The second: While I was in the village of Lipa, a mine was discovered in that of Tanavan which was said to be of silver. Governor Don Fausto Cruzat y Gongorà sent ministers and officials in order to find out about it and to assay it. These men made their efforts, but the mine only said, Argentum et aurum non est mihi.[81] But the devil willed to have some rogue at this time to sow this deceit, namely, that the ministers[82] said that the mine would yield no silver until all the old women of Cometan had been caught, and their eyes plucked out and mixed with other ingredients, in order to anoint the vein of the mine with that mixture. This was believed, so that all was confusion and lamentation, and the old women hid in the fields; and it took a long time to quiet them, and cost the ministers great difficulty, as the Indians would not believe them because they were Castilians, until time itself undeceived them.[83]
38. May God deliver us from any one of those Indians whom they consider as sages, who says any bit of nonsense, even though it be against the faith,[84] and they only respond, Vica nong maronong, “Thus say the sages,” and it is labor lost to persuade them to the contrary; for the authority that these scholars have over them is incredible.
39. They are extremely arrogant, and hence the son will not obey his father, or the headman, or captain of the village.[85] They are only bound in this by fear, and when they have no fear they will not obey. They only recognize the Spaniard to be more than they;[86] and this they say only because of an interior impulse, which forces them against their will and without their knowing why. This is the providence of God, so that they can be governed.
40. They are very fond if imitating the Spaniard[87] in all his bad traits, such as variety of clothes, cursing, gambling, and the rest that they see the coxcombs[88] do. They shun the imitation of the good things in the dealings and civilization of the Spaniards, and in the proper rearing of their children. For in all the rest that treats of trickery, drunken revelries, and ceremonies in their marriages, burials, and tyrannies one against another, they observe exactly what they learned from their ancestors. Thus they unite in one the vices of the Indians and the Spaniards.[89]
41. Just as the poor are arrogant, so also are the old ones ignorant, and they are not to be distinguished from the youths. Consequently, in their weddings, banquets, and revelries one will see old men with white hair, mixed with the lads; and slouchy old women with their scapularies, clapping their hands and singing nonsensical things with the lasses. Scarcely is there an Indian who knows his age, and many[90] do not know the baptismal names of their wives, after they have been baptized for fifty years.[91]
42. They are so ignorant that they do not have the slightest knowledge concerning the origin of the ancestors from whom they descend, and whence they came to settle these islands. They do not give any information concerning their paganism, which is not the worst; and they only preserve in certain parts some ridiculous abuses, which they observe at births and sicknesses, and the cursed belief that persuades them that the souls of their ancestors or the grandfathers of the families are present in the trees and at the bottom of bamboos, and that they have the power of giving and taking away health and of giving success or failure to the crops. Therefore, they make their ancestors offerings of food, according to their custom; and what has been preached to them and printed in books avails but little, for the word of any old man regarded as a sage has more weight with them than the word of the whole world.[92]
43. They act tyrannically one toward another. Consequently, the Indian who has some power from the Spaniard is insolent[93] and intolerable among them—so much so that, in the midst of their ingratitude, some of them recognize it, although very few of them. Yet it is a fact that, if the Spaniards had not come to these islands, the Indians would have been destroyed; for, like fish,[94] the greater would have swallowed the lesser, in accordance with the tyranny which they exercised in their paganism.[95]
44. They are wanting in understanding and reflection, so that they do not recognize any means in anything, but go to extremes. Consequently, if one ask them for warm water, they bring it boiling, and then if they are reproached and told that one wishes it more temperate, they go and bring it back as cold as ice.[96] In this vicious circle of extremes, they will continue ceaselessly without finding a mean. Consider then, how they will act in prudential matters, where one must seek the mean and not the extremes, as says the poet:[97]
Es[t] modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines.
Quos ultra, citraque nequit consistere rectum.[98]