[Section iv is a vindication of the Recollects in regard to the demolition of the convent and church of Tándag. Juan Garcia, alcalde-mayor and captain of the fort of that place at the time of the demolition, declares (July 29, 1654) that “he proceeded with the razing of the building without the religious losing their composure, or threatening that their natives would revolt; and that neither before nor after was there any insurrection or disquiet in Tándag or throughout its districts; neither did the natives desert and flee to the mountains; neither did he see or know of any such thing while he was alcalde-mayor, or during the many months after that while he resided in the said village.” The following section treats of the life of father Fray Pedro de San Joseph (whose family name was Roxas) prior of Tándag in the time of the above troubles. He was born in Manila (where he took the Recollect habit) April 21, 1621. He achieved distinction in the study of moral and mystic theology. At the completion of his studies he was sent to various villages to preach, proving himself a successful preacher. In 1635 he was sent to the island of Romblon, where he worked with good results in spite of the hostile attempts of the Moros in that district. At the completion of his term of service at Romblon he was sent to Tándag, where he had to contend against the Spaniards themselves, on account of their excesses toward the natives. After the demolition of his convent and church he returned to Manila, arriving there on May 26, 1650. That same year he was sent to Taytáy in Calamianes, although he desired to remain in retreat in Manila. His death occurred in the following year at Manila, to which place he went as his last illness came on.]
§ VI
The insurrection in the village of Lináo
257. It has been stated above that when the Dutch enemy came in the year 48 to bombard Cavite, they had treated with certain Indian chiefs, saying that they would return with a larger fleet in the year 49. They gave the Indians to understand that they only would treat them as their friends and not in the domineering manner of the Spaniards, who (as the Dutch said) treat them as slaves; and therefore they hoped to find the Indians prepared, so that, having become well-inclined toward the Dutch power, they might be able to free themselves from so heavy a bondage. That proposition continued to spread from one to another; it was agreeable to them all because of the liberty that it seemed to promise, although it was offensive to many because it incited the natives to seditious movements. At that time Don Diego Faxardo, governor of Manila, despatched a decree ordering a certain number of carpenters with their wives and children to go to that city from each one of the islands. The effects produced by that mandate were especially fatal for the village of Palápac in the island of Hibábao. For they refused to obey the governor, killed their minister, a zealous father of the Society, took their possessions to the mountains, and commenced to gather to their following a great number of rebels.
258. That decree caused a great disturbance in the island of Mindanáo, for of its five divisions scarcely one is reduced to obedience; therefore those who live unsubdued in the mountains only wait for such opportunities in order to foment disturbances and restlessness. Many of the natives hid their property in the province of Carágha, and proved so unquiet that although the Butuans were the most trustworthy Indians, the father prior, Fray Miguel de Santo Thomás, had to work hard to restrain them. Those of Lináo descended to the last vileness, and it is presumed that the same would have happened in the district of Tándag if the alcalde-mayor, Bernabé de la Plaza, had not concealed the decree. That was afterward approved by the auditors in Manila, as they had experienced that that decree had been a seed-bed for many troubles. All that disquiet continued to operate with the manifest disturbance of the public peace, even at the news alone of the above-mentioned decree. Even the hint of it succeeded in Lináo where the insurrection took place in the following manner.
259. There are certain wild Indians in the mountains of Butuán, located in the province of Carágha, called Manóbos.[1] They have kinky hair, oblique eyes, a treacherous disposition, brutish customs, and live by the hunt. They have no king to govern them nor houses to shelter them; their clothing covers only the shame of their bodies; and they sleep where night overtakes them. Finally, they are infidels, and belie in everything, by the way in which they live, that small portion that nature gives them as rational beings. Among so great a rabble, but one village is known where some people are seen far from human intercourse. They are a race much inclined to war, which they are almost always waging against the Indians of the seacoast. There lived Dabáo,[2] who had become as it were a petty king, without other right than that of his great strength, or other jurisdiction than that of his great cunning. His wickedness was much bruited about, and he made use of subtle deceits by which he committed almost innumerable murders. He was often pursued by Spanish soldiers, but he knew quite well how to elude them by his cunning. For on one occasion, in order to avoid the danger, he went to the house of an evangelical minister saying that he wished baptism, and that the minister should defend him, as it would be the motive for many conversions; but he only made use of that trick to save his life. Father Fray Agustin de Santa Maria—a very affable religious, and one who labored hard to attract the infidels—was prior of the convent of Santa Clara de Monte Falco of Lináo, a place forty leguas up-stream from Butuán. He visited Dabáo, and won him over so well by presents and gifts to intercourse with the Spaniards, that he spent nearly all the day in the convent and entrusted father Fray Agustin with the education of one of his sons—being quite eager in that in order to work out the treachery that he had planned.
260. Dabáo went by night to the houses of the chief Christians. He laid before them the harsh decree of the governor, the offers that the Dutch had made, and especially the attaining of freedom to keep up their old religion. Since they were not well rooted in our holy faith, those discussions were very agreeable to them. That faithless Indian was so contagious a cancer that he infected the greater part of the village with his poison. Therefore, almost all of them assenting to his plan, the day was set on which he resolved to kill the Spaniards and the minister. He warned the people to be ready with their arms to aid him. He had previously held a meeting with his Manóbos, in which they decided that if the provincial sent a visitor and did not come personally to make the visitation, it would be a clear sign that the Dutch were infesting those coasts. When they learned with certainty that the father-provincial, Fray Bernardo de San Laurencio, had not gone out for the visitation, but that he was sending the father ex-provincial, Fray Juan de San Antonio, as visitor, they were confirmed [in the belief] that the hostile fleet was coming, and began immediately to stir up the country.
261. The father visitor had already reached the convent of Butuán, and Dabáo sent his Manóbo Indians to the river Humáyan with obsequious appearances of readiness to receive him, but with the peremptory order to kill him. God so arranged that the father visitor, Fray Juan de San Antonio, should pass to the convent of Cagayáng without stopping to visit that of Lináo. He left a letter for the father prior of Lináo which he sent by Juan de Guevara, one of the soldiers who was later killed in the fray. That soldier met the Manóbos who were waiting at the river; they asked him for the father visitor, and he told them simply that he had left Butuán. They, without asking whether the father were to pass that way, returned to their village to inform their leader of the matter. Thus did God save the life of His minister for the second time, thereby allowing one to see even in so slight occurrences the height of His Providence.
262. At that time some hostile Indians began to harass the peaceful Indians, from whom they took a quantity of their rice and maize. Dabáo offered to make a raid in order to check so insolent boldness with that punishment, and he assured them that he would immediately return with the heads of some men, from which result their accomplices would take warning. He selected, then, eight robust and muscular Indians, whose hands he bound behind their backs, but by an artifice so cunning that they could untie themselves whenever occasion demanded. Thus did he bring as captives those who were really Trojan horses; for, concealing their arms, they showed only many obsequious acts of submission. The captain ordered them to be taken to the fort where the father prior, Fray Agustin de Santa Maria, was already waiting; and when the order was given that the feigned captives should be set in the stocks, at that juncture Dabáo drew a weapon which he had concealed, and broke the captain’s head. The Indians untied their bonds, the rebels came with lances from the village, and a hotly-contested battle took place in which almost all our men lost their lives. Only the religious and four Spanish soldiers and a corporal were left alive. It did not occur to them, in the midst of so great confusion, to take other counsel than to drop down from the wall. We shall leave the father prior, Fray Agustin, for the present, and speak only of the soldiers who opened up a road with their invincible valor by means of their arms, in order to take refuge in the convent. But finding it already occupied by the insurgents, who had gone ahead to despoil it, they fought there like Spaniards, hurling themselves sword in hand on the mass of the rebels. However, they were unable to save the post, for the convent and the church were blazing in all parts. Thereupon it was necessary for them to hurl themselves upon a new danger in order to return to the redoubt, where they arrived safely at the cost of many wounds, although they found the fort dismantled. Thence they sent the Indians in flight to the mountains by firing their arquebuses at them.
263. Only the family of one pious woman remained in the village, who (although sparingly) gave them food every day. But that charity could not last long, for necessity forced that family to take refuge with the insurgents, thus leaving the Spaniards destitute of all human consolation. They, seeing themselves wounded and without food, made a small boat of bamboo, dangerous at any time, and embarked in it in order to go to Butuán by way of the river, after they had dismantled the fort and spiked the artillery. In order that the so evident risk of that voyage might be more increased, their opponents pursued them with swift caracoas, from which firing many arrows they multiplied the wounds of the soldiers. The Spaniards, seeing that they could not defend themselves, entered the village of Hóot where the people had not yet risen. There they met an Indian called Pálan, who was going to Lináo for his daughter, so that she might not be lost amid the confusion of that so barbarous race. He took compassion on those afflicted soldiers, and, availing himself of fifteen Indians who were with him, accommodated them in his bark and took them to our convent of Butuán. They arrived there twenty days after the insurrection at Lináo, so used up and crippled that they were already in the last extremity.