Chapter XIV
The laws of their private conduct and the general laws of their government
Following are the laws pertaining to them privately as persons. They are as much adapted to the nature of the world (although more clothed with innocence), as they are to their laziness and cupidity which prohibits them from all expense which is not necessary for life, as superfluous. For that I have always said of these natives that they are fine philosophers, adapted to nature. The laws which touch on other matters and have to do with their neighbors are quite at variance with the laws of nature; and these extend to a tyranny so manifestly cruel that at times and in some things it comes to be brutality. I have seen a son who held his father as slave, and, vice versa, a father who held his son as slave; for if one make an outlay for another, they take account of it, as would be done in the case of a stranger. Inasmuch as this son had freed his father by buying him from his master, that man was reckoned as his son’s slave, and the same would be true of the son. It may happen that a chief lowers himself [by having intercourse] with his slave-woman, and the son whom she bears may be so cruel that at the death of his father he makes his own mother his slave. Even if, while they are at peace, these points are not cleared up, and the inner tyranny employs external civility, yet, if dissensions alter these relations, and they are divided, the men avail themselves of those rights, and subject their mothers to whatever they choose, and do not allow them to leave their houses. Thus do they come to be served by their mothers at all times. In regard to those who descend from them, there is even less shame; and among another kind of relations is an utter disregard of nature in this respect, for their own nephews are the slaves of their uncles, and, vice versa, uncles are slaves of their nephews.
They do not know what charity is. Consequently, whatever benefits they confer are all placed on account as debts, which their tyranny estimates wholly to their own satisfaction. Unfortunate he whom abandonment or orphanage has flung into the house of another, for now for his sustenance, and again for his rearing, he must become a slave. Kindness is shown at the cost of liberty. Although that was general throughout the islands, in this island it is excessive, as it is a tenet of the perfidious sect of Mahomet; and its cruelty has left no liberty that it has not opposed. Therefore, there is not in this nation the middle class that is found in the others which forms the common people out of the freemen; for there are no freemen, nor any mean between chiefs and slaves. Their community is composed of but two extremes, so far separated. It is a fact that there are many ways by which to reduce men to such a condition, and there is no escape from the injury. For, since self-interest is the advantage of those who are powerful, it unites them against the unfortunate one who dares to proclaim the offense that has been done to him, while his punishment conciliates so many other offenders who might perplex justice; and fear shuts the mouths of those whom the same fortune might gain to his favor in the support of his testimonies. Therefore, when it comes to proof there is always a lack of witnesses for innocence; while on the contrary there is for tyranny an oversupply of ocular witnesses of things that they have never seen or heard. When some stranger goes to a village to trade where he does not have the guaranteed patronage of many powerful relations, in the case of any neglect that is shown him in courtesy or in the laws, they bring such a case against him that to get out of it well he abandons his business and perhaps with his business his freedom. The worst of it is that the punishment is always more than the offense, for the just pay as if they were sinners. Their avarice or tyranny not satisfied with the vengeance taken on the criminal makes the offense related to the very blood, in order to extend their cupidity farther. Hence it is that on account of the crime committed by a single one, they make all the relations slaves. I saw four brothers who were all deprived of their inherited freedom because of the incivility and weakness of one. Finding myself in Iligan—a nation which, as it is so new, is even yet throwing out the sparks of this tyrannical fury it happened that a common woman spoke some insulting words to another woman who had rank; and the latter’s husband, coming to me to make a complaint, said to me, exaggerating the offense: “Father, if the Spaniards were not here, and we could rule ourselves by our own laws, we would have made mincemeat [gigote] of that woman with a campilan, and slaves of her brothers and sisters and relatives.” Finally, he whom avarice rules with a tyrannical power (for all their laws end in self-interest) gets usury from his offense and employment from his crime.
Avarice rules in all their judgments; and the purse becomes the gallows of all crimes. Money is the vengeance of the aggrieved parties, and the sponge for injuries. When they are paid for, no spot or sign of the offense is left. Although there are crimes which bear especially a capital penalty, yet there is no penalty that cannot be redeemed by money or goods. He who has no possessions at all has still liberty, and can surrender that also. That is the road most traveled by which some come to be the slaves of others; and perhaps the chief, if he be poor, may be the slave of another who is a plebeian. When anyone is caught in adultery, if sudden wrath does not execute him, which is but seldom, the wounds are passed on to his purse, in the endeavor to destroy him, and the husband subjects his own wife to the same harshness and penalty. For here all persons have a separate purse, and the husband is not master of what his wife possesses but only of what pertains to him. Nor, under pretext of managing her possessions, does he have more to do with it than the extent of her permission; and she is always mistress of her own possessions. Thus she pays a fine to her own husband, as if she were a stranger to him. Having received this, the aggrieved party remains as satisfied as when, among the Spaniards, one sword has pinned both guilty ones together. The offender retains a privilege truly insulting and barbarous—that for one year he may have intercourse with the woman without her husband complaining. Then the husband and wife return in all peace to cohabit as before, the offense being again at risk, for another atonement.
They especially abhor theft, and they have assigned an ignominious penalty for the thief, as a warning. This is to cut off the joints of his fingers, more or fewer according to the crime. That perhaps obliges them to pass from the hands to the toes, the penalty being proportioned to the misdeeds of greater atrocity. But that penalty can also be redeemed, as can the others, by money.
Notwithstanding that, some crimes they regard as so capital that they do not respect petitions or allow bribes, and death is the necessary punishment for them. The unnatural crime is one of them, and the severity of the execution well shows their natural horror, for such people are burned, and their houses; and nothing that they possessed is allowed to escape from this rigor, as being contaminated. Or, having caged the offenders, they throw them into the sea, and destroy their houses and fields, by such punishment to make demonstration of their abhorrence.
The most feared crime is that which they call sumban, which is incest in the first degree; for they regard it as assured by long experience and knowledge inherited in tradition from their ancestors, that the land which allows that crime is bound down by wretchedness and misfortunes until its infamy is purged by the rigorous chastisement of the offender. There is no other means which can placate the wrath of heaven. Consequently, when they suffer long droughts, or other general plagues from heaven, they immediately attribute them to this. A case of that nature came to my notice in the year fifty-one, when the drought was general, and so great that even the water of the rivers failed, and that river which had any water that found its way to the sea was rare. The Indians of the village which was in my care on the coast of Siocon came to tell me that it was a punishment from the sky, and that it had been demanded by the awfulness of such crime on the coast of Mindanao, where they said that a mother was living in marriage with her son. They petitioned me to have the offenders punished, and warned me that the punishment should be death without remission, such being their custom, without admitting satisfaction by any other penalty, however excessive it be. The same report was current in the island of Basilan. However, it was without other foundation than that the Indians are gossipy and suspicious, ignorant of the secrets of the sky and ruled by the traditions of the past. They are ruled in that island by greater fear, as they retained more accurately in their memory certain cases that served them as examples and warnings. For, at a certain time, the sky was so leaden that for two years not a drop of rain fell. There was an Indian who violated the respect that he owed to his blood and to nature, with regard to a daughter of his. Although he tried to bury the crime in the depths of his silence, it cried out to the sky as an offense, and was heard distinctly as a sin; for the effect, as ungrateful as evil, always turns against its cause. He was a person of influence, and respect for him did not allow any investigation to be made; but, the villages grieving over the public calamity, and unable to endure their forced famine, men trampled under foot respect and laws, in their judgment that tolerance in so execrable an evil had also vexed and hardened the sky. By common consent they seized father and daughter, and, shutting them up in a cage well weighted with stones, threw them into the sea. In return they experienced from the sky approbation for their avenging zeal, in the heavy rain with which it received them. For at all times God preserves the credit to virtue, and even among barbarians imposed penance on vice, so that those who became familiars of vice could have no excuse.[36]
The Joloans executed the same punishment with equal severity, but through malicious information. God, who is always the protector of innocence, shielded the wretched; for when they cast two other fathers in the same manner [into the water], he took away the weight of the stones, and gave the men strength to keep afloat, without abandoning them for a whole day, so that, the report of the matter having reached the king, the wonder forced him to seek new information, by which he discovered falsity and recognized innocence. In all the nations innocence considers God as its advocate, and in desperate cases rests secure on His protection.
Judges in suits or causes follow the simple laws of nature, and have no embarrassment of laws and doubts and contrary interpretations. They have no delays by reports or prolixity of writs, for they do not waste a single dedo[37] of paper in that. The accusation, the plea, and the evidence are quickly heard—all in the manner of the time of Noah. If there is no testimony, they admit the parties to the oath, which contains terrifying imprecations. With that plea the party is usually content; for the obligation and risk, to which he is exposed by results which are reckoned as punishments of heaven against perjured ones if the rigor of their imprecations is executed, are greatly feared. If perchance the party is satisfied that he has truth on his side, at his petition they do not rest content with that trial, but judgment of red-hot coals or hot iron,[38] such as was resorted to in España and other countries, in centuries ruder and more immune from laws by the privilege of their innocence and goodness. If the persons are burned, then their punishment is proceeded with; and if not, the accuser is obliged to make requital. That custom seems to have been communicated by the Moros by way of Terrenate, where it is still observed. However, no one is burned, for since the Ternatans are so skilled in sorcery, they know herbs of such efficacy and bewitchments of such power, that they communicate it to the hands so that they can handle the iron with impunity, as if it were a nosegay of flowers. Also many of those whom they bury alive, that being the punishment of adultery and rape, escape. I say this, for it often occurred that persons escaped from the execution of this test, in the sight of the Spaniards at Ternate, women whose guilt was notorious, but who cleared themselves of suspicion among their people by this proof. I was told many happenings of this sort, during the time that I spent in those islands [i.e., the Moluccas]; and I was assured that it was done by means of an herb, and I was shown some that were famous in its knowledge. These were the ones to whom the accused had recourse in all their exigencies, suborning their expertness with a quantity of money.