He prides himself on being very learned, and that he needs no advice from any one, holding it as an established maxim that the religious lie to him in whatever they say or propose in favor of the Indians. From this results the extreme contempt in which the religious now find themselves [held by him], and the grievous oppression which the poor Indians experience; for, from the very month in which this governor entered Manila, the Indians have not ceased their labors [on public works] to this day, without any attention being paid to the times when they ought to attend to their farming, or to the inclemency of the rainy seasons—not even in a sort of pestilence which has prevailed in this [province] of Tagalos among the Indians. Sick as they were, [the officials] obliged them with blows to go to their toil in timber-working, where not a few fell dead from the labor and their illness; and all this, only to build one ship (a very small one), on account of the unnecessary destruction of the galleon “Santo Niño,” which Don Juan de Bargas had constructed in his term as governor.
[1] Domingo Zabálburu de Echevarri (see Vol. XVII, p. 294).
Bibliographical Data
The documents contained in this volume are obtained from the following sources:
1. [Events at Manila], 1690–91.—From the Ventura del Arco MSS. (Ayer library), iv, pp. 53–67.
2. [Native races and customs.]—From Colin’s Labor evangélica, book i, chap. iv, xiii–xvi; from a copy of original edition (1663) in possession of Edward E. Ayer, Chicago.
3. [Natives of the southern islands.]—From Combes’s Historia de Mindanao, Ioló, etc. (Retana and Pastells’s reprint), chap. ix–xviii.