4Ibid., 3: 233.
1591
In various letters and other documents translated by Blair and Robertson from original sources we learn that the district of Butuán was an encomienda5 and that tributes were collected as early as 1591.
5An encomienda was a royal allotment or grant of land, including the natives that lived thereon, to a Spaniard for the purpose of government.
1596
In Chirino's6 relation it is set forth that in 1596 the Jesuits, Valero de Ledesma and Manuel Martinez, began their missionary labors in the Agúsan Valley where they found the inhabitants "by no means tractable on account of their fierce and violent nature." Christianity, however, made surprising advances, so great that the principal chief of the district, Siloñgan, divorced five of his wives, and protected the missionaries in every way possible.7 Religious fervor is said to have reached such a height that the people publicly flagellated themselves until the blood flowed.
6Ibid., 12: 315.
7Ibid., 13: 47, et seq. It is interesting to note here that Ledesma in one of his letters mentions the fact that the Ternatans were accustomed to swoop down on the coast of Mindanáo and kept the natives of Mindanáo on the alert. In citations from other writers quoted by Blair and Robertson we find evidence of dealings of the Ternatans, both friendly and unfriendly, and with the natives of Mindanáo.
Ledesma and Martinez were succeeded by other Jesuit missionaries who preached the doctrine to the Hadgaguanes,8 "a people untamed and ferocious--to the Manóbos and to other neighboring peoples."9
8Perhaps the Hadgaguánes here referred to are the Higagáons or Banuáons of the present day.