The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 43, 1670-1700 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

by Unknown

Chapter XXII

Election as provincial of the father commissary, Fray Christoval Pedroche, and founding of the mission of Tuga.

[The above father is elected provincial in 1690, after his return from exile to Nueva España, on account of the Pardo troubles. During his term there is considerable activity among the Chinese missions, those of Batanes, and that of Tuga. This last mission is the outcome of the work of father Fray Juan Yñiguez,[13] who is entrusted in 1688 “with the conversion of the Indians of Mananig and the other neighboring nations who inhabited the rough mountains near the village of Tuao in the province of Cagayan, on the western side of the said village; and extend north and south for many leguas. At the same time the said father was charged to learn the language peculiar to that country of Ytabes,[14] and compile a grammar and lexicon in it.... In the short space of six months, he learned the language of the Ytabes, and reduced it to a very detailed grammar.... In the same time he founded a new village in the mission in the very lands of the heathens about six leguas south of the village of Tuao, on a plateau below the creek of Tuga, whence that mission took its name, which it keeps even in our times.” The church built there is dedicated to St. Joseph, and mass said on the second of February, 1689. Notwithstanding the many oppositions offered to the new mission, it grows and prospers. At the end of eight years, the mission is moved to a more pleasant site two leagues nearer Tuao, and although it receives the name of Tuga there, it is sometimes called San Joseph de Bambang, from a mountain called Bambang. In 1710, lack of friars causes the abandonment of Tuga as an active mission, and it becomes a visita of Tuao. That epoch marks its decline, and in 1715, after many have fled to the mountains where they have resumed their pagan life, the remaining Christians are transferred to Tuao. “After the year 1718 the whole province of Cagayan rose in revolt[15], and that disturbance began especially in that district of Ytabes where the said village of Tuao is located. Thereupon the new Christians of the mission who had assembled in that village, returned to their former sites and mountains, and apostatized from the faith which they had received.” At the close of that insurrection, the Dominicans attempt to regain the ground that they had lost. In 1722 a friar is assigned to that mission to regain the apostates and work for new conversions among the heathens. Both objects are largely fulfilled. In 1731, the missionary established there, Fernando de Lara, moves the site of the mission still nearer to Tuao because of the greater conveniences. The new site which is maintained is called Orac, although it is still called by the former name of Tuga.]