“Following the Hindus into the Malay archipelago came the Arabs. They came first as voyagers and merchants, and here as always the Arab was a proselyter, and his faith spread rapidly. Long before the Portuguese arrival Islamism had succeeded Brahminism and the Arab had supplanted the Hindu.... Mohammedanism gradually made its way until, on the arrival of the Europeans, its frontiers were almost the same as those of the Malay race itself.
“The people who carried this faith, and who still rank as the type of the race, were the seafaring population, living in boats as well us on the shore, who control the islands of the straits between Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo. These people received from the Portuguese the name of Cellates, a corruption of Orang Salat (Sea Folk). Under the influence of Mohammedanism this race, which seems to have originated in Sumatra, improved in culture, formed many settlements and principalities, and because of their seagoing habits, their enjoyment of trade, and their lust for piracy, carried their name (Malayu), their language, and their adopted Mohammedan religion throughout the Malay archipelago. Probably as early as 1300 these adventurers established a colony on northwest Borneo, opposite the island of Labuan, which colony received the name of Brunei, from which has been derived the name of the whole island, Borneo. The island was already inhabited by Malayan tribes of more primitive culture, of which the Dyak is the best known. From this settlement of Borneo the Mohammedanized Malay extended his influence and his settlements to the Sulu archipelago, to Mindanao, to Mindoro, and to Manila Bay.” The people of Sulúan, whom Magellan encountered near Sámar, “were almost certainly of the same stock from which the present great Visayan people are in the main descended. Many things incline me to believe that these natives had come, in successively extending settlements, up the west coast of Mindanao from the Sulu archipelago.... To the present day the physical type and the language, persisting unchanged in spite of changes of culture, closely relate the Visayan to the Moro. In addition to these arrivals from the archipelago of Sulu there was probably a more primitive Malayan population, whom the later arrivals already had more or less in subjection, as the Moros even now control the pagans on the mainland of Mindanao.... Thus we may infer that at the time of the discovery there were on these central islands of the archipelago, a primitive, tattooed Malayan people, related on the one hand to the still primitive and pagan tribes of the Philippines, and on the other hand to the wild head-hunting tribes of Borneo; and in addition intruding and dominating later arrivals, who were the seafaring Malays.”
Interesting in this connection is the following remark on the Negritos by Taw Sein Ko, in his “Origin of the Burmese Race,” published in the magazine Buddhism, (Rangoon, Burma), in March, 1904: “There remains the question as to the autochthonous races which were displaced by the Burmese, Talaings, Shans, Chins, and Karens in Burma. Before the advent of these nations, the Negrito race appears to have occupied southeastern Asia, including Burma. Remnants of it are still found in the Andaman Islands, Philippines, Borneo, and Malaya.”
[3] Apparently a reference to Manuel Estacio Venegas, a favorite of Fajardo’s, whose downfall Letona relates in sect. 59.
[4] Vascongado: a term applied to the people or products of the Spanish provinces of Alava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya (or Biscay).
Events in Manila, 1662–63
Relation of the events in the city of Manila from the embassy sent by Cotsen,[1] captain-general of the coasts of China and king of Hermosa Island, with father Fray Victorio Ricio his ambassador, in the year 1662, until the second embassy, which his son sent with the same father, and which was despatched on July 11, 1663.
On the fifth of May the ambassador of Cot-sen made his entry; this was father Fray Victorio Riccio,[2] a Florentine, a religious of the Order of Preachers. He was attired in the garb of a mandarin’s rank, which the barbarian had conferred on him to equip him for this embassy. Little pomp was displayed in his reception, for the unfriendly nature of his errand was already known. Don Sabiniano Manrrique de Lara received the letter which he brought; it was full of arrogance, ostentatiously boasting of Cot-sen’s power, and declaring that his champans were many thousands in number and his perfect soldiers hundreds of thousands; (it is a fact that those champans, counting large and small, amount to 15,000, as is known by eyewitnesses); and, in virtue of this pompous and noisy declaration, he demanded that these islands should pay him tribute, threatening us with the example of the Dutch.[3]
The insolence of this demand angered all the Spaniards, and our resolute attitude filled the Sangleys with anxiety; for, as it could not be imagined that a less generous one [would be taken], they feared the injuries that would be caused by the war, and that they would be the first to suffer from these. The governor, as pious as prudent, commanded that in the church of the Society of Jesus the blessed sacrament should remain exposed, in order that the archbishop, the three auditors, the superiors of the religious orders, and the military chiefs might assemble in a devout public supplication; and ordered that, at about the same time, a council should be summoned (in order to give the Sangleys less cause for blame), where Cot-sen’s letter should be read and such decision made as in the opinion of the council ought to be adopted.