will catch nothing.Those who are atheists knowingly are the dwellers in mountains; for they have no mosques, orshrines, or any method of praying to God. Those upon whom they call in their illnesses are their ancestors, saying “Alas, my mother!” or “my grandfather.” That is rather the natural expression of pain than a prayer in which they experience any efficacy. Where there are some to whom the devil talks (which was more usual in their antiquity), such people offer him their sacrifices,32and the Indianshave recourse to them in their illnesses, so that they could make the same efforts for them. Today the Christian truth has obscured the falsity of hell. At most, the descendants of those ministers of the devil, who were generally women, do what they saw them do without the devil taking any notice of them or talking to them. Others, who lay but small stress on all that, do what they heard said was the custom in the days of their antiquity, let happen what would. But they do it with so little earnestness that it appears to be levity rather than religion. With the same fervor they follow any other rule, so that they always remain without any law, unless it be where the energy and incessant constancy of the missionaries has made them forget their ancient customs, and with continual instruction has made it easy for them to accept the new things of our holy faith.In Caraga there was a barbarous custom to make their ships lucky, namely, to vow to them the firsttime upon some name, which was generally the name of one of their captives.That which has great value in all parts is sorcery; and they hold it in such high esteem that the father hides it from the son, and unless they receive a great profit they refuse to communicate any secret of it. The famous sorcerers are feared, although there is no one who is not ashamed of being called thus, and the word “sorcerer” is one of the insulting words of these natives. My judgment from seeing these [sorceries], so alike, is that they are implicit compacts made with their ancestors. For it also seems impossible that there are herbs of so powerful poison that they can kill so instantly that some persons kill, with only the breath alone by chewing those herbs; and others, by burying those herbs where one has to pass. They also use figures, which they dedicate to him whom they wish to harm, and these accordingly torment him; the figure continues to aggravate the evil upon the sorcerer’s enemy. Others work by letters, and that is peculiar to the Moro Kasis [caciques], although the most of all this is fabulous; but as they imagine that it is true, for any accident for which they find no remedy, and of whose cause they are ignorant, they throw the blame on the sorcerer. It is recounted of the king of Burney that, on learning the name of one, he can kill him if he chooses. Sargento-mayor Pedro Duran Monforte having made war in his land, the king was informed of his name, and said that since he knew his name, therefore Monforte could not live much longer, and with that he consoled his people. But thanks to God, the sargento-mayor has been living for three years since that threat. Thus are all their affairs.He who unites the excellency of a powerful sorcerer to Mahometan ardor is King Corralat. He causes the fish to enter his boat. While one of our fathers was in his boat, a fish leaped in; the king picked it up and, giving it to the father, said: “This is for the father.” It is also related that he makes a piece of artillery float on the surface of the water by placing an oar in its mouth. He has a saker, which according to report, when fired, serves him as a good or evil augury. The fact is, that he talks very familiarly with the devil. According to the tale of a Spaniard (and one for which he vouched to me), when he was going from Samboangan on a certain embassy, just as he entered the river the favorite of Corralat told him that, the night previous, his king had asked him whether any ship were to be seen. To his negative answer the king said to him: “Then take note that three ships will arrive tomorrow, and one of them will be Spanish.” That was a fact, for two ships from Java entered, and that of the said Spaniard. Thereupon the favorite exclaimed: “Great Saint Corralat, there is no other truth.” With such things he has established so much credit that if God do not bury his body in the depths [of the sea], the Mindanaos will worship him and will found another house of Mecca, such as they had in Joló. With that he has become a greater king than any of his forbears; for their fear of him is incredible, as they recognize in him one who has superior power to avenge himself. Consequently, they do not dare undertake anything against his will; for they regard it as certain that they will be unlucky. Since the devil has been so advantaged by that way, he manages to make their fears come out true at times, by which credit for the others is assured.Chapter XIIIThe moderation of their conduct, and the sobriety of their livingAmong all the Indians it is a general fact that in what relates to their own persons natural law is more conspicuous, and has a more firmly established empire, than have the nations. Part of that is founded on the slothfulness of their natures, and part on the rudeness of their civilization; the former makes them content with little, and the latter causes them to ignore the niceties of art. Their food proves the first well; and the havoc that they cause, the second. The food is very poor among the wealthy, and requires little labor; for they neither know condiments nor for that purpose are drugs valued among them, of the use of all which they are ignorant. Both slave and ruler, plebeian and prince, eat bread; for, since that consists of a little boiled rice, one cannot eat it more adorned than the other. Since all of them are bakers of this bread, he who wishes to clean it better eats it whiter. He who has no slaves to relieve him from that eats it as he chooses; and, consequently, there is no one who does not know how to cook his food. For they are under the daily necessity, even the richest, of making it; and, as ostentation in ordinary life is so little, it is unavoidable that service is lacking to them on their voyages and navigations, so that they are forced to use their own hands. Those who do not obtain rice—either because the land does not bear it, or because it is limited in any year—eat of many roots, which supply the lack fully, and which require no other preparation than boiling. He who is so well served that he obtains a little fish, venison, or pork, with water and salt alone makes his stew,without the knowledge of other kinds of pottages. In order to give their food a sharp flavor, they are wont to cook it with some herbs of a sour taste. Consequently, in the seasoning of their food they consume nothing, so that they save the cost of butter, oil, vinegar, and all spices. They are accustomed to make theirpuches[i.e., a sort of pap] andpoleadas[i.e., a sort of fritter] from cocoanut milk and the honey made from sugarcane, which are their preserves and royal cakes. But such is at a great wedding or at a feast, where their desire for ostentation arouses their endeavors. Such were presented to me by the king of Joló, Panguian Bachal, while I was visiting at his court. They consisted of a half-dozen small cakes made of rice flour and kneaded with cocoanut-milk, and baked until they turned dark, so that they appeared to be cinnamon to the sight. In fact the color was due to the toasting and to a preserve, like turpentine, made from the fruit of the durion with honey made from sugarcane. This is enough to turn the strongest stomachs—as it were, the chief dainty for the stomach of a bull—oppressive, as it was all night to the Queen mother;33and we satisfied ourselves with looking at it.Their clothing is very simple, without stiffening or linings. All are dressed after the same style, and innovations due to curiosity are not allowed. As the country is so hot, they dress very loosely, a fact which makes the cutting out very easy. Each one is the tailor of his own garments. This is the reason why the Indians are so lacking in the communal idea, and are so hostile to assembling and uniting in villages;for since their misery and laziness make them content with the easiest and most natural, which all obtain, they do not need one another. For in each house are found all the trades, and no one makes use of them unless his own necessity compels him. If one goes to fish, he is content with what will satisfy either his appetite or his necessity; and the desire of acquiring does not make him break with his laziness in order to work.Returning to their clothes, the stuffs worn are generally common to nobles, and plebeians, kings and slaves, and there is no difference between them—except it be in something extraordinary, in which the obligation and ostentation of their chief persons induces them to depart from their accustomed use. At such times they are wont to wear silks and very beautiful stuffs, with buttons and gold lace. Their krises (which are their inseparable weapons) have gilded scabbards and hilts of massy gold. I have seen some of them which were valued at nine slaves each, all covered with precious stones and perhaps encrusted with pearls. But in daily appearance all resemble one another, both in the garments in which they dress and in the fashions that they employ. These clothes consist of breeches and short jacket [ropilla]—or skirt, to be more accurate. That is not worn over a shirt, for with them the first garment is not the shirt, but the skirt, for it is all one. Sometimes they wear a jacket with long skirts cut in the French style; which, although it can be buttoned, is generally worn open, with the breast exposed. In this particular this nation is quite different from the others of this region. They use another style of cut; the skirts and sleeves each ending in a point, andthe ends which ought to close over the bosom are brought together in double points, fastened either with a button or with a knot, so that almost all the breast is left open. The breeches are full and white, resembling those which the Spaniards wear for the sake of cleanliness under their black ones. They are girt with a bit of native linen, so long that after having been knotted it hangs from the waist to the knees; and it serves to make their garb more decent than it would be because of the meagerness and thinness of the breeches. Or if they do not have that, then they use two brazas’ length of the same cloth or silk, which at its full width they wind about the body, joined in front with one end crossed below the other. In that manner they cover the breeches entirely, and the clothing is much more decent. In this usage, the gala costumes have special elaboration, and it displays their ostentation; for they are wont to wear cloth that is valued at thirty or forty reals of eight. They also wear breeches of the Malay fashion, which are closed like ours, although they are not so tight. It is the rule that they must be of silk with a gold fringe below, or with border and buttons of the same which among these people is always of filigree or of solid gold. In that they consider only ostentation, without any risk of waste.On the head, in the Moorish style, is worn a turban. Its use throughout the Indias is general, but among these people inviolable. I do not know whether it is because even their hearts are tinged with their cursed worship, or because of hatred to our nation and to our customs, or because of flattery to their natural arrogance—through which they will never, of themselves, come to depreciate their ownthings. Even yet throughout the islands, those who are esteemed as chiefs are ashamed of appearing without hats.The clothing of the women is plainer, and such that it becomes indecent; for from the small mantas or textiles of these regions, which are all very thin, they make a sack nine palmos long and open at both ends. They gird this in at the waist as much as may be necessary, so that it falls to the feet; what is left they allow to fall over the legs, and it does not even reach to the knees, or necessarily serve for the decency which modesty requires. They adjust it by drawing it close to one side of the body, and by making folds on the other side of all the extra width in proportion to their body. This sack, which by day is a garment—so shameful to decency, because it so ill satisfies it—serves at night for mattress, sheets, and curtain. For on retiring they ungird the sack, and the part which they doubled about the knees they put up to the head. That is all the opulence and comfort that their beds can boast of, which are made of a thin mat. These are their Holland and Rouen linens, which serve for their opulence and their fastidious cleanliness. That is their whole wealth of quilts and covers, which protect them from the cold and from the mosquitoes. All is so exactly adapted to necessity, that there is no difference between the chief women and the slaves—as I saw in Joló in the queen herself, and in Samboangan in many other women, not inferior to her in vanity. However, the women of highest rank, on retiring let fall a curtain without a covering. And that is all their ostentation and the necessary obligation of modesty for the protection from sight of those who arecareless concerning their manner of sleeping, in houses where there is no division of apartments, and where there can be no rooms for the multitude that inhabit them, and where the others throw themselves down pellmell on the floor. At most, the master is protected by that little grandeur. This is in regard to the bed, for in dress no difference is known.The gala dress of the women of this nation consists wholly of the shirt [sayuelo] which is made in the style usual to the Indians. It is however, drawn close about the breasts, and the sleeves are very long, at times each sleeve taking three or four varas of cloth. The sleeve is gathered at the wrist in a very fine and graceful plait, as the goods that they wear are so delicate. They heighten that gala dress with the wealth of gold, the use of which among these Indias extends to the wrists, which they cover with bracelets, either solid or hollow, and a finger in width. On days of great display they generally wear three or four pairs. The work is beautiful, and these add much to their gay and festive appearance; and they show off the arm loaded with such rich bracelets. For cloaks or mantles they wear textiles of fine silk, and at times of gold [tissue], which they callpatolas34which is a very beautiful and rich kind of goods. Generally, when they leave the house they all wear very long black cloaks; that partly moderates the ugliness and utter indecency of their dress—which of itself is, I know not whether more ugly or more immodest, with its sack above mentioned, which serves them as shirt and petticoat, without its having any distinction either for station, rank, or display.The houses in which they reside have what is sufficient for their shelter and poor lodging. They have no salons where they can walk, or higher stories where they can amuse themselves, than that which separates them from the ground. This is made with logs, upon which as columns they build their sills, to which they fasten the ends of the beams with their keys. The roof is thatch, which nature furnished, a provision very suitable to the needs of the country—which, as it is so subject to earthquakes, does not allow a greater weight without danger to the buildings. The floor is of bamboos, split or otherwise prepared; for, as these are hollow, they can be split with the same ease, thus avoiding the trouble and niceties of carpentry. Thus the floor is like a grating, and is a necessary precaution of their natural laziness and dirtiness; for by this way of making their floors they avoid having to sweep them, since the houses can so easily be washed and rid of all dirt. They have no benches or chairs, and thus they get rid of the encumbrance of much furniture. They consider a seat on the floor as more secure. They use tables somewhat; these are round and hollowed out in the middle, in the manner of an ordinary brasier, and are built wholly for use rather than for display. In that hollow they put all their dishes, which consist of boiled rice, and fish of the same stew, without there being any danger of the food being spilled out. They use no tablecloths or napkins; and, although they use dishes somewhat, they do not usually feel the lack of these, as the trees with their wide leaves furnish them a cleaner table-service, and the bamboos make them very tasteful jugs and bowls which are formed from their lengths between knots. These also form their jars; for thereis a kind of bamboo from which they make jars containing three or four azumbres.35By cutting four joint-lengths and boring holes in them, they fill a good jar. The cocoanuts yield them cups, for here these are very common.Chapter XIVThe laws of their private conduct and the general laws of their governmentFollowing are the laws pertaining to them privately as persons. They are as much adapted to the nature of the world (although more clothed with innocence), as they are to their laziness and cupidity which prohibits them from all expense which is not necessary for life, as superfluous. For that I have always said of these natives that they are fine philosophers, adapted to nature. The laws which touch on other matters and have to do with their neighbors are quite at variance with the laws of nature; and these extend to a tyranny so manifestly cruel that at times and in some things it comes to be brutality. I have seen a son who held his father as slave, and,vice versa, a father who held his son as slave; for if one make an outlay for another, they take account of it, as would be done in the case of a stranger. Inasmuch as this son had freed his father by buying him from his master, that man was reckoned as his son’s slave, and the same would be true of the son. It may happen that a chief lowers himself [by having intercourse] with his slave-woman, and the son whom she bears may be so cruel that at the death ofhis father he makes his own mother his slave. Even if, while they are at peace, these points are not cleared up, and the inner tyranny employs external civility, yet, if dissensions alter these relations, and they are divided, the men avail themselves of those rights, and subject their mothers to whatever they choose, and do not allow them to leave their houses. Thus do they come to be served by their mothers at all times. In regard to those who descend from them, there is even less shame; and among another kind of relations is an utter disregard of nature in this respect, for their own nephews are the slaves of their uncles, and,vice versa, uncles are slaves of their nephews.They do not know what charity is. Consequently, whatever benefits they confer are all placed on account as debts, which their tyranny estimates wholly to their own satisfaction. Unfortunate he whom abandonment or orphanage has flung into the house of another, for now for his sustenance, and again for his rearing, he must become a slave. Kindness is shown at the cost of liberty. Although that was general throughout the islands, in this island it is excessive, as it is a tenet of the perfidious sect of Mahomet; and its cruelty has left no liberty that it has not opposed. Therefore, there is not in this nation the middle class that is found in the others which forms the common people out of the freemen; for there are no freemen, nor any mean between chiefs and slaves. Their community is composed of but two extremes, so far separated. It is a fact that there are many ways by which to reduce men to such a condition, and there is no escape from the injury. For, since self-interest is the advantage of those whoare powerful, it unites them against the unfortunate one who dares to proclaim the offense that has been done to him, while his punishment conciliates so many other offenders who might perplex justice; and fear shuts the mouths of those whom the same fortune might gain to his favor in the support of his testimonies. Therefore, when it comes to proof there is always a lack of witnesses for innocence; while on the contrary there is for tyranny an oversupply of ocular witnesses of things that they have never seen or heard. When some stranger goes to a village to trade where he does not have the guaranteed patronage of many powerful relations, in the case of any neglect that is shown him in courtesy or in the laws, they bring such a case against him that to get out of it well he abandons his business and perhaps with his business his freedom. The worst of it is that the punishment is always more than the offense, for the just pay as if they were sinners. Their avarice or tyranny not satisfied with the vengeance taken on the criminal makes the offense related to the very blood, in order to extend their cupidity farther. Hence it is that on account of the crime committed by a single one, they make all the relations slaves. I saw four brothers who were all deprived of their inherited freedom because of the incivility and weakness of one. Finding myself in Iligan—a nation which, as it is so new, is even yet throwing out the sparks of this tyrannical fury it happened that a common woman spoke some insulting words to another woman who had rank; and the latter’s husband, coming to me to make a complaint, said to me, exaggerating the offense: “Father, if the Spaniards were not here, and we could rule ourselves by our own laws, wewould have made mincemeat [gigote] of that woman with a campilan, and slaves of her brothers and sisters and relatives.” Finally, he whom avarice rules with a tyrannical power (for all their laws end in self-interest) gets usury from his offense and employment from his crime.Avarice rules in all their judgments; and the purse becomes the gallows of all crimes. Money is the vengeance of the aggrieved parties, and the sponge for injuries. When they are paid for, no spot or sign of the offense is left. Although there are crimes which bear especially a capital penalty, yet there is no penalty that cannot be redeemed by money or goods. He who has no possessions at all has still liberty, and can surrender that also. That is the road most traveled by which some come to be the slaves of others; and perhaps the chief, if he be poor, may be the slave of another who is a plebeian. When anyone is caught in adultery, if sudden wrath does not execute him, which is but seldom, the wounds are passed on to his purse, in the endeavor to destroy him, and the husband subjects his own wife to the same harshness and penalty. For here all persons have a separate purse, and the husband is not master of what his wife possesses but only of what pertains to him. Nor, under pretext of managing her possessions, does he have more to do with it than the extent of her permission; and she is always mistress of her own possessions. Thus she pays a fine to her own husband, as if she were a stranger to him. Having received this, the aggrieved party remains as satisfied as when, among the Spaniards, one sword has pinned both guilty ones together. The offender retains a privilege truly insulting and barbarous—thatfor one year he may have intercourse with the woman without her husband complaining. Then the husband and wife return in all peace to cohabit as before, the offense being again at risk, for another atonement.They especially abhor theft, and they have assigned an ignominious penalty for the thief, as a warning. This is to cut off the joints of his fingers, more or fewer according to the crime. That perhaps obliges them to pass from the hands to the toes, the penalty being proportioned to the misdeeds of greater atrocity. But that penalty can also be redeemed, as can the others, by money.Notwithstanding that, some crimes they regard as so capital that they do not respect petitions or allow bribes, and death is the necessary punishment for them. The unnatural crime is one of them, and the severity of the execution well shows their natural horror, for such people are burned, and their houses; and nothing that they possessed is allowed to escape from this rigor, as being contaminated. Or, having caged the offenders, they throw them into the sea, and destroy their houses and fields, by such punishment to make demonstration of their abhorrence.The most feared crime is that which they callsumban, which is incest in the first degree; for they regard it as assured by long experience and knowledge inherited in tradition from their ancestors, that the land which allows that crime is bound down by wretchedness and misfortunes until its infamy is purged by the rigorous chastisement of the offender. There is no other means which can placate the wrath of heaven. Consequently, when they suffer long droughts, or other general plagues from heaven,they immediately attribute them to this. A case of that nature came to my notice in the year fifty-one, when the drought was general, and so great that even the water of the rivers failed, and that river which had any water that found its way to the sea was rare. The Indians of the village which was in my care on the coast of Siocon came to tell me that it was a punishment from the sky, and that it had been demanded by the awfulness of such crime on the coast of Mindanao, where they said that a mother was living in marriage with her son. They petitioned me to have the offenders punished, and warned me that the punishment should be death without remission, such being their custom, without admitting satisfaction by any other penalty, however excessive it be. The same report was current in the island of Basilan. However, it was without other foundation than that the Indians are gossipy and suspicious, ignorant of the secrets of the sky and ruled by the traditions of the past. They are ruled in that island by greater fear, as they retained more accurately in their memory certain cases that served them as examples and warnings. For, at a certain time, the sky was so leaden that for two years not a drop of rain fell. There was an Indian who violated the respect that he owed to his blood and to nature, with regard to a daughter of his. Although he tried to bury the crime in the depths of his silence, it cried out to the sky as an offense, and was heard distinctly as a sin; for the effect, as ungrateful as evil, always turns against its cause. He was a person of influence, and respect for him did not allow any investigation to be made; but, the villages grieving over the public calamity, and unable to enduretheir forced famine, men trampled under foot respect and laws, in their judgment that tolerance in so execrable an evil had also vexed and hardened the sky. By common consent they seized father and daughter, and, shutting them up in a cage well weighted with stones, threw them into the sea. In return they experienced from the sky approbation for their avenging zeal, in the heavy rain with which it received them. For at all times God preserves the credit to virtue, and even among barbarians imposed penance on vice, so that those who became familiars of vice could have no excuse.36The Joloans executed the same punishment with equal severity, but through malicious information. God, who is always the protector of innocence, shielded the wretched; for when they cast two other fathers in the same manner [into the water], he took away the weight of the stones, and gave the men strength to keep afloat, without abandoning them for a whole day, so that, the report of the matter having reached the king, the wonder forced him to seek new information, by which he discovered falsity and recognized innocence. In all the nations innocence considers God as its advocate, and in desperate cases rests secure on His protection.Judges in suits or causes follow the simple laws of nature, and have no embarrassment of laws and doubts and contrary interpretations. They have no delays by reports or prolixity of writs, for they donot waste a single dedo37of paper in that. The accusation, the plea, and the evidence are quickly heard—all in the manner of the time of Noah. If there is no testimony, they admit the parties to the oath, which contains terrifying imprecations. With that plea the party is usually content; for the obligation and risk, to which he is exposed by results which are reckoned as punishments of heaven against perjured ones if the rigor of their imprecations is executed, are greatly feared. If perchance the party is satisfied that he has truth on his side, at his petition they do not rest content with that trial, but judgment of red-hot coals or hot iron,38such as was resorted to in España and other countries, in centuries ruder and more immune from laws by the privilege of their innocence and goodness. If the persons are burned, then their punishment is proceeded with; and if not, the accuser is obliged to make requital. That custom seems to have been communicated by the Moros by way of Terrenate, where it is still observed. However, no one is burned, for since the Ternatans are so skilled in sorcery, they know herbs of such efficacy and bewitchments of such power, that they communicate it to the hands so that they can handle the iron with impunity, as if it were a nosegay of flowers. Also many of those whom they bury alive, that being the punishment of adultery and rape, escape. I saythis, for it often occurred that persons escaped from the execution of this test, in the sight of the Spaniards at Ternate, women whose guilt was notorious, but who cleared themselves of suspicion among their people by this proof. I was told many happenings of this sort, during the time that I spent in those islands [i.e., the Moluccas]; and I was assured that it was done by means of an herb, and I was shown some that were famous in its knowledge. These were the ones to whom the accused had recourse in all their exigencies, suborning their expertness with a quantity of money.Chapter XVThe form of government of these nativesThe kings, although so tyrannical in government, and in power so beyond the affliction and trouble which authority and ostentation incur, yet according to the condition of their poverty maintain the form and authority of a court. Peace affairs are in charge of a chief justice or counselor, calledzarabandal. That is the greatest court title and he decides the causes and suits, and advises concerning the sentence. In the outside villages where the king does not reside, the chiefs meddle wherever they wish, without other law than their power and will, and their unbridled greed; and the one injured has no recourse, for, in quarrels between the plebeians and chiefs, the king always takes the part of the latter—who are more powerful, and are those who can make trouble for him, and even deprive him of his kingdom. For his principate is founded more on the recognition that they make of his nobility than on any absolute power which secures to him their vassalage; since a slavewill say “no” to the king in what does not suit him. That happened in Joló, in the presence of Father Alexandro Lopez. When the father was negotiating through the medium of the king to have the ransom for a Christian put at a humane figure, the other, a Joloan slave by condition, who had the Christian in his power, said to the very face of the king, when the latter asked him to conform to the prices settled upon in the treaty of peace,39that he would not do it; and that was the end of the matter. That signified that the king’s power in execution extended just so far as his vassals wished, and that they would obey him just so far as it pleased them.They have established orders of nobility, with a distinction of titles which aggrandize it. Some are calledTuam, which is the same as “Señor” or the title applied to men in España. Others are given the title ofOrancaya, which signifies “rich man;” it is the greatest title, and equivalent to grandee of their kingdom. It is equivalent to the same title that España gave to its grandees when his Majesty used more simplicity, and called them Ricos-Homes [i.e., “rich men”]. The rest are called chiefs, and correspond to what we callcaballerosandHijos-dalgo[i.e., “knights and nobles”]. They have no greater dignity than the honor. Those of the blood royal are calledcachilesfollowing the custom and style of the kings of Maluco, Terrenate, Tidores, and Xilolos. The same in the peculiar style of Joló are called Paguian.The Orangcayas or Ricos-Homes become the rulers of vassals, and have some villages in their charge. In those villages, although the king is recognized,and tribute sent to him, in all else those rulers are absolute; and especially in government affairs are they independent. They are the ones who tyrannize most ungovernably over the people; for whatever fine the king imposes upon them, or whatever gift he requests from them, they lay hands upon their subjects, and, as if they were slaves they take away the son from the father in order to sell him. That has been the case so often that, even since they have been made subject to our government, it has been necessary to examine with close attention, whenever they bring any slave to sell, the reason for his slavery; for it has been found that they sell us many slaves without any other right than that of their tyranny, relieving their necessities and making their payments with the first person whom they meet—bringing him, beguiled by some other pretext, to the Spaniards; and the injury was suffered without any complaint, because of the incapacity and dullness of the poor Subanos. The latter, as they are so unused to intercourse with us, and so shut up in their own lives, had no arguments to oppose to what they did not understand; and showed their wonder, surprise, and bashfulness in brute silence. For that reason, where the Orangcayas govern (which are almost all villages of the Subanos or Indians of the mountain), there is scarce one who enjoys liberty. Those chiefs hold them so under their power, that they regard the very leaders and chiefs of the Subano nation as their slaves. That I experienced on a visit which I made on a dangerous occasion, when in order to assure the minds of the people I took with me a Lutao chief who was the absolute master before the Spaniards entered, and to whom they still paid hereditary respectalong all the coast of Siocon. Being, then, with all the people and chiefs of the nation assembled together in a village, and I endeavoring to honor them with signs of the greatest affection, the Lutao said: “Do not pay any attention to these people, Father, for they are all my slaves.” This he said in a place where we two and the chiefs of the village were alone. I thought that that contempt and arrogance would arouse them; but on the contrary, it softened them, as the affection and presents of a loving prince would his humble vassal. And, although they were not slaves, the respect in which they were born gives the chiefs so much authority, that although we [Spaniards] possess the rule, they, as chiefs, command the people. And, as the latter were reared in that tyranny, their natural disposition made them show respect and natural submission; for, notwithstanding the immunity that our arms give them, they obey those chiefs better than they do us. May that be tempered in part by the Christian government, and the vigilance of our father ministers, and the recourse which they find in the royal officials. For a chief of those natives who was governor of the village of Baluasan, near to Samboangan, when speaking of the wretched subjection in which the Lutaos held them, and the good fortune that had come to them with the entrance of our government, by restraining the Lutao tyranny, and giving arms to persecuted liberty, spoke to me these words: “If you [Spaniards] had not arrived when you did, there would now not be any of us left; for we would already have been finished, and bartered for goods with the people of Macasar.” These words consoled me, on account of the fidelity which the interestand recognized advantages of that barbarian guaranteed.40Such was the government maintained by Corralat. And since he made all of them so powerful, giving them special power by laws, he was very acceptable to the princes of his nation and therefore most secure. These men, then, are the ones who grieve over the losses sustained by the change, who see themselves put under holy laws and just—they who before had no other laws than those of their own will, and their unbridled ambition, laws from which the others suffered as a servile, cowardly, and rude nation.

Chapter XIIBeliefs and superstitions of these islandsThe general condition of these islands is paganism. From Sangil to Samboangan, the dwellers along the beach follow the law of Mahomet, as well as those of the islands of Basilan and Joló. This last is the metropolis of the false religion, and the Mecca of this archipelago; for there is the tomb of their first master, concerning whom the caciques [i.e., Kasis], for the credit of his deceits, have been establishing innumerable fables, which have already become a lying tradition in this century. One is thathe came from Paradise with three others, of whom one went to Java, and another to Burney, and the other two landed at Joló, and thence one went to Mindanao. He of Mindanao was ill received; and because of that, and of having been shipwrecked in the sea by driving on a reef, he went in anger to an island to become a hermit, walking upon the water. But he who was wrecked in a ship could ill keep his footing in the water. Such is the character of lies, that some are quite contrary to others. The outfit that he carried consisted of a net, and it is said that he caught fish on the mountain with it, by dragging it over the ground. But if he found fish on the mountain then the fish surely could not escape him, unless indeed it were a flying-fish. When his followers went to seek him, Satan had already carried him away, and they found only the net—and that stretched out, for it had been placed to dry. From that point they took occasion to discuss so disconnected bits of nonsense as we have mentioned. Thereupon he who remained in Joló obtained the chair of the evil [doctrine], and, as he is accredited with not fewer deceits, he was able to authorize his person and his doctrine with the barbarians; for he also gave them to understand that he could get fresh water from the sea, that he could sail on land, and could establish fisheries on the mountain, as did the other. The use of these errors gave authority for the common people to invent others. They believe that the enchanted boat which they never saw, and whose anchorage they never knew, still exists. The respect that his deceits gained him in life became ignorant and infamous adoration at his death. A sepulcher was erected for him, which became themausoleum of his memory, and the Mecca of his deceits. They erected it on the famous hill [of Joló], and it was very elegant.28At its foot they planted the singular fruit which they call the king’s fruit,29which is unique in this archipelago, and of which no one ate except himself, although for devotion the shells were given to the others. As we said, they planted many jasmines, and made their defenses there, so that animals might not defile the mausoleum. As an entrance to it, there was arranged in front of it a little house which was placed at the beginning of the stockade, as if it were an entrance into the well of St. Patrick. There they made their offerings, all of which went to the benefit of the prebendaries of the house, who were generally of the blood of the hypocrite. Thence they took their auguries for the war, for, putting water in a vase, together with some earth from the sepulcher, if it became bitter to the taste the outcome would be bad; but if sweet, it would be happy. It is said that this test was made for the war waged on them by Don Sebastian, in consequence of which the king was always inclined to treat for peace.By the entrance of our forces upon the hill, that place lost its worship and esteem; for the soldiers turned it all upside down, and dug it up in the hope of finding some treasure, and found no trace of a human body. The Indians were terrified at their boldness, and asked whether those who dared to do so much would not die. Thereupon, those peoplewere left with only the staff [of that teacher], which the Kasis [caciques] keep; for that is the staff of all virtues, and in going out with it (which is at the time of any necessity), all make it great reverence, and attend to all that is asked of them. For if they do not do so, he excommunicates them, with two blows with it which he gives on the house or the boat, and there can be neither health in the one or good luck in the other. All these are the artifices of cupidity, which holds them fast in a deceitful fear by vain terrors.The other relic is the cap,30which is the hereditary possession of the kings, and to swear by it is to use the sanction of a great sacrament.Notwithstanding so many lies that are made up to sustain this deceit, there are but few who esteem it; and in general they are all atheists, and those who have any religion are sorcerers. For as Moros, beyond not eating pork, and practicing circumcision, and [having] a multiplicity of women, they know not anything. They drink wine more than we do, and all their happiness consists in drunken revels—[to them] a positive act of greatness; and thus all their knightly deeds consist in emptying more or fewer jars [of wine], and there is a wedding in which they empty two hundred. All their festivals consist in this. They live in all respects like men without any law who do not know God, and without any mode of worship, and unmindful that there is suchin the world. All regard the law as little more or less, and, according to the land they inhabit, follow its customs and laws. Accordingly they are neither Moors, heathen, nor Christians, but barbarous atheists. Corralat, who has civilized his country somewhat, has his mosque, and makes his people attend it. But when they leave their village, each one does as he pleases—except some of the chiefs, who, following the example of the king, have made it a point of honor to appear to be Moors. But the common people, assuredly, lay no stress on that point.What they believe in thoroughly are omens, which are almost general in all the islands. There are many of them: of birds, like the limocon;31of insects, like the lizard; of accidental occurrences, like sneezing; of happenings, like deaths or earthquakes; of observances at time of sowing, and of reaping, and of the hunt—all of these have their observances, which they fulfil in order to have luck in the work; for they believe that without these it will be unlucky, and without any profit. Therefore, they do not undertake those things, since in many districts it is considered an omen when anyone asks for a portion of what may be caught (as for instance, of the hunter or fisher), if we say to him when he goes to try his luck: “Divide with me what you shall catch.” They consider that as a bad omen, and return to their house, for they believe that they will catch nothing.Those who are atheists knowingly are the dwellers in mountains; for they have no mosques, orshrines, or any method of praying to God. Those upon whom they call in their illnesses are their ancestors, saying “Alas, my mother!” or “my grandfather.” That is rather the natural expression of pain than a prayer in which they experience any efficacy. Where there are some to whom the devil talks (which was more usual in their antiquity), such people offer him their sacrifices,32and the Indianshave recourse to them in their illnesses, so that they could make the same efforts for them. Today the Christian truth has obscured the falsity of hell. At most, the descendants of those ministers of the devil, who were generally women, do what they saw them do without the devil taking any notice of them or talking to them. Others, who lay but small stress on all that, do what they heard said was the custom in the days of their antiquity, let happen what would. But they do it with so little earnestness that it appears to be levity rather than religion. With the same fervor they follow any other rule, so that they always remain without any law, unless it be where the energy and incessant constancy of the missionaries has made them forget their ancient customs, and with continual instruction has made it easy for them to accept the new things of our holy faith.In Caraga there was a barbarous custom to make their ships lucky, namely, to vow to them the firsttime upon some name, which was generally the name of one of their captives.That which has great value in all parts is sorcery; and they hold it in such high esteem that the father hides it from the son, and unless they receive a great profit they refuse to communicate any secret of it. The famous sorcerers are feared, although there is no one who is not ashamed of being called thus, and the word “sorcerer” is one of the insulting words of these natives. My judgment from seeing these [sorceries], so alike, is that they are implicit compacts made with their ancestors. For it also seems impossible that there are herbs of so powerful poison that they can kill so instantly that some persons kill, with only the breath alone by chewing those herbs; and others, by burying those herbs where one has to pass. They also use figures, which they dedicate to him whom they wish to harm, and these accordingly torment him; the figure continues to aggravate the evil upon the sorcerer’s enemy. Others work by letters, and that is peculiar to the Moro Kasis [caciques], although the most of all this is fabulous; but as they imagine that it is true, for any accident for which they find no remedy, and of whose cause they are ignorant, they throw the blame on the sorcerer. It is recounted of the king of Burney that, on learning the name of one, he can kill him if he chooses. Sargento-mayor Pedro Duran Monforte having made war in his land, the king was informed of his name, and said that since he knew his name, therefore Monforte could not live much longer, and with that he consoled his people. But thanks to God, the sargento-mayor has been living for three years since that threat. Thus are all their affairs.He who unites the excellency of a powerful sorcerer to Mahometan ardor is King Corralat. He causes the fish to enter his boat. While one of our fathers was in his boat, a fish leaped in; the king picked it up and, giving it to the father, said: “This is for the father.” It is also related that he makes a piece of artillery float on the surface of the water by placing an oar in its mouth. He has a saker, which according to report, when fired, serves him as a good or evil augury. The fact is, that he talks very familiarly with the devil. According to the tale of a Spaniard (and one for which he vouched to me), when he was going from Samboangan on a certain embassy, just as he entered the river the favorite of Corralat told him that, the night previous, his king had asked him whether any ship were to be seen. To his negative answer the king said to him: “Then take note that three ships will arrive tomorrow, and one of them will be Spanish.” That was a fact, for two ships from Java entered, and that of the said Spaniard. Thereupon the favorite exclaimed: “Great Saint Corralat, there is no other truth.” With such things he has established so much credit that if God do not bury his body in the depths [of the sea], the Mindanaos will worship him and will found another house of Mecca, such as they had in Joló. With that he has become a greater king than any of his forbears; for their fear of him is incredible, as they recognize in him one who has superior power to avenge himself. Consequently, they do not dare undertake anything against his will; for they regard it as certain that they will be unlucky. Since the devil has been so advantaged by that way, he manages to make their fears come out true at times, by which credit for the others is assured.Chapter XIIIThe moderation of their conduct, and the sobriety of their livingAmong all the Indians it is a general fact that in what relates to their own persons natural law is more conspicuous, and has a more firmly established empire, than have the nations. Part of that is founded on the slothfulness of their natures, and part on the rudeness of their civilization; the former makes them content with little, and the latter causes them to ignore the niceties of art. Their food proves the first well; and the havoc that they cause, the second. The food is very poor among the wealthy, and requires little labor; for they neither know condiments nor for that purpose are drugs valued among them, of the use of all which they are ignorant. Both slave and ruler, plebeian and prince, eat bread; for, since that consists of a little boiled rice, one cannot eat it more adorned than the other. Since all of them are bakers of this bread, he who wishes to clean it better eats it whiter. He who has no slaves to relieve him from that eats it as he chooses; and, consequently, there is no one who does not know how to cook his food. For they are under the daily necessity, even the richest, of making it; and, as ostentation in ordinary life is so little, it is unavoidable that service is lacking to them on their voyages and navigations, so that they are forced to use their own hands. Those who do not obtain rice—either because the land does not bear it, or because it is limited in any year—eat of many roots, which supply the lack fully, and which require no other preparation than boiling. He who is so well served that he obtains a little fish, venison, or pork, with water and salt alone makes his stew,without the knowledge of other kinds of pottages. In order to give their food a sharp flavor, they are wont to cook it with some herbs of a sour taste. Consequently, in the seasoning of their food they consume nothing, so that they save the cost of butter, oil, vinegar, and all spices. They are accustomed to make theirpuches[i.e., a sort of pap] andpoleadas[i.e., a sort of fritter] from cocoanut milk and the honey made from sugarcane, which are their preserves and royal cakes. But such is at a great wedding or at a feast, where their desire for ostentation arouses their endeavors. Such were presented to me by the king of Joló, Panguian Bachal, while I was visiting at his court. They consisted of a half-dozen small cakes made of rice flour and kneaded with cocoanut-milk, and baked until they turned dark, so that they appeared to be cinnamon to the sight. In fact the color was due to the toasting and to a preserve, like turpentine, made from the fruit of the durion with honey made from sugarcane. This is enough to turn the strongest stomachs—as it were, the chief dainty for the stomach of a bull—oppressive, as it was all night to the Queen mother;33and we satisfied ourselves with looking at it.Their clothing is very simple, without stiffening or linings. All are dressed after the same style, and innovations due to curiosity are not allowed. As the country is so hot, they dress very loosely, a fact which makes the cutting out very easy. Each one is the tailor of his own garments. This is the reason why the Indians are so lacking in the communal idea, and are so hostile to assembling and uniting in villages;for since their misery and laziness make them content with the easiest and most natural, which all obtain, they do not need one another. For in each house are found all the trades, and no one makes use of them unless his own necessity compels him. If one goes to fish, he is content with what will satisfy either his appetite or his necessity; and the desire of acquiring does not make him break with his laziness in order to work.Returning to their clothes, the stuffs worn are generally common to nobles, and plebeians, kings and slaves, and there is no difference between them—except it be in something extraordinary, in which the obligation and ostentation of their chief persons induces them to depart from their accustomed use. At such times they are wont to wear silks and very beautiful stuffs, with buttons and gold lace. Their krises (which are their inseparable weapons) have gilded scabbards and hilts of massy gold. I have seen some of them which were valued at nine slaves each, all covered with precious stones and perhaps encrusted with pearls. But in daily appearance all resemble one another, both in the garments in which they dress and in the fashions that they employ. These clothes consist of breeches and short jacket [ropilla]—or skirt, to be more accurate. That is not worn over a shirt, for with them the first garment is not the shirt, but the skirt, for it is all one. Sometimes they wear a jacket with long skirts cut in the French style; which, although it can be buttoned, is generally worn open, with the breast exposed. In this particular this nation is quite different from the others of this region. They use another style of cut; the skirts and sleeves each ending in a point, andthe ends which ought to close over the bosom are brought together in double points, fastened either with a button or with a knot, so that almost all the breast is left open. The breeches are full and white, resembling those which the Spaniards wear for the sake of cleanliness under their black ones. They are girt with a bit of native linen, so long that after having been knotted it hangs from the waist to the knees; and it serves to make their garb more decent than it would be because of the meagerness and thinness of the breeches. Or if they do not have that, then they use two brazas’ length of the same cloth or silk, which at its full width they wind about the body, joined in front with one end crossed below the other. In that manner they cover the breeches entirely, and the clothing is much more decent. In this usage, the gala costumes have special elaboration, and it displays their ostentation; for they are wont to wear cloth that is valued at thirty or forty reals of eight. They also wear breeches of the Malay fashion, which are closed like ours, although they are not so tight. It is the rule that they must be of silk with a gold fringe below, or with border and buttons of the same which among these people is always of filigree or of solid gold. In that they consider only ostentation, without any risk of waste.On the head, in the Moorish style, is worn a turban. Its use throughout the Indias is general, but among these people inviolable. I do not know whether it is because even their hearts are tinged with their cursed worship, or because of hatred to our nation and to our customs, or because of flattery to their natural arrogance—through which they will never, of themselves, come to depreciate their ownthings. Even yet throughout the islands, those who are esteemed as chiefs are ashamed of appearing without hats.The clothing of the women is plainer, and such that it becomes indecent; for from the small mantas or textiles of these regions, which are all very thin, they make a sack nine palmos long and open at both ends. They gird this in at the waist as much as may be necessary, so that it falls to the feet; what is left they allow to fall over the legs, and it does not even reach to the knees, or necessarily serve for the decency which modesty requires. They adjust it by drawing it close to one side of the body, and by making folds on the other side of all the extra width in proportion to their body. This sack, which by day is a garment—so shameful to decency, because it so ill satisfies it—serves at night for mattress, sheets, and curtain. For on retiring they ungird the sack, and the part which they doubled about the knees they put up to the head. That is all the opulence and comfort that their beds can boast of, which are made of a thin mat. These are their Holland and Rouen linens, which serve for their opulence and their fastidious cleanliness. That is their whole wealth of quilts and covers, which protect them from the cold and from the mosquitoes. All is so exactly adapted to necessity, that there is no difference between the chief women and the slaves—as I saw in Joló in the queen herself, and in Samboangan in many other women, not inferior to her in vanity. However, the women of highest rank, on retiring let fall a curtain without a covering. And that is all their ostentation and the necessary obligation of modesty for the protection from sight of those who arecareless concerning their manner of sleeping, in houses where there is no division of apartments, and where there can be no rooms for the multitude that inhabit them, and where the others throw themselves down pellmell on the floor. At most, the master is protected by that little grandeur. This is in regard to the bed, for in dress no difference is known.The gala dress of the women of this nation consists wholly of the shirt [sayuelo] which is made in the style usual to the Indians. It is however, drawn close about the breasts, and the sleeves are very long, at times each sleeve taking three or four varas of cloth. The sleeve is gathered at the wrist in a very fine and graceful plait, as the goods that they wear are so delicate. They heighten that gala dress with the wealth of gold, the use of which among these Indias extends to the wrists, which they cover with bracelets, either solid or hollow, and a finger in width. On days of great display they generally wear three or four pairs. The work is beautiful, and these add much to their gay and festive appearance; and they show off the arm loaded with such rich bracelets. For cloaks or mantles they wear textiles of fine silk, and at times of gold [tissue], which they callpatolas34which is a very beautiful and rich kind of goods. Generally, when they leave the house they all wear very long black cloaks; that partly moderates the ugliness and utter indecency of their dress—which of itself is, I know not whether more ugly or more immodest, with its sack above mentioned, which serves them as shirt and petticoat, without its having any distinction either for station, rank, or display.The houses in which they reside have what is sufficient for their shelter and poor lodging. They have no salons where they can walk, or higher stories where they can amuse themselves, than that which separates them from the ground. This is made with logs, upon which as columns they build their sills, to which they fasten the ends of the beams with their keys. The roof is thatch, which nature furnished, a provision very suitable to the needs of the country—which, as it is so subject to earthquakes, does not allow a greater weight without danger to the buildings. The floor is of bamboos, split or otherwise prepared; for, as these are hollow, they can be split with the same ease, thus avoiding the trouble and niceties of carpentry. Thus the floor is like a grating, and is a necessary precaution of their natural laziness and dirtiness; for by this way of making their floors they avoid having to sweep them, since the houses can so easily be washed and rid of all dirt. They have no benches or chairs, and thus they get rid of the encumbrance of much furniture. They consider a seat on the floor as more secure. They use tables somewhat; these are round and hollowed out in the middle, in the manner of an ordinary brasier, and are built wholly for use rather than for display. In that hollow they put all their dishes, which consist of boiled rice, and fish of the same stew, without there being any danger of the food being spilled out. They use no tablecloths or napkins; and, although they use dishes somewhat, they do not usually feel the lack of these, as the trees with their wide leaves furnish them a cleaner table-service, and the bamboos make them very tasteful jugs and bowls which are formed from their lengths between knots. These also form their jars; for thereis a kind of bamboo from which they make jars containing three or four azumbres.35By cutting four joint-lengths and boring holes in them, they fill a good jar. The cocoanuts yield them cups, for here these are very common.Chapter XIVThe laws of their private conduct and the general laws of their governmentFollowing are the laws pertaining to them privately as persons. They are as much adapted to the nature of the world (although more clothed with innocence), as they are to their laziness and cupidity which prohibits them from all expense which is not necessary for life, as superfluous. For that I have always said of these natives that they are fine philosophers, adapted to nature. The laws which touch on other matters and have to do with their neighbors are quite at variance with the laws of nature; and these extend to a tyranny so manifestly cruel that at times and in some things it comes to be brutality. I have seen a son who held his father as slave, and,vice versa, a father who held his son as slave; for if one make an outlay for another, they take account of it, as would be done in the case of a stranger. Inasmuch as this son had freed his father by buying him from his master, that man was reckoned as his son’s slave, and the same would be true of the son. It may happen that a chief lowers himself [by having intercourse] with his slave-woman, and the son whom she bears may be so cruel that at the death ofhis father he makes his own mother his slave. Even if, while they are at peace, these points are not cleared up, and the inner tyranny employs external civility, yet, if dissensions alter these relations, and they are divided, the men avail themselves of those rights, and subject their mothers to whatever they choose, and do not allow them to leave their houses. Thus do they come to be served by their mothers at all times. In regard to those who descend from them, there is even less shame; and among another kind of relations is an utter disregard of nature in this respect, for their own nephews are the slaves of their uncles, and,vice versa, uncles are slaves of their nephews.They do not know what charity is. Consequently, whatever benefits they confer are all placed on account as debts, which their tyranny estimates wholly to their own satisfaction. Unfortunate he whom abandonment or orphanage has flung into the house of another, for now for his sustenance, and again for his rearing, he must become a slave. Kindness is shown at the cost of liberty. Although that was general throughout the islands, in this island it is excessive, as it is a tenet of the perfidious sect of Mahomet; and its cruelty has left no liberty that it has not opposed. Therefore, there is not in this nation the middle class that is found in the others which forms the common people out of the freemen; for there are no freemen, nor any mean between chiefs and slaves. Their community is composed of but two extremes, so far separated. It is a fact that there are many ways by which to reduce men to such a condition, and there is no escape from the injury. For, since self-interest is the advantage of those whoare powerful, it unites them against the unfortunate one who dares to proclaim the offense that has been done to him, while his punishment conciliates so many other offenders who might perplex justice; and fear shuts the mouths of those whom the same fortune might gain to his favor in the support of his testimonies. Therefore, when it comes to proof there is always a lack of witnesses for innocence; while on the contrary there is for tyranny an oversupply of ocular witnesses of things that they have never seen or heard. When some stranger goes to a village to trade where he does not have the guaranteed patronage of many powerful relations, in the case of any neglect that is shown him in courtesy or in the laws, they bring such a case against him that to get out of it well he abandons his business and perhaps with his business his freedom. The worst of it is that the punishment is always more than the offense, for the just pay as if they were sinners. Their avarice or tyranny not satisfied with the vengeance taken on the criminal makes the offense related to the very blood, in order to extend their cupidity farther. Hence it is that on account of the crime committed by a single one, they make all the relations slaves. I saw four brothers who were all deprived of their inherited freedom because of the incivility and weakness of one. Finding myself in Iligan—a nation which, as it is so new, is even yet throwing out the sparks of this tyrannical fury it happened that a common woman spoke some insulting words to another woman who had rank; and the latter’s husband, coming to me to make a complaint, said to me, exaggerating the offense: “Father, if the Spaniards were not here, and we could rule ourselves by our own laws, wewould have made mincemeat [gigote] of that woman with a campilan, and slaves of her brothers and sisters and relatives.” Finally, he whom avarice rules with a tyrannical power (for all their laws end in self-interest) gets usury from his offense and employment from his crime.Avarice rules in all their judgments; and the purse becomes the gallows of all crimes. Money is the vengeance of the aggrieved parties, and the sponge for injuries. When they are paid for, no spot or sign of the offense is left. Although there are crimes which bear especially a capital penalty, yet there is no penalty that cannot be redeemed by money or goods. He who has no possessions at all has still liberty, and can surrender that also. That is the road most traveled by which some come to be the slaves of others; and perhaps the chief, if he be poor, may be the slave of another who is a plebeian. When anyone is caught in adultery, if sudden wrath does not execute him, which is but seldom, the wounds are passed on to his purse, in the endeavor to destroy him, and the husband subjects his own wife to the same harshness and penalty. For here all persons have a separate purse, and the husband is not master of what his wife possesses but only of what pertains to him. Nor, under pretext of managing her possessions, does he have more to do with it than the extent of her permission; and she is always mistress of her own possessions. Thus she pays a fine to her own husband, as if she were a stranger to him. Having received this, the aggrieved party remains as satisfied as when, among the Spaniards, one sword has pinned both guilty ones together. The offender retains a privilege truly insulting and barbarous—thatfor one year he may have intercourse with the woman without her husband complaining. Then the husband and wife return in all peace to cohabit as before, the offense being again at risk, for another atonement.They especially abhor theft, and they have assigned an ignominious penalty for the thief, as a warning. This is to cut off the joints of his fingers, more or fewer according to the crime. That perhaps obliges them to pass from the hands to the toes, the penalty being proportioned to the misdeeds of greater atrocity. But that penalty can also be redeemed, as can the others, by money.Notwithstanding that, some crimes they regard as so capital that they do not respect petitions or allow bribes, and death is the necessary punishment for them. The unnatural crime is one of them, and the severity of the execution well shows their natural horror, for such people are burned, and their houses; and nothing that they possessed is allowed to escape from this rigor, as being contaminated. Or, having caged the offenders, they throw them into the sea, and destroy their houses and fields, by such punishment to make demonstration of their abhorrence.The most feared crime is that which they callsumban, which is incest in the first degree; for they regard it as assured by long experience and knowledge inherited in tradition from their ancestors, that the land which allows that crime is bound down by wretchedness and misfortunes until its infamy is purged by the rigorous chastisement of the offender. There is no other means which can placate the wrath of heaven. Consequently, when they suffer long droughts, or other general plagues from heaven,they immediately attribute them to this. A case of that nature came to my notice in the year fifty-one, when the drought was general, and so great that even the water of the rivers failed, and that river which had any water that found its way to the sea was rare. The Indians of the village which was in my care on the coast of Siocon came to tell me that it was a punishment from the sky, and that it had been demanded by the awfulness of such crime on the coast of Mindanao, where they said that a mother was living in marriage with her son. They petitioned me to have the offenders punished, and warned me that the punishment should be death without remission, such being their custom, without admitting satisfaction by any other penalty, however excessive it be. The same report was current in the island of Basilan. However, it was without other foundation than that the Indians are gossipy and suspicious, ignorant of the secrets of the sky and ruled by the traditions of the past. They are ruled in that island by greater fear, as they retained more accurately in their memory certain cases that served them as examples and warnings. For, at a certain time, the sky was so leaden that for two years not a drop of rain fell. There was an Indian who violated the respect that he owed to his blood and to nature, with regard to a daughter of his. Although he tried to bury the crime in the depths of his silence, it cried out to the sky as an offense, and was heard distinctly as a sin; for the effect, as ungrateful as evil, always turns against its cause. He was a person of influence, and respect for him did not allow any investigation to be made; but, the villages grieving over the public calamity, and unable to enduretheir forced famine, men trampled under foot respect and laws, in their judgment that tolerance in so execrable an evil had also vexed and hardened the sky. By common consent they seized father and daughter, and, shutting them up in a cage well weighted with stones, threw them into the sea. In return they experienced from the sky approbation for their avenging zeal, in the heavy rain with which it received them. For at all times God preserves the credit to virtue, and even among barbarians imposed penance on vice, so that those who became familiars of vice could have no excuse.36The Joloans executed the same punishment with equal severity, but through malicious information. God, who is always the protector of innocence, shielded the wretched; for when they cast two other fathers in the same manner [into the water], he took away the weight of the stones, and gave the men strength to keep afloat, without abandoning them for a whole day, so that, the report of the matter having reached the king, the wonder forced him to seek new information, by which he discovered falsity and recognized innocence. In all the nations innocence considers God as its advocate, and in desperate cases rests secure on His protection.Judges in suits or causes follow the simple laws of nature, and have no embarrassment of laws and doubts and contrary interpretations. They have no delays by reports or prolixity of writs, for they donot waste a single dedo37of paper in that. The accusation, the plea, and the evidence are quickly heard—all in the manner of the time of Noah. If there is no testimony, they admit the parties to the oath, which contains terrifying imprecations. With that plea the party is usually content; for the obligation and risk, to which he is exposed by results which are reckoned as punishments of heaven against perjured ones if the rigor of their imprecations is executed, are greatly feared. If perchance the party is satisfied that he has truth on his side, at his petition they do not rest content with that trial, but judgment of red-hot coals or hot iron,38such as was resorted to in España and other countries, in centuries ruder and more immune from laws by the privilege of their innocence and goodness. If the persons are burned, then their punishment is proceeded with; and if not, the accuser is obliged to make requital. That custom seems to have been communicated by the Moros by way of Terrenate, where it is still observed. However, no one is burned, for since the Ternatans are so skilled in sorcery, they know herbs of such efficacy and bewitchments of such power, that they communicate it to the hands so that they can handle the iron with impunity, as if it were a nosegay of flowers. Also many of those whom they bury alive, that being the punishment of adultery and rape, escape. I saythis, for it often occurred that persons escaped from the execution of this test, in the sight of the Spaniards at Ternate, women whose guilt was notorious, but who cleared themselves of suspicion among their people by this proof. I was told many happenings of this sort, during the time that I spent in those islands [i.e., the Moluccas]; and I was assured that it was done by means of an herb, and I was shown some that were famous in its knowledge. These were the ones to whom the accused had recourse in all their exigencies, suborning their expertness with a quantity of money.Chapter XVThe form of government of these nativesThe kings, although so tyrannical in government, and in power so beyond the affliction and trouble which authority and ostentation incur, yet according to the condition of their poverty maintain the form and authority of a court. Peace affairs are in charge of a chief justice or counselor, calledzarabandal. That is the greatest court title and he decides the causes and suits, and advises concerning the sentence. In the outside villages where the king does not reside, the chiefs meddle wherever they wish, without other law than their power and will, and their unbridled greed; and the one injured has no recourse, for, in quarrels between the plebeians and chiefs, the king always takes the part of the latter—who are more powerful, and are those who can make trouble for him, and even deprive him of his kingdom. For his principate is founded more on the recognition that they make of his nobility than on any absolute power which secures to him their vassalage; since a slavewill say “no” to the king in what does not suit him. That happened in Joló, in the presence of Father Alexandro Lopez. When the father was negotiating through the medium of the king to have the ransom for a Christian put at a humane figure, the other, a Joloan slave by condition, who had the Christian in his power, said to the very face of the king, when the latter asked him to conform to the prices settled upon in the treaty of peace,39that he would not do it; and that was the end of the matter. That signified that the king’s power in execution extended just so far as his vassals wished, and that they would obey him just so far as it pleased them.They have established orders of nobility, with a distinction of titles which aggrandize it. Some are calledTuam, which is the same as “Señor” or the title applied to men in España. Others are given the title ofOrancaya, which signifies “rich man;” it is the greatest title, and equivalent to grandee of their kingdom. It is equivalent to the same title that España gave to its grandees when his Majesty used more simplicity, and called them Ricos-Homes [i.e., “rich men”]. The rest are called chiefs, and correspond to what we callcaballerosandHijos-dalgo[i.e., “knights and nobles”]. They have no greater dignity than the honor. Those of the blood royal are calledcachilesfollowing the custom and style of the kings of Maluco, Terrenate, Tidores, and Xilolos. The same in the peculiar style of Joló are called Paguian.The Orangcayas or Ricos-Homes become the rulers of vassals, and have some villages in their charge. In those villages, although the king is recognized,and tribute sent to him, in all else those rulers are absolute; and especially in government affairs are they independent. They are the ones who tyrannize most ungovernably over the people; for whatever fine the king imposes upon them, or whatever gift he requests from them, they lay hands upon their subjects, and, as if they were slaves they take away the son from the father in order to sell him. That has been the case so often that, even since they have been made subject to our government, it has been necessary to examine with close attention, whenever they bring any slave to sell, the reason for his slavery; for it has been found that they sell us many slaves without any other right than that of their tyranny, relieving their necessities and making their payments with the first person whom they meet—bringing him, beguiled by some other pretext, to the Spaniards; and the injury was suffered without any complaint, because of the incapacity and dullness of the poor Subanos. The latter, as they are so unused to intercourse with us, and so shut up in their own lives, had no arguments to oppose to what they did not understand; and showed their wonder, surprise, and bashfulness in brute silence. For that reason, where the Orangcayas govern (which are almost all villages of the Subanos or Indians of the mountain), there is scarce one who enjoys liberty. Those chiefs hold them so under their power, that they regard the very leaders and chiefs of the Subano nation as their slaves. That I experienced on a visit which I made on a dangerous occasion, when in order to assure the minds of the people I took with me a Lutao chief who was the absolute master before the Spaniards entered, and to whom they still paid hereditary respectalong all the coast of Siocon. Being, then, with all the people and chiefs of the nation assembled together in a village, and I endeavoring to honor them with signs of the greatest affection, the Lutao said: “Do not pay any attention to these people, Father, for they are all my slaves.” This he said in a place where we two and the chiefs of the village were alone. I thought that that contempt and arrogance would arouse them; but on the contrary, it softened them, as the affection and presents of a loving prince would his humble vassal. And, although they were not slaves, the respect in which they were born gives the chiefs so much authority, that although we [Spaniards] possess the rule, they, as chiefs, command the people. And, as the latter were reared in that tyranny, their natural disposition made them show respect and natural submission; for, notwithstanding the immunity that our arms give them, they obey those chiefs better than they do us. May that be tempered in part by the Christian government, and the vigilance of our father ministers, and the recourse which they find in the royal officials. For a chief of those natives who was governor of the village of Baluasan, near to Samboangan, when speaking of the wretched subjection in which the Lutaos held them, and the good fortune that had come to them with the entrance of our government, by restraining the Lutao tyranny, and giving arms to persecuted liberty, spoke to me these words: “If you [Spaniards] had not arrived when you did, there would now not be any of us left; for we would already have been finished, and bartered for goods with the people of Macasar.” These words consoled me, on account of the fidelity which the interestand recognized advantages of that barbarian guaranteed.40Such was the government maintained by Corralat. And since he made all of them so powerful, giving them special power by laws, he was very acceptable to the princes of his nation and therefore most secure. These men, then, are the ones who grieve over the losses sustained by the change, who see themselves put under holy laws and just—they who before had no other laws than those of their own will, and their unbridled ambition, laws from which the others suffered as a servile, cowardly, and rude nation.

Chapter XIIBeliefs and superstitions of these islandsThe general condition of these islands is paganism. From Sangil to Samboangan, the dwellers along the beach follow the law of Mahomet, as well as those of the islands of Basilan and Joló. This last is the metropolis of the false religion, and the Mecca of this archipelago; for there is the tomb of their first master, concerning whom the caciques [i.e., Kasis], for the credit of his deceits, have been establishing innumerable fables, which have already become a lying tradition in this century. One is thathe came from Paradise with three others, of whom one went to Java, and another to Burney, and the other two landed at Joló, and thence one went to Mindanao. He of Mindanao was ill received; and because of that, and of having been shipwrecked in the sea by driving on a reef, he went in anger to an island to become a hermit, walking upon the water. But he who was wrecked in a ship could ill keep his footing in the water. Such is the character of lies, that some are quite contrary to others. The outfit that he carried consisted of a net, and it is said that he caught fish on the mountain with it, by dragging it over the ground. But if he found fish on the mountain then the fish surely could not escape him, unless indeed it were a flying-fish. When his followers went to seek him, Satan had already carried him away, and they found only the net—and that stretched out, for it had been placed to dry. From that point they took occasion to discuss so disconnected bits of nonsense as we have mentioned. Thereupon he who remained in Joló obtained the chair of the evil [doctrine], and, as he is accredited with not fewer deceits, he was able to authorize his person and his doctrine with the barbarians; for he also gave them to understand that he could get fresh water from the sea, that he could sail on land, and could establish fisheries on the mountain, as did the other. The use of these errors gave authority for the common people to invent others. They believe that the enchanted boat which they never saw, and whose anchorage they never knew, still exists. The respect that his deceits gained him in life became ignorant and infamous adoration at his death. A sepulcher was erected for him, which became themausoleum of his memory, and the Mecca of his deceits. They erected it on the famous hill [of Joló], and it was very elegant.28At its foot they planted the singular fruit which they call the king’s fruit,29which is unique in this archipelago, and of which no one ate except himself, although for devotion the shells were given to the others. As we said, they planted many jasmines, and made their defenses there, so that animals might not defile the mausoleum. As an entrance to it, there was arranged in front of it a little house which was placed at the beginning of the stockade, as if it were an entrance into the well of St. Patrick. There they made their offerings, all of which went to the benefit of the prebendaries of the house, who were generally of the blood of the hypocrite. Thence they took their auguries for the war, for, putting water in a vase, together with some earth from the sepulcher, if it became bitter to the taste the outcome would be bad; but if sweet, it would be happy. It is said that this test was made for the war waged on them by Don Sebastian, in consequence of which the king was always inclined to treat for peace.By the entrance of our forces upon the hill, that place lost its worship and esteem; for the soldiers turned it all upside down, and dug it up in the hope of finding some treasure, and found no trace of a human body. The Indians were terrified at their boldness, and asked whether those who dared to do so much would not die. Thereupon, those peoplewere left with only the staff [of that teacher], which the Kasis [caciques] keep; for that is the staff of all virtues, and in going out with it (which is at the time of any necessity), all make it great reverence, and attend to all that is asked of them. For if they do not do so, he excommunicates them, with two blows with it which he gives on the house or the boat, and there can be neither health in the one or good luck in the other. All these are the artifices of cupidity, which holds them fast in a deceitful fear by vain terrors.The other relic is the cap,30which is the hereditary possession of the kings, and to swear by it is to use the sanction of a great sacrament.Notwithstanding so many lies that are made up to sustain this deceit, there are but few who esteem it; and in general they are all atheists, and those who have any religion are sorcerers. For as Moros, beyond not eating pork, and practicing circumcision, and [having] a multiplicity of women, they know not anything. They drink wine more than we do, and all their happiness consists in drunken revels—[to them] a positive act of greatness; and thus all their knightly deeds consist in emptying more or fewer jars [of wine], and there is a wedding in which they empty two hundred. All their festivals consist in this. They live in all respects like men without any law who do not know God, and without any mode of worship, and unmindful that there is suchin the world. All regard the law as little more or less, and, according to the land they inhabit, follow its customs and laws. Accordingly they are neither Moors, heathen, nor Christians, but barbarous atheists. Corralat, who has civilized his country somewhat, has his mosque, and makes his people attend it. But when they leave their village, each one does as he pleases—except some of the chiefs, who, following the example of the king, have made it a point of honor to appear to be Moors. But the common people, assuredly, lay no stress on that point.What they believe in thoroughly are omens, which are almost general in all the islands. There are many of them: of birds, like the limocon;31of insects, like the lizard; of accidental occurrences, like sneezing; of happenings, like deaths or earthquakes; of observances at time of sowing, and of reaping, and of the hunt—all of these have their observances, which they fulfil in order to have luck in the work; for they believe that without these it will be unlucky, and without any profit. Therefore, they do not undertake those things, since in many districts it is considered an omen when anyone asks for a portion of what may be caught (as for instance, of the hunter or fisher), if we say to him when he goes to try his luck: “Divide with me what you shall catch.” They consider that as a bad omen, and return to their house, for they believe that they will catch nothing.Those who are atheists knowingly are the dwellers in mountains; for they have no mosques, orshrines, or any method of praying to God. Those upon whom they call in their illnesses are their ancestors, saying “Alas, my mother!” or “my grandfather.” That is rather the natural expression of pain than a prayer in which they experience any efficacy. Where there are some to whom the devil talks (which was more usual in their antiquity), such people offer him their sacrifices,32and the Indianshave recourse to them in their illnesses, so that they could make the same efforts for them. Today the Christian truth has obscured the falsity of hell. At most, the descendants of those ministers of the devil, who were generally women, do what they saw them do without the devil taking any notice of them or talking to them. Others, who lay but small stress on all that, do what they heard said was the custom in the days of their antiquity, let happen what would. But they do it with so little earnestness that it appears to be levity rather than religion. With the same fervor they follow any other rule, so that they always remain without any law, unless it be where the energy and incessant constancy of the missionaries has made them forget their ancient customs, and with continual instruction has made it easy for them to accept the new things of our holy faith.In Caraga there was a barbarous custom to make their ships lucky, namely, to vow to them the firsttime upon some name, which was generally the name of one of their captives.That which has great value in all parts is sorcery; and they hold it in such high esteem that the father hides it from the son, and unless they receive a great profit they refuse to communicate any secret of it. The famous sorcerers are feared, although there is no one who is not ashamed of being called thus, and the word “sorcerer” is one of the insulting words of these natives. My judgment from seeing these [sorceries], so alike, is that they are implicit compacts made with their ancestors. For it also seems impossible that there are herbs of so powerful poison that they can kill so instantly that some persons kill, with only the breath alone by chewing those herbs; and others, by burying those herbs where one has to pass. They also use figures, which they dedicate to him whom they wish to harm, and these accordingly torment him; the figure continues to aggravate the evil upon the sorcerer’s enemy. Others work by letters, and that is peculiar to the Moro Kasis [caciques], although the most of all this is fabulous; but as they imagine that it is true, for any accident for which they find no remedy, and of whose cause they are ignorant, they throw the blame on the sorcerer. It is recounted of the king of Burney that, on learning the name of one, he can kill him if he chooses. Sargento-mayor Pedro Duran Monforte having made war in his land, the king was informed of his name, and said that since he knew his name, therefore Monforte could not live much longer, and with that he consoled his people. But thanks to God, the sargento-mayor has been living for three years since that threat. Thus are all their affairs.He who unites the excellency of a powerful sorcerer to Mahometan ardor is King Corralat. He causes the fish to enter his boat. While one of our fathers was in his boat, a fish leaped in; the king picked it up and, giving it to the father, said: “This is for the father.” It is also related that he makes a piece of artillery float on the surface of the water by placing an oar in its mouth. He has a saker, which according to report, when fired, serves him as a good or evil augury. The fact is, that he talks very familiarly with the devil. According to the tale of a Spaniard (and one for which he vouched to me), when he was going from Samboangan on a certain embassy, just as he entered the river the favorite of Corralat told him that, the night previous, his king had asked him whether any ship were to be seen. To his negative answer the king said to him: “Then take note that three ships will arrive tomorrow, and one of them will be Spanish.” That was a fact, for two ships from Java entered, and that of the said Spaniard. Thereupon the favorite exclaimed: “Great Saint Corralat, there is no other truth.” With such things he has established so much credit that if God do not bury his body in the depths [of the sea], the Mindanaos will worship him and will found another house of Mecca, such as they had in Joló. With that he has become a greater king than any of his forbears; for their fear of him is incredible, as they recognize in him one who has superior power to avenge himself. Consequently, they do not dare undertake anything against his will; for they regard it as certain that they will be unlucky. Since the devil has been so advantaged by that way, he manages to make their fears come out true at times, by which credit for the others is assured.

Beliefs and superstitions of these islands

Beliefs and superstitions of these islands

The general condition of these islands is paganism. From Sangil to Samboangan, the dwellers along the beach follow the law of Mahomet, as well as those of the islands of Basilan and Joló. This last is the metropolis of the false religion, and the Mecca of this archipelago; for there is the tomb of their first master, concerning whom the caciques [i.e., Kasis], for the credit of his deceits, have been establishing innumerable fables, which have already become a lying tradition in this century. One is thathe came from Paradise with three others, of whom one went to Java, and another to Burney, and the other two landed at Joló, and thence one went to Mindanao. He of Mindanao was ill received; and because of that, and of having been shipwrecked in the sea by driving on a reef, he went in anger to an island to become a hermit, walking upon the water. But he who was wrecked in a ship could ill keep his footing in the water. Such is the character of lies, that some are quite contrary to others. The outfit that he carried consisted of a net, and it is said that he caught fish on the mountain with it, by dragging it over the ground. But if he found fish on the mountain then the fish surely could not escape him, unless indeed it were a flying-fish. When his followers went to seek him, Satan had already carried him away, and they found only the net—and that stretched out, for it had been placed to dry. From that point they took occasion to discuss so disconnected bits of nonsense as we have mentioned. Thereupon he who remained in Joló obtained the chair of the evil [doctrine], and, as he is accredited with not fewer deceits, he was able to authorize his person and his doctrine with the barbarians; for he also gave them to understand that he could get fresh water from the sea, that he could sail on land, and could establish fisheries on the mountain, as did the other. The use of these errors gave authority for the common people to invent others. They believe that the enchanted boat which they never saw, and whose anchorage they never knew, still exists. The respect that his deceits gained him in life became ignorant and infamous adoration at his death. A sepulcher was erected for him, which became themausoleum of his memory, and the Mecca of his deceits. They erected it on the famous hill [of Joló], and it was very elegant.28At its foot they planted the singular fruit which they call the king’s fruit,29which is unique in this archipelago, and of which no one ate except himself, although for devotion the shells were given to the others. As we said, they planted many jasmines, and made their defenses there, so that animals might not defile the mausoleum. As an entrance to it, there was arranged in front of it a little house which was placed at the beginning of the stockade, as if it were an entrance into the well of St. Patrick. There they made their offerings, all of which went to the benefit of the prebendaries of the house, who were generally of the blood of the hypocrite. Thence they took their auguries for the war, for, putting water in a vase, together with some earth from the sepulcher, if it became bitter to the taste the outcome would be bad; but if sweet, it would be happy. It is said that this test was made for the war waged on them by Don Sebastian, in consequence of which the king was always inclined to treat for peace.

By the entrance of our forces upon the hill, that place lost its worship and esteem; for the soldiers turned it all upside down, and dug it up in the hope of finding some treasure, and found no trace of a human body. The Indians were terrified at their boldness, and asked whether those who dared to do so much would not die. Thereupon, those peoplewere left with only the staff [of that teacher], which the Kasis [caciques] keep; for that is the staff of all virtues, and in going out with it (which is at the time of any necessity), all make it great reverence, and attend to all that is asked of them. For if they do not do so, he excommunicates them, with two blows with it which he gives on the house or the boat, and there can be neither health in the one or good luck in the other. All these are the artifices of cupidity, which holds them fast in a deceitful fear by vain terrors.

The other relic is the cap,30which is the hereditary possession of the kings, and to swear by it is to use the sanction of a great sacrament.

Notwithstanding so many lies that are made up to sustain this deceit, there are but few who esteem it; and in general they are all atheists, and those who have any religion are sorcerers. For as Moros, beyond not eating pork, and practicing circumcision, and [having] a multiplicity of women, they know not anything. They drink wine more than we do, and all their happiness consists in drunken revels—[to them] a positive act of greatness; and thus all their knightly deeds consist in emptying more or fewer jars [of wine], and there is a wedding in which they empty two hundred. All their festivals consist in this. They live in all respects like men without any law who do not know God, and without any mode of worship, and unmindful that there is suchin the world. All regard the law as little more or less, and, according to the land they inhabit, follow its customs and laws. Accordingly they are neither Moors, heathen, nor Christians, but barbarous atheists. Corralat, who has civilized his country somewhat, has his mosque, and makes his people attend it. But when they leave their village, each one does as he pleases—except some of the chiefs, who, following the example of the king, have made it a point of honor to appear to be Moors. But the common people, assuredly, lay no stress on that point.

What they believe in thoroughly are omens, which are almost general in all the islands. There are many of them: of birds, like the limocon;31of insects, like the lizard; of accidental occurrences, like sneezing; of happenings, like deaths or earthquakes; of observances at time of sowing, and of reaping, and of the hunt—all of these have their observances, which they fulfil in order to have luck in the work; for they believe that without these it will be unlucky, and without any profit. Therefore, they do not undertake those things, since in many districts it is considered an omen when anyone asks for a portion of what may be caught (as for instance, of the hunter or fisher), if we say to him when he goes to try his luck: “Divide with me what you shall catch.” They consider that as a bad omen, and return to their house, for they believe that they will catch nothing.

Those who are atheists knowingly are the dwellers in mountains; for they have no mosques, orshrines, or any method of praying to God. Those upon whom they call in their illnesses are their ancestors, saying “Alas, my mother!” or “my grandfather.” That is rather the natural expression of pain than a prayer in which they experience any efficacy. Where there are some to whom the devil talks (which was more usual in their antiquity), such people offer him their sacrifices,32and the Indianshave recourse to them in their illnesses, so that they could make the same efforts for them. Today the Christian truth has obscured the falsity of hell. At most, the descendants of those ministers of the devil, who were generally women, do what they saw them do without the devil taking any notice of them or talking to them. Others, who lay but small stress on all that, do what they heard said was the custom in the days of their antiquity, let happen what would. But they do it with so little earnestness that it appears to be levity rather than religion. With the same fervor they follow any other rule, so that they always remain without any law, unless it be where the energy and incessant constancy of the missionaries has made them forget their ancient customs, and with continual instruction has made it easy for them to accept the new things of our holy faith.

In Caraga there was a barbarous custom to make their ships lucky, namely, to vow to them the firsttime upon some name, which was generally the name of one of their captives.

That which has great value in all parts is sorcery; and they hold it in such high esteem that the father hides it from the son, and unless they receive a great profit they refuse to communicate any secret of it. The famous sorcerers are feared, although there is no one who is not ashamed of being called thus, and the word “sorcerer” is one of the insulting words of these natives. My judgment from seeing these [sorceries], so alike, is that they are implicit compacts made with their ancestors. For it also seems impossible that there are herbs of so powerful poison that they can kill so instantly that some persons kill, with only the breath alone by chewing those herbs; and others, by burying those herbs where one has to pass. They also use figures, which they dedicate to him whom they wish to harm, and these accordingly torment him; the figure continues to aggravate the evil upon the sorcerer’s enemy. Others work by letters, and that is peculiar to the Moro Kasis [caciques], although the most of all this is fabulous; but as they imagine that it is true, for any accident for which they find no remedy, and of whose cause they are ignorant, they throw the blame on the sorcerer. It is recounted of the king of Burney that, on learning the name of one, he can kill him if he chooses. Sargento-mayor Pedro Duran Monforte having made war in his land, the king was informed of his name, and said that since he knew his name, therefore Monforte could not live much longer, and with that he consoled his people. But thanks to God, the sargento-mayor has been living for three years since that threat. Thus are all their affairs.

He who unites the excellency of a powerful sorcerer to Mahometan ardor is King Corralat. He causes the fish to enter his boat. While one of our fathers was in his boat, a fish leaped in; the king picked it up and, giving it to the father, said: “This is for the father.” It is also related that he makes a piece of artillery float on the surface of the water by placing an oar in its mouth. He has a saker, which according to report, when fired, serves him as a good or evil augury. The fact is, that he talks very familiarly with the devil. According to the tale of a Spaniard (and one for which he vouched to me), when he was going from Samboangan on a certain embassy, just as he entered the river the favorite of Corralat told him that, the night previous, his king had asked him whether any ship were to be seen. To his negative answer the king said to him: “Then take note that three ships will arrive tomorrow, and one of them will be Spanish.” That was a fact, for two ships from Java entered, and that of the said Spaniard. Thereupon the favorite exclaimed: “Great Saint Corralat, there is no other truth.” With such things he has established so much credit that if God do not bury his body in the depths [of the sea], the Mindanaos will worship him and will found another house of Mecca, such as they had in Joló. With that he has become a greater king than any of his forbears; for their fear of him is incredible, as they recognize in him one who has superior power to avenge himself. Consequently, they do not dare undertake anything against his will; for they regard it as certain that they will be unlucky. Since the devil has been so advantaged by that way, he manages to make their fears come out true at times, by which credit for the others is assured.

Chapter XIIIThe moderation of their conduct, and the sobriety of their livingAmong all the Indians it is a general fact that in what relates to their own persons natural law is more conspicuous, and has a more firmly established empire, than have the nations. Part of that is founded on the slothfulness of their natures, and part on the rudeness of their civilization; the former makes them content with little, and the latter causes them to ignore the niceties of art. Their food proves the first well; and the havoc that they cause, the second. The food is very poor among the wealthy, and requires little labor; for they neither know condiments nor for that purpose are drugs valued among them, of the use of all which they are ignorant. Both slave and ruler, plebeian and prince, eat bread; for, since that consists of a little boiled rice, one cannot eat it more adorned than the other. Since all of them are bakers of this bread, he who wishes to clean it better eats it whiter. He who has no slaves to relieve him from that eats it as he chooses; and, consequently, there is no one who does not know how to cook his food. For they are under the daily necessity, even the richest, of making it; and, as ostentation in ordinary life is so little, it is unavoidable that service is lacking to them on their voyages and navigations, so that they are forced to use their own hands. Those who do not obtain rice—either because the land does not bear it, or because it is limited in any year—eat of many roots, which supply the lack fully, and which require no other preparation than boiling. He who is so well served that he obtains a little fish, venison, or pork, with water and salt alone makes his stew,without the knowledge of other kinds of pottages. In order to give their food a sharp flavor, they are wont to cook it with some herbs of a sour taste. Consequently, in the seasoning of their food they consume nothing, so that they save the cost of butter, oil, vinegar, and all spices. They are accustomed to make theirpuches[i.e., a sort of pap] andpoleadas[i.e., a sort of fritter] from cocoanut milk and the honey made from sugarcane, which are their preserves and royal cakes. But such is at a great wedding or at a feast, where their desire for ostentation arouses their endeavors. Such were presented to me by the king of Joló, Panguian Bachal, while I was visiting at his court. They consisted of a half-dozen small cakes made of rice flour and kneaded with cocoanut-milk, and baked until they turned dark, so that they appeared to be cinnamon to the sight. In fact the color was due to the toasting and to a preserve, like turpentine, made from the fruit of the durion with honey made from sugarcane. This is enough to turn the strongest stomachs—as it were, the chief dainty for the stomach of a bull—oppressive, as it was all night to the Queen mother;33and we satisfied ourselves with looking at it.Their clothing is very simple, without stiffening or linings. All are dressed after the same style, and innovations due to curiosity are not allowed. As the country is so hot, they dress very loosely, a fact which makes the cutting out very easy. Each one is the tailor of his own garments. This is the reason why the Indians are so lacking in the communal idea, and are so hostile to assembling and uniting in villages;for since their misery and laziness make them content with the easiest and most natural, which all obtain, they do not need one another. For in each house are found all the trades, and no one makes use of them unless his own necessity compels him. If one goes to fish, he is content with what will satisfy either his appetite or his necessity; and the desire of acquiring does not make him break with his laziness in order to work.Returning to their clothes, the stuffs worn are generally common to nobles, and plebeians, kings and slaves, and there is no difference between them—except it be in something extraordinary, in which the obligation and ostentation of their chief persons induces them to depart from their accustomed use. At such times they are wont to wear silks and very beautiful stuffs, with buttons and gold lace. Their krises (which are their inseparable weapons) have gilded scabbards and hilts of massy gold. I have seen some of them which were valued at nine slaves each, all covered with precious stones and perhaps encrusted with pearls. But in daily appearance all resemble one another, both in the garments in which they dress and in the fashions that they employ. These clothes consist of breeches and short jacket [ropilla]—or skirt, to be more accurate. That is not worn over a shirt, for with them the first garment is not the shirt, but the skirt, for it is all one. Sometimes they wear a jacket with long skirts cut in the French style; which, although it can be buttoned, is generally worn open, with the breast exposed. In this particular this nation is quite different from the others of this region. They use another style of cut; the skirts and sleeves each ending in a point, andthe ends which ought to close over the bosom are brought together in double points, fastened either with a button or with a knot, so that almost all the breast is left open. The breeches are full and white, resembling those which the Spaniards wear for the sake of cleanliness under their black ones. They are girt with a bit of native linen, so long that after having been knotted it hangs from the waist to the knees; and it serves to make their garb more decent than it would be because of the meagerness and thinness of the breeches. Or if they do not have that, then they use two brazas’ length of the same cloth or silk, which at its full width they wind about the body, joined in front with one end crossed below the other. In that manner they cover the breeches entirely, and the clothing is much more decent. In this usage, the gala costumes have special elaboration, and it displays their ostentation; for they are wont to wear cloth that is valued at thirty or forty reals of eight. They also wear breeches of the Malay fashion, which are closed like ours, although they are not so tight. It is the rule that they must be of silk with a gold fringe below, or with border and buttons of the same which among these people is always of filigree or of solid gold. In that they consider only ostentation, without any risk of waste.On the head, in the Moorish style, is worn a turban. Its use throughout the Indias is general, but among these people inviolable. I do not know whether it is because even their hearts are tinged with their cursed worship, or because of hatred to our nation and to our customs, or because of flattery to their natural arrogance—through which they will never, of themselves, come to depreciate their ownthings. Even yet throughout the islands, those who are esteemed as chiefs are ashamed of appearing without hats.The clothing of the women is plainer, and such that it becomes indecent; for from the small mantas or textiles of these regions, which are all very thin, they make a sack nine palmos long and open at both ends. They gird this in at the waist as much as may be necessary, so that it falls to the feet; what is left they allow to fall over the legs, and it does not even reach to the knees, or necessarily serve for the decency which modesty requires. They adjust it by drawing it close to one side of the body, and by making folds on the other side of all the extra width in proportion to their body. This sack, which by day is a garment—so shameful to decency, because it so ill satisfies it—serves at night for mattress, sheets, and curtain. For on retiring they ungird the sack, and the part which they doubled about the knees they put up to the head. That is all the opulence and comfort that their beds can boast of, which are made of a thin mat. These are their Holland and Rouen linens, which serve for their opulence and their fastidious cleanliness. That is their whole wealth of quilts and covers, which protect them from the cold and from the mosquitoes. All is so exactly adapted to necessity, that there is no difference between the chief women and the slaves—as I saw in Joló in the queen herself, and in Samboangan in many other women, not inferior to her in vanity. However, the women of highest rank, on retiring let fall a curtain without a covering. And that is all their ostentation and the necessary obligation of modesty for the protection from sight of those who arecareless concerning their manner of sleeping, in houses where there is no division of apartments, and where there can be no rooms for the multitude that inhabit them, and where the others throw themselves down pellmell on the floor. At most, the master is protected by that little grandeur. This is in regard to the bed, for in dress no difference is known.The gala dress of the women of this nation consists wholly of the shirt [sayuelo] which is made in the style usual to the Indians. It is however, drawn close about the breasts, and the sleeves are very long, at times each sleeve taking three or four varas of cloth. The sleeve is gathered at the wrist in a very fine and graceful plait, as the goods that they wear are so delicate. They heighten that gala dress with the wealth of gold, the use of which among these Indias extends to the wrists, which they cover with bracelets, either solid or hollow, and a finger in width. On days of great display they generally wear three or four pairs. The work is beautiful, and these add much to their gay and festive appearance; and they show off the arm loaded with such rich bracelets. For cloaks or mantles they wear textiles of fine silk, and at times of gold [tissue], which they callpatolas34which is a very beautiful and rich kind of goods. Generally, when they leave the house they all wear very long black cloaks; that partly moderates the ugliness and utter indecency of their dress—which of itself is, I know not whether more ugly or more immodest, with its sack above mentioned, which serves them as shirt and petticoat, without its having any distinction either for station, rank, or display.The houses in which they reside have what is sufficient for their shelter and poor lodging. They have no salons where they can walk, or higher stories where they can amuse themselves, than that which separates them from the ground. This is made with logs, upon which as columns they build their sills, to which they fasten the ends of the beams with their keys. The roof is thatch, which nature furnished, a provision very suitable to the needs of the country—which, as it is so subject to earthquakes, does not allow a greater weight without danger to the buildings. The floor is of bamboos, split or otherwise prepared; for, as these are hollow, they can be split with the same ease, thus avoiding the trouble and niceties of carpentry. Thus the floor is like a grating, and is a necessary precaution of their natural laziness and dirtiness; for by this way of making their floors they avoid having to sweep them, since the houses can so easily be washed and rid of all dirt. They have no benches or chairs, and thus they get rid of the encumbrance of much furniture. They consider a seat on the floor as more secure. They use tables somewhat; these are round and hollowed out in the middle, in the manner of an ordinary brasier, and are built wholly for use rather than for display. In that hollow they put all their dishes, which consist of boiled rice, and fish of the same stew, without there being any danger of the food being spilled out. They use no tablecloths or napkins; and, although they use dishes somewhat, they do not usually feel the lack of these, as the trees with their wide leaves furnish them a cleaner table-service, and the bamboos make them very tasteful jugs and bowls which are formed from their lengths between knots. These also form their jars; for thereis a kind of bamboo from which they make jars containing three or four azumbres.35By cutting four joint-lengths and boring holes in them, they fill a good jar. The cocoanuts yield them cups, for here these are very common.

The moderation of their conduct, and the sobriety of their living

The moderation of their conduct, and the sobriety of their living

Among all the Indians it is a general fact that in what relates to their own persons natural law is more conspicuous, and has a more firmly established empire, than have the nations. Part of that is founded on the slothfulness of their natures, and part on the rudeness of their civilization; the former makes them content with little, and the latter causes them to ignore the niceties of art. Their food proves the first well; and the havoc that they cause, the second. The food is very poor among the wealthy, and requires little labor; for they neither know condiments nor for that purpose are drugs valued among them, of the use of all which they are ignorant. Both slave and ruler, plebeian and prince, eat bread; for, since that consists of a little boiled rice, one cannot eat it more adorned than the other. Since all of them are bakers of this bread, he who wishes to clean it better eats it whiter. He who has no slaves to relieve him from that eats it as he chooses; and, consequently, there is no one who does not know how to cook his food. For they are under the daily necessity, even the richest, of making it; and, as ostentation in ordinary life is so little, it is unavoidable that service is lacking to them on their voyages and navigations, so that they are forced to use their own hands. Those who do not obtain rice—either because the land does not bear it, or because it is limited in any year—eat of many roots, which supply the lack fully, and which require no other preparation than boiling. He who is so well served that he obtains a little fish, venison, or pork, with water and salt alone makes his stew,without the knowledge of other kinds of pottages. In order to give their food a sharp flavor, they are wont to cook it with some herbs of a sour taste. Consequently, in the seasoning of their food they consume nothing, so that they save the cost of butter, oil, vinegar, and all spices. They are accustomed to make theirpuches[i.e., a sort of pap] andpoleadas[i.e., a sort of fritter] from cocoanut milk and the honey made from sugarcane, which are their preserves and royal cakes. But such is at a great wedding or at a feast, where their desire for ostentation arouses their endeavors. Such were presented to me by the king of Joló, Panguian Bachal, while I was visiting at his court. They consisted of a half-dozen small cakes made of rice flour and kneaded with cocoanut-milk, and baked until they turned dark, so that they appeared to be cinnamon to the sight. In fact the color was due to the toasting and to a preserve, like turpentine, made from the fruit of the durion with honey made from sugarcane. This is enough to turn the strongest stomachs—as it were, the chief dainty for the stomach of a bull—oppressive, as it was all night to the Queen mother;33and we satisfied ourselves with looking at it.

Their clothing is very simple, without stiffening or linings. All are dressed after the same style, and innovations due to curiosity are not allowed. As the country is so hot, they dress very loosely, a fact which makes the cutting out very easy. Each one is the tailor of his own garments. This is the reason why the Indians are so lacking in the communal idea, and are so hostile to assembling and uniting in villages;for since their misery and laziness make them content with the easiest and most natural, which all obtain, they do not need one another. For in each house are found all the trades, and no one makes use of them unless his own necessity compels him. If one goes to fish, he is content with what will satisfy either his appetite or his necessity; and the desire of acquiring does not make him break with his laziness in order to work.

Returning to their clothes, the stuffs worn are generally common to nobles, and plebeians, kings and slaves, and there is no difference between them—except it be in something extraordinary, in which the obligation and ostentation of their chief persons induces them to depart from their accustomed use. At such times they are wont to wear silks and very beautiful stuffs, with buttons and gold lace. Their krises (which are their inseparable weapons) have gilded scabbards and hilts of massy gold. I have seen some of them which were valued at nine slaves each, all covered with precious stones and perhaps encrusted with pearls. But in daily appearance all resemble one another, both in the garments in which they dress and in the fashions that they employ. These clothes consist of breeches and short jacket [ropilla]—or skirt, to be more accurate. That is not worn over a shirt, for with them the first garment is not the shirt, but the skirt, for it is all one. Sometimes they wear a jacket with long skirts cut in the French style; which, although it can be buttoned, is generally worn open, with the breast exposed. In this particular this nation is quite different from the others of this region. They use another style of cut; the skirts and sleeves each ending in a point, andthe ends which ought to close over the bosom are brought together in double points, fastened either with a button or with a knot, so that almost all the breast is left open. The breeches are full and white, resembling those which the Spaniards wear for the sake of cleanliness under their black ones. They are girt with a bit of native linen, so long that after having been knotted it hangs from the waist to the knees; and it serves to make their garb more decent than it would be because of the meagerness and thinness of the breeches. Or if they do not have that, then they use two brazas’ length of the same cloth or silk, which at its full width they wind about the body, joined in front with one end crossed below the other. In that manner they cover the breeches entirely, and the clothing is much more decent. In this usage, the gala costumes have special elaboration, and it displays their ostentation; for they are wont to wear cloth that is valued at thirty or forty reals of eight. They also wear breeches of the Malay fashion, which are closed like ours, although they are not so tight. It is the rule that they must be of silk with a gold fringe below, or with border and buttons of the same which among these people is always of filigree or of solid gold. In that they consider only ostentation, without any risk of waste.

On the head, in the Moorish style, is worn a turban. Its use throughout the Indias is general, but among these people inviolable. I do not know whether it is because even their hearts are tinged with their cursed worship, or because of hatred to our nation and to our customs, or because of flattery to their natural arrogance—through which they will never, of themselves, come to depreciate their ownthings. Even yet throughout the islands, those who are esteemed as chiefs are ashamed of appearing without hats.

The clothing of the women is plainer, and such that it becomes indecent; for from the small mantas or textiles of these regions, which are all very thin, they make a sack nine palmos long and open at both ends. They gird this in at the waist as much as may be necessary, so that it falls to the feet; what is left they allow to fall over the legs, and it does not even reach to the knees, or necessarily serve for the decency which modesty requires. They adjust it by drawing it close to one side of the body, and by making folds on the other side of all the extra width in proportion to their body. This sack, which by day is a garment—so shameful to decency, because it so ill satisfies it—serves at night for mattress, sheets, and curtain. For on retiring they ungird the sack, and the part which they doubled about the knees they put up to the head. That is all the opulence and comfort that their beds can boast of, which are made of a thin mat. These are their Holland and Rouen linens, which serve for their opulence and their fastidious cleanliness. That is their whole wealth of quilts and covers, which protect them from the cold and from the mosquitoes. All is so exactly adapted to necessity, that there is no difference between the chief women and the slaves—as I saw in Joló in the queen herself, and in Samboangan in many other women, not inferior to her in vanity. However, the women of highest rank, on retiring let fall a curtain without a covering. And that is all their ostentation and the necessary obligation of modesty for the protection from sight of those who arecareless concerning their manner of sleeping, in houses where there is no division of apartments, and where there can be no rooms for the multitude that inhabit them, and where the others throw themselves down pellmell on the floor. At most, the master is protected by that little grandeur. This is in regard to the bed, for in dress no difference is known.

The gala dress of the women of this nation consists wholly of the shirt [sayuelo] which is made in the style usual to the Indians. It is however, drawn close about the breasts, and the sleeves are very long, at times each sleeve taking three or four varas of cloth. The sleeve is gathered at the wrist in a very fine and graceful plait, as the goods that they wear are so delicate. They heighten that gala dress with the wealth of gold, the use of which among these Indias extends to the wrists, which they cover with bracelets, either solid or hollow, and a finger in width. On days of great display they generally wear three or four pairs. The work is beautiful, and these add much to their gay and festive appearance; and they show off the arm loaded with such rich bracelets. For cloaks or mantles they wear textiles of fine silk, and at times of gold [tissue], which they callpatolas34which is a very beautiful and rich kind of goods. Generally, when they leave the house they all wear very long black cloaks; that partly moderates the ugliness and utter indecency of their dress—which of itself is, I know not whether more ugly or more immodest, with its sack above mentioned, which serves them as shirt and petticoat, without its having any distinction either for station, rank, or display.

The houses in which they reside have what is sufficient for their shelter and poor lodging. They have no salons where they can walk, or higher stories where they can amuse themselves, than that which separates them from the ground. This is made with logs, upon which as columns they build their sills, to which they fasten the ends of the beams with their keys. The roof is thatch, which nature furnished, a provision very suitable to the needs of the country—which, as it is so subject to earthquakes, does not allow a greater weight without danger to the buildings. The floor is of bamboos, split or otherwise prepared; for, as these are hollow, they can be split with the same ease, thus avoiding the trouble and niceties of carpentry. Thus the floor is like a grating, and is a necessary precaution of their natural laziness and dirtiness; for by this way of making their floors they avoid having to sweep them, since the houses can so easily be washed and rid of all dirt. They have no benches or chairs, and thus they get rid of the encumbrance of much furniture. They consider a seat on the floor as more secure. They use tables somewhat; these are round and hollowed out in the middle, in the manner of an ordinary brasier, and are built wholly for use rather than for display. In that hollow they put all their dishes, which consist of boiled rice, and fish of the same stew, without there being any danger of the food being spilled out. They use no tablecloths or napkins; and, although they use dishes somewhat, they do not usually feel the lack of these, as the trees with their wide leaves furnish them a cleaner table-service, and the bamboos make them very tasteful jugs and bowls which are formed from their lengths between knots. These also form their jars; for thereis a kind of bamboo from which they make jars containing three or four azumbres.35By cutting four joint-lengths and boring holes in them, they fill a good jar. The cocoanuts yield them cups, for here these are very common.

Chapter XIVThe laws of their private conduct and the general laws of their governmentFollowing are the laws pertaining to them privately as persons. They are as much adapted to the nature of the world (although more clothed with innocence), as they are to their laziness and cupidity which prohibits them from all expense which is not necessary for life, as superfluous. For that I have always said of these natives that they are fine philosophers, adapted to nature. The laws which touch on other matters and have to do with their neighbors are quite at variance with the laws of nature; and these extend to a tyranny so manifestly cruel that at times and in some things it comes to be brutality. I have seen a son who held his father as slave, and,vice versa, a father who held his son as slave; for if one make an outlay for another, they take account of it, as would be done in the case of a stranger. Inasmuch as this son had freed his father by buying him from his master, that man was reckoned as his son’s slave, and the same would be true of the son. It may happen that a chief lowers himself [by having intercourse] with his slave-woman, and the son whom she bears may be so cruel that at the death ofhis father he makes his own mother his slave. Even if, while they are at peace, these points are not cleared up, and the inner tyranny employs external civility, yet, if dissensions alter these relations, and they are divided, the men avail themselves of those rights, and subject their mothers to whatever they choose, and do not allow them to leave their houses. Thus do they come to be served by their mothers at all times. In regard to those who descend from them, there is even less shame; and among another kind of relations is an utter disregard of nature in this respect, for their own nephews are the slaves of their uncles, and,vice versa, uncles are slaves of their nephews.They do not know what charity is. Consequently, whatever benefits they confer are all placed on account as debts, which their tyranny estimates wholly to their own satisfaction. Unfortunate he whom abandonment or orphanage has flung into the house of another, for now for his sustenance, and again for his rearing, he must become a slave. Kindness is shown at the cost of liberty. Although that was general throughout the islands, in this island it is excessive, as it is a tenet of the perfidious sect of Mahomet; and its cruelty has left no liberty that it has not opposed. Therefore, there is not in this nation the middle class that is found in the others which forms the common people out of the freemen; for there are no freemen, nor any mean between chiefs and slaves. Their community is composed of but two extremes, so far separated. It is a fact that there are many ways by which to reduce men to such a condition, and there is no escape from the injury. For, since self-interest is the advantage of those whoare powerful, it unites them against the unfortunate one who dares to proclaim the offense that has been done to him, while his punishment conciliates so many other offenders who might perplex justice; and fear shuts the mouths of those whom the same fortune might gain to his favor in the support of his testimonies. Therefore, when it comes to proof there is always a lack of witnesses for innocence; while on the contrary there is for tyranny an oversupply of ocular witnesses of things that they have never seen or heard. When some stranger goes to a village to trade where he does not have the guaranteed patronage of many powerful relations, in the case of any neglect that is shown him in courtesy or in the laws, they bring such a case against him that to get out of it well he abandons his business and perhaps with his business his freedom. The worst of it is that the punishment is always more than the offense, for the just pay as if they were sinners. Their avarice or tyranny not satisfied with the vengeance taken on the criminal makes the offense related to the very blood, in order to extend their cupidity farther. Hence it is that on account of the crime committed by a single one, they make all the relations slaves. I saw four brothers who were all deprived of their inherited freedom because of the incivility and weakness of one. Finding myself in Iligan—a nation which, as it is so new, is even yet throwing out the sparks of this tyrannical fury it happened that a common woman spoke some insulting words to another woman who had rank; and the latter’s husband, coming to me to make a complaint, said to me, exaggerating the offense: “Father, if the Spaniards were not here, and we could rule ourselves by our own laws, wewould have made mincemeat [gigote] of that woman with a campilan, and slaves of her brothers and sisters and relatives.” Finally, he whom avarice rules with a tyrannical power (for all their laws end in self-interest) gets usury from his offense and employment from his crime.Avarice rules in all their judgments; and the purse becomes the gallows of all crimes. Money is the vengeance of the aggrieved parties, and the sponge for injuries. When they are paid for, no spot or sign of the offense is left. Although there are crimes which bear especially a capital penalty, yet there is no penalty that cannot be redeemed by money or goods. He who has no possessions at all has still liberty, and can surrender that also. That is the road most traveled by which some come to be the slaves of others; and perhaps the chief, if he be poor, may be the slave of another who is a plebeian. When anyone is caught in adultery, if sudden wrath does not execute him, which is but seldom, the wounds are passed on to his purse, in the endeavor to destroy him, and the husband subjects his own wife to the same harshness and penalty. For here all persons have a separate purse, and the husband is not master of what his wife possesses but only of what pertains to him. Nor, under pretext of managing her possessions, does he have more to do with it than the extent of her permission; and she is always mistress of her own possessions. Thus she pays a fine to her own husband, as if she were a stranger to him. Having received this, the aggrieved party remains as satisfied as when, among the Spaniards, one sword has pinned both guilty ones together. The offender retains a privilege truly insulting and barbarous—thatfor one year he may have intercourse with the woman without her husband complaining. Then the husband and wife return in all peace to cohabit as before, the offense being again at risk, for another atonement.They especially abhor theft, and they have assigned an ignominious penalty for the thief, as a warning. This is to cut off the joints of his fingers, more or fewer according to the crime. That perhaps obliges them to pass from the hands to the toes, the penalty being proportioned to the misdeeds of greater atrocity. But that penalty can also be redeemed, as can the others, by money.Notwithstanding that, some crimes they regard as so capital that they do not respect petitions or allow bribes, and death is the necessary punishment for them. The unnatural crime is one of them, and the severity of the execution well shows their natural horror, for such people are burned, and their houses; and nothing that they possessed is allowed to escape from this rigor, as being contaminated. Or, having caged the offenders, they throw them into the sea, and destroy their houses and fields, by such punishment to make demonstration of their abhorrence.The most feared crime is that which they callsumban, which is incest in the first degree; for they regard it as assured by long experience and knowledge inherited in tradition from their ancestors, that the land which allows that crime is bound down by wretchedness and misfortunes until its infamy is purged by the rigorous chastisement of the offender. There is no other means which can placate the wrath of heaven. Consequently, when they suffer long droughts, or other general plagues from heaven,they immediately attribute them to this. A case of that nature came to my notice in the year fifty-one, when the drought was general, and so great that even the water of the rivers failed, and that river which had any water that found its way to the sea was rare. The Indians of the village which was in my care on the coast of Siocon came to tell me that it was a punishment from the sky, and that it had been demanded by the awfulness of such crime on the coast of Mindanao, where they said that a mother was living in marriage with her son. They petitioned me to have the offenders punished, and warned me that the punishment should be death without remission, such being their custom, without admitting satisfaction by any other penalty, however excessive it be. The same report was current in the island of Basilan. However, it was without other foundation than that the Indians are gossipy and suspicious, ignorant of the secrets of the sky and ruled by the traditions of the past. They are ruled in that island by greater fear, as they retained more accurately in their memory certain cases that served them as examples and warnings. For, at a certain time, the sky was so leaden that for two years not a drop of rain fell. There was an Indian who violated the respect that he owed to his blood and to nature, with regard to a daughter of his. Although he tried to bury the crime in the depths of his silence, it cried out to the sky as an offense, and was heard distinctly as a sin; for the effect, as ungrateful as evil, always turns against its cause. He was a person of influence, and respect for him did not allow any investigation to be made; but, the villages grieving over the public calamity, and unable to enduretheir forced famine, men trampled under foot respect and laws, in their judgment that tolerance in so execrable an evil had also vexed and hardened the sky. By common consent they seized father and daughter, and, shutting them up in a cage well weighted with stones, threw them into the sea. In return they experienced from the sky approbation for their avenging zeal, in the heavy rain with which it received them. For at all times God preserves the credit to virtue, and even among barbarians imposed penance on vice, so that those who became familiars of vice could have no excuse.36The Joloans executed the same punishment with equal severity, but through malicious information. God, who is always the protector of innocence, shielded the wretched; for when they cast two other fathers in the same manner [into the water], he took away the weight of the stones, and gave the men strength to keep afloat, without abandoning them for a whole day, so that, the report of the matter having reached the king, the wonder forced him to seek new information, by which he discovered falsity and recognized innocence. In all the nations innocence considers God as its advocate, and in desperate cases rests secure on His protection.Judges in suits or causes follow the simple laws of nature, and have no embarrassment of laws and doubts and contrary interpretations. They have no delays by reports or prolixity of writs, for they donot waste a single dedo37of paper in that. The accusation, the plea, and the evidence are quickly heard—all in the manner of the time of Noah. If there is no testimony, they admit the parties to the oath, which contains terrifying imprecations. With that plea the party is usually content; for the obligation and risk, to which he is exposed by results which are reckoned as punishments of heaven against perjured ones if the rigor of their imprecations is executed, are greatly feared. If perchance the party is satisfied that he has truth on his side, at his petition they do not rest content with that trial, but judgment of red-hot coals or hot iron,38such as was resorted to in España and other countries, in centuries ruder and more immune from laws by the privilege of their innocence and goodness. If the persons are burned, then their punishment is proceeded with; and if not, the accuser is obliged to make requital. That custom seems to have been communicated by the Moros by way of Terrenate, where it is still observed. However, no one is burned, for since the Ternatans are so skilled in sorcery, they know herbs of such efficacy and bewitchments of such power, that they communicate it to the hands so that they can handle the iron with impunity, as if it were a nosegay of flowers. Also many of those whom they bury alive, that being the punishment of adultery and rape, escape. I saythis, for it often occurred that persons escaped from the execution of this test, in the sight of the Spaniards at Ternate, women whose guilt was notorious, but who cleared themselves of suspicion among their people by this proof. I was told many happenings of this sort, during the time that I spent in those islands [i.e., the Moluccas]; and I was assured that it was done by means of an herb, and I was shown some that were famous in its knowledge. These were the ones to whom the accused had recourse in all their exigencies, suborning their expertness with a quantity of money.

The laws of their private conduct and the general laws of their government

The laws of their private conduct and the general laws of their government

Following are the laws pertaining to them privately as persons. They are as much adapted to the nature of the world (although more clothed with innocence), as they are to their laziness and cupidity which prohibits them from all expense which is not necessary for life, as superfluous. For that I have always said of these natives that they are fine philosophers, adapted to nature. The laws which touch on other matters and have to do with their neighbors are quite at variance with the laws of nature; and these extend to a tyranny so manifestly cruel that at times and in some things it comes to be brutality. I have seen a son who held his father as slave, and,vice versa, a father who held his son as slave; for if one make an outlay for another, they take account of it, as would be done in the case of a stranger. Inasmuch as this son had freed his father by buying him from his master, that man was reckoned as his son’s slave, and the same would be true of the son. It may happen that a chief lowers himself [by having intercourse] with his slave-woman, and the son whom she bears may be so cruel that at the death ofhis father he makes his own mother his slave. Even if, while they are at peace, these points are not cleared up, and the inner tyranny employs external civility, yet, if dissensions alter these relations, and they are divided, the men avail themselves of those rights, and subject their mothers to whatever they choose, and do not allow them to leave their houses. Thus do they come to be served by their mothers at all times. In regard to those who descend from them, there is even less shame; and among another kind of relations is an utter disregard of nature in this respect, for their own nephews are the slaves of their uncles, and,vice versa, uncles are slaves of their nephews.

They do not know what charity is. Consequently, whatever benefits they confer are all placed on account as debts, which their tyranny estimates wholly to their own satisfaction. Unfortunate he whom abandonment or orphanage has flung into the house of another, for now for his sustenance, and again for his rearing, he must become a slave. Kindness is shown at the cost of liberty. Although that was general throughout the islands, in this island it is excessive, as it is a tenet of the perfidious sect of Mahomet; and its cruelty has left no liberty that it has not opposed. Therefore, there is not in this nation the middle class that is found in the others which forms the common people out of the freemen; for there are no freemen, nor any mean between chiefs and slaves. Their community is composed of but two extremes, so far separated. It is a fact that there are many ways by which to reduce men to such a condition, and there is no escape from the injury. For, since self-interest is the advantage of those whoare powerful, it unites them against the unfortunate one who dares to proclaim the offense that has been done to him, while his punishment conciliates so many other offenders who might perplex justice; and fear shuts the mouths of those whom the same fortune might gain to his favor in the support of his testimonies. Therefore, when it comes to proof there is always a lack of witnesses for innocence; while on the contrary there is for tyranny an oversupply of ocular witnesses of things that they have never seen or heard. When some stranger goes to a village to trade where he does not have the guaranteed patronage of many powerful relations, in the case of any neglect that is shown him in courtesy or in the laws, they bring such a case against him that to get out of it well he abandons his business and perhaps with his business his freedom. The worst of it is that the punishment is always more than the offense, for the just pay as if they were sinners. Their avarice or tyranny not satisfied with the vengeance taken on the criminal makes the offense related to the very blood, in order to extend their cupidity farther. Hence it is that on account of the crime committed by a single one, they make all the relations slaves. I saw four brothers who were all deprived of their inherited freedom because of the incivility and weakness of one. Finding myself in Iligan—a nation which, as it is so new, is even yet throwing out the sparks of this tyrannical fury it happened that a common woman spoke some insulting words to another woman who had rank; and the latter’s husband, coming to me to make a complaint, said to me, exaggerating the offense: “Father, if the Spaniards were not here, and we could rule ourselves by our own laws, wewould have made mincemeat [gigote] of that woman with a campilan, and slaves of her brothers and sisters and relatives.” Finally, he whom avarice rules with a tyrannical power (for all their laws end in self-interest) gets usury from his offense and employment from his crime.

Avarice rules in all their judgments; and the purse becomes the gallows of all crimes. Money is the vengeance of the aggrieved parties, and the sponge for injuries. When they are paid for, no spot or sign of the offense is left. Although there are crimes which bear especially a capital penalty, yet there is no penalty that cannot be redeemed by money or goods. He who has no possessions at all has still liberty, and can surrender that also. That is the road most traveled by which some come to be the slaves of others; and perhaps the chief, if he be poor, may be the slave of another who is a plebeian. When anyone is caught in adultery, if sudden wrath does not execute him, which is but seldom, the wounds are passed on to his purse, in the endeavor to destroy him, and the husband subjects his own wife to the same harshness and penalty. For here all persons have a separate purse, and the husband is not master of what his wife possesses but only of what pertains to him. Nor, under pretext of managing her possessions, does he have more to do with it than the extent of her permission; and she is always mistress of her own possessions. Thus she pays a fine to her own husband, as if she were a stranger to him. Having received this, the aggrieved party remains as satisfied as when, among the Spaniards, one sword has pinned both guilty ones together. The offender retains a privilege truly insulting and barbarous—thatfor one year he may have intercourse with the woman without her husband complaining. Then the husband and wife return in all peace to cohabit as before, the offense being again at risk, for another atonement.

They especially abhor theft, and they have assigned an ignominious penalty for the thief, as a warning. This is to cut off the joints of his fingers, more or fewer according to the crime. That perhaps obliges them to pass from the hands to the toes, the penalty being proportioned to the misdeeds of greater atrocity. But that penalty can also be redeemed, as can the others, by money.

Notwithstanding that, some crimes they regard as so capital that they do not respect petitions or allow bribes, and death is the necessary punishment for them. The unnatural crime is one of them, and the severity of the execution well shows their natural horror, for such people are burned, and their houses; and nothing that they possessed is allowed to escape from this rigor, as being contaminated. Or, having caged the offenders, they throw them into the sea, and destroy their houses and fields, by such punishment to make demonstration of their abhorrence.

The most feared crime is that which they callsumban, which is incest in the first degree; for they regard it as assured by long experience and knowledge inherited in tradition from their ancestors, that the land which allows that crime is bound down by wretchedness and misfortunes until its infamy is purged by the rigorous chastisement of the offender. There is no other means which can placate the wrath of heaven. Consequently, when they suffer long droughts, or other general plagues from heaven,they immediately attribute them to this. A case of that nature came to my notice in the year fifty-one, when the drought was general, and so great that even the water of the rivers failed, and that river which had any water that found its way to the sea was rare. The Indians of the village which was in my care on the coast of Siocon came to tell me that it was a punishment from the sky, and that it had been demanded by the awfulness of such crime on the coast of Mindanao, where they said that a mother was living in marriage with her son. They petitioned me to have the offenders punished, and warned me that the punishment should be death without remission, such being their custom, without admitting satisfaction by any other penalty, however excessive it be. The same report was current in the island of Basilan. However, it was without other foundation than that the Indians are gossipy and suspicious, ignorant of the secrets of the sky and ruled by the traditions of the past. They are ruled in that island by greater fear, as they retained more accurately in their memory certain cases that served them as examples and warnings. For, at a certain time, the sky was so leaden that for two years not a drop of rain fell. There was an Indian who violated the respect that he owed to his blood and to nature, with regard to a daughter of his. Although he tried to bury the crime in the depths of his silence, it cried out to the sky as an offense, and was heard distinctly as a sin; for the effect, as ungrateful as evil, always turns against its cause. He was a person of influence, and respect for him did not allow any investigation to be made; but, the villages grieving over the public calamity, and unable to enduretheir forced famine, men trampled under foot respect and laws, in their judgment that tolerance in so execrable an evil had also vexed and hardened the sky. By common consent they seized father and daughter, and, shutting them up in a cage well weighted with stones, threw them into the sea. In return they experienced from the sky approbation for their avenging zeal, in the heavy rain with which it received them. For at all times God preserves the credit to virtue, and even among barbarians imposed penance on vice, so that those who became familiars of vice could have no excuse.36

The Joloans executed the same punishment with equal severity, but through malicious information. God, who is always the protector of innocence, shielded the wretched; for when they cast two other fathers in the same manner [into the water], he took away the weight of the stones, and gave the men strength to keep afloat, without abandoning them for a whole day, so that, the report of the matter having reached the king, the wonder forced him to seek new information, by which he discovered falsity and recognized innocence. In all the nations innocence considers God as its advocate, and in desperate cases rests secure on His protection.

Judges in suits or causes follow the simple laws of nature, and have no embarrassment of laws and doubts and contrary interpretations. They have no delays by reports or prolixity of writs, for they donot waste a single dedo37of paper in that. The accusation, the plea, and the evidence are quickly heard—all in the manner of the time of Noah. If there is no testimony, they admit the parties to the oath, which contains terrifying imprecations. With that plea the party is usually content; for the obligation and risk, to which he is exposed by results which are reckoned as punishments of heaven against perjured ones if the rigor of their imprecations is executed, are greatly feared. If perchance the party is satisfied that he has truth on his side, at his petition they do not rest content with that trial, but judgment of red-hot coals or hot iron,38such as was resorted to in España and other countries, in centuries ruder and more immune from laws by the privilege of their innocence and goodness. If the persons are burned, then their punishment is proceeded with; and if not, the accuser is obliged to make requital. That custom seems to have been communicated by the Moros by way of Terrenate, where it is still observed. However, no one is burned, for since the Ternatans are so skilled in sorcery, they know herbs of such efficacy and bewitchments of such power, that they communicate it to the hands so that they can handle the iron with impunity, as if it were a nosegay of flowers. Also many of those whom they bury alive, that being the punishment of adultery and rape, escape. I saythis, for it often occurred that persons escaped from the execution of this test, in the sight of the Spaniards at Ternate, women whose guilt was notorious, but who cleared themselves of suspicion among their people by this proof. I was told many happenings of this sort, during the time that I spent in those islands [i.e., the Moluccas]; and I was assured that it was done by means of an herb, and I was shown some that were famous in its knowledge. These were the ones to whom the accused had recourse in all their exigencies, suborning their expertness with a quantity of money.

Chapter XVThe form of government of these nativesThe kings, although so tyrannical in government, and in power so beyond the affliction and trouble which authority and ostentation incur, yet according to the condition of their poverty maintain the form and authority of a court. Peace affairs are in charge of a chief justice or counselor, calledzarabandal. That is the greatest court title and he decides the causes and suits, and advises concerning the sentence. In the outside villages where the king does not reside, the chiefs meddle wherever they wish, without other law than their power and will, and their unbridled greed; and the one injured has no recourse, for, in quarrels between the plebeians and chiefs, the king always takes the part of the latter—who are more powerful, and are those who can make trouble for him, and even deprive him of his kingdom. For his principate is founded more on the recognition that they make of his nobility than on any absolute power which secures to him their vassalage; since a slavewill say “no” to the king in what does not suit him. That happened in Joló, in the presence of Father Alexandro Lopez. When the father was negotiating through the medium of the king to have the ransom for a Christian put at a humane figure, the other, a Joloan slave by condition, who had the Christian in his power, said to the very face of the king, when the latter asked him to conform to the prices settled upon in the treaty of peace,39that he would not do it; and that was the end of the matter. That signified that the king’s power in execution extended just so far as his vassals wished, and that they would obey him just so far as it pleased them.They have established orders of nobility, with a distinction of titles which aggrandize it. Some are calledTuam, which is the same as “Señor” or the title applied to men in España. Others are given the title ofOrancaya, which signifies “rich man;” it is the greatest title, and equivalent to grandee of their kingdom. It is equivalent to the same title that España gave to its grandees when his Majesty used more simplicity, and called them Ricos-Homes [i.e., “rich men”]. The rest are called chiefs, and correspond to what we callcaballerosandHijos-dalgo[i.e., “knights and nobles”]. They have no greater dignity than the honor. Those of the blood royal are calledcachilesfollowing the custom and style of the kings of Maluco, Terrenate, Tidores, and Xilolos. The same in the peculiar style of Joló are called Paguian.The Orangcayas or Ricos-Homes become the rulers of vassals, and have some villages in their charge. In those villages, although the king is recognized,and tribute sent to him, in all else those rulers are absolute; and especially in government affairs are they independent. They are the ones who tyrannize most ungovernably over the people; for whatever fine the king imposes upon them, or whatever gift he requests from them, they lay hands upon their subjects, and, as if they were slaves they take away the son from the father in order to sell him. That has been the case so often that, even since they have been made subject to our government, it has been necessary to examine with close attention, whenever they bring any slave to sell, the reason for his slavery; for it has been found that they sell us many slaves without any other right than that of their tyranny, relieving their necessities and making their payments with the first person whom they meet—bringing him, beguiled by some other pretext, to the Spaniards; and the injury was suffered without any complaint, because of the incapacity and dullness of the poor Subanos. The latter, as they are so unused to intercourse with us, and so shut up in their own lives, had no arguments to oppose to what they did not understand; and showed their wonder, surprise, and bashfulness in brute silence. For that reason, where the Orangcayas govern (which are almost all villages of the Subanos or Indians of the mountain), there is scarce one who enjoys liberty. Those chiefs hold them so under their power, that they regard the very leaders and chiefs of the Subano nation as their slaves. That I experienced on a visit which I made on a dangerous occasion, when in order to assure the minds of the people I took with me a Lutao chief who was the absolute master before the Spaniards entered, and to whom they still paid hereditary respectalong all the coast of Siocon. Being, then, with all the people and chiefs of the nation assembled together in a village, and I endeavoring to honor them with signs of the greatest affection, the Lutao said: “Do not pay any attention to these people, Father, for they are all my slaves.” This he said in a place where we two and the chiefs of the village were alone. I thought that that contempt and arrogance would arouse them; but on the contrary, it softened them, as the affection and presents of a loving prince would his humble vassal. And, although they were not slaves, the respect in which they were born gives the chiefs so much authority, that although we [Spaniards] possess the rule, they, as chiefs, command the people. And, as the latter were reared in that tyranny, their natural disposition made them show respect and natural submission; for, notwithstanding the immunity that our arms give them, they obey those chiefs better than they do us. May that be tempered in part by the Christian government, and the vigilance of our father ministers, and the recourse which they find in the royal officials. For a chief of those natives who was governor of the village of Baluasan, near to Samboangan, when speaking of the wretched subjection in which the Lutaos held them, and the good fortune that had come to them with the entrance of our government, by restraining the Lutao tyranny, and giving arms to persecuted liberty, spoke to me these words: “If you [Spaniards] had not arrived when you did, there would now not be any of us left; for we would already have been finished, and bartered for goods with the people of Macasar.” These words consoled me, on account of the fidelity which the interestand recognized advantages of that barbarian guaranteed.40Such was the government maintained by Corralat. And since he made all of them so powerful, giving them special power by laws, he was very acceptable to the princes of his nation and therefore most secure. These men, then, are the ones who grieve over the losses sustained by the change, who see themselves put under holy laws and just—they who before had no other laws than those of their own will, and their unbridled ambition, laws from which the others suffered as a servile, cowardly, and rude nation.

The form of government of these natives

The form of government of these natives

The kings, although so tyrannical in government, and in power so beyond the affliction and trouble which authority and ostentation incur, yet according to the condition of their poverty maintain the form and authority of a court. Peace affairs are in charge of a chief justice or counselor, calledzarabandal. That is the greatest court title and he decides the causes and suits, and advises concerning the sentence. In the outside villages where the king does not reside, the chiefs meddle wherever they wish, without other law than their power and will, and their unbridled greed; and the one injured has no recourse, for, in quarrels between the plebeians and chiefs, the king always takes the part of the latter—who are more powerful, and are those who can make trouble for him, and even deprive him of his kingdom. For his principate is founded more on the recognition that they make of his nobility than on any absolute power which secures to him their vassalage; since a slavewill say “no” to the king in what does not suit him. That happened in Joló, in the presence of Father Alexandro Lopez. When the father was negotiating through the medium of the king to have the ransom for a Christian put at a humane figure, the other, a Joloan slave by condition, who had the Christian in his power, said to the very face of the king, when the latter asked him to conform to the prices settled upon in the treaty of peace,39that he would not do it; and that was the end of the matter. That signified that the king’s power in execution extended just so far as his vassals wished, and that they would obey him just so far as it pleased them.

They have established orders of nobility, with a distinction of titles which aggrandize it. Some are calledTuam, which is the same as “Señor” or the title applied to men in España. Others are given the title ofOrancaya, which signifies “rich man;” it is the greatest title, and equivalent to grandee of their kingdom. It is equivalent to the same title that España gave to its grandees when his Majesty used more simplicity, and called them Ricos-Homes [i.e., “rich men”]. The rest are called chiefs, and correspond to what we callcaballerosandHijos-dalgo[i.e., “knights and nobles”]. They have no greater dignity than the honor. Those of the blood royal are calledcachilesfollowing the custom and style of the kings of Maluco, Terrenate, Tidores, and Xilolos. The same in the peculiar style of Joló are called Paguian.

The Orangcayas or Ricos-Homes become the rulers of vassals, and have some villages in their charge. In those villages, although the king is recognized,and tribute sent to him, in all else those rulers are absolute; and especially in government affairs are they independent. They are the ones who tyrannize most ungovernably over the people; for whatever fine the king imposes upon them, or whatever gift he requests from them, they lay hands upon their subjects, and, as if they were slaves they take away the son from the father in order to sell him. That has been the case so often that, even since they have been made subject to our government, it has been necessary to examine with close attention, whenever they bring any slave to sell, the reason for his slavery; for it has been found that they sell us many slaves without any other right than that of their tyranny, relieving their necessities and making their payments with the first person whom they meet—bringing him, beguiled by some other pretext, to the Spaniards; and the injury was suffered without any complaint, because of the incapacity and dullness of the poor Subanos. The latter, as they are so unused to intercourse with us, and so shut up in their own lives, had no arguments to oppose to what they did not understand; and showed their wonder, surprise, and bashfulness in brute silence. For that reason, where the Orangcayas govern (which are almost all villages of the Subanos or Indians of the mountain), there is scarce one who enjoys liberty. Those chiefs hold them so under their power, that they regard the very leaders and chiefs of the Subano nation as their slaves. That I experienced on a visit which I made on a dangerous occasion, when in order to assure the minds of the people I took with me a Lutao chief who was the absolute master before the Spaniards entered, and to whom they still paid hereditary respectalong all the coast of Siocon. Being, then, with all the people and chiefs of the nation assembled together in a village, and I endeavoring to honor them with signs of the greatest affection, the Lutao said: “Do not pay any attention to these people, Father, for they are all my slaves.” This he said in a place where we two and the chiefs of the village were alone. I thought that that contempt and arrogance would arouse them; but on the contrary, it softened them, as the affection and presents of a loving prince would his humble vassal. And, although they were not slaves, the respect in which they were born gives the chiefs so much authority, that although we [Spaniards] possess the rule, they, as chiefs, command the people. And, as the latter were reared in that tyranny, their natural disposition made them show respect and natural submission; for, notwithstanding the immunity that our arms give them, they obey those chiefs better than they do us. May that be tempered in part by the Christian government, and the vigilance of our father ministers, and the recourse which they find in the royal officials. For a chief of those natives who was governor of the village of Baluasan, near to Samboangan, when speaking of the wretched subjection in which the Lutaos held them, and the good fortune that had come to them with the entrance of our government, by restraining the Lutao tyranny, and giving arms to persecuted liberty, spoke to me these words: “If you [Spaniards] had not arrived when you did, there would now not be any of us left; for we would already have been finished, and bartered for goods with the people of Macasar.” These words consoled me, on account of the fidelity which the interestand recognized advantages of that barbarian guaranteed.40

Such was the government maintained by Corralat. And since he made all of them so powerful, giving them special power by laws, he was very acceptable to the princes of his nation and therefore most secure. These men, then, are the ones who grieve over the losses sustained by the change, who see themselves put under holy laws and just—they who before had no other laws than those of their own will, and their unbridled ambition, laws from which the others suffered as a servile, cowardly, and rude nation.

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