388. The origin of all these people (who are scattered throughout these islands) is inferred to be either the many civilized Indians who have retreated to the mountains in order not to pay tribute, or in order not to be chastised for any crime; or the many different nations immediate to this archipelago. For some bear traces of being Japanese mestizos, as do the Tagabaloòyes, as I am well informed by religious who have had intercourse with them. Some are known to proceed from the Chinese; some from pure Indians, and some from other nations, as is declared by the circumstances of face, body, color, hair, customs, manner, and behavior—according to the experience of various religious, who agree that they are not of the pure race of the Indians, but mestizos as above stated. And even in five clans of Mangyànes who are said to exist in the island of Mindòro, there is one which has a little tail, as do the monkeys; and many religious who have assured me of it, as witnesses. In Valèr, on the coast opposite us, a woman was found not long ago who had a long tail, as was told me by the present missionary; and he was unable to be sure of the origin of that race, unless it was a race of Jews.
389. I do not know whether those people who are found only in the environs of Manila, and are called Criollos Morenos [i.e., creole blacks], can be put in this mestizo class. The former are all oldtime Christians, docile, well inclined, and of sufficient understanding. They serve the king in personal duties, and always have their regiment of soldiers, with their master-of-camp, captains, and other leaders; and in this way they are outside the reckoning as Indians. It is difficult to assign their true origin to them. For some make them the descendants of those blacks, of whom we shall speak later, who were the primitive lords of these domains. But I do not see how this can be so, for they do not resemble those Negrillos either in their hair or in the members of their bodies, or in the qualities of their minds, in which these creoles have the complete advantage. And although it might be said that they have been bettered in all ways with the lapse of time, and the change of location to one more civilized and temperate, it is not credible that they would not retain some of their old vices, as is the case with various other races here, and as has been experienced in Nueva España. Some people make them the descendants of those slaves who were formerly held here by the petty rulers, brought by foreign traders in exchange for the drugs that formed their commerce and with whose price they made a good profit. Even yet they bring to our settlements a considerable number—so many, that it is necessary for one of the auditors to be judge of the slaves, and his duty costs him his time and patience. The creoles refuse to confess this origin, and it does not seem to me that they would be so well received and so well regarded if they had so vile an origin. Some believe that they descend from the free Malabars who come to these islands under pretext of trade. I incline more to this view, paying heed to the physiognomies and intellect of them all, for they are almost all alike in their clear dark color, aquiline noses, animated eyes, lank hair, docile disposition, and good manners, by which we may infer that those that there are now are Malabar and Indian mestizos.
390. At the present time, all this archipelago, and especially these islands of the Tagálogs, are full of another race of mestizos, who were not found at the first discovery, whom we call Sangley mestizos,[4] who are descended from Indian women and Chinese men. For since trade with them [i.e., the Sangleys] has been, and is, so frequent, and so many remain in these islands under pretext of trade, and they are the ones who supply these islands with clothing, food, and other products, those who have mixed with the Indian women in marriage are numerous; and for this purpose they become Christians, and from them have resulted so many mestizos that one cannot count them. They are all Christians, and quite commonly well disposed, and very industrious and civilized. They take pride in imitating the Europeans in everything, but their imitation is only a copy. They inhabit the same villages with the Tagálogs, but are not reckoned with them; since for the reckoning of the king they belong to a different body. The women are more like the Sangleys or Chinese, but the men not so much; however, these inherit from them ambition, in their continual industry.
391. There is also another kind of mestizo—the Japanese—who result from the Japanese who were shipwrecked on these islands in former years. They are of better conduct than the others, since they have a better origin. They are more esteemed here and have more privileges, for they only pay half as much tribute as do the others.
392. It is tradition that the Negrillos, who belong to the second class of people whom our first conquistadors found, were the first owners of the islands of this archipelago; and that, the civilized nations of other kingdoms having conquered them, they fled to the mountains and settled there, and from there it has never been possible to exterminate them, because their sites are impenetrable. There they have lived and brought forth children until the present. In former times they were so elated with their primitive power that, although their forces were not able to cope with those of foreigners in the open, they were very powerful in the thickets, mountains, and mouths of the rivers; and were accustomed to burst like an avalanche upon the villages, and compel their inhabitants to pay them tribute, as if they were the lords of the land, who were inhabiting it. And if the people refused to give it willingly, they killed right and left, collecting the tribute in the heads of those who were decapitated; as was written by one of our oldtime religious in the following words: “Even in my time, it happens,” he says, “that they descended to the settlements and sought tribute from the Tagálogs, and at times took some heads for this purpose. Thus did it happen in Sinilòan, which refused tribute at the approach of the Spaniards. The mountain Indians, having revolted, attacked the village; and they took three heads, and badly wounded a Spaniard who was defending them.” Thus far the religious. At other times those people did not allow the Indians to make use of the wood and game of the mountains, and the fish of the rivers. For being very skilful in the use of the bow and arrow, and very swift and experienced in the fastnesses of the mountains and thickets, they inhumanly shot with arrows as many as approached their territories, without anyone catching sight or sound of them. For that reason, the inhabitants of the villages consider it wise to make an agreement with the Negrillos to pay them a certain tribute, provided that the latter leave the rivers and fields free. And although this pact is not so apparent at present, I believe that it is practiced secretly because of the fear that the Indians have of them, and because of their dependence on them; since the Negrillos are the lords of the mountains which contain the most virgin forests, with woods of the greatest value. It is a fact, too, that those of the present day are as barbarous as their ancestors.
393. All of these people are black negroes, most of whom have kinky hair, and very few have lank. They are flat-nosed, and almost all of them have thick, projecting lips. They go totally naked, and only have their privies covered with some coverings resembling linen cloths, which they draw on from the back forward, and which are called bahaques. They make those bahaques from the bark of trees, pounded with heavy blows, so that there are some that look like fine linen. Wrapping a rattan around the waist, they fasten the bahaque to it by the two ends. As ornaments they wear certain bracelets of rattan of various colors, curiously wrought; and garlands on their heads and on the fleshy parts of their arms, composed of various flowers and branches; and as a means of greater distinction for some one person, a cock’s feather or the feather of some other bird, as a plume. Their food consists of fruits, and roots of the mountain; and if they find, perchance, some deer, they eat it in that place where they kill it. That night they make their abode there, and after they grow tired of dancing, they sleep there—all helter-skelter, like brutes. Next day the same thing happens, and they sleep in another stopping-place. All their customs are the savage and brutish ones characteristic of barbarians; and they recognize no other laws, letters, or government than those of the heads of their families, at the most. They only care about defending their own territories, upon which they have lively wars, some Negrillos against others, with great mortality on both sides. At such times no natives dare enter the mountains, for the Negrillos kill them all, whether friend or enemy. Their most common arms are shield, bow, and arrow. If by a miracle any Christian is found among these people, and if perhaps the religious have reared some of them in Christianity from childhood, it very rarely occurs that he does not flee to the mountains whence he originated, when he becomes grown.
394. One of the islands of this archipelago which has a name, is the one called the island of Negros, because of the abundance of those people. It is located between the two islands of Zebú and Panày, and in it is established a Christian and civilized government. But at one point of this island, which lies toward the west, and is called the point of Sojotòn, there is a great number of the said blacks, and not one Christian. In the center of the island is a much greater number; therefore, it is along the beach where the Jesuit fathers and the seculars administer, and where the Visayans or Pintados are settled.
395. The origin of these Negrillos is thought to have been interior India, or citra Gangen, which was called Etyopia; for it was settled by Ethiopian negroes, whence went out the settlers to African Etyopia, as Father Colin proves in detail. Consequently, there being on the mainland of India nations of negroes, and even in Nueva Guinea so many that their first discoverers gave the island that name because of the multitude of these people; and since the distance from those places to these islands and the Philippine archipelago is not great; nor was the land [of Nueva Guinea] which was five hundred leguas in length, entirely settled with blacks—whom the ships of Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza found in one of the capes of the strait of Magallanes: those blacks could very easily pass from one island to another, and their chief abode with their own name might be the island of Negros, as we have remarked. Thence they could extend afterward to dominate and settle the rest of the islands, without any opposition from other people, until the opposition came through other men more rational and civilized than they, who dispossessed them.
396. The third kind of people whom our Spaniards found in this archipelago were the civilized nations, who maintained their government or seigniory on the river banks, on the seashores, and in the other sites with the best locations in these regions, and in the locations most fit for healthful and safe dwelling-places. Among them there was another remarkable class of people, and their domination, scattered throughout the many islands of this archipelago, the chief of whom are the Tagálogs, Pampangos, Visayans, and Mindanaos. Other peoples are reduced to these, although they have various distinguishing marks. The Tagálogs, who are the natives of Manila and its archbishopric, with but little distance between their villages, were Malays, who came from a district called Malàyo; that is the origin of all the Malays, who are scattered throughout the most and the better parts of all these archipelagoes. They are located on the mainland of Malâca, and as that district is not far distant from the great island of Bornèy, it is inferred (and this tradition has been handed down from father to son), that the Malays went to Bornèy, and from Bornèy to settle Manila and its district; taking the name of Tagàlog—which is the same as Taga Ylog, which signifies, in their own language, “those who live on the rivers;” for the Tagálogs have always lived on the shores of the rivers.
397. That the Tagálogs originated directly from the Malays, is proved (in the opinion of all) by their language, which differs but little from that of the real Malays; by their color, and the shape of their faces and their bodies; by the clothes and vesture in which the Spanish conquistadors found them; by their customs and ceremonies, all of which resemble those of the Malays—of whom the Tagálogs themselves said, and say always, that they are the true descendants. The coming of the Malays to this archipelago is not incredible, as we have so many examples of various accidents in these seas which have originated from the weather, by which we have seen brought to these islands unknown peoples, who spoke languages which no one could understand. For instance, a boat driven from its course, landed in the year 1725 on the opposite coast of Valèr and Casigùran, where our religious were in charge; it contained more than twenty men, whose language or garb had not been known until that time. But it is much more easily credible that the Malays came to these islands led by greed for their commercial profits—as, one reads in the histories of the Portuguese, happened in the regions of India with the Persians and Arab Moros, who, having entered under the pretext of trade, afterwards became masters of everything. The same thing is said here of the entrance of the Moro Malays.