A History of the Philippines

by David P. Barrows

The Payment of Tribute.—The tribute was introduced in 1570.[10] It was supposed to be eight reales or a peso of silver for each family. Children under sixteen and those over sixty were exempt. In 1590 the amount was raised to ten reales. To this was added a real for the church, known as “sanctorum,” and, on the organization of the towns, a real for the caja de communidad or municipal treasury. Under the encomiendas the tribute was paid to the encomenderos, except on the royal encomiendas; but after two or three generations, as the encomiendas were suppressed, these collections went directly to the insular treasury. There was, in addition to the tribute, a compulsory service of labor on roads, bridges, and public works, known as the “corvee,” a feudal term, or perhaps more generally as the “polos y servicios.” Those discharging this enforced labor were called “polistas.”

Conversion of the Filipinos to Christianity.—The population had been very rapidly Christianized. All accounts agree that almost no difficulty was encountered in baptizing the more advanced tribes. “There is not in these islands a province,” says Morga, “which resists conversion and does not desire it.”[11] Indeed, the Islands seem to have been ripe for the preaching of a higher faith, either Christian or Mohammedan. For a time these two great religions struggled together in the vicinity of Manila,[12] but at the end of three decades Spanish power and religion were alike established. Conversion was delayed ordinarily only by the lack of sufficient numbers of priests. We have seen that this conversion of the people was the work of the missionary friars. In 1591 there were 140 in the Islands, but the Relacion de Encomiendas calls for 160 more to properly supply the peoples which had been laid under tribute.

Coming of the Friars.—The Augustinians had been the first to come, accompanying Legaspi. Then came the barefooted friars of the Order of Saint Francis. The first Jesuits, padres Antonio Sedeño and Alonzo Sanchez, came with the first bishop of the Islands, Domingo de Salazar, in 1580. They came apparently without resources. Even their garments brought from Mexico had rotted on the voyage. They found a little, poor, narrow house in a suburb of Manila, called Laguio (probably Concepcion). “So poorly furnished was it,” says Chirino, “that the same chest which held their books was the table on which they ate. Their food for many days was rice, cooked in water, without salt or oil or fish or meat or even an egg, or anything else except that sometimes as a regalo they enjoyed some salt sardines.”[13] After the Jesuits, came, as we have seen, the friars of the Dominican order, and lastly the Recollects, or unshod Augustinians.

Division of the Archipelago among the Religious Orders.—The archipelago was districted among these missionary bands. The Augustinians had many parishes in the Bisayas, on the Ilocano coast, some in Pangasinan, and all of those in Pampanga. The Dominicans had parts of Pangasinan and all of the valley of Cagayan. The Franciscans controlled the Camarines and nearly all of southern Luzon, and the region of Laguna de Bay. All of these orders had convents and monasteries both in the city of Manila and in the country round about. The imposing churches of brick and stone, which now characterize nearly every pueblo, had not in those early decades been erected; but Morga tells us that “the churches and monasteries were of wood, and well built, with furniture and beautiful ornaments, complete service, crosses, candlesticks, and chalices of silver and gold.”[14]

The First Schools.—Even in these early years there seem to have been some attempts at the education of the natives. The friars had schools in reading and writing for boys, who were also taught to serve in the church, to sing, to play the organ, the harp, guitar, and other instruments. We must remember, however, that the Filipino before the arrival of the Spaniard had a written language, and even in pre-Spanish times there must have been instruction given to the child. The type of humble school, that is found to-day in remote barrios, conducted by an old man or woman, on the floor or in the yard of a home, where the ordinary family occupations are proceeding, probably does not owe its origin to the Spaniards, but dates from a period before their arrival. The higher education established by the Spaniards appears to have been exclusively for the children of Spaniards. In 1601 the Jesuits, pioneers of the Roman Catholic orders in education, established the College of San José.

Establishment of Hospitals.—The city early had notable foundations of charity. The high mortality which visited the Spaniards in these islands and the frequency of diseases early called for the establishment of institutions for the orphan and the invalid. In Morga’s time there were the orphanages of San Andres and Santa Potenciana. There was the Royal Hospital, in charge of three Franciscans, which burned in the conflagration of 1603, but was reconstructed. There was also a Hospital of Mercy, in charge of Sisters of Charity from Lisbon and the Portuguese possessions of India.

Close by the Monastery of Saint Francis stood then, where it stands to-day, the hospital for natives, San Juan de Dios. It was of royal patronage, but founded by a friar of the Franciscan order, Juan Clemente. “Here,” says Morga, “are cured a great number of natives of all kinds of sicknesses, with much charity and care. It has a good house and offices of stone, and is administered by the barefooted religious of Saint Francis. Three priests are there and four lay-brethren of exemplary life, who, with the doctors, surgeons, and apothecaries, are so dexterous and skilled that they work with their hands marvelous cures, both in medicine and surgery.”[15]

Mortality among the Spaniards.—Mortality in the Philippines in these years of conquest was frightfully high. The waste of life in her colonial adventures, indeed, drained Spain of her best and most vigorous manhood. In the famous old English collection of voyages, published by Hakluyt in 1598, there is printed a captured Spanish letter of the famous sea-captain, Sebastian Biscaino, on the Philippine trade. Biscaino grieves over the loss of life which had accompanied the conquest of the Philippines, and the treacherous climate of the tropics. “The country is very unwholesome for us Spaniards. For within these 20 years, of 14,000 which have gone to the Philippines, there are 13,000 of them dead, and not past 1,000 of them left alive.”[16]

The Spanish Population.—The Spanish population of the Islands was always small,—at the beginning of the seventeenth century certainly not more than two thousand, and probably less later in the century. Morga divides them into five classes: the prelates and ecclesiastics; the encomenderos, colonizers, and conquerors; soldiers and officers of war and marine; merchants and men of business; and the officers of his Majesty’s government. “Very few are living now,” he says, “of those first conquistadores who won the land and effected the conquest with the Adelantado Miguel Lopez de Legaspi.”[17]

The Largest Cities.—Most of this Spanish population dwelt in Manila or in the five other cities which the Spaniards had founded in the first three decades of their occupation. Those were as follows:—