As their work causes but little exertion, naturally they grow up lazy, and only shake off their laziness for the gains and advantages of an industry like trading and sea piracy. And since the gains derived from that source are sure, both because the cunning employed by them is that of finished robbers, and because their wings are those of royal falcons, they are most eager for that exercise, as they are assured by these advantages from all danger; for, whether it be because of the swiftness of their ships or because of their skill in rowing them, no ship of ours has ever been able to overtake them. Assured on that point, they have pillaged whatever their greed has dictated to them. Their method of attack is for all of them to land at once with a terrifying and barbaric cry, the awfulness of which strikes terror to the people as they are caught defenseless and separated and thus incapable of resistance.
They are more circumspect on the sea, when danger does not oblige them to make resistance. For since these natives do not fight for reputation, but only for gain, they seek to assure that, and not to buy it too dear with their blood. Therefore, when they meet a ship which they think cannot make any resistance they go to it in certainty of making it a prize, and that they will catch it a half-legua from shore. However small it be, they do not care to seize it if there is any danger. They continue to row about it, until they cause it to waste its powder in spectacular warfare, and then, when they see it weakening, they attack it with great valor throwing by hand so many missile weapons that no man can [safely] show his face; and when they get within range there is rarely a man who is not wounded, for they hurl these missiles in showers. No matter how well equipped a boat may be, if once it gets within their range it has to surrender; for then their men, both sailors and soldiers hurl their arrows with both hands, so that they confuse those who uncover themselves for the fight. But by startling them from a distance, that danger is not imminent, and less resistance suffices. In order that this may be better understood, I shall relate some attested incidents of such encounters. One happened to an inhabitant of Dapitan, with whom I sailed for many days. He, when going toward his village in a small boat, met the fleet of the Joloans. A ship with one piece immediately left the fleet to pursue him. The Indian carried a musket, and after he had discharged it the enemy, recognizing it, moderated their zeal, and coming within range discharged their own piece. Then they backed water in order to load again and repeated the attack, always keeping a close watch on the musket. In this way they made three attacks, until at the third their piece became enraged, and breaking its carriage, fell into the sea. Thereupon the enemy dared attempt nothing more, and retired. The same fortune happened to Father Antonio Abarca,[7] of our Society, of whom we shall make honorable mention later. He, having left me in Dapitan in order to go over to Bohol, on that same day while sailing toward that island, and while still one legua away from it, found three hostile joangas of Joloans at another island, small and uninhabited, called Illaticasa, which attacked him at the same time. There was but one firearm in the ship, and the father was the only one who knew how to manage it. He seeing himself so far from land, and pursued by an enemy so keen and so swift on the sea, availed himself of his courage, which was great, and of his skill, which was remarkable; and, adroitly fighting, he kept firing at the enemy, until he gained shore, being almost all the time in range of them, and so near that they talked to one another. By that means he saved himself and his people—a thing that would have been impossible in any other manner; but his defense was so fiery that in less than half an hour he fired the gun more than thirty times.
These people are the instruments of all the exploits by sea, for of all the other nations no one will embark unless he is forced; and on account of the little effectiveness that is found by experience in all the others, our enemies, who are watchful for their own safety and for fortunate results, are not hindered by those other peoples. Consequently, he who has most men from this nation is considered the most powerful and is the most feared, as they have power to infest the seas and coasts, making captives and pillaging, and making themselves masters of the crossings and passages necessary for communication with the other islands.
For that same reason the Mindanao has become so feared in these latter years that although he of Buhayen is the true and legitimate king, he is coming to be less esteemed; for since the Mindanao king has many Lutaos, he has also power to make war. And although the king of Buhayen has twenty-fold more vassals, he can make no one uneasy because he has no subjects of this nation; consequently, he has no weight in these islands. For the wars of these nations, now because of their little permanence, now because of the natural ruggedness of their settled parts, are but seldom offensive by land; for the enemy are immediately perceived, and the less powerful avail themselves of the shelter of the mountains. Since the people are of little endurance and less subordination they cannot sustain long campaigns. Therefore, at most the valiant ones set an ambush, and according to the way it falls out the campaign is finished without the spoils being surrendered; for their articles of value, as there is so little good faith among them, are always kept buried, or are so light that they are carried along with them. On that account he alone is judged powerful who has people to make war by sea. In ancient times this power caused all this island to pay tribute to the king of Mindanao in order to be free from his attacks. In the time of Buisan, the father of Corralat, they had hopes of rendering all the islands of Pintados tributary; and, though the island of Burney is so out of the way, more than twenty thousand vassals pay tribute to him in the villages called Suaco. For the same reason, although the Joloan nation is so small, it has become the most distinguished in these islands; for on sea it equals the strength of the Mindanaos, as they have as many or more vassals of the Lutao nation.
The fourth nation is the Subano. They are the settlers along the rivers. To them is due the name suba, which is the equivalent of “river” in the general language of these nations. It is the nation of least esteem, both because of their natural barbarousness, for they live in the plains with as little association with one another as have brutes (one house being located a legua’s distance from another, according to where each one wishes to build his hut); and because of their poverty, which is dire. For since they have no other intelligence than [what is required for] their work, their slothfulness reduces their efforts to what necessity [only] requires, so that what is abundant for a laborious life is always lacking with them. They are deficient in civilized ways, along with human intercourse, as they are born so hostile and so averse to communication [with others] that they grow old in their rude settlements without curiosity drawing them from their place of residence, or without their seeing the sea, although some of them live where they hear news of the horror of its tumults and movements. If either necessity or gain has made them give a glance at their rivers, they are satisfied with that, and do not seek a better fortune with its dangers. This inertia forbids them, incapable of giving force to their ambition, from following its impulses with [favoring] winds.
They are as cowardly as treacherous, the one being the consequence of the other. He who better plans a bit of treachery and comes out most safely is considered the most valiant. As they all know one another, they look out for one another, and build their houses so high up that a pike cannot reach and wound them. Their usual practice is to seek a very high tree, where they can build their nests safely; and, their houses being so unostentatious in size and furnishing, a tree holds them easily. The ladder by which they ascend is a log, some grooves that they cut in it serving as steps. On the coming of night they draw this ladder up and thus sleep secure. They teach us the little with which life is satisfied, and the fatigues which our ambition and pride give us; for in order to satisfy our ambition and pride we take upon us so many cares, which, so far as life is concerned, are superfluous, and are not the least of the accidents which our life suffers. This nation is almost wholly in vassalage to the Lutaos, and every village recognizes some chief[8] of the latter nation to whom they pay tribute; and that chief bears himself as a king among them, and makes and unmakes at his will. In the beginning, this authority entered under color of protection and support against the king of Mindanao, and remained in enthroned tyranny, so that today most of this nation are slaves of the Lutaos—their want of intellect subjecting them to a thousand cheats, and their want of protection to a thousand outrages. For since the Lutaos are so alert a nation, and so sharp in their affairs, they have gradually bought the Subanos by trading with them, becoming masters of their entire freedom.
Chapter X
Of the noble and brave nation of the Dapitans
Of this island, which has given empires to so many kings, without doubt the crown is the village of Dapitan; and, although it is so small at present, it has been one of the most densely populated in the past, the one most respected for its power, and in our times the whole, both of these conquests and of their Christian churches. In a small number, reduced to one single village, there is inclosed a nation[9] apart from all the others, and superior to all those discovered in nobility, valor, fidelity, and Catholicism. They are descended from the island of Bool, where they anciently occupied the strait made by that island and the island of Panglao, which remains dry at low tide, but at high tide allows a galliot to pass. Therefore many brazas in the sea stand, even today, certain columns of upright wood, as honorable witnesses of the location so gloriously occupied by this nation, and today the venerable ruins of poor although adequate buildings which they sustained. They occupied both shores and the entire island of Panglao. There they conquered the famous people of Bohol; for as their nation was the less numerous in that island, they were obliged to sustain their name by their deeds. The Boholans, conquered and put to flight, abandoned the site which they occupied from the shore of the strait to the coast of Baclayon and took refuge on the river of Loboc, where their name is still preserved in a few families descended from that stock which conquered that island, and only the valor of the Dapitans subdued.[10] According to the ancient law of the land the Dapitans can call the Boholans their slaves since less title was sufficient for that in the days of their antiquity, and the most authoritative reason was always that of war.
War exiled the Dapitans from their country, a proof of their valor and the unforeseen accidents of their misfortunes; for they were the only people of all the archipelago who were renowned among foreign princes for their exploits, and to them alone were embassies made. It happened then that in an embassy sent by the king of Terrenate, the most warlike and powerful king known, his ambassador lost [due] respect for the house of the Dapitan princes—then represented by Dailisan and Pagbuaya, who were brothers—by making advances to a concubine. They punished the crime more by the laws of offended and irritated fury than by those of reason, with hideous and indeed cruel demonstrations of contempt, by cutting off the noses and ears of the ambassador and his men. When they had returned to Terrenate, the horrid aspect of his subjects aroused the wrath of the king. He armed all his power in twenty joangas to oppose the Dapitans. His general, doubtful of the outcome, as he knew the valor of those with whom he had to do, made use of a trick by which he assured a deceitful victory. He sent his joangas in, one by one, giving out that they were traders, and under the security of friendship—excusing the above occurrence, in order to divert the attention [of the Dapitans], with the laws of punishment, deserved because of the boldness of their men. The Dapitans, seeing that the Ternatans were attending only to the sale of their goods, lost their caution, and came up with the same confidence as ever. When the Ternatans had all their fleet together, and saw that of the Dapitans, they closed with them. Although the latter placed themselves in a position of defense, they retreated before that multitude, and the terror of arms to which they were unaccustomed; for the Ternatans already had muskets and arquebuses, the use of which they had before other nations, because of their trade with the Portuguese.[11] The frightful effects of these, as terrible by their ruin as by their novelty, worked on the minds of the Dapitans. Dailisan was killed in that fray, and his brother Pagbuaya was left the reigning prince. He, seeing how he was involved with the Ternatans, and how much at the mercy of their new [arms][12] was the place occupied by the Dapitans—where the Ternatan ships could succeed in anchoring under the houses of the Dapitans, and using their arms, fight them in safety—resolved to seek another place, better defended. He also thus resolved because these nations regard as unlucky the place where fortune has once shown itself hostile to them, and immediately abandon it as accursed. Even today, in these islands, it is a fact that the house where a chief dies is abandoned by his people and it remains alone, waiting its ruin.[13] He sought then a place where, their valor and its ruggedness joining hands, they could make up, aided by the strength of the site, for the small number of their nation. As there were no hills on their coasts, and they were unable to restrain their noble and warlike nature to the confinement and gloomy prison of the retired mountains, where they would be deprived of the trade and benefits of the sea, they crossed to the island of Mindanao, a crossing of fifteen leguas, and twenty from their village, and seized a small rugged hill, which would allow itself to be monopolized by their valor.