Archipelagus orientalis, sive Asiaticus (Eastern or Asiatic archipelago); photographic facsimile of map by Joannis Blaeu (Amsterdam, 1659)
[From original map in Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]
The islands called Filipinas, because of having been conquered during the reign of Felipe II, were discovered in the year 1521, by Hernando Magallanes, a famous Portuguese, who gave his name to the strait. That great pilot, after having forever perpetuated his name by a navigation so new and so difficult, landed on one of the Filipinas Islands—a very small one, named Matan—where he was treacherously killed by the Indians. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos sighted the islands again after him in the year 1539.[2] Finally they were pacified in the year 1571 by the adelantado Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. It is a cause for surprise that the Portuguese, who had discovered the Malucas, China, and Japon, some years before, and had made their homes there, did not know anything about those islands until long afterward, although they are, as it were, the very center and middle part of their other discoveries. They knew well the island of Borneo, which is the last of those islands toward the south, but they had never stopped there while en route to the Malucas—urged, perhaps, by their too great greed for the spices and drugs which are produced so abundantly in those islands.
The geographies say that there are eleven thousand islands in that great archipelago of which the Filipinas are a part, and that they are adjacent to Asia as are the Canaries and the Terceras to Africa. They cross into the torrid zone and extend along the coasts of China and India. South of them lie the Malucas, and on their northern coast, Japon. More than forty of them are subject to the king of España, the largest and most important being Manila and Mindanao. Manila is the capital of all the others, the residence of the governor and the archbishop, and the seat of the royal Audiencia. Those two islands are each six hundred miles in circuit; they are full of mountains, have rivers and dense forests, and lie in thirteen and one-half degrees north latitude. The other islands are not so large, some being one hundred miles in circuit, some fifty, and some even less. Almost all of them are inhabited by Indians, and those which are not are used by the Indians for their crops, and for the chase of deer and wild boars, and for the gathering of wax, with which the islands most abound.
The islands not yet under the dominion of the king of España have their own kings, who are Mahometans. The island of Borneo, three times greater than the whole of Italia, is the largest of all the islands. Those subject to the king of España are Manila, Zebu, Oton, Mindanao, Bohol, Leite, Samar, Mindoro, Marinduque, the island of Negros, the island of Fuegos, Calamianes, Masbat, Jolo, Taquima, Capul, La Paragua, the island of Tablas, Verde Island, Burias, Tiago, Maripipe, Panama, Panaon, Sibuian, Luban, Bantajan, Panglao, Siquior, Catanduan, Imaras, Tagapolo, Banton, Romblon, Similara, Cuio, Cagaianes, Marivelez, Poro, Babuianes, the island of Cabras (which is distant from the others), and other smaller ones.
In the islands subject to the king of España, every married man pays ten reals of tribute, and he who is unmarried five. Nearly all of them have received the gospel, and hence there are few heathen. However, in the islands of Mindanao, Taquima, and Jolo, conquered but recently, most of the people are Moros or heathen; but it is hoped that the zeal of the missionaries will convert them very soon to Jesus Christ.
Before the conquest of those islands by the Spaniards, the natives of the country were subject to the chiefs among them, who were recognized as nobles, and all the others obeyed them. Those chiefs possessed a great amount of gold, and slaves in proportion to their nobility. I knew two chiefs, one in Bohol, and the other at Dapitan, a village of Mindanao, who had more than one hundred slaves apiece. They are not foreign slaves, as those of Angola who are in Europa, but of the same nation. It was a lamentable thing to see with what violence and for how little a thing, these chiefs made slaves. For, however small a sum one owed to another, the interest, for lack of payment, amounted to so great a sum that it was impossible to pay it; and consequently, the person of the debtor being pledged for the debt, he became the slave of his creditor, together with all his posterity. They also made slaves, with unusual tyranny and cruelty, for crimes of slight importance, such as not keeping silent at the graves of the dead, and for passing in front of the chief’s wife when she was in her bath. Those captured in war were also all made slaves. Now with baptism, all those acts of violence and tyranny have been suppressed—although there still remains one very peculiar custom among them, which does not follow that general rule, namely, Partus sequitur ventrem;[3] for there are some who are wholly slaves, and others who are only half slaves. The former are those born of a slave father and mother; the others who are born of a slave father and a free mother, or vice versa. In some villages it is the custom that, if the father is slave and the mother free, one of the children is free and the other slave. The privilege of those half slaves is that if they pay a certain sum of money to their master, they may oblige him to grant them their liberty—an advantage that is not possessed by those who are wholly slaves.
All the religion of those Indians is founded on tradition, and on a custom introduced by the devil himself, who formerly spoke to them by the mouth of their idols and of their priests. That tradition is preserved by the songs that they learn by heart in their childhood, by hearing them sung in their sailing, in their work, in their amusements, and in their festivals, and, better yet, when they bewail their dead. In those barbarous songs, they recount the fabulous genealogies and deeds of their gods, of whom they have one who is chief and head of all the others. The Tagáls call that god Bathala mei Capal, which signifies “God the Creator.” The Bisayans call him Laon, which signifies “Time.” They are not far from our belief on the point of the creation of the world. They believe in a first man, the flood, and paradise, and the punishments of the future life.
They say that the first man and the first woman came out of a reed stalk which burst in Sumatra, and that there were some quarrels between them at their marriage. They believed that when the soul left the body, it went to an island, where the trees, birds, waters, and all other things were black; that it passed thence to another island, where all things were of different colors; and finally that it arrived at one, where everything was white. They recognized invisible spirits, another life, and devils hostile to men, of whom they had great fear. Their chief idolatry was in adoring and regarding as gods those of their ancestors who were most remarkable for their courage, or for their intelligence. Such they called humalagar, or, as is said in Latin, manes. Each one, as far as possible, ascribed divinity to his father at death. The old men even died with that conceit, and that is why they chose a remarkable place—as did one in the island of Leite, who had himself placed on the seashore, so that those who went sailing should recognize him as a god, and commend themselves to him. They also worshiped animals and birds. They regarded the rainbow as a sort of divinity. The Tagáls worshiped a totally blue bird, of the size of a thrush, which they called bathala, which was a name of the divinity. They worshiped the raven, which they called meilupa, meaning “the master of the earth.” They had a great veneration for the crocodile. [When] they saw it in the water, they called it nono, or “grandfather.” They offered to it prayers regularly, with great devotion, and offerings of what they carried in their boats, in order that it might not harm them. There was no old tree of which they did not make a god, and it was a sacrilege to cut it. I have seen a very large one called nonog,[4] in the island of Samar, which a religious ordered to be felled, in order to destroy all those superstitions. He was unable to find an Indian who would undertake it for him; and it was necessary for some Spaniards to go to fell it. They also worshiped the stones, rocks, reefs, and promontories of land which jut into the sea; and made offerings to these of rice, fish, and other like things, or fired their arrows at them in passing.
Between La Caldera and the river in the island of Mindanao, a great point of land runs into the sea, which makes the coast dangerous and very high. The sea beats violently against that cape, which is very difficult to double. The Indians in passing offered it their arrows as a sacrifice, praying it to allow them to pass. They shot them with so great force that they made them enter the rock, and hence it is called the Punta de Flechas. One day the Spaniards burned a number of those arrows to show their hatred of so vain a superstition; and in less than one year more than four thousand were found there. When Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera conquered the island of Mindanao three years ago,[5] he ordered that that point be called no more Punta de Flechas, but San Sebastian. They had innumerable other superstitions. If they saw a snake or a lizard, or if they heard a bird that they called corocoro[6] sneeze or sing, they took it as a bad sign, and did not go farther. They had no remarkable temples, and no festivals of days of public sacrifices; but each one made his offerings to the humalagar or divata (which was the name of their god) in private, according to their purpose or need. Although they had no temples, they had men and women who acted as priests, who were called catolonan by some and babailan by others. Those priests were most inclined to allow themselves to be deceived by the devil, and to deceive the people afterward by a thousand tricks and inventions—chiefly at the time of their sicknesses, when they are depressed, lose courage, and crave a prompt remedy; and give all their possessions to him who promises it to them.