601. The district of Bislìg, which is the last and most distant from Manila among those possessed there by our reformed order, is located in Carhàga, in the island of Mindanào and consists of five villages. These are Bislìg, which is the chief one, Hinatòan, Catèl, Bagàngan, and Carhàga. At its beginning the province was named from the last one, as it was then the settlement of the greatest population. Two religious only are generally designated for the spiritual administration of this district, and they have too much work in the exercise of it. For the villages are located at great distances from one another, the people are especially warlike, they are contiguous to the Moros, those irreconcilable enemies, while the sea of those districts on which they have to travel from one village to another, is extremely boisterous, rough, and at times impassable, and on its reef in the dangers already mentioned, several religious have lost their lives, as will be patent further on in this history. But, notwithstanding that the two religious assigned to those villages can scarcely attend fully to the direction of the Christian Indians, and although because of the dearth of religious from which our reformed order almost always suffers in those islands, but rarely could more subjects be employed there, those few following the maxim practiced there of one doing the work of many, they did not cease to solicit ever the conversion of the surrounding heathens, who are very numerous in those mountains.
602. There is especially so great a number of heathen Indians and barbarous nations in certain mountains that extend along the coast, from opposite Carhàga near Bislìg (a distance of about twenty-five leguas, while it is not known how far they extend inland), that even the Christian Indians do not know them all. The nearest nation to our villages is that of the Tagabalòyes, who are so named from certain mountains which they call Baloòy. They live amid their briers without submission to the Catholic faith or to the monarchy of España. Those Indians are domestic, peaceable, tractable, and always allied with the Christians, whom they imitate in being irreconcilable enemies of the Moros. They are a very corpulent race, well built, of great courage and strength, and they are at the same time of good understanding, and more than half way industrious. That nation is faithful in its treaties, and constant in its promises, as they are descendants, so they pride themselves, of the Japanese, whom they resemble in complexion, countenance, and manners. Their life is quite civilized, and they show no aversion to human society. All those of the same kin, however extensive, generally live in one house, the quarters being separated according to the families. Those houses are built very high, so that there are generally two pike lengths from the ground to the first floor. The whole household make use of only one stairway, which is constructed so cunningly, that when all are inside they remove it from above, and thus they are safe from their enemies. Many of those Tagabalòyes live near the Christians, and those peoples have mutual intercourse, and visit and aid one another. They do not run away from our religious, but on the contrary like to communicate with them, and show them the greatest love and respect. Hence any ministers can live among them as safely as in a Christian village.
603. It is now seen how suitable are all these districts to induce so docile a nation to receive our holy faith. But for all that, very little progress was made in their reduction until the year 1671, and then it was that the care and the continual preaching of Ours obtained it. Besides the will of God, whose resolutions are unsearchable, there were several motives of a natural order, which made the attempts of the evangelical ministers fruitless. The first was the continual wars with the Moros. That fact scarcely permitted the Christians and even the Tagabalòyes to let their weapons out of their hands. With the din of arms the Catholic religion, always inclined to quiet and peace, can generally make but little progress. The second consisted in the little or no aid rendered in this attempt by the alcalde-mayor, the military leaders of Catèl, and even some chiefs of the subject villages. All of the above were assured of greater profits in their trade and commerce, if those Indians were heathens than if they were Christians; and it is very old in human malice that the first objects of anxiety are the pernicious ideas of greed, and the progress of the faith is disregarded if it opposes their cupidity.
604. But the strongest reason for the failure of the desired fruit was the third. This reason is reduced, as we have already mentioned, to the fact that there were but two religious generally in the said district, and of those no one could be in residence at the villages of Catèl or Carhàga, the nearest ones to the said mountains, and they only went thither two or three times per year. Consequently, although they wished never so strongly to labor in the conversion of the heathen Indians, they could not obtain the fruit up to the measures of their desires. It happened almost always that the minister was detained a fortnight at most, in the said villages, the greater part of which was necessarily spent in instructing the Christians. And although, by stealing some hours from sleep, the minister employed some of them in catechizing the heathens, since his stay was so short, he could not give the work the due perfection, and left it in its beginning, as he had to go to the other villages. He charged some Christians to continue in preparing and cultivating those souls so that they might be ready on his return to receive baptism. But human weakness, united to the sloth, which almost as if native to him, accompanies the Indian, was the reason that when the religious returned after an interval of four or six months, instead of finding the work advanced, he found that which he himself had done in it lost. And idolatry always triumphed, notwithstanding that he did not cease to make vigorous war upon it.
605. Thus time rolled on, and the Church obtained very little increase in those mountains, for the three above-mentioned reasons. The order could not conquer the two first, and there was less possibility for the third. For however much the order desired to apply on its part the only means whereby the desired fruit could be obtained, namely, the assignment of a religious to reside in the said places, who should look after the reduction of the Tagabalòyes, without attending to any other thing, it was continually unable to effect that, for in Philipinas the harvest is very great and the laborers few. I have detained myself in the consideration of these obstacles, which threaten the total devastation of the heathendom of Philipinas, and are transcendental to all the holy orders, who are striving to spread the faith in the said islands. For some believe (and more than two have expressed as much to me here in España in familiar conversation) that the reason why the heathenism of those countries has not been ended, is because the missionaries do not work with the same spirit as they did at the beginning. But they are surely deceived, for in addition to the many other reasons that may be assigned, the three above-mentioned suffice to render the most laborious efforts vain. The same tenacity, zeal, and courage of the first laborers accompanies those who have succeeded them. Let the obstacles be removed, and one will see that (as has been experienced many times) Belial having been destroyed and cut into pieces, although many render him adoration, the Catholic faith triumphs in the ark of the testament. This happened at the time of which we treat in the mountains of Bislìg.
606. The year, then, of 1671 came, in which that holy province held their chapter and father Fray Juan de San Phelipe, a native of Nueva España, who had taken our holy habit in the convent of Manila, was elected provincial. That religious had lived for some years in Bislìg, and had known by experience how necessary it was for a missionary to live in residence near the mountains, where so great infidelity was fortified, in order to establish there the health-bringing dogmas of our Catholic religion. Scarcely was he elected superior prelate, since he had a sufficient number of subjects in order to attend to all parts, when he resolved to place one of them in residence at Catèl, and to order such an one solemnly that he should from there procure the reduction of those heathens by all means without engaging in other cares, however useful they seemed to him. He also gave very rigorous orders to the father prior of Bislìg to the effect that whenever they could without any omission in the spiritual administration of the other villages, he or his associates should go to reside in the village of Carhàga, and be there in residence as much as possible, all three religious concurring in that great work and aiding one another mutually for the attainment of so well conceived desires. Finally he arranged matters with so much acumen that if the lack of religious had not rendered it impossible after such ideas had been put into practice, it is probable that they would have subdued all the heathens of those mountains.
607. In August 1671 that project was begun to be put into operation; and although we have not yet been able to get detailed information of the laborers, who were employed in it, on account of which we cannot place their names in this history, we shall have the consolation of knowing that they will not be omitted from the book of life. It is certain that all three religious conspired together in bringing to the delicious net of the Church those misguided souls, and they shirked no toil that might help in their object. They made raid after raid into those mountains; one from Catèl, one from Carhàga, and one from Bislìg, penetrating to their highest peaks, and their deepest valleys in all their extent from the promontory of Calatàn nearly to the cape called San Agustin. All three of them at the same time were careful to assist the Christians in the spiritual administration. They preached, catechized, attracted the people by argument, by art, by prudence. And as some truce occurred in the war with the Moros at that time, and as they obtained at the same time a very Christian alcalde-mayor who aided them and caused all his subordinates to aid them in so holy zeal, so much fruit was obtained that when the father provincial went on his visit in February 1673, he found that they had already baptized more than three hundred adults without reckoning those who had been purified in the waters of grace in sickness and had immediately died. The latter were as many as one hundred counting great and small.
608. Thus did the above-mentioned father provincial, Fray Juan de San Phelipe, write to our father vicar-general under date of July 5, of the same year. And after, on June 26, 1674, he adds that, according to the relations sent to the chapter by the father prior of Bislìg, that district had increased by two hundred tributes. This, according to the reckoning in vogue there, means eight hundred souls. They had all been allured from the mountains and from the horrors of their paganism to become inhabitants of the villages already formed, and to live in civilized intercourse among the pleasant lights of the Christian name. This well premeditated idea has since then been followed as has been possible by the successors of our father, Fray Juan de San Phelipe, whenever the small number of religious has not rendered it impossible. For in some chapters of that holy province, repeated determinations are seen to place a minister in residence at Catèl, so that he may exercise the means conducive to that end. Hence it is that father Fray Juan Francisco de San Antonio has inserted the following narrative in his seraphic chronicle. He says: “Some of the Tagabalòyes are living now in old villages who have become Christians, and others are being reduced by the zeal and cultivation of the discalced Augustinian fathers, who hold them as inhabitants of Bislìg.”[21] And it is confirmed that although the district of Bislìg was formerly one of the smallest in the number of its parishioners, it is now one of the largest in Mindanào, and there is no other reason for its increase.
[The two following sections of this chapter detail several miraculous happenings that aided not a little in the conversion of the region inhabited by the Tagabalòyes. In 1662 when the Spaniards abandoned the island of Ternate, because of the Chinese pirate Kuesing, one of the religious images taken away with them was of the Virgin. That image was given by the governor of Ternate to the alcalde-mayor of Caraga, who in turn gave it to the garrison of Catèl. From its position there it was known as “La Virgen de la Costa” or, the Virgin of the hill, “for costa in the language of the country, is the same as castillo [i.e., redoubt].” The influence of this image was far reaching and it distributed many blessings and favors to its devotees in times of drought, in plagues of locusts, and during epidemics, and performed other miracles that gave it lasting fame. Another image of the Christ crucified was revered in a village near Bislìg, and was later given a place in the Recollect church at Manila. It was a small ordinary image such as was used on the altar during mass. As it was very ugly and misshapen the priest determined to bury it, ordering some of the natives to perform that task. But when the hole was dug, and they went to get the image, in its place they found the most beautiful and symmetrical image that they had ever seen, and nailed to the same cross. The transformation was announced to be of divine origin, and this image was accordingly revered as miraculous; and it proved itself to be so in the future. On account of the miracles that occurred in the Caraga district the people became more devout Christians and many abandoned their ancient practices. The remainder of this chapter does not deal with Philippine matters; as do neither of the two following chapters.]