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LOOKING FOR THE PREHISPANIC FILIPINO
and Other Essays in Philippine History
by
William Henry Scott
Copyright 01992
by William Henry Scott
and New Day Publishers
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner or form
without permission by the author and publisher, except in the form of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. ^
Published by
NEW DAY PUBLISHERS
II Lands Street, VASRA /
P.O. Box 1167, 1100 Quezon City
Philippines *■
Tel. Nos. (632) 928-8046 / 927-5982
Cover design: John Sibal
ISBN 971-10-0524-7 (BP)
ISBN 971-10-0740-1 (NP)
First Impression, 1992
Third Impression, 2000
u library A
CONTENTS
Foreword v
Acknowledgments viii
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino: Mistranslations
and preconceptions 1
Demythologizing the Papal Bull "Inter Caeterd' 15
The Mediterranean Connection 24
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 40
The Conquerors As Seen by the Conquered 64
Sixteenth-Century Tagalog Technology from
the Vocabulario de lengua tagalo of Pedro
de San Buenaventura, O.F.M 73
Oripun and Alipin in the Sixteenth-Century
Philippines 84
Lost Visayan Literature 104
Visayan Religion at the Time of Spanish Advent 117
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 138
Kalantiaw: The Code That Never Was 159
New Day Books on Philippine History 171
/
FOREWORD
Although we know so much more about our history in 1992, in this
centennial year of the Philippine Revolution, than was the case say
ten or twenty years ago, the task of reconstructing and reinterpreting
it in light of centuries of misinterpretations, distortions and omis-
sions remains a formidable and overwhelming one. To compensate
for this horrendous neglect of our history, we need to identify and
rectify the imbalances in historical scholarship, to apply the best
techniques, use the best perspectives not only of the discipline of
history but also those of sister disciplines in the social sciences and
humanities as well as access the voluminous historical data in ar-
chives and libraries in many parts of the world. It hardly need be
stated that there is also a need to re-read the earlier historical
presentations for many of them have served only to obscure the real
contours of our development as a people. We have reached a stage
in our historical development where the rescue of our culture is of
utmost importance: we must make any aspect of our culture ever
present and easy of access to see its assonance with (or significance
in) our present life and to free it from the alienating forces that have
prevented its self-appraisal. Obviously, any scholar who engages in
the above process would also contribute to the affirmation of the
Filipino identity and provide substance to the truism that history can
be an instrument of liberation.
More than two decades ago, a prominent historian expressed the
opinion that there is no Philippine history before 1872, that is to say,
that the sources, being mostly in Spanish and written by Spaniards,
could only be used effectively in writing the history of Spain and
Spaniards in the Philippines. William Henry Scott has time and again
proved this obiter dictum a gross error. Using the same sources
consulted by conventional historians in the 1950s and the 1960s,
accessing the voluminous documentation in the Spanish archives,
drawing on new methodologies and interpretations, Scott provides
perspectives of colonial society other Philippine historians have not
VI
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
done. His use of the dictionaries as a key to understanding many
facets of colonial life has inspired many young students to do the
same with truly rewarding results. His dissatisfaction with pat ex-
planations of issues and themes in Philippine history has resulted in
painstakingly researched work that provides fascinating and instruc-
tive studies on colonial life and society.
The scholarship that informs his earlier books are ever present
in this collection of essays. The lead essay in this collection points to
one important direction in historical research: the need to re-read the
historical documents hitherto ignored or taken for granted and, just
as important, to subject to harsh scrutiny the mediated (i.e., trans-
lated) sources that we have inherited from an earlier generation of
historians. His essay on Cebu politics during the early years of
contact between the Spaniards and the Filipinos ("Why Did Tupas
Betray Dagami?") provides insights into Philippine politics and
should make us ponder on the nature and character of the in-
digenous elite. In the essays on Tagalog technology, slavery, Visayan
literature, religion, food and farming, the author has shown that the
materials that had been used perfunctorily for broad statements or
conclusions in Philippine history are actually amenable to detailed
social and economic analysis. While the essays range widely in
subject matter, they focus on the identification of the forces that
determine patterns of cultural accommodation, struggle, political as
well as economic change during the first century of Spanish coloniza-
tion. In these essays, the Filipinos are seen neither as passive objects
of colonial rule nor as victims of early Spanish policy. Rather, they
are seen as actors who have responded to their environment as well
as events in a manner that have helped determine their destiny in
history. It is in this sense that this collection of essays is an important
and welcome contribution to the understanding of our country's still
unmastered past.
The other day I asked the author if he is still an American citizen
to which of course he replied yes. This might have been a facetious
question but one I thought quite apropos regarding a scholar like Dr.
Scott who ha$ done more research and writing on our history, culture
and society than any other social and cultural historian in the country
today. He does so not because such an activity provides his daily
bread and butter but because of a very real love and concern for, and
sympathy with, the Filipino people. He expresses this again in this
latest collection of essays on transformation as a people under
Foreword
Vll
r:
colonial rule. No Filipino mindful of our national heritage can afford
to ignore this contribution to an understanding of our past. Dr. Scott
leads many in the historian's profession in our difficult search for
the roots of the Filipino nation.
For this, Scotty, maraming salamat!
Milagros C. Guerrero
28 June 1992
Faculty Center
University of the Philippines
Diliman, Quezon City
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The essays in this volume have been previously published in journals
or as chapters of edited books as listed below:
1. "Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino: Mistranslations and
Preconceptions." Paper read at the 12th Conference of the Inter-
national Association of Historians of Asia. Hong Kong, 24-28
June 1991.
2. "Demythologizing the Papal Bull 'Inter Caetera/" PHILIPPINE
STUDIES 35 (1987): 348-356.
3. "The Mediterranean Connection," PHILIPPINE STUDIES 37
(1989):131-144.
4. "Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami?" PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF
CULTURE AND SOCIETY 14 (1986): 12-31.
5. "The Conquerors as Seen by the Conquered," PHILIPPINE
STUDIES 34 (1986): 493-506.
6. "Sixteenth-Century Tagalog Technology from the Vocabulario
de Lengua Tagala of Pedro de San Buenaventura, OFM,
Pilal613" in Rainer Carle, ed., GAVA': STUDIES IN AUS-
TRONESIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURE DEDICATE^ TO
HANS KAHLER (Berlin, 1982): 523-535.
7. "Oripun and Alipin in the 16th-Century Philippines" in Anthony
Reid, ed., SLAVERY, BONDAGE AND DEPENDENCY IN
SOUTHEAST ASIA (1983): 138-155.
8. "Lost Visayan Literature," KINAADMANli (1992): 19-30.
Acknowledgments
IX
9. "Visayan Religion at the Time of Spanish Advent," PHILIP -
PINIANA SACRA 25 (1990): 397-415.
10. "Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming," PHILIPPINE
QUARTERLY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY \8 (1990): 291-311.
11. "Kalantiaw: The Code That Never Was," HISTORICAL BUL-
LETIN27-28 (1983-1984 but published 1991): 77-85.
LOOKING FOR THE PREHISPANIC FILIPINO:
MISTRANSLATIONS AND PRECONCEPTIONS
Some years ago I had the opportunity to read a paper on the history
of Philippine society by a Filipino student in Cornell University. In
passing, the author referred to prehispanic social structure as "tribal/'
citing Juan Plasencia's 1589 "Customs of the Tagalogs" as evidence.
"In Father Plasencia's own words/’ he wrote, "'This tribal gathering
is called in Tagalo a barangay Z" 1
In actual fact, however, these were not Father Plasencia's own
words; they were the words of Harvard historian Frederick W.
Morrison who provided this translation for Volume 7 of the
monumental Blair & Robertson compendium, The Philippine Is-
lands, 1493-1898 . Whether a Tagalog barangay was a tribal gather-
ing or not. Father Plasencia did not say so. What he said was: "These
[datus] were chiefs of but few people, as many as a hundred houses
and even less than thirty; and this they call in Tagalog, barangay.” 2
The word "tribal" was, therefore, supplied by an American history
professor in 1903, not an eye-witness in 1589, and so reflects a 20th-
century preconception of what 16th-century Philippine society was
like. And the incident itself reflects a problem facing any Filipino
student searching for his own past: his textbooks were all written in
English by authors who used English translations as their sources.
Of course, any translator might easily sympathize with Professor
Morrison's own problem. It is often impossible to find a word in
modern English which is the equivalent of some term in 16th-century
Spanish. When translating Plasencia's four classes of Tagalog society,
for example, what was Morrison to do with words like principals,
hidalgos, pecheros and esclavos ? Principales were dearly datus,
those the Spaniards first called kings until they discovered they had
neither kingdoms nor power over other datus, and the esclavos were
alipin, slaves. But Plasencia also distinguished a serf-like category
of slaves who owned their own houses as a separate class he called
pecheros, tribute-payers. And between these and the datus, he recog-
nized the datu's non-slave subjects, maharlika, as hidalgos, gentry
2 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
or well-to-do, which Morrison in his turn translated as "nobles.” Like
hidalgos, these maharlika accompanied their lord to war armed at
their own expense, but unlike them, they rowed his boat alongside
slave oarsmen, harvested his rice like field hands, and provided
manual labor when he called for it.
It is true that hidalgos were technically a lower grade of nobility,
but the translation "nobles" is misleading; in both English and
Spanish, nobles are titled lords— like the Count of Monte Cristo or
the Duke of Windsor. Titled lords in Tagalog society— like Rajah
Soliman of Manila or Lakandula of Tondo— were maginoo, not
maharlika. The early dictionaries define maharlika unambiguously
as freemen, litres, or freedmen, libertos— e.g., "Sa ikapat ang
kamaharlikaan ko— I'm one-quarter free. 1 * 8 Freedmen were former
slaves, and when they were freed they became, not nobles, but the
class ancestors of the Filipino peasantry. One does not know whether
to laugh or cry that Morrison's innocent mistranslation has per-
suaded three generations of Filipinos that their ancestors had an
order of nobility called Maharlika, a myth of such popular appeal
that one president's wife soberly proposed renaming the Republic,
Maharlika.
There are also less innocent mistranslations, ones which include
patent errors, some insignificant but some distorting. Four examples
will suffice.
1. Clements Markham in 1911 translated one of the Spanish
King's instructions to Garda de Loaysa as, "Vessels of Timor and
Borneo, which are the best, should be procured; and as some of the
Moors themselves will be in the business, they will like to sail in
them." 4 What Markham translated as "Moors themselves will be in
the business" is "metiendo en parte a los mismos Moros de la
contra tadon"—' that is, taking the Moors themselves into the busi-
ness. 5 The error is insignificant, but it disguises the readiness of
sworn enemies of Islam to share profits with Muslims if it was in
their own interest to do so. Perhaps Markham forgot that the King
had also instructed Magellan to make friends with any Muslims
encountered on the Spanish side of the so-called Papal Line of
Demarcation but to seize for ransom or sale any from the Portuguese
side. Or that all five expeditions from Magellan to Legazpi survived
starvation only because of business with Muslims.
2. In 1837, Martin Fernandez de Navarrete published a 1526
account of the Saavedra expedition, which described how a boatload
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino 3
of Spaniards had been killed on the Surigao coast by a king called
Katunaw, "who had come to raid that land which was his enemy." 6
But Navarrete added his own version of the incident by rendering
the passage, "que iba a robar poraquella tierra que era sus enemigos,"
as "saying that they [the Spaniards] were his enemies who came to
raid." 7 Another small error, but one which withholds the information
that Filipinos raided one another. Yet Spanish accounts unanimously
reported that Filipinos fought local wars, took captives in slave raids,
and tattooed in proportion to their performance in battle— conditions
which made divide-and- conquer tactics so effective.
3. In 1569, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi decided to transfer the
Spanish camp from Cebu to Panay. because of its abundance of rice,
with the additional advantage, he explained in a letter, that "from
the sea they [the Portuguese] cannot prevent it from coming
down the river from the mountains.” 8 But the Blair and Robertson
translation of this passage reads, "No one from the sea could prevent
us from going up the river to the mountains." 9 This outright error
obscures the fact that it was normal for rice to come down the river,
that it was grown in the hills and was traded— as Miguel de Loarca
reported 12 years later — to coastal Panayanos for fish and salt, that,
in short, highlanders and lowlanders lived in symbiotic relationship
with one another.
4. Blair and Robertson present a translation of Baltazar de Santa
Cruz's 1693 Dominican history which includes the following passage
about Christian converts in what is now Nueva Vizcaya: "Those
Indians were at war continually with other people of the interior,
more powerful, who greatly persecuted them, and the faith of
Christ." 10 But the translator deleted a whole clause, "por averse
sage ta do a los Espanoles, y a la Fe de Cristo," which in the original
gave the reason for the persecution— "for having submitted to the
Spaniards and the Faith of Christ." 11 The deletion makes the Chris-
tian Faith an object of the attack rather than the converts whose
submission threatened the independence of their pagan neighbors.
Perhaps the translator was unaware of a political pattern which
continued right up to the end of the Spanish colony, namely, that
Filipinos who became Spanish subjects also became enemies of
Filipinos who did not.
These translations and mistranslations all appeared in scholarly
works which celebrated the extension of Western empire into the
Philippine archipelago. Markham's Early Spanish Voyages to the
4 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Strait of Magellan was the definitive work of its day,and the title of
Navarrete's five volumes speaks for itself — Coleccion de los Viages
y Descubrimientos que hideron por Mar los Espanoles desde Fines
del Siglo XV (Collection of the Voyages and Discoveries which the
Spaniards made by Sea since the End of the 15th Century). And Blair
and Robertson introduce their 55 volumes with the explanation,
"The entrance of the United States of America into the arena of
world-politics, the introduction of American influence into Oriental
affairs, and the establishment of American authority in the Philip-
pine archipelago, all render the history of those islands and their
numerous peoples a topic of engrossing interest to the reading
public." The translators were therefore, if not colonial apologists, at
least impressed with its advantages for colonized peoples, and little
inclined to dwell on its economic motivations. Thus, wittingly or not,
Markham glossed over Charles V's unblushing pragmatism, and
Robertson denied a pagan mountain tribe the dignity of a rational
motive for its warfare.
At the time these books were written, the majority of the Filipino
people were descendants of ancestors who at one time or another
had submitted to Spanish rule. A minority that had maintained their
independence were perceived as Moro pirates or headhunting
savages, differing from the majority not only in culture but in race.
Given the premise, it followed that the same dichotomy should have
been discernible in the Philippine population at the time of Spanish
advent. It was presumably this preconception which accounts for the
careless translations cited above, and it is one with which contem-
porary historians and history students alike still attempt to
reconstruct prehispanic Philippine society. Texts are not wanting
which even state, erroneously, that the Spaniards found highland
and lowland Filipinos at war with one another when they arrived.
Loarca's 1582 Reladon has sometimes been cited out of context as
evidence, though what he said in full was:
There are two kinds of men in this land [Panay] who, though
they are all one, behave somewhat differently and are almost
always enemies— the one, those who live on the seacoast, and the
other, those who live in the mountains, and if they have some
peace between them it is because of the necessity they have of
one another to sustain human life, because those of the moun-
tains cannot live without the fish and salt and other things and
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino 5
jars and plates which come from other parts, nor can those on
the coast live without the rice and cotton which the mountaineers
have. 12
In short, whatever enmity they may have felt, it did not interfere
with a trade that was a normal part of their existence.
First-generation Spanish accounts describe Filipino warfare as
endemic and seasonal. Rajah Kulambo told Magellan he had enemies
,T but that it wasn't the right season to go there then," 13 and pioneer
missionary Martin de Rada wrote in 1577, "Every year as soon as
they harvest their fields, they man their ships to go to plunder." 14
But they say nothing about any mountaineer enemies. After the
conquest of lowland Luzon, however, complaints about attack by
uncoriquered highlanders became a regular refrain. By the 17th
century this unwillingness to submit was being explained as an
innate character flaw. Rodrigo de Aganduru M6riz's 1623 Historia
general is typical.
Fray Rodrigo wrote at a time when the people of Leyte and
Samar were tax-paying Spanish subjects, but those on the Surigao
coast of Mindanao were still resisting a Spanish fort at Tandag. The
latter, he describes as real beasts: "When you are talking to them,
they will look at your head covetously as if it were gold, and say,
'Oh, what a fine head!' unable to conceal their evil nature or barbaric
desire." The Visayans he characterizes as "very good-natured, com-
passionate, and fond of entertaining strangers," and rhapsodizes
about their hospitality to shipwrecked Spaniards from the Villalobos
expedition, without mentioning that when those guests were res-
cued, they were ransomed off and three of them retained for failure
to meet the asking price. But then, deploring Mindanao slave raids,
he contradictorily writes:
The indios of the Bisayas say that before they gave obedience
to the King our Lord, and became Christians, not only did the
Mindanaons not make raids in their territory, but that, on the
contrary, they would go to Mindanao where they took many
captives, and terrified them, but now . . . [that] they are dis-
armed, they are paying for what they did then. 15
At the time of the Spanish advent, Manila was rapidly becoming,
if it had not already become, the main entrepot in the archipelago.
6 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Lakandula of Tondo was enforcing a trade monopoly on Chinese
junks anchored in the Bay, removing their rudders while in port, and
receiving half their goods on a year's credit. Manila merchants were
retailing these imports to other islands, where they were often called
Chinese because of these wares. Earlier, Pigafetta had found a Luzon
vessel loading sandalwood in Timor, and when the Portuguese took
Malacca in 1511, they appointed a wealthy Luzon businessman by
the name of Regimo as temenggong (governor) of the Muslim com-
munity. Regimo had migrated there in the preceding century,
married a local lady and received the Malay title Diraja, sent his ships
annually to China, Brunei and Siam, and attracted other Filipino
businessmen to follow him.
Trade centers always become sophisticated because foreign con-
tacts bring new ideas and products. Manila not only had a gun
foundry in 1572, but an alphabet which was then spreading to the
Visayas, and its urban elite spoke Malay as a prestigious second
language. Traditional values and customs had changed to achieve
newgoals: a Franciscan account describes Tagalog headtaking in the
past tense. Father Rada said that Filipinos around Manila did not
make slave raids or human sacrifices "because of their being more
merchants than warlike,” but that^no doubt for the same reason—
they excelled all others in "robberies, thefts [and] tyrannies of proper-
ty and persons. 1 ' 16 People in rural areas with less access to these new
products and attitudes were naturally more conservative, and those
in the hills even more so. And those in the remote sierras and
cordilleras retained their traditional values and customs longest of
all.
Where colonial authority was established, principales who
hoped to retain some power quickly learned what Spaniards con-
sidered uncivilized. An illustration of 1593 shows a Tagalog wearing
pantalones instead of bahag, and Dutch Admiral Van Noort scouting
the Albay coast in 1600 reported that many hispanized natives had
pants and skirts, though former chiefs were still "very nicely, beauti-
fully and artistically" tattooed. 17 Friars did their part to speed the
process. Father San Buenaventura said, "Whoever files his teeth I will
surely punish," 18 and the Synod of Calasiao directed priests to make
surprise school inspections for circumcized boys and ridicule their
parents from the pulpit. By the turn of the century, Tondo principales
were selling or mortgaging land with title deeds in Spanish— replete
with conflicting testimonies sworn under oath or spurious claims to
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino 7
royal descent. But country folk in the "boondocks" were slow to
change. New missionaries were still being sent outside Manila for
language training in the 18th century because, lexicographer Pedro
de Sanlucar said, "It is a common and true saying that to learn
Tagalog requires almost one year of study and three of G- string."
By the 19th century, this whole process of acculturation had been
forgotten. Untattooed Filipinos who wore pants and did not decorate
their teeth considered themselves a different people from mountain
tribes with traditional practices now considered barbaric. College
graduates who called themselves Filipinos bitterly resented being
lumped together with headtaking Igorots as indios, especially on the
streets of Madrid. The final turn of the screw came with the Exposi-
tion of the Philippine Islands in the Madrid Zoological Gardens in
1887.
The exhibition of Philippine products and handicrafts had been
welcomed by the Filipino community in Madrid as a means of
publicizing the colony's wealth and competence for representation
in the metropolitan legislature. But they had not foreseen what was
to attract the most attention— an Igorot Village where six Bontoc
warriors, battle-scarred and tattooed, were exhibited and their naked
musculature measured. Jose Rizal wrote in anguish:
I worked hard against this degradation of my fellow
Filipinos that they should not be exhibited among the animals
and plants! But I was helpless ... I would rather that they all got
sick and died so they would suffer no more. Let the Philippines
forget that her sons have been treated like this!
But, in fact, it was more than a half dozen Igorots v/ho were
degraded. Igorrote became a household word, young ladies stared
at Antonio Luna on the street and murmured, "Jesus, how horrible
—an Igorot!" and Senator Manuel Salamanca argued in open session
against the possibility of seating Filipinos because they might smell
like Igorots. 0
The memory of the Madrid Exposition was still an open wound
when the American colonial government sent an even larger Igorot
village to the St. Louis Exposition in 1903-1904. There, Americans
who did not have an opportunity to see them in the flesh, could read
about them in a newspaper debate over offence to public decency by
the naked display of that flesh. Following the Exposition, they and
8
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
9
their spears, G-strings and culinary habits were exhibited in car-
nivals ail over the United States and Europe— "Head-hunting
dog-eating wild people from the Philippine Islands." 21 This memory,
in turn, moved U.N. Ambassador Carlos P. Romulo in 1946 to deny
them the sympathy accorded their grandparents by Jose Rizal in
1887. "These primitive black people," he said, "are no more Filipinos
than the American Indian is representative of the United States
citizen." Evidently General Romulo's preconception also moved
him to ignore the fact that those United States citizens belonged to a
different race from the Indians their forebears had dispossessed,
while he and the Igorots did not. Perhaps that is why he called them
"black."
Meanwhile, between Rizal's and Romulo's time, the preconcep-
tion developed into a wave migration theory. The idea that Negritos
were aboriginal Filipinos driven into the hills by later migrants
called indios was as old as the Spanish introduction of the terms.
Then in the Bismarck era, Rizal's good friend, Ferdinand Blumen-
tritt, extended the Negrito analogy to the rest of the population: all
Filipinos in the interior were driven there by Filipinos on the coast.
Thus he divided them into two waves of Malay invaders, and then
added a third to account for the Moros. Local variations in culture
and physical type he explained as the result of intermarriage, and
the extent of intermarriage to resistance and conquest, but he appears
not to have considered any movements within the archipelago as due
to ecological reasons or normal population growth. The theory was
based, not on observed facts, but on a Darwinian preconception of
racial competition for survival. Thus the terrace-builders and gold-
miners of the northern Luzon Cordillera were considered in some
sense inferior to their lowland neighbors.
In 1905, a young American school teacher was stationed in
Ifugao who was to become the author of a wave migration theory
known to every literate Filipino today— H. Otley Beyer. After an
extensive examination of living Philippine cultures and types, he
added two waves between Blumentritt's Negritos and Malays—
Indonesian Types A and B— and assigned each one a date to produce
an imaginary chronology of migratory invasions for the official
Census of 1918. Then in 1921, he became the Father of Philippine
Archaeology with the discovery of Stone Age sites in Novaliches,
and during another quarter century of excavations, assigned every
bone or artifact recovered to one of his theoretical migrations. In this
way, he was able to create what eulogist Frank Lynch called "grand
and vulnerable syntheses" 23 which, popularized in picture book and
college text alike have become gospel in the Philippine educational
system.
There are problems, however, with accepting the wave migra-
tion theory as part of Philippine history. The most obvious is that it
is, after all, simply a theory, speculative rather than factual, a
hypothesis to be tested. Its separate waves were formulated by a
consideration of living populations, though there is no way of
knowing what tools, crops, skills and customs their migrating ances-
tors brought with them, much less that they arrived in a graduated
sequence from primitive to advanced. Stone tools do not reveal the
skin color or skull shape of the men who made them, nor Chinese
porcelains the nationality of the ships that delivered them. And the
statements that Mid-Pleistocene inhabitants were "thickly haired," as
one textbook has it, 24 or that people with thick lips and large noses
entered the archipelago "in or about 1,500 B.C." are pure fantasy. 25
A more serious problem is that the theory ignores the fact that
cultures change. Headhunting may be taken as a case in point.
Blumentritt thought that the first wave of Malays took heads but not
the second, but the question is not one which could have been settled
by observing the customs of their descendants in 1880. Headtaking
societies that give up the practice quickly forget it. In Han-Dynasty
China, the word for a grade in rank was chi, which meant a severed
head, and in medieval Ireland, Celtic clansmen were taking heads
long after the Christian conversion. In the lowland Philippines, a
Franciscan friai^probably Father Plasencia himself— wrote of the
Tagalogs that "at the death of any chief, they had to cut off many
heads in order to avenge his death," 26 and Father Benavides, founder
of the University of Santo Tomas, informed the Pope that the people
of Pangasinan were "an unconquered tribe whose fiestas were cut-
ting off one another's heads." Moreover, some societies remove
heads from corpses as a form of reverence for heroes and ancestors.
So the skulls of some skeletons recovered from Calatagan graves had
been dissarticulated prior to burial, and Juan Salcedo's Ilocano
companions retained his head when the body was sent to Manila for
burial.
At any event, the Bontoc culture exhibited in Madrid and St.
Louis was developed in the Philippines, not imported from abroad
three thousand years before. Similarly, Jose Rizal and Carlos Romulo
10
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
grew up in a colonial culture which didn't exist when Legazpi landed
in Manila, and they studied lessons in languages which didn't exist
when their ancestors first cut into the virgin Philippine rain forest.
We do not know much about that primordial proto-Tagalog culture,
but we can describe the one the Spaniards found on their arrival in
considerable detail from contemporary accounts and early dic-
tionaries. It was a culture in which both Rizal and Romulo would
have felt like foreigners.
Sixteenth-century Tagalog farmers grew rice both in swiddens
and irrigated fields, and knew neither draft animals, plows nor
wheeled vehicles. Cloth was woven on backstrap looms; pottery was
made by the paddle-and-anvil technique and fired in the open air
with rice straw; and iron was worked with a two-piston Malay forge
and stone mauls. Sugarcane juice was extracted, not for sugar but for
wine, with a two-pole press operated like a pump handle, and
reduced to alcohol in a still made from a hollow tree trunk, and
sipped through reed straws. Boards were adzed to size in the forest,
not sawed, and mortised together without nails, and boats were
constructed of carved planks sewn together. Chinese porcelains were
esteemed as heirloom wealth, and bronze gongs played either with
the naked palms or a drumstick to accompany dances in which both
men and women danced with outstretched arms without touching
their partners.
Men wore G-strings with the longer flap hanging behind (so
Spaniards quipped, "Don't get your tail wet"), highly decorated or
silk in the case of the elite. They filed and blackened their teeth and
pegged them with gold, and wore earrings heavy enough to distend
their earlobes to the shoulder. Everybody chewed betelnut, and
lovers exchanged quids partly masticated, and serenaded with nose
flutes. Men who had killed somebody were privileged to wear red
headbands, and those sworn to do so put a tuft of feathers in their
hair and a rawhide collar around their neck. Victors came back
singing tagumpay and displayed enemy heads on poles, but expedi-
tions were cancelled if the tigmamanukin omen bird flew across the
trail from left to right.
Members of the maginoo class practiced secondary burial. After
the body had been buried long enough to decompose, the bones were
disinterred, given a ritual cleansing and placed in a porcelain jar, to
be kept in the family or inserted in the hollow of a balete tree. During
burial, mourners at the graveside threw a handful of soil on the
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino 1 1
deceased and said, "Dumamay sa iyo angsakit ko— May my sorrow
end together with you," and then took a bath before returning home.
During the wake, the cadaver was displayed embalmed and un-
shrouded, dressed as in life, until it putrefied. "Although it smells
bad," Father San Buenaventura said, "they suffer it for love." 2
This is the technology and these are the customs presumably
representative of the wave of migrants Blumentritt and Beyer con-
sidered superior to all the others, the one that drove all its
predecessors into the hills. But to a contemporary ethnographer, it
would sound more like the traditional cultures of highland Filipinos
in Mindanao and northern Luzon. The fact that Tagalogs are so
different from Bontocs and Bukidnons today is therefore more readi-
ly explained by historic developments in the past three centuries
than by population movements in the preceding three millenia. That
js why Tagalogs arguing for the adoption of their cradle tongue as
the national language, do so on the grounds of Philippine conditions
in the 1990's, not in their migratory past.
Finally, the most serious problem with the wave migration
theory is simply that it is 50 years out of date. A half century of
scientific research by archaeologists, anthropologists, geologists and
linguists has produced a wealth of data unavailable when that grand
synthesis was created before the War. The synthesis is therefore
accepted by no Philippine anthropologist today: the hypothesis has
been tested and found wanting. When a festschrift was presented in
honor of Beyer's 82nd birthday in 1965, contributions on prehistory
were delicately listed under "Rethinking the writings of H. Otley
Beyer," and when the ten-volume Filipino Heritage published the
findings of the leading Philippine scholars in 1977, wave migrations
were conspicuously absent from the heritage. The theory appears in
no publications by the National Museum or in any scientific texts,
least of all in definitive landmarks like prehistorian Peter Bellwood's
1979 Man's Conquest of the Pacific or 1986 Prehistory of the Indo-
Malaysian Archipelago . This silence is eloquent: probably the only
place where the theory can be found is in the Philippine school
system.
It is a fond adage of historians that a people without a history is a
people without a soul. So nation-building Filipinos eagerly search
for their roots. It is a search which must be taken with disciplined
care, however, eschewing all grandiose fantasies, because the facts
12
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
13
r
arc so few. But despite the sparsity of the record, it can be stated that
neither history nor prehistory suggests a succession of predatory
hordes battling for possession of tropical rain forests. Rather, it
suggests a vigorous and mobile population adjusting to every en-
vironment in the archipelago, creatively producing local variations^
in response to resources, opportunities and culture contacts, able to-
trade and raid, feed and defend themselves. The facts stand in sharp
contrast to the passive Philippine population depicted in grade
school texts, a kind of formless cultural clay ready to be stamped
with patterns introduced from abroad. The history student with such
preconceptions will not likely discover the prehispanic Filipino.
NOTES
! Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philip-
pine Islands 1483-1898, vol. 7 (Cleveland, 1903), pp. 174- 175.
Juan de Plasencia, "Relation de las costumbres que los yndios
solian tener en estas yslas," Archivo General de Indias (Seville),
Filipinas 18-B, fol. 23 v.
o
Pedro de San Buenaventura, Vocabulario de Lengua tagala
(Pila, 1613), entry at Libertad: camaharlicaan.
4 Clements Markham, Early Spanish Voyage to the Strait of
Magellan (London, 1911), p. 36.
5 Antonio de Herrera, Historia general de los Hechos de los
Castellanos en laslslasy Tierrafirme del Mar Oceano (Madrid, 1601),
vol. 2, p. 277.
6 Martin Fernandez de Navarette, Coleccion de los Viages y
Descubrimientos que hicieron por Mar lost Espaholes desde Fines
del Siglo XV, vol. 5 (Madrid, 1837), p. 480.
7 Ibid., p. 107.
Isacio Rodriguez, Historia de la Provincia agustiniana del Smo.
Nombre de Jesus de Filipinas, vol. 14 (Manila, 1978), p. 20.
Q
Blair and Robertson, vol. 3, p. 49.
10 Ibid., vol. 37, p. 99.
n Baltazar de Santa Cruz, Tomo segundo de la Historia de la
Provincia del Santo Rosario de Filipinas, Japon, y China delsagrado
Orden de Predicadores (Zaragoza, 1693), vol. 2, p. 256.
12 Blair and Robertson, vol. 5, Spanish text on p. 120.
13 Ibid., vol. 33, p. 126.
14 Rodriguez, Historia, vol. 14, p. 479.
15 Rodrigo Aganduru Moriz, "Historia general de las Islas oc-
cidentales a la Asia adyacentes llamadas Philippinas," Coleccion de
Documentos ineditos para la Historia de Espaha, vol. 77 (Madrid,
1882), pp. 452-453.
16 Rodriguez, Historia, vol. 14, p. 484.
17 De Reis om de Wereld door Olivier van Noort 1599-1601 (1602:
's-Gravenhage, 1926), p. 93. 1 am indebted to Paul Valentine for the
translation from Dutch.
18 San Buenaventura, Vocabulario, entry at Limarse: alal.
19 Juan Jose Noceda and Pedro de Senlucar, Vocabulario de la
Lengua tagala (1753; Manila, 1860), introduction (unpag.).
20 William Henry Scott, The Discovery of the Igorots (Quezon
City, 1974), pp. 276-278.
21 San Francisco Chronicle, 11 November 1905.
22 Carlos P. Romulo, Mother America: A Living Story of
Democracy (Garden City, 1946), p. 59.
23 Frank Lynch, "Henry Otley Beyer 1883-1966," Philippine
Studies, 15 (196 7):7.
24 Gregorio F. Zaide, Philippine Political and Cultural History
(Manila, 1957), vol. 1, p. 21.
25 Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Oscar M. Alfonso, A Short History of
the Filipino People (Quezon City, 1960), p. 19.
26 Relaci6n de las Islas Filipinas, ca. 1588 (title page missing),
fol. 2.
14
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Diego de Aduarte, Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario
de la Orden de Predicadores en Filipinas, Japon y China (Manila,
1640; Madrid, 1962), vol. 1, p. 131.
28
San Buenaventura, Vocabulario , see especially entries at Ave:
tigmamanucqin; Buyo: sapa; Cantar: tagumpay; Cola: palavit; Col-
gar: bayobay; Collar: balata; Difuncto: borol; Entierro: baon; Flauta:
bangsintavo; Huesos: bangcay; and Orejas: lambing :
DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE PAPAL BULL
"INTER CAETERA"
In the Philippine school system, Spanish conquistadors are usually
introduced onto the stage of Philippine history following a curtain-
raiser called 'Inter Caetera." This is presented as a papal bull in
which Alexander VI divides the world into two open hunting
grounds for the conquest of non-Christian peoples by two compet-
ing Iberian monarchies— or, as professional historians are aware,
two papal bulls or perhaps two versions of the same bull, one dated
3 May 1493 and the other May 4th. The prominent place given the
bull in standard history texts presupposes that it played some sig-
nificant part in history, that it was obeyed by monarchs and therefore
affected the course of events. This presumption, in turn, is part of a
larger one— namely, the concept that European monarchs were truth-
ful, law-abiding members of a civilized Christendom who respected
international treaties, held legal systems inviolable, and valued al-
legiance to popes more highly than national interests.
In fact, no such international scruples or papal hegemony
existed. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sent an expedition to the
Philippines two years after he had sold all claim to the islands to the
Portuguese crown, and when his son Philip actually occupied the
archipelago, he did so not because any pope gave him permission
but because the Portuguese could not prevent it The two bulls
themselves carry deliberately falsified dates, and one of them isn't
really a bull at all but a top secret apostolic brief. These errors would
be the sort of trivia which interest nobody but historiographers were
they not found in the very cradle of Filipino historical consciousness.
There, they inevitably distort the student's developing view of the
world by projecting images which are sheer illusions. The raw facts
might better prepare him to understand his people's involvement in
the true events and real forces of world history— past, present and
future.
The facts have been available since 1944 when Manuel Gimenez
Fernandez published a meticulous study, "Nuevas consideraciones
16 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
sobre la his tori a y sentido de las letras alejandrinas de 1493 referen-
tes a las Indies (New considerations about the history and sense of
the Alexandrine letters of 1493 in reference to the Indies)" in the
Seville Anuario de Estudios Americanos} The new considerations
were based on a careful collation of the correspondence which
passed between Rome and the Spanish court in connection with the
bull, much of it previously unknown or ignored, in remote archives
and Vatican registers. The habit of Vatican clerks of jotting down the
dates when they entered authenticated documents, for example, or,
the fact that secretarial signatures changed every trimester, makes it
possible to establish the true dates of the Inter Caetera. Details like
the length of time it took royal mail to be delivered were also
essential for reconstructing the story— 12 days between Barcelona
and Seville, for instance, or 10 days by special delivery costing 30
ducats, and five days to Rome if some Mediterranean corsair hap-
pened to be available. To review the full display of this corre-
spondence in chronological sequence reveals a diplomatic
drama playacted by two machiavellian protagonists pursuing per-
sonal interests. If good theater calls for romance, suspense and
character flaws in high places, Inter Caetera was high drama indeed.
The story really begins with an earlier Inter Caetera which had
been granted Portugal in 1456 by Alexander VPs uncle. Pope Calixto
III, the latest of a series of bulls which gave papal blessing to the
simple political fact that Portugal was preeminent in navigational
progress. It sanctified Portuguese exploration and occupation of
islands and ports down the African coast "as far as the Indies" ( usque
ad Zncfos)— that is, Asia— and threatened any challengers with ex-
communication. Similarly, after the 1479 Treaty of Alcazobas ended
Spain's unsuccessful attempt to do so, Sixto IV's Aeterni Regis of
1481 granted what had already been decided by naval artillery—
Portuguese occupation of Atlantic islands like the Azores, Madeiras
and Cape Verdes— and sanctioned all future such discoveries "in the
Ocean Seas" (in mari oceano), the waters believed to surround the
Eurasian land mass. The question of eastern and western routes had
not yet become an issue: European cosmographers, unaware of the
existence of the American continents, did not doubt that the same
waters washed the eastern shores of Asia and the west coast of
Europe. Thus when Ferdinand V sent Columbus into those waters to
reach the Indies, he was breaking the oath he had sworn at Alcozobas
and defying papal excommunication.
Demythologizing the Papal Bull "Inter Caetera" 17
On 17 April 1492, Christopher Columbus signed a commercial
contract with los Reyes Catolicos Ferdinand and Isabel, driving a
hard bargain. He demanded the title of Admiral of the lands and
waters to be discovered, together with the privileges traditionally
reserved to the Enriquez family of Castile (Ferdinand's maternal
kin), and the office of viceroy for himself and his heirs; ten percent
of the profits to be realized off any pearls, precious stones, gold,
silver, spices or other goods acquired; and the right to invest one
eighth the initial capital with a corresponding portion of the interest
accruing. Nothing was said about any missionary motives nor did
the expedition carry a chaplain, though six of the ten "Indian" youths
brought back were baptized in Spain. Columbus also brought back
the businesslike suggestion that, in the disappointing absence of any
new gold mines, a slave trade might be instituted. The pious Queen
Isabel sent the boys back to their homeland, however, and on her
deathbed added a codicil to her will disallowing any such traffic to
her heirs.
Columbus returned from what he thought until his dying day
were the offshore islands of Japan and the Khanate of Cathay on 4
March 1493, and anchored in the Tagus River off Lisbon. He an-
nounced his presence to Portuguese King John II, who told him that
his discoveries obviously belonged to Portugal by virtue of the
Treaty of Alcozobas and the bull Aeterni Regis, , which Columbus
reported to Ferdinand in Barcelona by sea mail from Palos. Then he
proceeded up the Guadalquivir River to Seville to await instructions
from Ferdinand, which soon arrived telling him to come as quickly
as possible but to start preparations for the return voyage before he
left. Ferdinand then instructed his procurators in Rome, Bishops
Bernardino Lopez de Carvajal and Juan Ruiz de Medina, to start
working for papal favors to remove the threat of excommunication
posed by Aeterni Regis and recognize Spain's rights to the new
discoveries, whatever and wherever they might be. The procurators
responded with a request for more details, but of course Ferdinand
didn t know what to tell them until he talked to Columbus. So he
instructed them to keep the proceedings secret and by all means
forestall the departure of the congratulatory embassy the Pope
proposed sending.
As it happened, the Pope was just at that moment in need of
favors himself. Born a Spaniard— Rodrigo Lanzol y Borja (Borgia)—
he was already beholden to the Spanish crown for his 16-year-old
18
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
son Cesare's appointment as Archbishop of Valencia. Now he was
trying to carve out an Italian fief for his eldest son Giovanni, Duke
of Gandia, and had just annulled his daughter Lucrezia's marriage
to her Spanish husband to make a better match with Milanese
Giovanni de Pesaro of the Sforza family. His main opponent was
Ferrante of Naples, Ferdinand's cousin and brother-in-law. In hopes
of obtaining Ferdinand's neutrality, he had proposed Giovanni's
marriage to his half-brother Pier Luigi's widow, Ferdinand's cousin
Maria Enriquez. But in March, Ferrante kept writing Ferdinand about
Alexander's pretensions in harsh terms, so on the 20th Juan Lopez
of the papal cabinet wrote a defense of the Pope to his uncle Enrique
Enriquez, elder brother of Ferdinand's mother. Lopez was also a
Spaniard, a close confidant of the Pope, and the Vatican datario, or
"dispatcher" who officially signed and dated all papal privileges. His
letter included the request that, "since His Holiness had decided on
the departure of the Illustrious Duke of Gandia, your son (son-in-
law), your lordship try to have him received, treated and benefited
by their Highnesses as he who sends him is expecting and as he
merits; and I am your lordships' to order and command." And he
closed, "Whatever your lordship orders will be done." 2
Juan Lopez's letter must have reached Barcelona in the middle
of April, and so did Columbus, for Ferdinand's formal petition for
papal favor was dated on the 18th. Alexander's response was the
document whose opening two words were Inter Caetera dated May
3, but actually already copied into the archival Regesta Vaticana
before the end of April. It was produced by first papal secretary
Ludovicus Podocatharus, chief of the papal cabinet ( Camara Apos-
tolical and was an apostolic letter, not a papal bull, and so did not
pass through the public chancery ( Cancellaria Apostolica): it was
referred to as one of three letters ( tertium breve) when it was sent to
Ambassador Francisco de Spratz in Barcelona on May 18 for delivery
to the King. It was also top secret: nobody handled it but members
of the Pope's private staff; and a reason is not hard to surmise. The
most powerful cardinal in the chancery was Portuguese Jorge de
Costa, King John's personal agent and the papabile whom Rodrigo
Borgia outbid during the simoniacal election of August 1492. It was
dispatched a few days after license arrived in Rome for the corsair
Bernardo de Villamarin to fetch bridegroom Giovanni, surely no
coincidence. But Bernardo himself did not appeai^-"The noble Duke
of Gandia, our beloved son," the Pope told Spratz, "is constantly
19
Demythologizing the Papal Bull "Inter Caetera"
n
waiting for him —and the wedding did not actually take place until
August, a delay perhaps reflecting royal displeasure with the first
version of the Inter Caetera .
This original Inter Caetera had still not reached Barcelona when
Portuguese ambassador Ruy de Sande arrived in the middle of May
with claims to the Indies which Ferdinand could not refute. When
another week passed with no word from Rome, he decided he could
wait no longer. Accordingly, on May 23 he signed a dozen dispatches
to prepare a second expedition, ,r both to rule and possess the said
islands and continent which are in the Ocean Sea in the region of the
Indies, of which possession has been taken in our name, and to
discover others." Five days later he reconfirmed Columbus' titles
with definition of where they were to hold force: "We have drawn a
boundary which passes from the islands of the Azores to those of
Cape Verde, north to south from pole to pole, such that everything
which is found to the west of the said line is ours and belongs to us.
Then, lest there be any doubt about his authority, he had canonist
Rodrigo Maldonado add a preamble which expounded his Divine
Rights:
Naturally, wise men have said that kings are the head of
the realm . . . and so great is the said power of kings that they
hold all laws and rights of their own authority, because they
receive this not from men but from God, whose place they take
in temporal affairs. 5
Armed with these heady documents, Columbus left for Seville
on May 28th. But that night a royal courier overtook him, probably
in Lerida, with an urgent letter from the King: the long-awaited
document had arrived after Columbus' departure, and he was
enclosing a translation. The Pope says he had learned that the
Spanish monarchs, out of personal zeal to extend the Catholic faith
to remote lands, sent Columbus sailing into the Ocean Sea "through
western waters towards the Indies," where he discovered certain
unknown lands and islands. Therefore, to encourage an enterprise
"so pleasing to immortal God, the Pope is hereby granting them those
lands and ordering them to send missionaries out to convert their
inhabitants. The pertinent passage reads as follows:
In order that with greater readiness and heartiness you enter
20
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Demythologizing the Papal Bull "Inter Caetera'
21
upon an undertaking of so lofty a character as has been
entrusted to you by the graciousness of our apostolic favor, we,
moved thereunto by our own accord, not at your instance nor
the request of anyone else in your regard, but of our own sole
largesse and certain knowledge as well as in the fullness
of our apostolic power, by the authority of almighty God con-
ferred upon us in blessed Peter and of the vicarship of Jesus
Christ which we hold on earth, do by tenor of these presents give,
grant, and assign forever to you and your heirs and successors,
kings of Castile and Leon, all and singular, the aforesaid
countries and islands thus unknown and hitherto discovered by
your envoys and to be discovered hereafter, providing however
they at no time have been in the actual temporal possession of
any Christian owner, together with all their dominions, cities,
camps, places, and towns as well as all rights, jurisdiction, and
appurtenances of the same wherever they may be found.
Moreover we invest you and your aforementioned heirs and
successors with them, and make, appoint, and depute you
owners of them with full and free power, authority, and juris-
diction of every kind, with this proviso, however, that by this
gift, grant, assignment, and investiture of ours no right conferred
on any Christian prince is hereby to be understood as
withdrawn. Moreover we command you in virtue of holy
obedience, that, employing all due diligence in the premises, as
you promise— nor do we doubt your compliance therewith to the
best of your loyalty and royal greatness of spirit— you send to
the aforesaid countries and islands worthy. God-fearing,
learned, skilled, and experienced men in order to instruct the
aforesaid inhabitants and dwellers therein in the Catholic faith,
and train them in good morals. 6
The document as received was unacceptable to Ferdinand for
two reasons. In the first place, it was a private communication, not
a public proclamation; and in the second, it neither defined the
territory to which he could lay claim with papal sanction nor
delimited Portugal's. He had already made his own solution to this
latter problem by drawing that dividing line down the middle of the
Ocean Sea, though drawing it through the Azores was a bit of a
blunder. King John was claiming that the new discoveries actually
lay in the far western Azores, and Columbus had stubbornly refused
to divulge the true distance, even to Ferdinand. Moreover, Portugal
had fought for those islands in 1479 and might be prepared to do so
again. Columbus realized all this and, therefore, studying the Inter
Caetera carefully that night, he drew up a new line 100 leagues to
the west of the Azores, and sent it back to Ferdinand the next day.
Meanwhile, that masterful hyperbole about Ferdinand's missionary
zeal suggested a new course of action, and the king "obeyed" imme-
diately. That same day he chose one of his faithful agents. Fray
Bernal Boil, to organize a mission.
On June 2nd he sent special ambassador Diego Lopez de Haro
to Rome with a letter announcing a mission, and on June 8th he
ordered the Benedictines of Monserrat to provide a replacement for
Fray Bernal as vicar of the religious of San Francisco de Paul in
Barcelona. On the same date he dispatched the Latin outline of what
would become the papal bull PiisFidelium of June 25, which licensed
the missioners and authorized Ferdinand to select them. Lopez de
Haro arrived on the 12th just in time for Lucrezia Borgia's wedding
with Giovanni Sforza, following which he had a private interview
with the Pope and brusquely announced Ferdinand's solidarity with
his cousin Ferrante. (Alexander immediately began negotiations for
a match between his son Giuffre and Ferrante's granddaughter
Sancha de Aragon.) On the 19th, Procurator Carvajal delivered a
pompous Latin discourse at a public reception in the Vatican, giving
equal praise to the private and public virtues of the Pope and to the
loyalty, submission and devotion of the Spanish monarchs whose
Christian zeal had led to the discovery of new lands which would
soon believe in Christ, "thanks to the royal envoys who are just on
the point of departing for them." 7 The Inter Caetera was revised in
accordance with Spanish requirements the next week, signed and
sealed as a papal bull on June 28, but dated "May 4." But it did not
reach Barcelona until August 3, when it was delivered together with
other wedding gifts befitting a Renaissance prince by Giovanni
Borgia, Duke of Gandia.
The original Inter Caetera disappeared into the Archives of the
Indies in Simancas, where it remained unknown until Guillermo
Berchet published a copy from the Regesta Vaticana in his 1892
Raccolta dei Fonti italiane de la Scoperta del Nuovo Mondo (Collec-
tion of Italian Sources on the Discovery of the New World). But it is
repeated verbatim in the revised version with three changes. One of
these is the insertion— presumably by Columbus himself— of a
22
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
reference to him as "a man assuredly worthy and of the highest
recommendations/' and another is the removal— probably by Jurist
Rodrigo Maldonado— of the feudal- sounding expression, "We invest
you and your aforementioned heirs." The significant change, of
course, is the addition of the so-called Papal Line of Demarcation,
not once but twice, the second time in the following provocative
passage:
Under penalty of excommunication late sen ten tie to be in-
curred ipso facto, should any one thus contravene, we strictly
forbid all persons of whatsoever ranks, even imperial and royal,
or of whatsoever estate, degree, order or condition, to dare,
without your special permit or that of your aforesaid heirs and
successors, to go, as charged, for the purpose of trade or any
other reason to the islands and mainlands found and to be found,
discovered and to be discovered, towards the west and south, by
drawing and establishing a line from the Arctic Pole to the
Antarctic Pole, no matter whether the mainlands and islands
found and to be found lie in the direction of India or towards
any other quarter whatsoever, the said line to the west and south
to be distant one hundred leagues from any of the islands
commonly known as the Azores and Cabo Verde, the apostolic
constitutions and ordinances and other decrees whatsoever to
8
the contrary notwithstanding.
This, then, is the document which is the object of the myth which
appears in Philippine history texts that the papal bull Inter Caetera
was promulgated by a disinterested Christian arbiter to prevent war
between Spain and Portugal. The fact is that, far from preventing
war. Inter Caetera abrogated a treaty which had already ended one.
That another war was avoided after Columbus left on his second
voyage was due to pragmatic compromise between the two states
involved, not by arbitration by any third party. The Treaty of Tor-
desillas signed on 7 June 1494 moved Columbus' line of demarcation
270 leagues farther west, thus preserving to Spain her new dis-
coveries while guaranteeing to Portugal control of the Atlantic
islands flanking her sea route to India. And the treaty contained a
specific clause rejecting any appeal to Rome— namely, that after
swearing the oath, neither party would seek "absolution or relaxa-
tion of it from our very holy Father, or from any other Legate or
Demythologizing the Papal Bull "Inter Caetera" 23
Prelate who could give it, nor to make use of it if they give it of their
own volition." 9
NOTES
1 This article is based on Manuel Gimenez Fernandez's "Nuevas
consideraciones sobre la historia y sentido de las letras alejandrines
de 1493 referentes a las Indias," Anuario de Estudios Americanos
(1944).
2 Gimenez, p. 241.
3 Ibid., p. 247.
4 Ibid., p. 86.
5 Ibid., p.«7.
^Translations by Thomas Cooke Middleton, in Emma Helen Blair
and James A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands 1493-898, vol. 1
(Cleveland, 1903), pp. 100-101.
7 Gimenez, p. 96.
8 Blair and Robertson, p. 110.
9 Gimenez, p. 294.
The Mediterranean Connection
25
THE MEDITERRANEAN CONNECTION
When Magellan's ships and survivors left Philippine waters in 1521
following his death in Mactan, they proceeded to Borneo where, at
the mouth of Brunei Bay, they seized a ship commanded by a Filipino
prince who 50 years later would be known as Rajah Matanda. He
was quietly released after bribing the Spanish commander, but 17
others of his company were retained for their value as guides, pilots
or interpreters—or, in the case of three females, for other virtues. One
of these was a slave who could speak Spanish— or, more accurately,
"a Moor who understood something of our Castillian language, who
was called Pazeculan." 1 A later account identifies this slave as a pilot
and a Makassarese, who "after having been captured and passed
from one master to another, had wound up in the service of the
prince of Luzon." His special linguistic proficiency may have been
the result of the vicissitudes of his captivity, and so may his faith
since Makassar did not adopt Islam until the next century. Similarly,
a Portuguese-speaking negro the Spaniards met in Palawan had been
baptized Bastian in the Moluccas.
Slaves were regularly employed as translators in international
trade.When Joao de Barros, the great Portuguese historian of
Southeast Asia, purchased some Chinese maps in 1540, he also
purchased a Chinese to translate them. Magellan himself left Spain
on his famous voyage with two slave interpreters— Arabic-speaking
Jorge and Malay-speaking Enrique. Jorge presumably also under-
stood Persian since he was able to communicate with one Calin of
Bachian in the Moluccas who spoke that language. 4 Magellan could
have acquired him himself during the Moroccan campaign of 1513-
1514, or he might have bought him in the Seville slave markets in
Calle de las Gradas, Calle de Bayona or the Plaza de San Francisco.
Enrique he purchased in Malacca— at the age of 13, one account
says— for which reason he was listed as Enrique de Malacca in the
ship's register of Magellan's flagship, though he was actually a
native of Sumatra, homeland of the Malay language. Malay was a
trade language of Southeast Asian ports at the time: it was under-
stood by Rajah Kolambu of Limasawa (who was actually from
Butuan) and his boatmen, as well as Rajah Sarripada Humabon of
Cebu. Expeditionary ethnographer Antonio Pigafetta commented of
their ability to understand Enrique, "In these parts, kings know more
languages than the others." 5
After seizing the people from the Luzon ship, the Spaniards
continued on to the Spice Islands, and there they encountered
Uzman of Tidore who also knew Spanish. 6 These evidences of the
language of Cervantes in the farthest corner of the world from Spain
must come as a considerable surprise to the modern history student.
The grandeur of the circumnavigation of the world and the drama
of Magellan's appearance in the Philippines predispose us to think
of Spanish as a kind of transpacific import, and the romance and
reality of the Manila galleon trade makes us forget that the spice
trade which attracted Columbus into the Atlantic and Magellan into
the Pacific began just south of the Philippines, and had been reaching
Europe for centuries across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean
Sea. The profits of this trade were naturally highest at its western
end, where they were being enjoyed during the 16th century by
Turkish, Egyptian, Tunisian and Italian middlemen— to say nothing
of expatriate Spanish Muslims. The phenomenon of the Spanish-
speaking slave may therefore be best understood by a consideration
of this Mediterranean connection.
A modern inclination to exaggerate the problem of language
barriers no doubt adds to our surprise. The mere fact that Henry of
Malacca was understood by Visayan Filipinos has suggested to some
Philippine historians that he must have been a Visayan himself,
while there are others who have tried to explain initial Filipino
hostility to Spanish aggression as a simple communications failure.
Great medieval travelers like Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, however,
left accounts of crossing half the countries of Eurasia without finding
the problem worthy of comment. Indeed, true love of profit would
seem to surmount any cultural barriers. Nicolo de Conti left Venice
on business in 1419, crossed Syria, Iraq, Persia, India and Ceylon and
got as far east as Sumatra; 25 years later he returned through the Red
Sea and Egypt with an Indian wife and family, and sought the Pope's
absolution for having abjured his faith in Jiddah. 7 And in 1505,
Ludovico de Varthema of Bologna also reached Sumatra, having
become a Muslim and picked up a Persian partner and two Chinese
Christian companions on the way: one would wonder what language
26
27
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
they used to hire ships complete with captain and crews in Malacca,
Atjeh and Borneo*
Another stumbling block to understanding the Mediterranean
connection is the false dichotomy between the terms "Spanish" and
"Muslim" (or "Moro") which has been engendered by three centuries
of colonial history. The former term, after all, pertains to a nationality
or language, while the latter pertains to a religion; they are therefore
not alternates to one another. When Columbus was born, part of
Spain was still ruled by Muslims (he himself was present at their
final defeat in the siege of Granada), but Spain's indigenous popula-
tion was "Spanish" no matter who ruled them or whatever faith they
professed. Traditional histories, whether written in Spanish or
Arabic, do not distinguish Moros from Spaniards, but from Chris-
tians.
This indigenous Spanish population did not, of course, disap-
pear with the Arab and Berber invasions of the eighth century; rather,
they became Muslims, learned Arabic, and constituted the major
population of the caliphates and Muslim kingdoms which ruled
most of the Peninsula for 800 years. Their epic hero was called El Cid
after an Arabic title, sayyid, and he presumably used that language
when he swore allegiance to Emir Moktadir of Zaragoza. But the
Spanish language— or, better said, the language which would be-
come Spanish— survived in Andalusian market places, and its
advantages produced moros latinados ("Latinized Moors") whose
business acumen has given the modern word ladino a connotation
of sly or cunning.
Eventually, the reconquest of Muslim territory by revitalized
Christian kingdoms gave a new incentive for changing language and
faith. Arab-speaking Spaniards were baptized and the sort of pidgin
Spanish they spoke— and wrote in the Arabic alphabet— was called
aljamia (from an Arabic word meaning "non- Arabic"). The language
scene at the end of the 16th century may be illustrated by a contem-
porary reference to some Spaniards who "grew up in little hamlets
where aljamia was never spoken, nor was there anybody who un-
derstood it except the parish priest or curate or sacristan; and these
always spoke in Arabic." 9
During the long Muslim occupation, tens of thousands of
Spanish Muslims migrated to the Mediterranean coast of Africa,
mainly to escape persecution following political reversals. Whole
populations fled to Morocco and Egypt following an unsuccessful
The Mediterranean Connection
Cordoban uprising in 814, and to Tunis following the fall of Seville
in 1248 in such numbers that the city was said to be largely populated
by Sevillians. These Spanish Tunisians constituted an educated and
skilled elite that was credited with the two or three centuries of
prosperity which Tunis enjoyed off a trade which extended from
Portugal to India and included Italian maritime republics like Pisa
and Genoa in between. 10 The final Spanish exodus was touched off
by the fall of Granada and the capture of Melilla in Morocco
in 1492, which opened a century of Muslim expulsions or enforced
conversions to Christianity. It was this diaspora, no doubt, which
accounts for the Spanish speech which the Portuguese heard in the
Indian Ocean, not from the lips of slave interpreters but from men
of considerable social stature. When they bombarded Hormuz
at the entrance to the Persian Gulf to cut one of the Arab links
in the Mediterranean connection, one of the emissaries who
came to sue for peace was a Spanish Muslim "a native of the
Kingdom of Granada by the name of Abadala, who spoke good
Castillian." 11
As a matter of fact, the first person Vasco da Gama met on his
arrival in India in 1498 addressed him in Spanish. As official
chronicler Damiao de Gois describes the contact:
On boarding the ship, he said in Castillian in a loud voice,
"Welcome to you all: give thanks to God that he has brought you
to the richest land in the world, in which you will find every kind
of merchandise you could desire or imagine!" Vasco de Gama
embraced him, asking him most joyfully where he was from;
Monzaide told him from Tunis, and that since the time when
King Don Juan II used to send ships to Oran to get things he
needed for his naval stores, he was familiar with the Portuguese
and was always very friendly with them, and so in every way he
could serve King Dom Manuel in that land, he would do it if they
wished to employ him for it, to which Vasco da Gama gave him
thanks with the promise of paying him well for his troubles.
History texts are usually written in terms of wars and crusades
fought by specific nations and empires, and so little prepare us to
recognize those driving economic forces which know no nationality,
language or religion. Nonetheless, there will be modern Filipino
students who understand the readiness with which the men who
28 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
constituted the Mediterranean connection sold their services to the
highest bidders. Vasco da Gama had actually been guided to India
by the leading authority of Indian Ocean navigation of his day, the
Arab pilot Ahmad ibn Majid, whom he hired in Malindi over his
ruler s protests, and when he went home, the effusive Monzaide
went with him, becoming a Christian to do so. So did the well-
traveled Gaspar das Indias in Calicut, whom the King of Portugal
described on his arrival as "a Jew turned Christian, a man of great
discretion and energy, born in Alexandria, a great merchant and
lapidary who had been trading in India for 30 years." 13
When Vasco da Gama returned to Calicut four years later with
14 heavily armed men-o-war, that globe-trotting Muslim convert
and itinerant merchant, Haji Ludovico Varthema, quickly reverted
to his former faith and fought on the Portuguese side in the battle of
Cananor in 1506. Ferdinand Magellan was wounded during this
battle but saved the life of his good friend (or cousin?) Francisco
Serrao, who later went to serve Sultan Cachil Boleife of Ternate— and
left 35 tons of cloves and two mestizo children when he died. 1 " 1
Spaniards coasting down Mindanao in 1521 met a native vessel
whose captain had been in his house in the Moluccas.
The European end of this commerce was in the hands of
Venetians: it was their galleys which fetched the Oriental goods from
Egypt and Syria, giving them a virtual monopoly on the sale of spices
into European markets. Thanks to this strange ecumenism, Jesuit
founder Ignatius Loyola was able to communicate with his mis-
sionaries in India through Venetian ambassadors to Muslim
states-monthly from Cairo and every three months for Aleppo. 15
The extent and speed of information passing from one end of this
network to the other is noteworthy. Scarcely a decade after the
Portuguese first set foot on the coast of Brazil, they acquired a
Javanese map in Malacca which showed that American landfall. 16
Conversely, Portuguese cartographers were quickly able to indicate
Asian points which Portuguese explorers had not yet seen. An
unsigned chart presumably by Pedro Reinal (who supplied Magellan
with maps and a globe before he left Seville), drawn before Borneo
and the Philippines were reached, shows, in addition to known ports
along the Indonesian archipelago from Sumatra to the Moluccas, the
sketchy outlines of the Chinese coast and, to the east, a group of
islands south of the Tropic of Cancer and a larger one just north of
it. The Tropic of Cancer actually passes through the large island of
The Mediterranean Connection 29
Taiwan, and the Philippines, of course, lie to the south of it.
Missionary complaints reveal the extent of this cooperation be-
tween people who appear in standard histories as sworn enemies.
Writing from Malacca in 1556, Jesuit Baltazar Diaz labels the passage
of Muslim teachers "under the pretense of their being merchants" in
Portuguese ships "one of the gravest offenses that could be offered
God our Lord," and recounts a personal experience. In the ship in
which he came from India, one of his fellow passengers was a Moro,
"proclaiming himself a relative of Muhammad,” who was on his way
to Borneo to join a companion who "has already made Moros of the
major part of that paganism." 18 His confrere Nicolas Lancelot is so
exercised about the "contracting and mixed commerce with all kinds
of infidels, enemies of the Cross and the law of all truth," that he frets
about what penance he should assign confessing Christians who
participate in it. "They sell horses from Arabia and Persia," he writes
in an especially revealing passage, "which are sold in such numbers
every year that the customs duties from horses alone produce 40,000
cruzados for the King of Portugal, and the dealers of these horses are
Portuguese and Moros." 19 Ten years earlier. Father Miguel Vaz com-
plained to the King about the Portuguese slave trade in India: he
didn't want Christian dealers to sell their merchandise to Muslim or
Hindu customers.
Without such cooperation, however, the Portuguese would
never have been able to capture, hold or exploit the great Southeast
Asian emporium of Malacca. The popular image of their blasting
their way into that port with heavy-caliber naval artillery to intro-
duce the novely of European capitalism is rather a caricature of the
facts. Magellan was wounded again during Affonso Albuquerque's
unsuccessful first attack in July of 1511, but a week later, local
merchants eager to get on with business provided two men to breach
the fortifications, and then outfitted a large junk to fetch the In-
donesian spices that Chinese traders were waiting for. Even before
the battle, a Javanese businessman by the name of Utimaraja
presented a fine gift of sandalwood to signify his support, 21 and
Burmese tycoon Nina Chatu turned over a vessel he had constructed
for defeated Sultan Mahmud, complete with a mixed Burmese-
Malay crew and a pilot whose son spoke Portuguese. Albuquerque
immediately started exploring the local rivalry between Hindu
Tamils from Coromandel and Muslim Gujaratis from Cambay, and
when he returned to India in December with his worm-eaten fleet
30
31
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
(the Flor de Mar broke up on the Sumatran coast), he appointed Nina
Chatu bendahara (prime minister) of the city and wealthy Filipino
businessman Regimo Diraja temenggong (governor) of the Muslim
communities. The next year Nina Chatu and the Portuguese Crown
put up the capital, 50-50, to send a heavy-laden merchantman to
Pasai and Pegu, with a Muslim captain named Saif ud-Din and two
Portuguese inspectors whose detailed logs and cargo registers still
exist.
j As soon as Albuquerque learned the real source of the spices, he
dispatched three vessels to buy some and to advertise the presence
of new customers, and Malacca captain Nehoda Ismael to Java for
the same purpose. Guided by two Malay pilots, they reached Banda
and headed back loaded to capacity after purchasing a local junk to
replace the unseaworthy Cambay ship Francisco Serrao was com-
manding. SerrSo then proceed to run her onto reefs in the Penju
Islands off Sulawesi, but as soon as rival sultans Boleife of Ternate
and Almansor of Tidore learned of the presence of these new masters
of Malacca, they rushed fleets to rescue them. Nine Ternatan caracoas
got there first and took Serrao back to become commanding general
of Boleife's forces, where, once established, he wrote Magellan about
the wealth and location of the Moluccas. 25 Magellan finally replied
from Lisbon that, God willing, he would soon join him there, if not
by the Portuguese route, then by the Spanish— that is, by sailing west
across the Atlantic. 24 ' ^
Unlike Temenggong Regimo Diraja, some Filipino traders took
the wrong side: a colony of 500 at Minjam on the west coast of the
Malay Peninsula (where the Chinese had noted Mindoro cotton in
the 14th century) lost their Malacca trading rights by joining the
losing sultan's party. Luzon mercenaries also participated in an
unsuccessful attempt to retake Malacca in 1525 with the help of
Portuguese renegade Martin Avelar: the "captain of the Lugoes"
sailed in the flagship with warriors Joao de Barros considered "the
most warlike and valiant of these parts." 26 In 1539 Filipinos formed
part of a Batak-Menangkabau army which besieged Atjeh, as well as
of the Atjenese fleet which raised the siege under command of
Turkish Heredim Mafamede sent out from Suez by his Uncle
Suleiman, Baxa-viceroy of Cairo. When this fleet later took Aru on
the Straits of Malacca, it contained 4,000 Muslims from Turkey,
Abyssinia, Malabar, Gujarat and Luzon, and following his victory!
Heredim left a hand-picked garrison there under the command of a
The Mediterranean Connection
Filipino by the name of Sapetu Diraja. 27 All these Filipinos were so
closely associated with Borneo that many Portuguese thought they
came from there: even that Luzon prince captured in 1521 had just
come from a victorious raid as Brunei Rajah Sarripada's captain
general. And this Luzon mercenary tradition seems to have survived
into fairly modern times: the Dutch had a company of Pampanga
Christians in Batavia as late as 1721. 28
Pigafetta noted a Luzon vessel loading sandalwood in Timor in
1522. and Fernao Mendes Pinto mentions Mindanao merchants in
the Burmese emporium of Martaban in 1547. Magellan's and
Albuquerque's contemporary, druggist Tome Pires, left a book-
length manuscript known as the Suma Oriental when he departed
with the first Portuguese embassy to China in 1517, in which he says
the Luzones trade for the same goods in Malacca as the Borneans
and that they are "almost one people." Luzon itself he describes as a
source of foodstuff, wax, honey and gold, but, unlike cartographer
Francisco Rodriguez, who locates Llou^am on the north coast of
Borneo, he knows from native informants that it is another ten days'
sail. Significantly, too, he comments when describing the Chinese
port of Canton before any Portuguese had seen it, "This the Lu^oes
say who have been there." 30
The fortunes of the Malacca Filipinos, however, were not based
on such petty commerce as the Philippine trade: rather, they came
from ship-owning and the underwriting of large-scale export ven-
tures in the China market, even letting out small shares which
illiterate Portuguese sailors could afford. The head of this com-
munity was Regimo Diraja, who had attracted his fellows from
Luzon in the first place, a genuine tycoon who sent junks to Brunei,
China, Pasai, Siam and Sunda, and whose widow and father-in-law
continued his business following his death in 1513. Another Filipino
magnate was Surya Diraja who paid the Portuguese 9,000 cruzadas'
worth of gold to retain his plantation and country estate, and annual-
ly sent 175 tons of pepper to China; one of his junks sailed in the first
Portuguese fleet to pay an official visit to the Chinese Empire.
Considering the high visibility of this Filipino community, one
wonders if a sharp-minded adventurer like Magellan could have
been unaware of the existence and location of the Philippines. Per-
haps the "discovery of the Philippines" was made in Malacca.
Magellan left the Far East in 1513 after lending 110 cruzados to
a Portuguese merchant in Goa, to be repaid in pepper in Lisbon at
■
32 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
82 percent interest. 32 Back in Portugal, he had a falling out with his
king, but until he renounced his citizenship in 1517 and left for
Spain— Joao de Barros says— "he was always hanging around pilots
and sea charts." 33 In Seville, he married the sister of the author of the
latest travel book on Indian Asia,, 34 and signed a contract with the
Spanish king for 15 percent of the profits to be realized from what
turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to sabotage the Portuguese
spice trade. He left Spain with instructions to find a new route to the
Spice Islands, discovered the strait which bears his name, and headed
across the Pacific on a course of northwest by west. When he came
to the equator, he strangely did not veer west in search of the
Moluccas he knew to be on that line; rather, he continued on and
only changed course when he reached the latitude of Luzon, and
then headed direct for the Philippines. 35 There, instead of carrying
out his orders, he spent six weeks merchandising, baptizing and
politicking in Cebu, and died trying to force a beachhead in Mactan.
Crewman Gines de Mafra speculated that this unauthorized be-
havior was motivated by Magellan's desire to have Cebu as one of
two islands to be granted him in perpetuity, "because he had said so
many times/' 36 Perhaps the easiest way to explain this whole
scenario is to assume that Magellan knew where he was going and
wanted to get there.
The drugs and aromatics which made up the spice trade were
mainly carried from their islands of origin by Javanese traders or
Buginese from Makassar, to the fiercely competing entrepots of
Malacca and Atjeh, where they joined with the commerce of all Asia.
From there they were delivered largely in Atjenese, Arab and Indian
bottoms — or occasionally Turkish from Egypt to the coasts of
Africa, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, where they were
transshipped by camel train to Mediterranean ports like Alexandria,
Beirut, Cairo and Damascus, all under the control of the Egyptian
ruler the Portuguese called the Sultan of Babylon. This is the
monopoly the Portuguese broke by sailing from India to Europe
around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. The first
spices to reach the European market in Flanders completely by
sea — and bring almost their weight in gold— were delivered by two
Portuguese carracks in 1499. Five years later the Venetian
Senate was shocked to have its galleys return from Alexandria
empty, no spices having reached that port that year across the
Mediterranean connection. 37
The Mediterranean Connection 33
Establishing a new monopoly to replace the old one, however,
required a certain amount of shoot-on-sight contacts at sea, and
of destabilizing or overthrowing local governments ashore. These
actions were all defended by the Portuguese Crown as a kind of
Christian crusade though not one, evidently, which applied to
infidels who did not threaten Portuguese profits, like those Muslim
pilots, proprietors, underwriters and business partners in Goa,
Malacca and Ternate. Mediterranean investors faced with
bankruptcy responded in kind. The Venetians sent four cannon-
makers to Calicut in 1505, and in 1508 contributed carpenters,
caulkers, artillery and two whole galleys to a fleet sent out by the
Sultan of Egypt under the command of his Mameluke governor of
Jiddah, which also included Christian mariners from Italy and the
Levant, as well as 40 Calicut vessels manned by Hindus from
Malabar. A similarly ecumenical armada in 1515 was manned by 700
Egyptian Mamelukes, 300 Turkish Janissaries, a thousand Moors
from Granada and Tunis, and 70 Levantine Christians. 38
Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent conquered Egypt
in 1517, so Portugal's Far Eastern competitors started sending em-
bassies direct to Constantinople to solicit military aid. Among these,
those from Atjeh had an especially persuasive case: Atjeh, at the
northeastern corner of Sumatra, was in a position to cut off Malacca's
westbound traffic: indeed, the wars which involved Filipino mer-
cenaries from Luzon were fought for control of the Sumatran shore
of the Straits of Malacca. The Portuguese once intercepted a 50-gun
Atjenese ship carrying their ambassador with 200,000 cruzados'
worth of gold and jewelry for the Emperor; it also carried 500
Atjenese, Arab, Abyssinian and Turkish warriors. Chance references
in diplomatic correspondence reveal that Turkish troops and gun-
founders left for Atjeh in 1539, and a dozen gunners and military
advisers in 1564, while the Portuguese took an Atjenese mer-
chantman in a naval action off Hadramaut in 1562 with 400 "white
men” on board. And in the year of Suleiman's death, two Turkish
ships arrived with 500 men who included gunners, gun-founders
and military engineers. When the Dutch invaded Atjeh four centuries
later, they found antiquated cannons of Turkish design in the royal
compound. 39
But the last hopes for any revival of the Mediterranean connec-
tion faded in the face of spreading Mediterranean wars during the
second half of the century. In 1568, a rebellion in Granada resulted
34 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
in the deportation of more than 50,000 persons— most of them first-
and second-generation Christians— and the Spanish occupation of
Tunis in 1570. The next year, Don Juan of Austria, son of Holy
Emperor Charles V, defeated the Turkish fleet in the battle of Lepan-
to, following which Turkey got increasingly embroiled in wars on
two fronts in the Balkans and Persia. Perhaps it was these unsettled
conditions which sent more Mediterranean Muslims to Southeast
Asia, where Manila Oidor Melchor Divalos could report in 1585 that
llirks were coming to Sumatra, Borneo and Ternate every year,
including defeated veterans from Lepanto. 40
Finally, we may consider the view from Manila. Following the
union of the Spanish and the Portuguese crowns in 1581, the Por-
tuguese in the Moluccas requested aid to put down a rebellion which
had seized their fort in Ternate. Governor Santiago de Vera mounted
an expedition which, on arrival in the Moluccas, found not only
Ternatans but 2,500 Arabs, Javanese and lascars (East India seamen),
and a Portuguese commander who wasn't interested in any military
action that would interfere with business. Nonetheless, following
unsuccessful negotiations conducted through a Muslim "bishop"
from Mecca, the fort was besieged and surrendered. But the Ter-
natan, Javanese, Chinese and Malay merchants inside would not
vacate until they were guaranteed the value of their goods, so
in the end half the fort's cannons were turned over to the Javanese.
The Spaniards returned to Manila in disgust, and Dominican
chaplain Cristobal de Salvatierra wrote in his official report, "Many
of them are married to indias of Ternate and others are mestizo
children of Ternate women and Portuguese men, so they tell their
relatives so much that nothing is said in the Spanish camp without
their learning it." 41
After the expedition returned, Oidor Davalos wrote a long letter
to the King, worrying about the continuing or increasing Muslim
presence. He gave the following details as historical background:
Persians and Arabs and Egyptians and Turks brought
[Muhammad's] veneration and evil sect here, and even Moors
from Tunis and Granada came here, sometimes in the armadas
of Campson [Kait Bey], former Sultan of Cairo and King of
Egypt Thus it seems to me that these Moros of the Philippine
Islands [are] mainly those who, as has been said, come from
Egypt and Arabia and Mecca, and are their relatives, disciples
The Mediterranean Connection 35
and members, and every year they say that Turks come to
Sumatra and Borneo, and to Ternate, where there are now some
of those defeated in the famous battle which Senor Don Juan de
Austria won. 42
Conclusion
There are two points worthy of special note in this survey of the
Mediterranean connection. The first is that all these data have sur-
vived by mere chance outside the texts of standard histories. Nicolo
de Conti's travels are known only because Eugenius IV required him
to dictate them to papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini as an act of
penance for his apostasy. The fortunes of those two Filipino tycoons
with honorable Malay titles like diraja are known only because of
the scrupulous accounts royal bookkeepers kept in Portuguese out-
posts like Malacca. And Spanish-speaking Pazeculan appears in
none of the four eyewitness accounts brought back from the first
voyage around the world; he is known to us only because of his
services as translator for Spanish peace treaties in Palawan and the
Moluccas. Spanish law required these formalities to include such
details as how the parties swore their oaths and who did the trans-
lating, and the particular libro de pazes in this case turned up by
accident in the Archives of the Indies only a few years ago.
The second point is the Law of Chance itself. When Monzaide
took Vasco de Gama's comrades ashore in India, he introduced them
to another interpreter: is it likely that these were the only two men
in Calicut who could speak European languages— just waiting, so to
speak, to be discovered? When the Spaniards hailed that parao in
Basilan Strait, what were the chances that its captain should be the
only indio to have been in the house of Magellan's good friend
Francisco Serrao? And when Sebastian de Elcano met Pazeculan in
Borneo by sheer happenstance and then Uzman four months later,
2,000 kilometers away in Tidore, what were the odds against their
being the only two persons in Southeast Asia who knew Spanish?
These questions suggest that the presence of the Spanish-speaking
slave on the Luzon caracoa may not have been an isolated
phenomenon. Perhaps further research on the Mediterranean con-
nection will provide the final explanation by exploring the question
36
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
of just how many people between Granada and Manila could speak
Spanish in 1521.
Notes
El libro que trajo la nao Vitoria de las amistades que hicieron
con Ios Reyes de Maluco" {Archive General de Indias, Indiferente
General, 1528), text in Mauricio Obregon, La primera Vuelta al
Mundo (Bogota, 1984), p. 300.
2
Rodrigo de Aganduru Moriz, "Historia general de las Islas
occidentals a la Asia adyacentes, llamadas Philippinas" (MS, 1623),
Coleccidn de Documentos ineditos de la Historia de Espana vol 78
(Madrid, 1882), p. 60.
3 "Navega S am e vyagem que fez Fernao de Magalhaes de Sevilha
para Maluco no anno de 1519 annos," Collegao de Noticias para a
Historia e Geografia das Nacoes ultramarines que vivem nos
Dominios portuguezes, vol. 4 (Lisboa, 1826), p. 164.
4 Obregon, op. cit., pp. 318, 321.
5 Antonio Pigafetta, Primo Viaggio intorno al Mondo, text in
* nd J amcs A - ^bertson. The Philippine Islands ,
1493-1898 (Cleveland, 1905), vol. 33, p. 114.
6 Obregon, op. cit., p. 309.
7 Rodrigo Fernandez de Santa ella, Cosmographia breve intro-
ductona en el Libro de Marco Polo ... con otro tratado de Micer
n ° rentino Q ue trata deIas mesmas tierras & yslas (Seville,
UUO/i
8
"Itinerario di Lucovico Barthema Bolognese," in Gian Bauttista
fff""® 0 ' Delle Navigation i et Viaggi, vol. 1 (Venice, 1554), pp.
160-190. rr
9
Luis de Marmol, Historia de la rebellion y castigo de los moris-
cos de Granada (Malaga, 1600), lib. 2, fol. 40; cited in Diccionario de
a Lengua castellana (Madrid, 1726), under almajia. See also Pedro
Agudo Bleye, Manual de Historia de Espana, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1975),
pp. 409-410; CharlesE. Chapman, A History of Spain (London, 1918)^
The Mediterranean Connection
37
pp. 43-45; Robert K. Spaulding, How Spanish Grew (Berkeley, 1943),
pp. 53-56; and Americo Castro, Espana en su Historia, Christianos,
Moros y Judios (Buenos Aires, 1948), pp. 12, 51-54, 59.
John D. Latham, "Towards a study of Andalusian immigration
and its place in Tunisian history,” Les Cahiers de Tunisia, vol. 5
(1957), pp. 203-249; and Neville Barbour, A Survey of North West
Africa (the Maghreb) (Oxford, 1962), pp. 18-19.
Damiao de Gois, Cronica do felicissimo rei d. Manuel (Lisboa
1566), part 2, p. 113.
12 Ibid., part 1, p. 89.
1 Letter dated 25 August 1499, in Antonio da Silva Rego,
Documentacao para a Historia das Misdes de Padroado Por fugue's
do Oriente: India, vol. 1 (Lisboa, 1947), p. 9.
14 Manuel Teixera, The Portuguese Missions in Malacca and Sin-
gapore (1511-1958) (Lisboa, 1961), vol. 1, pp. 57-59.
1S Letter from Antonio de Heredia dated 20 October 1554, in
Joseph Wicki, Monuments historica Societas lesu, vol. 74 {Documen-
ts Indica III) (Rome, 1954), p. 105.
16
Letter from Affonso de Albuquerque to the King dated 1 April
1512, Collecao deMonumentos ineditos para a Historia dasConquis-
tasdos Portuguezes em Africa, Asia e America, vol. 10 (Lisboa, 1884)
pp. 64-65.
17
Armando CorteSao and Avelina Teixera de Mota, Portugaliae
Monuments Cartographies, vol. 1 (Lisboa, 1960), plate 10:
"Anonymous-Pedro Reinal chart of c. 1517."
1 8
Wicki, op. cit., p. 537.
19 Ibid., p. 454.
20
Silva Rego, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 211.
21
John Villiers, "As Derradeiras de Mundo: the Dominican mis-
sions and the sandalwood trade in the Lesser Sunda Islands in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries," II Seminario Internacional de
Historia Indo-Portuguese: Actas (Lisboa, 1985), p. 578.
22
Genevieve Bouchon, ”Les premiers voyages portugais a Pasai et
38
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
a Pegou (1512-1520)," archipel 18 (Paris, 1979), pp. 131-136.
23 Teixera, op. cit., loc. cit; and Ronald Bishop Smith, The First Age
of the Portuguese Embassies, Na vigations and Peregrinations to the
Kingdoms and Islands of Southeast Asia ( 1509-1521 ) (Bethesda,
1968), pp. 40-42.
24 Joao de Barros, Decada terceira de Asia de Ioao de Barros dos
Feitos que os Portugueses fezarao no Descobrimiento & Conquista
dos Mares & Terras de Oriente (Lisboa, 1628), book 5, fol. 139.
Armando Cortesao, A Suma Oriental de Tome Pires e o Livro
de Francisco Rodriguez (Coimbra, 1978), p. 377.
26
Translated in Teixera, op. cit, p. 166.
27 Fernao Mendes Pinto, Peregrinagao (Lisboa, 1725), pp. 20, 35.
28
F. De Haan, Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen, OUD BATAVIA (Batavia, 1922), vol. 1, p. 480.
29
Mendes Pinto, op. cit., p. 232.
30
Cortesao, Suma, pp. 376-377, and 362.
31
Luis Filipe F.R. Thomaz, "Malacca's society on the eve of the
Portuguese conquest.” Unpublished paper presented at the Interna-
tional Conference on Malay civilization (Kuala Lumpur, 11- 13
November 1986), pp. 12, 16-17, 20, 25-26.
32
Jean Denuce, Magellan, la question des Moluques et la premiere
circumnavigation du Globe ( Academie Royal de Belgique: Memoires
deuxieme serie Tome IV (1908-1911), pp. lllff.
33 ~
Joao de Barros, op. cit, fol. 140.
34
Duarte Barbosa's 1516 Livro em que es da relagao do que viu no
Oriente Duarte Barbosa.
Samuel Eliot Morrison, The European Discovery of America: the
Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492-1616 (New York, 1974), pp. 406- 409.
36
Antonio Blazquez y Delgado Aguilera, Libro que trata del Des-
cubrimientoy Principio delEstrecho que se llama de Magallanes por
Gines de Mafra (Madrid, 1922), p. 200.
37
K.S. Mathew, "The first mercantile battle in the Indian Ocean:
The Mediterranean Connection
39
the Afro- Asian front against the Portuguese (1508-1 509)," II Semi-
nario In ternacional de His tori a Indo-Portuguesa: Actas (Lisboa,
1985), pp. 182-183.
38
Jeronymo Osorio, De Rebus Emanuelis Regis Lusitaniae invic-
tissimi virtute etauspicio (Colonae Agrippinae, 1574), p. 134; Math-
ew, op. cit., loc. cit.; and Gois, op. cit., part 2, pp. 85-86, part 4 (1567),
pp. 33-34.
39
B. Schrieke, Indonesian Sociological Studies Part Two (The
Hague, 1957), pp. 244-246; and C.R. Boxer, "A note on Portuguese
reactions to the revival of the Red Sea spice trade and the rise of Atjeh
1540-1600," Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 10 (1969), pp.
415-428.
40 See note 42 below.
41 "Relation de algunas cosas sucedidas en el Maluco en el
prosecution de la jornada que este ano de mill e quiniento e ochenta
y cinco mand. hacer el Illmo senor doctor Santiago de vera . . . por
el Padre frai Xrobal de salvatierra" (AGI Petronato 46, ramo 20). I
am indebted to Father Lucio Gutierrez, O.P., for a copy of this
document.
AO
Melchor Davalos to the King, Manila 20 June 1585, in Lewis
Hanke, Cuerpo de Documentos del Siglo XVI sobre los derechos de
Espaha en las Indias y las Filipinas (Mexico, 1977), pp. 72, 75.
1
WHY DID TUPAS BETRAY DAGAMI ? 1
Spanish forces under the command of Miguel Lopez Legazpi landed
in Cebu unopposed on Saturday, 28 April 1565, following a naval
bombardment. During the next three weeks, they began a stockaded
fort, recovered a religious image left by Magellan in 1521, and made
a blood compact with a harbor prince by the name of Tupas. They
suffered no losses until May 23, when Pedro de Arana, one of the
commander's personal company, was killed just outside the fort and
his head taken. Legazpi burned several suspect villages in retaliation
and exhausted every effort to discover his killer, but not until
January 1567 was he apprehended. The circumstances were recorded
by Legazpi's secretary as follows:
The chief of Gabi, who killed Pedro de Arana by treachery,
was captured in a canoe at sea: it seems that he had come to Cebu
on some business and Tupas notified the Governor he was there,
so they cornered him in an ambush the Governor ordered with
two canoes. He confessed it to be true that he and four other
chiefs had agreed to come to this fort from the port of Gabi and
try to kill some Spaniards, and so 16 indiosc ame in a parao one
night and waited in hiding between the fort and the town of Cebu
in a big grassy place among the palms, where they stayed all
night until the next dawn, when they saw a Spaniard come out
of the fort alone, passing along the beach toward where they
were, so they leaped out and speared and killed him and cut off
his head and took it back to the port of Gabi where they made a
great celebration and feast with the head. For this he was con-
demned to be drawn and quartered the next day in the place
where they had killed Pedro de Arana, where they put his head
on a pole, and the four quarters on poles scattered along the
beach. With this, the Indios were greatly frightened, and the
chiefs came to the Governor and told him that the execution was
very justified and that he had very much deserved it for what he
had done. And Tupas said that he who had been quartered had
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 41
been among the bravest and proudest in these islands, and that
when the Spaniards first arrived in this island and the Governor
summoned them to come and make peace, he had been among
them, and that when they were thinking of making peace and
friendship with the Governor, this Chief Dagami, as a proud and
valiant man, and the other chiefs from Mactan who were present,
had advised him not to make peace with the Spaniards and
hindered him from doing so, and that always after that he
continued to be rebellious against the Spaniards and in favor of
revolts and war, and that the Governor had given him his just
desserts. 2
The question is, why did Tupas betray Dagami?
Of course, we cannot hope to discover the personal motives for
the decision, but we can examine the political, social and economic
forces which must have influenced them. What, for instance, were
Tupas' resources in manpower and foodstuffs, and how much con-
trol did he have over them? What were his relations with Filipinos
outside Cebu, and how much experience had he had with foreign
aggression? Indeed, who was Tupas; what was his authority and
what were his means of income? What, in short, were his options?
And finally, what advantages and disadvantages might he have
expected from submission to the invading forces?
The Background
Sixteenth-century Cebu was a community of some thousand
houses strung out along six or seven kilometers of shoreline, some
actually standing in the water on piles, and all built of highly
inflammable materials. Its staple food crops were rice and millet
grown in hillside swiddens in exchange for seafood, salt and foreign
imports like hardware and porcelain, but rice was also traded from
Panay, Leyte and the northeast coast of Mindanao. It was an inter-
national entrepot, where domestic and foreign goods procured both
by trade and raid were exchanged, and harbor fees were collected
by removing the rudders and sails of merchantmen while they were
doing business in port. It had close ties with Limasawa, a tiny island
strategically located to control shipping between the Pacific coast
42 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
and the central Philippines, which was a Butuan satellite. Profits
were derived not so much from the sale of products grown on the
island of Cebu as from the trade itself: gold and slaves, for example
were both bought and sold. Chinese goods were delivered by Malay-
speaking Tagalogs, who exploited a trading network which extended
from Timor in the south to Canton in the north, and the west coast
of the Malay Peninsula facing India. And if Magellan's survivors
were correct in reporting the existence of a small Muslim settlement
on Mactan called Bulaya, it was probably a Bornean outpost. At least
a Bornean who had married and settled in Cebu was an influential
local figure in Legazpi's day.
One of the Magellanic accounts says that the ruler of the port of
Cebu was one of four chiefs on the island who governed "in the
manner of the Malays." This means local datus exercising authority
not over territory but over subjects, and ruling with the consensus
of other chiefs, who gave support to one another by personal
alliances— what the Maranaos still call pegawid ("support") and
pegawidan ("supported"). Those who controlled trading posts at-
tracted the most allies and often took prestigious Malay-Sanskrit
titles validated in lavish ceremonial feasts like Rajah ("ruler") or
Batara ( noble lord"). One of Tupas' fellow datus was a certain Batala,
but the most respected title for harbor princes was Sarripada ("his
highness ) or its variants, Salipada, Sipad and Paduka (all from
Sanskrit Sri Paduka). It was used by Rajah Humabon, ruler of Cebu
in Magellan's time, and at least three of his contemporaries— the
Sultan of Brunei, Kabungsuwan's son Maka-alang of Maguindanao
and a Bohol ruler who was killed in a Ternatan-Portuguese raid in
1562. And a Sulu ruler who died in China in 1417 was named Paduka
Batara.
Tupas must have been born in 1497: he was 70 when he was
baptized on 21 March 1568— despite the fact that he had been
baptized together with his wife, her parents, his brother, two sisters-
m-law and ten nieces in Magellan's day. His father was a bendahara
( prime minister”) of his own brother. Rajah Sarripada Humabon, no
doubt the "gouvernatore" who acted as his intermediary with
agellan s foster son as ambassador. Tupas was married to his
cousin, Humabon's eldest child— a typical Malay arrangement— but
there is no contemporary record of his having inherited either of his
father-in-law's titles. (Legazpi mistakenly thought he was
Humabon's own son.) It may be worth noting that he had two
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 43
prominent brothers. One was presumably older (he had two wives
and ten children in 1521) and was called "the bravest and wisest man
in the island" by expeditionary ethnographer Antonio Pigafetta.
(During the Cebu Massacre of May 1, he personally made off with
the priest who had baptized him.) The other notable brother, Makyo,
was evidently younger (he had two small daughters in 1565) and
was the most dominating personality Legazpi had to contend with.
Perhaps this dominance could be explained by assuming that he was
Tupas' brother-in-law rather than his brother— that is, a younger son
of Humabon who had been bypassed in favor of an older sister.
Humabon was short, fat and richly tattoed, dressed in a white
G-string, and wore heavy gold rings in his ears. Gines de Mafra, a
leading seaman on Magellan's flagship, said he was a relative of the
Lord of Mazagua— that is. Rajah Kolambu of Limasawa, brother of
the Rajah of Butuan. Some credence might be given Gines'
knowledgeability since he was the only Spaniard who met Kolambu
twice: he spent two months on Limasawa when the Villalobos
' expedition Teprovisioned there in 1543 and Kolambu still remem-
bered Magellan and showed some things he had given him. He also
says Humabon was married to Lapulapu's sister. This, too, is not
at all unlikely. Intermarriage was a common method of sealing
alliances between ruling datus, and certainly an alliance would have
been necessary to protect Cebu harbor shipping against attack from
Mactan. Sebastian de Elcano, Magellan's successor, described Lapu-
lapu in the following terms:
There was an island near there called Mauthan [i.e., Mactan],
the king of which was greatly esteemed as a fine man in the arts
of war and was more powerful than all his neighbors, who
responded to the envoys [of Magellan] that he was unwilling to
come and do reverence to one whom he had been commanding
for so long a time. 6
It is to be noted that Humabon did not actually participate in the
attack on his reputed brother-in-law, and although he rescued the
wounded Spaniards "because he was afraid that all those other
friends of his would get them," three days later he killed or enslaved
all of them he could. 7 .
Pifagetta was an admirer of Magellan' s— "our mirror, our light,
our comfort and our true guide,” as he called him— whose account
44
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
gives the impression Magellan died trying to enforce a legimate
ruler's authority over an unruly vassal.* All the other eyewitnesses,
owever, portray Magellan as an outright aggressor. Transylvanus,
after interviewing the survivors on their return to Seville, concluded
that Magellan himself suggested to the Cebu chief that he exert his
power over neighboring chiefs, "seeing that the island was rich in
gold and ginger," and Gines de Mafra speculates that Magellan
wanted Cebu as one of the two islands to be granted him in per-
petuity, 'because he had said so many times and wanted many
subjects." Perhaps the kindest analysis of his motives was an
anonymous Portuguese account which says that "since it seemed to
Fernao de Magalhaes that he had hit on an opportunity for the other
kings to be converted, he sent word to them that they should become
Christians and give obedience to the Christian king [i.e., Humabon)
or else he would make war on them and burn their holdings and the
palm groves off which they lived." 11
The Spanish Court appointed a commission of inquiry into the
reasons for Magellan's death and why he had wasted so much time
in port. The result led to an apology which the Viceroy of Mexico
tried unsuccessfully to send the King of Cebu in 1527:
It is well for you to know that this so powerful prince [i.e.,
the Spanish king), desirous of learning the customs and com-
merce of these parts, sent a captain of his called Hernando de
Magallanes to them with five ships, of which no more than one
due to the little caution and foresight of the said captain!
returned to his kingdoms, whereby His Majesty learned the"
cause of the destruction and loss of the others; and although he
was pained by everything, what he regretted most was having
his captain depart from the Royal orders and instructions which
he carried, most especially in having caused war and discord
with you and your people And for this disobedience, the
Lord and maker of all things permitted that he should receive
the retribution for his disrespect, dying as he did in the evil
endeavors which he attempted contrary to his prince's will. 12
The whole affair must have been a traumatic experience for the
young Tupas. It was he who made the peace pact on board
agellan s flagship, not Humabon; it was he who took Pigafetta
home to dinner and entertained him with naked dancing girls; and
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 45
it was his brother who was cured of a lingering illness by Magellan
acting as babaylan. The day after a Spanish fleet dropped anchor, he
and his father, together with Rajah Kolambu, eight Cebu datus and
a Malay-speaking Muslim merchant, went on board the Trinidad
with gifts of pigs, goats and chickens, and sat down crosslegged on
the deck in front of Magellan and his officers seated on chairs.
Magellan then preached a sermon on the True Faith, promised the
young prince a suit of Spanish armor if he became a Christian, and
was so moved by his own eloquence he burst into tears when Tupas
accepted. Tupas did not get the suit of armor, however, though he
did get an expensive length of white cloth, a red cap, some beads, a
gilded glass goblet and, the following Sunday, the name of the
Spanish king's brother.
The affair must also have had its religious significance, including
the ceremony of taking another man's name. In Visayan belief,
military success depended on amulets, sacrifices and guardian
spirits: warships were launched over the bodies of slaves, and the
partner in a joint raid who supplied the pre-departure sacrifice to his
personal deities received half of the booty. Although the Christian
sacrifice was different, Magellan also appeared to identify his faith
with war. He unsheathed his sword to venerate the image of the Holy
Child he gave Tupas' mother-in-law to replace her own idol, and had
the ships' guns fired off both at the elevation of the host during mass
and when he came grandly ashore with fireworks, clothed all in
white. He had Humabon swear an oath on the scapular he wore as
a knight of the military order of Santiago de Compostela, and
promised him that after baptism he would more easily conquer his
enemies. He wanted to lead a landing party ashore at Mactan on a
Saturday ’because that was a day especially holy to him/' 13 and he
declined Filipino reinforcements on the grounds that "with divine
favor, the Christians would conquer that whole rabble." 14 Perhaps it
was the apparent failure of his personal deity on the beachhead that
emboldened the Cebuanos to attack his companions a few days later
even under the guns of three Spanish men-o-war.
In his undelivered letter, the Viceroy of Mexico suggested that
the King of Cebu must have learned about the Spanish king's interest
in the Philippines from the "Spaniards who are prisoners in your
power." 15 He was probably right. There were Spaniards resident in
the Philippines for 40 years after Magellan's death, all slaves of
Filipino chiefs. Although eight survivors of the Cebu Massacre were
46 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
sold to Chinese, either directly or through Luzon middlemen, five
others lived on Cebu, at least two of them surviving up until the
1560 s, when one was sold to a Bornean trader. While Tupas was still
a young man in 1527, a Spanish deserter by the name of Sebastian-
de Puerto appeared in Cebu with his master Chief Katunaw selling
a boatload of Surigao rice. Katunaw had captured him during a raid
on enemy territory near Lianga Bay, where he had a son who was a
datu by virtue of a local marriage: the son visited Saavedra's flagship
the next year with a baby boy in his arms, and Sebastian escaped
Another dozen Spaniards lost from the Villalobos expedition of 1543
spent the rest of their days in Leyte and Samar villages along the San
Juamco Passage. Since they were all experienced mariners, they
probably served their masters as timawa— that is. Viking-like war-
riors who accompanied datus on mangayaw raids; at least, the last
of them, Juan Flores, disappeared with 30 of his Filipino townmates"
on a raid in 1561. And a Mexican cabin boy by the name of Juanes
actually survived to be recovered by Legazpi in 1566, by which time
he was thoroughly tattoed, could speak no language but Waray, and
had sired two children by one of his master's daughters.
When the first Spanish mission went ashore and told Humabon
and his Bendahara that they were not going to pay any harbor fees
because their king was so powerful, a merchant from Ciama (Siam?)
who happened to be present warned the Cebuano chiefs that these
were the people who had already conquered India and Malacca-
meaning the Portuguese, of course— an error the Spaniards promptly
corrected. Kolambu probably agreed with this assessment when he
arrived a little later, for when he went on board the Trinidad the next
day as Humabon's representative, the subject was not mentioned.
Ihe Portuguese presence in Southeast Asia, however, could hardly
have been news in a port city like Cebu: Sulu, Maguindanao and
barangani had been on the spice route to Malacca ever since that
city s founding in 1400. Communications were surprisingly good
? siich trade routes: all five Spanish expeditions found people
m the Philippines who understood Malay, the current trade language
even a native of Malacca in Surigao. Pigafetta explains Kolambu's
ability to understand Malay-speaking Enrique of Sumatra by saying.
Kings in these parts know more languages than others,” and gives
an actual Malay quotation from the Ciama merchant's conversation
with Humabon. In Palawan, the Cebu survivors met a Negro
named Bastian who had learned Portuguese in the Moluccas, 17 and
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 47
a slave from Luzon who could speak enough Spanish to translate a
peace pact, 18 and off Maguindanao they impressed a pilot who had
been in the house of Magellan's friend Francisco Serrao in Ternate,
who was awaiting Magellan's arrival. 19 But if the Portuguese
presence was not news in Cebu, the fact that they had a natural
enemy in the Spanish was. And it was a fact whose political sig-
nificance Tupas must have later remembered.
The Portuguese had been in the Moluccas since 1511, when
freebooter Serrao established himself as warlord to the Sultan of
Ternate, and started writing letters to Magellan about the location
and wealth of the Spice Islands. 20 In 1533, one of their ships seized
some Filipinos in a slave raid on Siargao after making a peace pact
with their chief, and only escaped swift-sailing pursuit by jettisoning
their cannons. 21 Five years later they were back in Mindanao with
two priests who baptized a number of chiefs and their families in
Butuan and Camiguin and took their children to Ternate to be raised
as Christians, 22 and in 1543 they sent two Ternatan vessels to dis-
courage Sarangani Bay trading partners from dealing with
Villalobos. Then in 1562, they struck Bohol with eight Ternatan
warships in a raid so shocking it was still on everybody's lips when
Legazpi arrived. They killed hundreds and carried off both booty
and captives, and then wiped out the Butuanon settlement on
Limasawa, though losing four Portuguese in the action. The
paramount chief of Bohol moved to Mindanao and established
himself as an overlord to Subanons in Dapitan, a strategic point for
advance defence against such raids in the future, and Kolambu s
heir escaped to his relatives in Butuan, where the Spaniards met him
two years later still in mourning. Thus when Tupas confronted the
Spaniards for the second time, the southern Visayas were full of men
whose relatives' deaths were still unavenged.
The Confrontation
The Spaniards returned to the Philippines in January 1565,
making landfall on the west coast of Samar. During the next three
months, they went ashore in Samar, Leyte, Limasawa, Bohol and
Negros, made blood compacts, claimed possession in the Spanish
king's name, seized or bartered foodstuffs, and lost three men and
killed three. It is unlikely that Cebu could have been unaware of their
48
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
presence, and in the middle of April definite word came from Bohol
Chiefs Katuna and Gala arrived in a boat accompanied by two
Spanish marines-perhaps that same Katunaw who had captured
Sebastian de Puerto in Surigao since the Katuna from Bohol was over -
10° years old when he was baptized in 1596. They presumably
reported that they had both made peace pacts with the Spaniard^
who were heavdy armed and aggressive, ready to trade luxury goods
and had already gone to Butuan to do so, and had seized a Bornean
trading yesse and befriended its pilot, from whom they had learned
all about local commerce. Tupas no doubt recognized the same arms
and armor on the two escorts he had seen in his youth, and while
i! 1 C f bu : the Pabl ° sailed U P the west coast of the
island and bombarded one settlement
had telTdal^T Si u Gala departed ' Tupas and his fellow datus
had ten days to decide what to do when the Spaniards arrived as
they no doubt would. They decided to resist. All things considered
IikTthe T glCa ! ? 0n - After a11 ' the S P aniar ds had no strong allies
out of th T fph r nS; - they r had akeady beCn killed ' ensIaved or driven
out of the Philippines four times; and they were probably seekine
revenge for Magellan's death. fry eKing
27 April i Ur 7 Can warshi P s anchored in Cebu harbor on
a Sn™ , f 3 thlrd the next da y- An env °y went ashore with
a Sumatran interpreter and told the Cebuano chiefs gathered in a
ciaTrelat 323 ^ Spaniards had come to open peaceful commer-
cial rdations and were inviting their king to the flagship to receive
If "“Mi 10111 the Ki ^ of S P ain ' and nurt*? peace pact L
that ad l C0U ’ d be§in ' A datU immediatel y went on board to request
that the ships guns not be discharged (as Magellan's had been) and
o r a , BO r an mamed in Cebu came out to introduce himself as the
offic ^ interpreter assigned for their stay in port. He said that Tupas
™° dd be V lat6r th3t afternoon - The Cebu townsfolk meanwhile
. ., d P ackin g up their clothes and collected the pigs, goats and
chjekens between their houses, but Tupas did not appear The next
day, the Spaniards sent envoys ashore three times to reach him and
when an official presented himself as proxy in his stead, they reCd
ake a pact with anybody but Tupas himself. If Tupas had not
so' U waihe 611 H th n hlll f' *0* W ° Uld SUrdy have decided him to do
fhi’rH be ' af ‘ eraI1 ' who had made the pact with Magellan. On the
third contact, the Spanish envoy dropped all pretense to diplomacy
and announced that the Cebuanos were rebellious subjects becaure
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami?
49
they had willingly submitted to Spanish suzerainty 40 years before.
The time for talk was now finished, he said: if they did not render
obedience immediately, any loss of life or property which might
follow would be their own fault.
By this time, the town was completely evacuated except for one
large granary. Reinforcements had arrived from the suburbs, and
between 1,500 and 2,000 men were now lined up along the
waterfront and in a dozen war canoes beyond a point down the
beach, all wearing wooden mail or padded armor, and armed with
shields, spears, javelins, cutlasses and a few bows and blowguns.
When the envoy headed back to the flagship for the last time, they
all brandished their weapons and shouted derisively, taunting him
and challenging his people to fight. The Spaniards promptly put five
boats in the water and the flagship's launch, and opened fire on the
town with all ships' guns. The Cebuanos immediately withdrew,
beaching and abandoning their boats; the granary went up in flames
and ignited some 400 houses, but the enemy landing party was
unable to take any prisoners. About 200 soldiers sacked the town but
found almost no food, and that evening billeted themselves four to
a house in the abandoned settlement. For the next few nights, they
got almost no rest as the Cebuanos crept up on their sentries in the
dark, so they tore down or burned enough houses to provide an open
space around their camp. But during the daytime they discovered a
rich source of booty in the porcelain and goldwork Cebuanos in-
terred with their deceased. When Legazpi became aware of the
extent of these riches, he issued a strict order that all graves in the
future should be opened only in the presence of royal officers to
make sure his majesty got his fair share.
On May 8, Legazpi personally turned the first spadeful of earth
to begin the construction of a stockaded campsite which would
eventually become Fort San Pedro. He then marked off the boundary
between the Cebuano settlement and the Spanish military reserva-
tion, and took possession of the whole island of Cebu in the name
of the Spanish king. By the 16th he considered the fort secure enough
to receive the sanctifying presence of the religious image Magellan
had given Tupas' mother-in-law, so it was transferred in a solemn
procession with military escort. A few days later— or perhaps the
same day (the records are contradictory)— Tupas presented himself
at the fort with a retinue of more than 40 followers. Perhaps this
timing was not a coincidence. That foreign an/fo-figure which had
V,
50
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
just been released from confinement in two wooden boxes and
restored to its worshippers had been brought to the Philippines by
a brave warrior from afar whose death in battle had never been
forT^ 0 ^ lNf ° W ** W3S instalIed as the guardian spirit of his followers'
Confronting the enemy commander face to face, Tupas' worst
fears were realized. Legazpi delivered a long lecture on Cebuano
treachery and apostasy, Magellan's death and the Cebu Massacre
and Tupas' rudeness in having failed to accept the King's letter
which, however, he did not now produce. He insisted that a formal
treaty be put in writing before making any blood compact, but finally
agreed to make the pact on the condition that Tupas would return
within three days to formalize the treaty. Tupas lamely explained
that he had only been a child when those things happened, agreed
to the condition and made the pact, then left the fort and disap-
peared. The next week Pedro de Arana's head was carried off to
actan. The Spaniards promptly burned a few settlements, dis-
covered the bloodstained boat in which the head had been carried
and seized a wounded man, a cripple and a few women. Then on
June 1, they had a stroke of good luck: they captured Tupas' sister-
in-law and two nieces-his brother Makyo's wife and daughters.
Makyo promptly appeared and was followed the next day by Tupas'
!L n m an ?u hei u P ! SUnkan ' and fina,1 y Tu P as himself appeared with
eight other chiefs willing to surrender. But not until July 3 did they
actually settle the formal treaty.^ 4 "
What Legazpi called a treaty was actually the terms of an uncon-
whtoH SU . rrender : li was a kind of prototype of the unequal treaties
which western nations were to fasten on Oriental peoples for the next
three centuries. It even established the sort of extraterritoriality still
pertaining to American military bases in the Philippines. Its full text
reads as follows:
Firstly, Tupas, lord of Cebu, and the chiefs of his town
submit, oblige and place themselves under the lordship and
royal crown of Don Philip the Second of Spain, our Lord, and
make themselves his vassals, promising always to be faithful to
his service and never to go against him for any cause, and to keep
his royal commands as their lord and king, and to obey those of
his governors who come to these islands in his royal name
whom they will receive, each and whenever they may come to
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 51
their island and town, in grievance or in pleasure, in peace or in
war, without any resistance or opposition, which they promise
for themselves and for their descendants who may come after
them, under the penalties that may be imposed and incurred in
case of treachery and treason to their king and lord.
Next, that the chief who killed Pedro de Arana by treachery,
one of the Governor's own men, is not included in this amnesty
and peace until such time as he appear to answer for it, whose
punishment is reserved to the Governor alone, and the said
Tupas and the other chiefs having heard it and fully understood
by means of the interpreters, they said that they so agreed and
promised and obligated themselves to comply, and offered that
if they were able to lay hands on the chief who killed Pedro de
Arana, they would bring him to be punished, and besides every-
thing referred to above, which is essential, they promised to keep
the following articles.
Next, that if Tupas and the others of his island and town
asked the Governor's favor and his men's aid against any indio
enemies of theirs with whom they were at war, the Governor
should be obligated to give them all favor and aid; and that the
said Tupas and the other chiefs, if the Governor should ask it of
them, should be obligated to accompany him against his
enemies; and that of all persons who were seized in actions in
which the indios and the Spaniards took part together, two equal
divisions should be made, the one for the Governor and the
Spaniards and the other for Tupas as his natives who took part
in such expedition.
Next, that if some indio of these islands should commit some
crime against some Spaniard, the said Tupas and chiefs should
be obliged to seize him and bring him before the Governor so
that he might give him the punishment which his crime war-
ranted, and that if some Spaniard should cause some harm or
offense against the natives, or take something from them, the
said chiefs should give notice of it to the Governor and tell him
who it was so that his lordship might punish him and make
restitution for it, if it were in his power to do so.
Next, that if some slave or other person should flee from the
camp of the Spaniards, or go into the interior where the indios
are and live, the said chiefs and natives should be obligated to
seize and bring them before the Governor, and similarly, if some
52 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
indio or india, free or slave, should come to the camp of the
Spaniards from the said indios, the said Governor promises to
order him returned and surrendered, in such wise that neither
party should deceive the other or hide anything at all.
Next, that the said natives, neither now nor at any other time,
should be able to enter the Royal Camp of the Spaniards with
any kind of arms, under pain of the offender's being punished
severely, without any excuse he might offer being accepted.
Next, the chiefs and natives shall be obliged to sell the
Spaniards from all the provisions they have from their crops at
the prices they are worth among themselves, without there being
any change in them, and similarly, the Governor orders that they
be given the goods which are brought from Spain at moderate
prices, and that after the prices are once fixed, it shall not be
possible to increase them, either by one party or the other.
All of which conditions and articles, and each one of them,
the said Tupas and the chiefs of the said island ahd town of Cebu
stated that they accepted for themselves and in the name of the
other chiefs who were absent, and that they would so keep them
and comply with them, in all and everything that is contained in
them, and that if they should transgress them or any part of them,
the Governor could punish them; all of which he, in the same
way in the name of his majesty, promised to keep and to comply
with in the name of his majesty, promised to keep and to comply
with in all that has been stated above.
All of which was agreed to before the said Fernando Riquel,
government notary, to which he attested 25
Despite its elegant wording, the results of this arrogant farce
were in fact an impasse, not a victory, for if the Cebuanos could not
dislodge the Spaniards from their fort, neither could the Spaniards
move beyond it. The fort was built in a triangle, with two sides facing
the town across an open buffer zone commanded by firearms. Rainy
weather heavy enough to render Spanish matchlocks inoperative
would also prevent a fire attack by the Cebuanos, and poisoning the
fort's water supply would be difficult and probably bring immediate
reprisal from the ships' guns. And surely the Spaniards could not be
lured into another banquet ambush. On the other hand, the
Spaniards did not have the manpower to extend their conquest and,
worse yet, were dependent on Cebuano food supplies, and although
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 53
these could be seized at gunpoint, they could not be produced by
gunfire. The Cebuanos made the obvious response by seeing to it
that none were available: they did not plant their crops that planting
season. This was a brave decision, which required the cooperation
of all chiefs and a willingness to suffer hunger themselves. It is
against this stalemate that we must consider the social dynamics
which may have affected Tupas' decision to betray Dagami.
The Stalemate
Military occupation and the annexation of territory was some-
thing new to Visayan experience and they were unprepared to meet
it. Warfare in insular Southeast Asia was largely a matter of seaborne
raids to procure labor for raising the spices, fishing the pearls,
collecting the forest products and weaving the cloth which were
traded for manufactured goods from mainland Asia. Communities
unable to intercept raiders at sea took defensive action by burning
their settlements and fleeing inland, returning to rebuild after the
raiders had departed. Political aggrandizement was effected by
trading networks based on intermarriage, both between ruling
families and between foreign merchants and their customers in
trading posts. So the son of the ruler of Manila married the daughter
of the Sultan of Brunei; Francisco Serrao raised a mestizo family in
Ternate; and Tupas was able to make use of Si Damit, Kamotuan and
Bapa Silaw— all well-informed Malay-speaking Muslims settled in
Cebu. So, too, Tupas sent his own daughter to Legazpi as a con-
cubine, but Legazpi had her baptized and married off to a Greek
caulker named Andreas Perez 26 But Tupas had no means of dealing
with three powerful sea raiders anchored in his harbor: Filipino
warships were built for speed and maneuverability, not for artillery
duels.
Tupas had no autocratic authority, nor even any fancy titles like
Rajah or Sarripada, but ruled with the consensus of his peers. When
he made his pact with Legazpi, he was accompanied by a Chief
Tumanyan, otherwise unknown, and the three of them exchanged
blood together. In his youth he appears to have been overshadowed
by an elder brother with two wives and a reputation for bravery and
wisdom, and in his old age by his younger brother (or brother-in-
law?), Makyo. When Legazpi set Tupas' submission as the condition
54 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
for releasing Makyo's wife and daughters, Makyo said he would
bring him in even if he had to seize and bind him himself. It was
Makyo and another brother named Katepan who had persuaded
Legazpi to release two Mactan fugitives who had fled to Tupas'
house, which Tupas later revealed to Legazpi with the complaint that
they had been unwilling to share the ransom money they collected.
It was Makyo who received funding from Legazpi to import rice
from Panay— gold and a small cannon— and when he returned and
Tupas claimed that one of the boats was his, Legazpi sternly told him
that it was public knowledge that the deal had been made with his
brother and that all the boats were his. And whatever the balance of
power between Cebu and Mactan may have been, Tupas and his
brothers were clearly associated with the Mactan people, including
Dagami of Gabi.
Whether Tupas' wife was actually the niece of the famous Lapu-
Iapu or not, the contemporary accounts regularly refer to the people
of Mactan as the friends, allies and relatives of the people of Cebu.
Legazpi was aware that they freely came and went in Cebu— the two
who fled to Tupas' house were crewmen of a Mactan boat ap-
prehended prowling the harbor— and that they spoke boldly of
burning the Spanish fort to the ground, but, of course, he had no way
of recognizing them. He sent Tupas to persuade them to surrender,
and hand over Dagami, but Tupas spent three days there before
returning to say the place was completely deserted and that every-
body had moved to Leyte with all their possessions. Legazpi then
ordered a hundred-man task force to go after them, but Tupas
requested them to delay until he could recall Cebu boats that had
gone to Leyte on business. When the expedition was finally ready,
Makyo volunteered his services as guide, and in Leyte led it astray
while he sent warning to the target villages. They were therefore all
deserted when the Spaniards finally arrived, and no Mactan fugitives
were ever located.
Visayan society was virile and warlike, and esteem was given
men in proportion to the number of tattoos they had won for bravery
in battle. Raiders from some other Cebu community who killed three
in an attack on the port in July called the defenders women because
they had permitted invaders to settle there, and men from Mactan
cast in their teeth the manliness with which their parents had dealt
with Magellan. Tupas even at his advanced age went out to defend
his honor, reinforced by Spanish allies, who won an immediate
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 55
reputation not only for superior arms but for the ferocity with which
they stormed the enemy settlement. They also surprised everybody
by failing to take their share of the booty and slaves. (A Filipino slave
whose escape from the Spanish fort no doubt inspired the pertinent
article in the treaty had been an outright purchase from Bornean
traders.) Probably nobody realized that the Spaniards were playing
for higher stakes, so to speak, than a few Chinese jars and bronze
gongs— namely, the entire archipelago. And they had the capital in
guns, gold and trade goods to invest in it.
The Spaniards also appeared to be lenient victors. Ransom and
captivity were normal objects of Visayan warfare, and fines and debt
servitude were normal civil penalties. Thus when Makyo appeared
to negotiate his wife's and daughters' release, he offered to meet any
price, including his own slavery. Yet he was neither fined nor
punished in any way — indeed, his ladies were released dressed in
clothes fit for Spanish royalty— and neither were any other Cebuanos
in their dealings with occupation forces, except two who had killed
Spaniards, and they received the same sentence as two Spanish
mutineers — execution. And because Legazpi wished to avoid open
warfare for both strategic and tactical reasons, Makyo concluded he
could easily be deceived and manipulated. Late in September,
Makyo contracted to fetch rice from Panay and left with an advance
in gold for 240 cavans. He did not return until the following January,
with a tale that the voyage had taken three months because of
adverse weather and that he had lost one boatload at sea. He then
persuaded Legazpi to settle for 100 cavans so as to relieve the hunger
of the Spanish king's Cebuano subjects with the rest, and while it
was being unloaded, gave short measure on the grounds that he had
had to meet a Panay price increase out of his own pocket. Legazpi
quietly accepted 90 cavans.
The bold but impractical Cebu plan to starve the Spaniards out
was already being undermined by delivery from other islands.
Muslim traders arrived from Luzon, unloaded their Chinese wares
in the fort to make cargo space for loading rice in Panay, and left
four merchants behind to do business with Cebuano and Spanish
customers: they were well-informed businessmen and hard bar-
gainers. They had met Bapa Silaw also buying rice in Panay, notified
Mindoro partners of the potential new markets in Cebu, and quoted
the prices the Spaniards had paid in Butuan back in March, and took
advantage of their seller's market to inflate prices. Direct producers
56
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami?
57
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
soon followed— eight boats from Panay at the beginning of October,
for example, and a chief named Si Umbas from Negros who was
shipwrecked on the Cebu coast and appealed to Legazpi, who
bought a local boat to send him home in. Legazpi also sent task forces
to Leyte with orders to buy rice or seize it if it was not for sale, a
persuasive argument which quickly attracted suppliers. Naturally all
these sellers swore allegiance to the Spanish Crown: the tribute
which was required for doing business with customers who paid in
hard specie and offered military protection was a small operating
expense in comparison to direct delivery to Cebu, anchorage fees,
commissions and ritual gifts to Tupas and other datus. And for Datu
Umbas of Negros to play pegawid to Legazpi's pegawidan was no
more than an ordinary example of Filipino interisland politics.
This new mercantile dispensation had obvious advantages to
Filipino chiefs outside Cebu. On the one hand, the entrepot of Cebu
would now be stocked with a greater variety of imports for sale or
barter, and, on the other, they would have no Spanish soldiers in
their own communities. For Tupas, the disadvantages were also
obvious: he would have to put up with a Spanish fort and occupation
forces and personally bear the brunt of their orders and complaints,
and he was being deprived not only of his suppliers and allies but
of the control of his harbor. Two Mindoro trading vessels that arrived
with iron, perfumes, porcelain, silk and tin requested license to trade
not from Tupas but from Legazpi, who ignored Cebuano advice to
remove their sails and rudders as was customary. A week later they
sailed on to Bohol with a passport in Spanish, but left merchants
behind to buy up Cebu goats and chickens to sell the Spaniards at a
profit. Legazpi by this time realized that Tagalog Muslims enjoyed
a virtual monopoly on the retailing of Chinese goods in the archi-
pelago, and Cebu's days as Spain's commercial outpost in the Orient
were numbered: Legazpi had already notified the "King of Luzon"
that he would like to send an embassy there. If Tupas did not know
this, and he probably did not, he might reasonably have hoped to
salvage some prestige and profit by becoming the chief compradore
in a colonial capital. But not, of course, if his authority was being
challenged by a man like Dagami of Gabi.
By the time the Cebuanos let their second planting season pass,
the stalemate was nonetheless breaking in Spanish favor. It may be
considered to have ended with the arrival of the San Geronimo with
reinforcements from Mexico on 15 October 1566, and word that the
ship Legazpi had sent out in June 1565 had reached there safely.
Cebu now was in fact the eastern outpost of Spanish empire. The
following month an event occurred which may well have been the
deciding factor in Tupas' deliberations — the return of the Portuguese.
The Ternatan-Portuguese raid of 1562 had been such a traumatic
experience that Filipino communities regularly took to the hills at
the least rumor of their approach, or the presence of anybody who,
like the Spaniards, looked like them. Thus when fishermen dis-
covered a Portuguese fleet off the Mindoro coast only 180 kilometers
from Cebu, and two small Portuguese vessels actually took refuge
in a Mactan cove, Cebu was completely evacuated. Legazpi flushed
out the two in Mactan, the others were caught in a storm, all of them
had left Philippine waters by the end of December, and hostilities
were limited to an exchange of bombastic notes. But the incident
must have put the thought in Tupas' mind that Spanish occupation
might be the lesser of two evils.
The Decision
Considering all the factors suggested by the contemporary ac-
counts, Tupas' situation at the end of 1566 may be summarized as
follows:
Economically, he had no access to gold mines, forest exports or
harbor fees, and was dependent on outside sources for food. Politi-
cally, he had no autocratic control and had lost most of his allies to
an enemy with blood compacts in Bohol, Leyte, Panay, Negros and
Samar, beneficiaries in Cebu, and trans-Pacific communications with
his home base. Militarily, he had no options: he would be held
accountable for any show of hostility, and even a suicidal attack on
the enemy garrison would be pointless unless he could neutralize
three powerful warships. Culturally, he had family or barangay ties
with the most outspoken proponents of resistance, and was probably
worried about the power of ani to- figures and spirits of the dead.
Personally, he was an old man whose leadership was threatened by
younger men of greater vigor, and he was directly or indirectly guilty
of the betrayal, death, sale or enslavement of enemies now in a
position to take revenge. In short, resistance was unrealistic, recal-
citrance dangerous, and cooperation promising: unless he was
willing to abandon Cebu permanently, accommodation was called
58
59
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
for. Predictable disadvantages were the loss of political primacy,
commercial income and the respect of his peers, the odium of failing
or betraying his people, and the risk of retaliation by competitors.
Probable advantages were the preservation of the paramount chief-
taincy of a trading port, reliable military support against local
enemies and protection against foreign predators, and a share in the
profits of a farflung commercial empire.
We do not know how often Dagami came to Cebu "on business"
but we know what that business was— fomenting revolt. January of
1567 would have been a good time for it: since December 19, more
than half the garrison force had been scattered along the coasts of
Leyte in small boats looking for rice. During their absence, two men
were poisoned inside the fort by Cebuana wine-sellers and three
others brought to the point of death. (Legazpi's sentries told him
frankly they would rather die of poison than give up drinking.)
Legazpi sent for Tupas and his fellow datus and delivered an impas-
sioned harangue. He was simply amazed, he said, "that in return for
so many and such good deeds as he had done for them and was doing
every day, such good will and love as he had for them and had been
showing them, they would make such villainous repayment, and
that there were such evil men among them that they would venture
to put poison, or order it put, in the wine they sold the Spaniards." 27
When the chiefs proclaimed their innocence and promised to
find and punish the guilty persons, Legazpi said their own guilt
could only be absolved by delivering the culprits to him. So, the fol-
lowing day, Tupas handed over two women who, under torture,
implicated two others: three of them were sentenced to flogging and
deportation, and the fourth to death. The one condemned requested
baptism before being beheaded, and so died with the names of God
and the Virgin Mary on her lips. Then her body was drawn and
quartered and displayed along the road from the Cebuano settlement
to the fort. That afternoon Tupas betrayed Dagami to Legazpi.
It was probably an easy decision.
Notes
1
The major sources for this paper are four collections of contem-
porary documents, cited as follows: (1) CVD: Martin Fernandez
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami?
Navarette, Coleccion de los Viagesy Descubrimientos que hicieron
por Mar los Espanoles desde Fines del Siglo XV, 5 vols. (Madrid,
1825-1837); (2) CDIA: Coleccion de Documentos ineditos relativos al
Descubrimiento, Conquista y Colonization de las Posesiones
espaholes en America y Oceania, sacada en su mayor Parte del Real
Archivo de Indias, 42 vols. (Madrid, 1864-1866); (3) CDIU: Coleccion
de Documentos ineditos relativos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y
Organization de las antiguas Posesiones espanoles de Ultramar, 13
vols. (Madrid, 1885-1932); and (4) HPAF: Isacio Rodnguez, Historia
de la Provincia agustiniana del Smo. Nombre de Jesus de Filipinas,
15 vols (Manila, 1965-1981). T. Valentino Sitoy, Jr., gives a complete
listing of those documents pertaining to the 16th-century Philippines
in The Initial Encounter, vol. 1 of his A History of Christianity in the
Philippines (Quezon City, 1985), pp. 349-367, a bibliographic service
which will place all future historians of this period in his debt. Other
sources are cited where appropriate.
2 CDIU 3:210-211.
3 M dejong, Um Roteiro inedito de Circumnavegacao de Fernao
de Magalhaes (Coimbra, 1927), p. 20. The originaljnanuscript, un-
signed but entitled, " Viage de Fernao de Magalhaes escripta p hu
home q foi na copanhia— Voyage of Ferdinand Magellan written by
a man who was in the crew," was found in the library of the
University of Leiden. Since it has not been published in English, I
offer the following translation of the pertinent passage:
They found many islands populated with people wearing
clothes and governed by kings in the manner of the Malays. Among
these islands they found one large one called Cebu in which four
kings reigned, one of whom ruled the eastern part where there was
a port and city called Caybo. FernSo de Magalhaes entered this port
with his ships on the last of February of the year 1521. As soon as he
entered, he ordered the ships' guns fired, at which many people
rushed to the beach with spears and shields and swords; and the
king, who was present, sent at once to ask the captain who he was,
and from what land or people, and what he came seeking. The
captain replied that he was Fernao de Magalhaes, captain of the King
of Castile, from which place he had come to offer peace and
friendship in order to trade as friends in those lands. The king
responded that he was very happy, but that peace must be made.
60
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
61
that the custom of that land was that they both had to draw blood
from their breast, he and the captain, and take it in their mouths, the
one from the other, and with this a lasting and mutual peace would
be made. The captain said he was willing to do so, and so they did
it and became friends and brothers. Once the peace or friendship was
made, they sent many provisions to the ship, and the captains
ordered some merchandise taken ashore so those of the land might
select what they wanted and so enjoy better trade.
And he ordered on the first Sunday following, that they should
say mass ashore for all those of the fleet to hear, and so that those of
that land would be moved to devotion on seeing the method of our
sacrifices. And so it was that, by the grace of God, the king and queen,
his wife, and some of the chiefs of the realm were converted on that
Sunday and asked for baptism, and during the following week, the
major part of the realm was converted. And since it seemed to Fernao
de Magalhaes that he had hit on an opportunity for the other kings
to be converted, he sent to tell them that they should become Chris-
tians or give obedience to the Christian king, or otherwise he would
make war on them and burn their lands and the palm groves off
which they supported themselves. Two of them gave their obedience
to the Christian king for fear of the damage he could do, but the other
sent word that he was unwilling to do either of the things he ordered
him and that if he should make war on him, he would defend
himself.
On receiving this reply, FernSo de Magalhaes undertook to do
him some damage or humble him, and decided to set out for that
land with some armed men and make a strike in his lands, as in fact
he did set out with 70 men with arquebuses, and commenced to burn
houses and cut palm trees. At this, the king took steps to defend his
land with many people, and gave battle against him; but so long as
our gunpowder lasted, those of that land did not dare to close with
them; but when it was used up, they surrounded us on all sides, and
since they were incomparably more numerous, they prevailed, and
our men were not able to defend themselves or escape, and, fighting
until they were exhausted, some died, and Fernao de Magalhaes
among them, who, when he was alive, did not want the king his
friend to aid him with his men who were there at that time, saying
that with divine favor, the Christians would be enough to conquer
that whole rabble. But when he was dead, the king rushed in and
saved those many who were wounded and ordered them carried
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami?
back to the ships, because he was afraid that all those other friends
of his would get together and seize them.
4 Antonio Pigafetta, Primo Viaggio in tor no al Mondo, text in
Emma H. Blair and James A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands
1493-1898, vol. 33 (Cleveland, 1905), p. 164.
5 Antonio Blazquez y Delgado Aguilera, Libro que trata del
Descubrimien to y Principio del Estrecho que se llama de Magallanes
por Gines deMafra (Madrid, 1922), p. 198. According to Rodrigo de
Aganduru Moriz in 1624, presumably writing from a lost account by
Martin de Islares, "Maruma [i.e., Kolambu] took Bernard de la Torre
to his house, regaled him grandly, and served him off porcelain and
other European ware" O'Historia General de las Islas occidentales a
la Asia adyacentes llamadas Philippinas," Coleccion de Documenta
i heditos para la Historia de Espaha, vol. 79 [Madrid, 1882], p. 511.
6 Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, Segunda Parte de la
natural y general Historia de las Indias Yslas y Tierra Firme del Mar
Oceano (Valladolid, 1552), fol. viii verso. Oviedo, official historiog-
rapher of the Indies, critically compared Elcano's personal account
with those of Pigafetta and Transylvanus. Portuguese historian
Gaspar Correa, who was in India when the survivors of Magellan's
flagship arrived there, got the same impression, and referred to the
Cebuanos in his Lendas da India as "well disposed people who had
a king, a people well treated who were at war with other neighbors
who were more powerful" ( Lendas da India por Gaspar Correa
[Rodrigo Jose de Lima Felner et, Lisbon, 1860], vol. 2, p. 630.)
7 M. de Jong, op. cit., p. 21.
8 Pigafetta, op. cit., pp. 174-180.
9 Maximilianus Transylvanus, De Moluccis insulis, translated in
Blair and Robertson, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 324.
10 Blazquez, op. cit., p. 200.
11 M. de Jong, op. cit, loc. cit.
12 CVD 5:424-425.
13 Pigafetta, op. cit., p. 183.
14 M. de Jong, op. cit., loc. cit.
62 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
15 CVD 5:424.
16 Pigafetta, op. cit., p. 114.
17m
"Navegagam e vyagem que fez Fernao de Magalhaes de Sevilha
pera Maluco no anno de 1519 annos," Collecao de Noticias para a
His tori a e Geografia das Nacoes ultramarines que vivem nos
Dominios portuguezes, tomo 4, num 1 (Lisboa, 1826), p. 164.
18
The treaty was made by Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa and
Sabastian de Elcano with Tuan Maamud, lord of Palawan and a
vassal of the Sultan of Brunei, his brother Guantail and son Tuan
Maamad on 1 October 1521, and its terms were "declared to the said
Tuan Maamud and his brother and son by a Moro who understood
something of our Castilian language, which Moro was taken in the
junk of the King of Luzon." ("El libro que trajo de nao Vitoria de las
amnistades que hicieron con los Reyes de Malucos 1521," text in
Mauricio Obregon, La primera Vuelta al Mundo [Bogota, 1984], p.
300). Aganduru Moriz, presumably writing from an eye-witness
account now lost, says that this slave was a native of Macassar (op.
cit., vol. 78, p. 60).
19
"Navegagam e vyagem," p. 169.
20
Decada terceira de Asia de Ioao de Barros dos feitos os Por-
tugueses fezerao no Descobrimien to & Conquista dos Mares & Terras
de Oriente (Lisboa, 1628), livro 5, fols. 139-140.
Antonio San Roman, Historia de la India Oriental (Valladolid,
1603), p. 480.
22
Ibid., p. 493; and Antonio Galvao, Tratado dos Descobrimien tos
antigos, e modernos (1563; 3rd ed. Porto, 1731), p. 256; and Da Asia
de foao de Barros (new ed., Lisboa, 1777), Decada IV, liv. ix, cap.
xx vi.
Francisco Combes, Historia de Mindanao, Jolo y sus Adyacentes
(Madrid, 1667; Retana ed., 1897), p. 33/34.
24 Two contemporary accounts give this date as June 4, but an
official document notarized by officers of the Royal Treasury states,
"On the third of July of the said year [1565], seven varas [about six
meters] of brown damask were given out by order of his lordship,
to make clothing for Tupas, lord of the town of Cebu, when he came
Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami? 63
to give obedience in the name of his majesty, and make peace" (HPAF
13:508n., 1560).
2 5 The original notarized document has not survived, but copies
appear, with slight variation in wording, in CDIU 3:101-103, and
Lorenzo Perez, "Un codice desconocido, relativo a las Islas Filipinas,"
Erudicion I be ro- Ultra marina 4 (1933):15-16, 510-511; and an
abridged version appears in Gaspar de San Agustin, Conquistas de
las Islas Filipinas (Madrid, 1698, Merino ed., 1975), pp. 221-222.
26 The contemporary account refers to this woman as Tupas' niece,
but she was probably his daughter by a secondary wife inasmuch as
her son. Sergeant Francisco Bayon— probably the three-year-old
child she had at the time of her marriage— identified his mother in
testimony sworn in 1645 as "Dona Isabel Perez . . . daughter of the
King of Cebu who was the first native who married a Spaniard for
the settling of Manila" (Jesus Gayo Aragon, introduction to Doctrina
Christiana: primer Libro impreso en Filipinas [Manila, 1951], p. 27).
27 CDIU 3:208-209.
The Conquerors as Seen by the Conquered
65
THE CONQUERORS AS SEEN BY THE CONQUERED
Translator's Introduction. In 1983, Father Cayetano Sanchez Fuertes,
OFM, published chapter 61 of Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora's "Historia
de la perdida y descubrimiento del galeon San Phelipe con el
glorioso martirio de los gloriosos martires del Japon" in the Archivo
Ibero-Americano, vol. 43, pp. 357-363, making use of a copy in the
Archivo Ibero-Oriental, Madrid, of the original document which
appears in the Lilly Library (Bloomington, Indiana), MS Fol. 13. The
very appropriate title translated above, "Los conquistadores vistos
por los conquistados," was supplied by Father Cayetano.
Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora was a lay brother of the Franciscan
Order who arrived in the Philippines in April or May of 1594,
preached the Gospel in Camarines, and was then sent to Japan in
1595 to investigate the Franciscan-Jesuit controversy there, returning
the same year to write his report. On 20 March 1596, he sailed for
Mexico on the ill-starred galleon San Felipe which, overloaded with
a valuable cargo and crowded with passengers, was caught in a
series of storms, lost her rudder and most of her rigging, but man-
aged to make the coast of Shikoku. There, Japanese boats came out
from Hirado and offered to tow her into port, but deliberately ran
her aground on a shoal and confiscated her cargo. Her crew and
passengers were thus in Japan when the famous martyrdoms of 2
February 1597 took place in Nagasaki on nearby Kyushu. Fray Juan
himself managed to get to Macao on a Portuguese vessel and left for
Spain again the next year. He made two more trips to the Philippines
in 1602 and 1609, and died in Spain in 1614 or 1615.
Among Fray Juan's fellow passengers on the San Felipe was a
Bikolano Christian by the name of Tomas with whom he struck up
an acquaintance, and chapter 61 of his "Perdida y descubrimiento"
is the account of a dialogue between them in Hirado after their
misfortunes. Of particular interest is the inclusion of the Spanish
translation of a Bikolano letter originally written in Philippine script,
from a chieftain of Gumaca (in Quezon Province today) named
Panpanga to his brother Antonio Simaon, Tomas' friend.
In the translation offered here, I render indio as Filipino, respell
Umaca as Gumaca and Urando as Hirado, but leave tingue ("moun-
tains," from Malay tinggi, "high") as it appears in the original.
The poor man, having done with his doleful and zealous sob-
bing, looked up and saw a Filipino coming in sight with a load of
firewood from deeper in the mountain, with whom he had a great
friendship, and when he got where he was and recognized him, he
stopped with the firewood and said:
"Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ. Why so sad, brother?"
"May he always be praised, brother," he replied. "To explain
whence my sadness comes, I ask: who has ever seen such afflic-
tions as our Lord has laid on us since we set out from Manila and
yet we are so ungrateful that if has made no impression in our
hearts?"
"True," said the Filipino, for he knew how to speak Spanish well.
"We are an untamed people. God help us and soften our hearts. How
much better it would be, brother, had our bodies been drowned in
the midst of those typhoons! For then at least our hearts would have
been contrite through our fear and with the confessions we were
forced to make, for now it appears that on land we go about our
business all forgetful of what was promised to God, for it is a great
sorrow to see with what little fear they behave even among these
Japanese foreigners."
"Certainly," said the Spaniard, "it would be sensible for
them to give a good example, since most of these wish to become
Christians."
"Many refrain from becoming such," said the Filipino, ,f because
they see little peace and little brotherhood in the Spaniards. Most of
them think that on becoming Christians they would live like this. I
know a Filipino called Panpanga from my place, from whom I have
a letter he wrote to a brother of his to our shame, in which he gives
an account of the reasons he did not become a Christian."
"I would be very pleased to hear it," said the Spaniard.
So, taking the letter out of his shirt, he said:
"Here it is in Tagalog letters. Let's go to town and on the way I'll
explain the circumstances which led this Filipino to write it, and then
I'll translate it into Spanish."
66
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
The Conquerors as Seen by the Conquered
67
So, as they started down the mountain and came out on the plain,
the Filipino said:
"When I came from Gumaca, which is on the opposite coast [from
Manila}, where I am a native, a Filipino chieftain came with me called
Simaho. We reached Manila, where we became Christians. This Fili-
pino had a brother and sister in our town, and with the light which
he now had of Heaven, he bewailed his past darkness, because he
was a man naturally good. And remembering his brother and sister
with the great desire that they become Christians, he wrote them a
letter in which he advised them that they should understand that if
they did not become Christians they would go to Hell, and prayed
them to come to Manila and stay in his house— for he was now
married— and be baptized and then they could return to our town.
After reading the devout Filipino's letter, his brother and sister came
to Manila at once and went and put up in their brother's house, who
admonished them every day and taught them our law. The sister,
called Aliway, was quickly converted because she didn't go out of
the house, and was named Catalina. But the brother, called Pan-
panga, on the contrary, he could not persuade to be converted, and
despite everything he said, his brother was unmoved and held his
peace, though sometimes he would say, "Very well, we'll think it over
carefully." And so he would go out every day and take a walk around
Manila.
"He went through the Parian of the Chinese and Japanese and
noted what was going on. Other times he went through the market-
place and went into the governor's palace and took careful note
of the behavior of the soldiers there; he went upstairs with
some other Filipinos, for a Filipino had come there from Gumaca to
file a case, and thus he saw the methods of those clerks and other
soliciters. Sometimes he also looked in and saw what the Filipinos
were answering in the suits filed against them in the Audien-
cia. He entered the churches and carefully observed the way
they prayed and sang and the rest of the ceremonies performed in
those temples. Then he would return to his brother's house in
the evening, who would ask him how Manila struck him and how
soon he expected to become a Christian. Panpanga would respond
to him in few words for he was a judicious man, 'Brother, the things
which seem good to me are few and those which seem evil many.
Let us go on thinking it over carefully, for I see few good deeds but
many good words with bad deeds/
"So in this way he stayed half a year in his brother's house, and
when the time came that the cargo arrived for the galleons Santo
Tomas and Santa Potenciana, Panpanga went around observing the
trafficking and disorder in Manila during those days. Sometimes he
entered the churches and found them deserted. And, eager to see the
ships themselves, he told his brother he would go to Cavite and see
the ships where they brought so many goods. But when he reached
the port of Cavite and saw the great confusion and the many oaths
and greed with which they went about unloading, he was
frightened."
"How much more," said the Spaniard, "that Filipino would have
been frightened at the loading of this sad ship we took before it broke
up! Never did I see such confusion."
And he began to cry again, saying:
"Ah, woe to you, Manila! When will you ever set your affairs in
order! Ay, false deceivers, schemers, fabricators of bribes, outbidders
by the ton! Oh, who could denounce them, one from the other!"
Don't make yourself miserable, my brother," replied the Filipino,
"for they have already paid dearly for it."
"I would like them to feel it in their souls so they would reform
—that's why I'm crying. Because that wealth— He who gave it took
it away, and He will give it again and take it away yet again until
no more ships be seen on this earth bearing the names of apostles
but made into dens of thieves, and in my mind this is so painful to
me I don't even want to remember it, for it seems to me useless when
we have the cause of our misfortune right before our eyes."
"Never mind, brother: the best thing is to commend it to God.
But, to get back to the Filipino from my place—
"The day he went to see how the galleon was being loaded, he
returned to Manila frightened, arriving in the afternoon, and, pass-
ing down a street near Santo Domingo, in a house I know very well,
he saw that they were making bales and tying them with rattan at
great speed, and a Spaniard pushing the Filipinos so much that
Panpanga stopped to watch, and after he was there a little while
watching the great care he was putting into the work, the owner
happened to look up toward the door and saw two or three Filipinos
watching what he was doing, and he came out very angry but very
68
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
The Conquerors as Seen by the Conquered
69
slyly and suddenly grabbed Panpanga, for the others saw him
coming, and pulled him inside and told him to help those Filipinos
get the work done quicker and he would pay him for it. Since
Panpanga was a Filipino chieftain, he told him he didn't know how
to do that kind of work, and the Spaniard, whom I know very well,
punched him three or four times and told him, 'I'll get you a teacher.'
And he pushed him inside without listening to him and closed him
up in a room with three other Filipinos and kept him there for four
days, when, by -dint of slaps and kicks and being pushed around by
the neck, he became an expert in short order.”
;d\
”As they do every day," said the Spaniard. "And did he pay him
afterwards?" '■
"Yes, for after he had finished,” said the Filipino, "because Pan-
panga asked for his wages, he gave him for the four days two kicks,
not counting the blows he had already received. And then, to salve
his conscience, he ordered him given a ganta of rice, and when the
Filipino didn't want it, gave him a slap in the face. And since it
looked as he if was going to lock him up again in the room, the
Filipino gave a leap and got out on the street and went to his brother's
house, who, on seeing him so thin and changed, asked him why he
had stayed so long in Cavite.
"It was five days ago I left Manila, and a Spaniard got me and
kept me in his house for four of them, where the pay he gave me was
blows. And if you don't believe it, look where he punched me this
morning/
"'Have patience/ said his brother, 'because for us this is the path
to Heaven/
"And, since his brother Panpanga was so judicious, he said, 'And
for the Spaniards, what is the path?'
"'If they are bad/ said Simaon, who is now called Antonio, 'they
will go to Hell, and those who are good will go to the glory of
Heaven/
"'But where are those good ones that I don't see them?'
"'Don't you see all the religious, those who serve God by day and
by night?'
"'So, tell me, brother/ said Panpanga, 'is your God and that of
the friars one and that of the Spaniards another?'
"'No, brother/ said Simoan. 'Because everybody has one God
and there is no other/
"'So how is it that most of them speak evil of their God?'
'"How do they speak evil?' said his brother.
"'Suppose you go to Cavite and you will see how bad they treat
their God. Otherwise, go to the house of that Spaniard where I went,
and you will see how he treats Him/
M/ Do not think/ said his brother, 'that when they swear or curse
and make some oath they are speaking evil of the God by this/
"1 cannot believe that they are saying good, because what they
say, they say very angry. Therefore, my brother, you stay here with
your God for I am going to go back to my tingues.'
"And, so saying and doing, he left his brother's house. And for
all that he begged him to stay, he could not persuade him, nor did
he wish to take his sister back again, either, because she was a
Christian. Thus he left for our town of Gumaca, and feeling that he
was not safe even there because it was a port which the Spaniards
regularly frequented coming or going to Camarines and the Bicol
River, he crossed the gulf of the sea in front of Gumaca and went up
into the tingues where he had his heritage and fields. And in such
manner did he excite the hearts of the Filipinos with his arrival, that
all those whom he met he not only told not to become Christians,
but even to avoid going to Manila."
"Oh, holy God!" said the Spaniard. 'What damage the Spaniards
do with their bad example and evil living!"
"The damage they do is such," said the Filipino, "that the
religious who went to Gumaca afterwards had the greatest labor
they had in all the islands to reduce those Filipinos: it seemed to them
that they had come to deceive them and, if it had not been for the
great love and friendliness which they saw in the friars of Saint
Francis, I believe there would not have been one Christian convert,
so frightened and excited were they with what Panpanga told them.
And he, after seeing himself free among those mountains, wrote a
letter to his brother, which he then gave to me."
"I would be very pleased to see it," said the Spaniard.
"Here, I have it," said the Filipino. "And once we reach Hirado,
we will read it after eating and I will translate for you."
With this, they arrived at the town at the time when the Pilot
Major had just arrived from Miaco [Kyoto] and told what he had
seen, with which he frightened all the Spaniards no little.
70
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
It was already two in the afternoon when the Spaniard, eager to
hear the letter, left his lodgings after taking a little rest and went to
Tomas s— for so the Filipino was called— amd told him to read him
the letter.
"I have to go and get firewood for the ship now, so on the way
I will read it to you."
"Very well," said the Spaniard.
So the two of them went together. And, taking the letter from his
shirt, he read it aloud, translating it into Castilian, since he knew it
very well.
(Letter from Panpanga to his brother Antonio):
It will be almost a year ago that I received a letter from you,
and went there as soon as I saw it, together with your sister— for
she is no longer mine, since she is a Christian, and let herself be
misled like a woman. But I, as a man, know how to think
carefully before I act, and so I went to your Manila, looking
around and observing what went on, and all I can tell you is that
never have I seen men of more war and less peace among
themselves than the Spaniards. (
Half a year I was in that place, and rarely did I see quarreling
among the Chinese and Japanese. And as for us, you know very
well how few quarrels we have. And although in ancient times
we used to make war among ourselves, since the Spaniards
came, we have all lived in peace and they were left with the
fighting. In half a year I saw quarrels there in Manila more than
a hundred times, and the one day I went to Cavite, I saw more
than six arguments among those on the galleon. And some
Spaniards killed two other Spaniards in just half a year. When I
went through Parian, I found Spaniards quarreling with the
Chinese every day, and because they did not give them their
goods for what they wanted, they would threaten them with
violence, and kick and slap them and grab them by the neck, and
call them queers, cuckolds, thieves, traitors, dogs, Moras,’ and
other names for which there are no words among us, and us they
called carabaos. J
Sometimes I also went to the governor's house and saw the
soldiers there under arms who were always gambling and speak-
ing evil of their God, and this as angry as if they were crocodiles.
The Conquerors as Seen by the Conquered
71
so wild they were.
1 also went up into the governor's house and saw others who
were writing as clerks, and, as you know, in the law suit which
one from our town filed, they took twelve pesos for just two or
three papers which he made, and as for me, they took my gold
chain and because I defended it, kicked me, besides what that
Spaniard gave me which I told you.
You often told me that your God orders them not to steal or
do evil nor covet anybody else's goods. Either you lied to me
when you said that or your God orders the opposite, because I
saw Spaniards in the marketplace stealing whatever they could
from the Chinese, and also not wanting to pay them for what
they had bought.
I also saw with what great greed they went to unload the
galleon, doing much harm to the Filipinos during that time, and
then also speaking evil of God.
Once I saw some priests quarreling inside the church, and a
Spaniard killed near it, and therefore I tell you that from here
on, don't you or your sister call yourselves my brother and sister,
but, myself, I want to go up to the tingues and walk through
these mountains and, as is my nature, eat camote roots and
bananas in peace among these carabaos and deer, and here I will
remain with my natural friends.
’This, brother, is a summary of what this letter contains from the
Filipino Panpanga, which, though not very well composed, at least
shows him to be of good intellect' 1
’’Truly, brother,” said the Spaniard, "in a few words he tells the
truth of everything that goes on in Manila. God reform it by his
mercy and bring them to true repentance, and convert this Filipino
who wrote the letter to become a Christian, for I am certain that he
would be a good one if he were.”
”He already is, and such that there is none better in the whole
land.” . . „
"Oh, what a joy to hear! But how did he become a Christian?’
"I learned it about a year ago from his brother Antonio, and it
was like this. When the friars of Saint Francis reached Gumaca and
learned that many Filipinos were roaming around those mountains,
they went to look for them, and, coming across Panpanga, showed
him such love and told him so many things that he came to town.
72
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
and there, when he saw the holy life of the friars and there were no
Spaniards to impede it, he became a Christian helped by the Grace
of God, and was the cause of many other Filipinos coming down, for
they had great love for him, and thus Gumaca was settled and is now
one of the best towns on the opposite coast because of the many who
have come down from the tingues and the mountains."
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY TAGALOG TECHNOLOGY
FROM THE VOCABULARIO DE LENGUA TAGALO
OF PEDRO DE SAN BUENAVENTURA, O.F.M.
A SERIOUS shortcoming of the Spanish colonial documents which
form the basis for 16th-century Philippine historiography is that they
do not describe the technology by which Filipinos exploited the
resources of their archipelago. Administrative and missionary cor-
respondence, as well as occasional treatises on Filipino culture, refer
frequently enough to commodities like rice and textiles as objects of
tribute, but do not reveal the methods by which they were produced.
Moreover, the Philippine islands even today contain hundreds of
thousands of pieces of valuable Chinese porcelains imported over a
period of half a millenium. What technology supported an economy
which could participate so vigorously in the international commerce
of Asia, and attract imperialist invasion from the other side of the
globe?
Fortunately, the early Spanish dictionaries of Philippine lan-
guages make it possible to answer this question. For the lexi-
cographer, unlike the colonial office-holder or friar proselytizer, has
to define all the terms he collects whether he is personally interested
in the subject to which they pertain or not. Thus, the names which
he records for the individual parts of the loom enable us to
reconstruct the Filipino weaving technique, while the absence of
indigenous terms for potter's wheels or plows strongly suggests that
these items were either completely wanting or introduced too recent-
ly to have influenced native nomenclature. Moreover, since the
dictionaries were produced by missionaries for the use of other
missionaries, they are free of the deliberate distortions to which
official correspondents were frequently tempted for the purpose of
their own interests though, of course, they may contain errors due
to the ignorance or misunderstanding of the lexicographer himself.
The earliest Tagalog dictionary extant, and one of the best during
the whole Spanish period, is Pedro de San Buenaventura's
Vocabulario de lengua tagala el romance Castellano presto primero
74
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Sixteenth-Century Tagalog Technology . . .
75
(Vocabulary of the Tagalog language with Castilian Romance (given
first), printed by Filipinos Tomas Pinpin and Domingo Loag in Pila,
Laguna Province, ina 1613. Father San Buenaventura was a Francis-
can friar who arrived in the Philippines in the middle of the last
decade of the 16th century, and from 1597 to 1611 was assigned to
such villages as Paete, Nagcarlan, and Santa Cruz on the shores of
Laguna de Bay, including Siniloan on the northeastern foothills
frontier, before completing his lexicon in Pila. He probably had
access to a manuscript dictionary by his famous predecessor, Fran-
ciscan tagalist Francisco Plasencia, which has not survived, and his
own varied stations enabled him to assign geographic limitations to
certain words with annotations like "M" for Manila or "T" for the hill
folk of the "tingues."
In using the 1613 Vocabulario to reconstruct 16th-century
Tagalog technology, it is well to be aware that languages change to
meet changing conditions, and that, therefore, not all terms neces-
sarily reflect older conditions, and that some may have shifted
meaning to accommodate new introductions. Fray Pedro defines
al-al, for example, as tooth-filing with a stone tool (and inveighs
against the custom, "Whoever files his teeth, I will surely punish"),
but his printer, Tomas Pinpin, in his 1610 Spanish grammar for
Tagalogs, Librong pagaaralan nang manga tagalog nang uicang
castila, uses it to mean any kind of file. Again, the limited use of
firearms at the time of the Spanish advent is indicated by the use of
imported terms like alcabus (Spanish arquebus), astingal (Malay
istanggar) or baril, a Malay word ultimately derived from Por-
tuguese. On the other hand, with 13 terms for rice and 22 varieties
of dry rice alone, and 11 words for planting, five for fields, and six
for transplanting, we may safely conclude that the cultivation of both
swidden and irrigated rice was an integral part of late 16th-century
Tagalog economy.
With these considerations in mind, the following summary of
16th-century Tagalog technology is presented. For the convenience
of the modern reader, the Vocabulario' s orthography has been
modified by changing c, cq and qu to k, and v to w, but no attempt
has been made to differentiate u from o or final r from d, or to insert
glottals (which Father San Buenaventura sometimes represents as
w— e.g., ta wo for tao).
* * * * *
Agriculture. The staple food crops are tubers and rice, though millet
is common enough for fine jeweller's work to be called "millet-
like"— da wadawa. Six major root crops are distinguished; ubi, tugi,
gabi (whose greens are called lain or awtias), kamote (’’they didn't
have them before"), and two wild ones— lakas and namL Kara taw is
a variety of quick-maturing rice, but is also the general name for 22
varieties of dry rice. All these crops are grown in swiddens. In
addition, the extent of gardening and arboriculture is indicated by
such specialized terms as akna, a pot for nursing seeds for trans-
planting, or suyak, spikes driven into palm-tree trunks to protect the
fruit against animals, and the presence of machines like the alilisan
sugar mill and hapitan coco oil press.
Swiddens. Saka is the general term for field work, and tabtab is to
work fields on level ground (called parang) by removing grasses,
etc. Pokan, felling trees for swiddening, is stated to be a hill-dwellers'
term, and so is Iawag f "to look for fields to farm every year as
Tinguians do." Kaingin is cutting branches, pagsisiga burning, pan-
ting removing roots, and dolok, piling up for a second burning.
Gosar is to prepare a field in subsequent years, mainly by pulling up
the roots of harvested grain, and kohit is to uproot grass with a
broad-pointed stick. Bakal is a mountaineer's planting stick for
drilling holes, and baligway and balway are digging sticks for root
crops. Various signs indicate claim to work a certain site— sangab r
watawat and lawag— or to mark the boundary of a field— banga.
Bukir is to plant rice in swiddens, borbor to drop seeds in the holes,
and golamas to weed between the stalks of growing rice.
Irrigation. Rice is also grown under irrigation by a sophisticated,
labor-intensive method. To open a new pond field is bagbag, and to
channel water through canals is alolor or salolo, the latter being the
actual bamboo or palm-tree conduits. The preparation of a field
already harvested begins with hapaw , removing last year's stalks
and roots, by hapay, cutting the straw and throwing it down, and
himono, pulling up any roots still fixed, to be followed later by
kamkam, removing newly sprouted weeds. Then comes timbonin r
piling up, followed by palispis and pagi cleaning, which leaves the
field ready for planting after the soil has been soaked, without
plowing. Pinpin and bongton are dividing mounds which serve both
as boundaries and pathways, and pilapil are ones made by piling up
76
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Sixteenth-Century Tagalog Technology . * .
77
debris from the field itself. Tarak are stakes set as dividing markers,
and ali is to move them surreptitiously. The motivation for such
movement is reflected in terms like banli and iwi, the rent or profit
off a field, or bintang, "a mortgage such that while it is unredeemed
the debtor and the one who gave the money divide the field every
year.”
Transplanting. Seeding and transplanting is accomplished in five
distinct phases. First, the seeds are soaked in a sack called baloyot
until they germinate, whereupon they are transferred to a basket to
put out roots. Next comes dapog, placing them on innundated
banana leaf trays until the roots are long enough for transplanting.
Third is pa Jan, transplanting them into the field, matted together,
"for the first time,” and next is ponla or salip, transplanting them the
second time "by small handfuls." Fifth and last is dorol, transplant-
ing for the third time by individual seedlings, inserting them into the
soil with a tool called a pandoroL Once the plants begin to bear
heads, scarecrows are placed in the fields of wickerwork or palm-
leaf pendants kept moving by the wind —pamanay, balian, paJawit,
salidangdang, bankiaw, or pakanlog, and bugawan huts may be
constructed to shelter persons who stay there to drive birds away.
Harvesting itself is done stalk by stalk with a pan-ani knife or a
blade of wood about 20 cm. long called gapas— and day wages for
such labor is called nolang.
Fishing. Both coastal and inland waters are exploited for their
protein content in a variety of ways. To fish with a certain kind of
small net is sima, or with a long net at river mouths, Jamba t , while
saJap is a purse sein. Casting nets vary in size of mesh for different
species— e.g., pamanak for skates and panamaw for conger
eels— while their lead sinkers are barondala . Basket traps include the
salakarr-' '’wide below with many prongs and narrow above with a
hole for inserting the hand to get the fish"— or the Laguna bobo, for
which channels ( boboban ) are specially constructed. Fish-trap cor-
rals are placed in mountain streams {tain), in canals (bangkat or the
longer and larger bankatan), or along the seacoast ( posor ) where
fish are trapped when the tide goes out. Biwas is to fish with hooks,
nilay with hook and line, pa taw with hook-loaded rattan lines
extended at sea or in rivers, while binwit, siit and banyugan are cane
rods with hooks attached. Under favorable conditions, it is possible
to spear fish with harpoons like the bolos with barbs or the three-
pronged saJapang . . Tangar is to fish by moonlight to locate the
schools before dropping the net, and ilaw by torchlight. And tuba is
defined as a tree whose fruit when rotten "makes fish drunk."
Hunting. To go hunting with spears— or firearms, when the
Spaniards provided them— is akar, and if accompanied by hounds,
nangangaso. If the dogs are used to drive game into nets, that is
bating, and nets for wild boar may be as long as 60 meters. Balaon
or baton pits are dug for large animals with bamboo spikes set in the
bottom, but more effective are bamboo spring-powered automatic
crossbows or arbalests set along runs frequented by game. BaJatik
and balais are the general terms, with paraigbeing designed for pigs
and deer, or even dogs; pasolo for carabao, and tagin, one with a
certain specialized design. Small arbalests for rats are the pasipit and
paitbong, but the panloob is an ordinary bamboo rattrap with no
moving parts. (It is interesting that among the half dozen terms for
ground spikes planted for military purposes, none are mentioned for
protecting crops against foraging animals.) Birds are caught with
snares {sagar) or a sticky birdlime made of jackfruit juice, reeds, and
a little clay ( patda ), and are valued not merely as food but for their
decorative plumage. So, too, the civet cat is taken not so much for its
flesh as for its perfume-fixing civet ( diris ).
Textiles. The main material for textiles is cotton. Abaca (saha or ihit)
is not mentioned as cloth, though fine abaca thread is used for fringes
on the bangkorohan skirt (from bangkoro, a bark used as a red dye).
Husi is defined as a fine red or colored silk made only in Tondo, and
anabo, balibago and labayo are all listed as bark threads, but used
for cordage not cloth. The extensive vocabulary connected with
cotton culture, however, indicates a well-developed industry, no
doubt with considerable economic significance.
Cotton. To harvest pods from the tree is bitin, and to remove the
cotton inside is baynos, or pipis or potpot if done with a sort of
rolling-pin on a table. Notnot is to untangle the wool with the fingers,
and pakpak is to cudgel it to make it fluffy. Spinning with a spindle
and distaff is sulir, and one distaff-ful is bosogsorlan, . Cotton thread
is simply called sinulir (that is, "spun”) and the general term for
thread, lubir, refers to cotton unless otherwise specified. Galongang
78 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
and labayan are reels for winding thread, and palatohat a simple
frame for making skeins ( iabay or hokas ) of 70 turns if long, 80 if
short. To wash it for dyeing is togas, and sapar is soaking it in blue
dye. Dyestuffs include suga (saffron or pomegranate), tayom (in-
digo), and red agusip and tala b roots, cotton husks themselves
making a bright red dye. And in preparation for weaving, doubling
the threads is lambal \ to wax them is hagor, higor or pagkit, and to
starch them with cooked rice paste is pangas .
Looms. Weaving is accomplished with the back-strap loom. The
whole paraphernalia is called tandaya, including the heddles, laze-
rods and balili beater. To set up the warp, with the warp beam
suspended from a partition of the house, is hanay. The warp itself if
hilig, the reed through which it passes, babay-hilig ("warp-house"),
and the heddle for shedding, anak-hilig ("warp child") or goyonan
(from goyon r the thread wound around the heddle to pick up alter-
nate warp threads). Laze-rods— i.e., flat or round reeds inserted into
the warp to prevent tangling and help preserve tension— include the
pugi on the weaver's side of the shed, and lilitan on the far side.
Gicos are the cords fastening the breast-beam to the back-strap. The
shuttle, sikwan, is also called a harpoon ( bolos ) or bolos sa paghabi
to distinguish it from the fishing harpoon; and the bobbin inside is
the pingi, potong, or sinikwan. No secondary heddles for imparting
a design are distinguished by name, so it is probably not surprising
that the only multicolored fabric listed is referred to as striped— the
gaudy black,- blue and white sabasabat The many fancy mantles,
shawls, headcloths and G-strings mentioned are all decorated with
fringes or are "worked" (labrada), that is, embroidered or sewn.
Basketry. Baskets range from fine, split-bamboo weaving like the
bogsok clothes hamper or tight-woven bakay for carrying rice ("wide
above, narrow below"), to the rattan alat with openings as large as
latticework. Tight weaving also appears in the bilawo winnowing
tray, mitay "mattress," kupit knapsack, and large or small abobot
"suitcases," but not in the ordinary bamboo carrying basket, bangkat
Only one hat is specified as being woven— the sawing, the others are
all plaited of leaves— e.g., the ladies' si lap or the large, wide
tankolok. A container for carrying rice is also made of leaves sewn
together, the tohog, named after the palm from which the leaves are
taken. Papaga re a sort of ubiquitous frames or trays made of canes
Sixteenth-Century Tagalog Technology ... 79
with their ends inserted into a rectangular bamboo or wooden frame,
and serve a wide variety of uses— beds, tables, benches, rowing
benches, house-parts, trays for soaking rice seedlings or, in general,
any light substitute for boards. Ships' sails are also woven of palm
matting, though, ironically, the famous Manila galleon carried sails
of locally woven canvas.
Carpentry. Woodworking and carpentry appear to be limited to,
and excel in, hewing, joinery and carving. That is, timber is squared
( pagpag ) and reduced to boards with an adze ( daras ) rather than a
saw, fitted together with mortise-and-tenon joints or rabetting made
with a chisel (pait), and given esthetic form by knifework— liso for
carving in general, or lilok with a knifepoint. Koko is mortising;
pasak and lapat are wedges or tenons, and pako and tilos are
bamboo pegs or nails. Benches and tables require such joinery, and
so do the great dalam chiefs' houses, but by far the most highly
developed skill is employed in the construction of boats and ships
with long, curved strakes handhewn all in one piece. At least 16
different types of vessels are listed, from the one-piece bilog and
ba wo to or five-man balasian, to the tapak with dugout keel, planks
and nipa-palm washboards, or the large, fully plank-built balangay,
kopit, birok or biroko. The planks making up the hull are literally
sewed or laced together, so there is a special vocabulary for caulk-
ing — siksik in general, and three distinct stages which make use of
coconut husk, bamboo and resin— balotbot, salogsog, and baliboL
Nautical terminology includes not only items to be expected like
prow, poop, mast, sails, sheets, braces, outriggers and rowing
benches, but such niceties as kinsikinsi railings on the stern, intricate
pimpin carving, or paminir boards which "stop up and seal the sides
of the boat where the gentlemen sit so they won't get wet."
Housing. Bahayis the general term for house, and lapatis one made
of mortised timber. Dalam are the great dwellings of chiefs, able to
accommodate relatives, servants, slaves and guests, and their con-
struction may be such protracted enterprises that there is a special
word for an occupied but uncompleted house— abolog. Chiefs have
a sort of lounging platform under their houses for palaver and public
gossip called palapag or gulanggulang, though the latter term may
also apply to a loosely woven public shed serving the same purpose
in some more centralized location. A room built under a house is
80
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
gilir, and a pigpen, banlat Balongbalong and sagobang are small
dwellings in the fields or countryside, and habong, dangpa and kobo
are huts built in the mountains, bakokol being a very low one
without a floor. Kobala and landaya.ro. temporary shelters for spend-
ing the night on the road or in the hills —dalongdong especially
when wood-cutting, and salong "just for one night/’ Banglin is a
granary; tambobong and olobo are granaries constructed as separate
buildings, but amatong or talongtong are granaries inside other
structures.
Pottery. The poverty of the dictionary's pot-making vocabulary is
probably to be explained by the presence of many terms for the
imported ceramics, plates, jars and Chinese porcelains which
reduced the native industry to supplying cheap earthenware for
everyday household use. Such would be two sizes of ordinary
water containers, the small galong and large banga , or the kalan
brazier and hinawan basin for washing the hands and feet. There
are only a few special terms like tikir, a jar with "ears,” and saro, a
variety most typically made in Pasig. The potter herself— or him-
self— is mamimipi, but beyond a term for firing with rice-bran
(bayang), none are given for the manufacturing process. Most
significant is the absence of any word for potter's-wheel: it is prob-
ably safe to conclude that the "paddle-and-anvil” technique is used,
especially since that method is mentioned in contemporaneous
lexicons like Marcos de Lisboa's Vocabulario de la lengua bicol
and Alonso de Mentrida's Bocabulario de la lengua bisaya-
hiligueyna y haria.
Metal-working. One of the richest vocabularies in the whole dic-
tionary is that pertaining to metallurgy and metal-working, includ-
ing special subdivisions for goldsmithy and jewelry. Iron, gold and
silver are the most frequently mentioned metals, with copper {turn-
baga) being glossed with reference to the Spanish use of the word
(viz., an alloy of gold, silver and copper) as "Metal from which they
make bells or [artillery] pieces; they don't distinguish it from cop-
per." Both lead and tin are tinga, with the latter being distinguished
as tinga puti f i.e., "white lead." Ochre is used to give gold a good,
reddish color. Brass is well known but rare, and sobong is to mix
metals "by alchemy"— for example, copper, gold and silver to cast
especially fine bells (i.e., gongs). Dolang is the general term for
Sixteenth-Century Tagalog Technology ... 81
mining, with longa meaning excavating rather than panning. Iron is
obtained from three sources— steel bars from Spain, binalon (literal-
ly, "wrought"), ingots ( babak ) or bars (landok) from China, "just as
it comes from the mine," and Chinese cast iron pans, patalim, so-
called because they are the most common source for steel blades
(talim).
Blacksmithy . Panday is a blacksmith, though the term is extended
to other specialized craftsmen like shipwrights, and kasalo is a
blacksmith's apprentice. The bellows, with feather-ringed pistons,
are basohas or bobolosan, and the fact that they are part of the typical
"Malay forge" is indicated by the presence of the lilim, a bored stone
nozzle which concentrates the draft received through two bamboo
pipes from the two cylinders. Labol is to heat red hot, goyong-
goyong a wood which produces the best blacksmiths' , charcoal
(though jewellers require wisak or bogos), and sugba is to temper in
cold water. Lokot is forging, banhay is shaping, and asor is mauling
or smithing in general, and includes specialized procedures like
tanar, hammering into bars, or batbat, into flat sheets; tambal, work-
ing two pieces of metal into one; balon, beating iron and steel
together; and binsal, sheathing iron with steel. Alob or balasbas is
reforging used or damaged tools.
Metallurgy and gold. In addition to smithing, metals are also
worked by founding. Bobo is the general term, with boboan being
a mould. Limbagan is to cast such things as images, with guhit
being the fine work on them after casting, and panala is a small
mould for money or seals ( tala ). Wire drawn through a die is batak,
but twisted brass wire is kawar . Goldsmithing almost doubles
the metal-working vocabulary with more delicate tools and
sophisticated techniques like soldering, fusing, enameling, filigree-
ing— and adulterating— to produce dozens of varieties of chains
and necklaces, brooches, pendants, pectorals and collars, diadems
and bracelets, beads, rings, anklets and armbands, earrings and
plugs, and dental inlays. It was, as a matter of fact, the glitter of just
such gold chains dangling from Filipino necks that first dazzled the
eye of the Spanish conquistador those kamagi as thick as a man's
finger and reaching down to the chest, or the six-strand gamay or
barbar that were never removed, or the heirloom layon and
lokaylokayan which so completely disappeared into colonial
82 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
coffers that the terms were already anarchisms when Father San
Buenaventura recorded them.
*****
This, then, is the basic technology which provided the tools and
weapons, the foodstuffs and raw materials, of 16th-century Tagalog
culture. In retrospect, it appears notably simple, even primitive,
especially when compared with that of those interior tribes
nowadays called cultural minorities. For, except for boat-building,
they are the same. And the similarity can be pressed further by noting
such "tribal" items as the kalikam, a highly decorated G-string
restricted to the upper class, and the bangsintawo ("people's-flute")
played with the nose, or such "primitive" customs as borol, a corpse
kept fully clothed in the house until it putrefies; bangkay, ancestral
bones disinterred and reburied in a jar at the foot of a balete tree, or
tambolok, a tuft of feathers worn in the hair to indicate an oath sworn
to kill somebody in mourning for a relative.
Yet, other terms indicate that Tagalog culture, far from being
primitive, was sophisticated and rich to the point of luxury. In
addition to jewelry and a half dozen kinds of purses and moneybelts
(the karay, for example, for carrying scales to weigh out gold for
purchases on the spot), imports include a silk G-string from Borneo
called kalikot, figured-cloth mantles from Japan, sinagitlong, and
such Chinese porcelains as the dinolang plate as large as a baptis-
mal font, or the binubulacan which is so white it is literally "cottony."
The good life includes cosmetics called popol makeup of ceruse or
white lead, tana eyebrow paint, red kamontigi nail polish, and
kablingaher-batb. ointment, or such niceties as sipan toothpicks, and
palirong eyeshades for falling asleep. And certain local products
must have been truly expensive simply in terms of the man-hours
required to produce them— an arrack, for example, distilled in a
simple wooden toong (alembic) so exquisite Father San Buenaven-
tura defined it as "Dalisay~a liquor 24-carats strong, which burns
without fire.”
The question arises: how was all this elegance provided by so simple
a technology? The answer is probably to be found in two other
specialized vocabularies— those connected with warfare and com-
merce.
Sixteenth-Century Tagalog Technology ... 83
Ngayaw is a raid, agaw an assault, dayo an attack, bakay an
ambush, and samsam a sacking. Bog-oy is to find treasure or booty,
gubat to devastate a town or people, bangga to engage a ship at sea,
and digma to conquer a city or town. Polotongis a squad of warriors,
batiaw a military spy, bihaga captive, and sagip a prisoner held for
ransom. Mamamayar is a dealer in slaves and banyaga an itinerant
merchant; dagang is to contract merchandise in gross, and otay to
sell by wholesale lots. Tapa is a capital investment and sama a
mercantile company; angka is to corner the market, and abang, to
detain merchandise, as they do along the Pasig and Taguig, to sell in
Manila for a higher price later."
Banli is to lease an irrigated field for half the crop, and iwi is to
do the same with any possession that bears increase, that is, live-
stock as well as fields. Palaba is a loan at 20% interest per month
(pahigit if calculated daily) and ganda, 100% per annum, while
ibayiw is any loan at 100% and dalawa-lima, 150%. And bintang
means "to add more and more every day to the debt a person owes,
as if it were buwis [tribute], by lending him more with the intention
that he will not be able to repay it and so become a slave." Thus it
would appear that the flourishing Tagalog culture which Fray Pedro
de San Buenaventura recorded in 1613 depended not so much upon
a technology for exploiting the natural environment as on techniques
for exploiting human populations.
It has long been a commonplace of Philippine historiography
that the so-called cultural minorities in the interior mountain ranges
were driven from the coastal plains into their present locations by
later migrants with a more advanced technology. The present study
of 16th-century Tagalog vocabulary, however, lends little support to
such a theory. Rather, it suggests an alternate theory— namely, that
the 16th-century coastal civilizations developed where they did not
because of any technological superiority but because of their access
to the sea, sea-lanes, overseas markets, and foreign ideas. Such
civilizations would therefore have been produced by Filipinos
within the archipelago, not imported by civilized migrants from
abroad. Thus, the Tagalogs would not have occupied the seacoasts
because they had an advanced culture; they would have had an
advanced culture because they occupied the seacoasts.
Oripun and Alipin . . . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 85
ORIPUN AND ALIPIN
IN THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PHILIPPINES
The earliest descriptions of Filipino social structure date from the
last quarter of the sixteenth century, when Spanish chroniclers
portrayed it as containing three classes— the rulers, their supporters,
and everybody else. Members of the first class they call nobles,
knights or titled lords, though they mention no higher authority
competent to bestow such titles. Those in the second they call
variously gentry (hidalgos or villa nos), commoners, plebeians,
freemen, freed men or simply "neither lords nor slaves," a confusion
which reflects a shift from seafaring warfare to agricultural vas-
salage. But the accounts are unanimous in calling all members of the
third class slaves, though they are then just as unanimous in adding
such disclaimers as "but not real slaves" or "hardly slaves at all" or
"slaves in name only." One of them attempts a solution by isolating
a fourth class, "tribute-payers" ( pecheros ). The reason for this im-
precision is clear. These persons appear to come into their lowly
condition through birth, debt, sale or capture, and to be liable to such
genuinely chattel fates as burial in some warlord's tomb. Yet the
conditions of their slavery are graduated, redeemable and trans-
ferable, and social mobility crosses the line into the second category
in both directions.
Our earliest information about Filipino slavery actually predates
the formal accounts by half a century: ironically, it is supplied by the
experience of 50 or 60 Spaniards who suffered it themselves.
Eight Spaniards from Magellan's ill-fated expedition of 1521, for
example, were sold outright to the Chinese; five others were still in
Cebu 22 years later, and one survived into the early 1560's to be sold
to Bornean traders and then resold— or ransomed off— to the Por-
tuguese in Malacca. In 1526 Sebastian de Puerto was one of three
captured along the coast of what is now Surigao del Sur by sea-raid-
ing, rice-dealing Chief Katunaw of Lianga Bay, but managed to
escape 18 months later. Two of his shipmates, Sanchez and Roman,
were captured in the Sangir Islands and sold to Filipinos in Saran-
gani, where they were ransomed in gold by the Saavedra expedition
in 1528. At the same time a moribund seaman by the name of Grijalva
who preferred to die on land rather than on shipboard was put
ashore at his own request; instead of dying, he recovered to be sold
to the "King of Mindanao"— presumably Sharif Kabungsuwan him-
self. There he met two other Spaniards who had been sold by
Sangirese, and the three of them soon afterwards accepted the offer
of the Sultan of Brunei to send them to Malacca in response to a direct
request from the Portuguese governor there.
Fifteen years later, the Villalobos expedition of 1543-1544 spent
almost 18 months in southern Philippine waters, during which time
more than four dozen of its members became Filipino captives,
slaves, hostages— or, perhaps, paying guests. (One of them, Father
Geronimo Santisteban, reporting that they were guests, notcaptives,
rather ineptly quoted Seneca, " Benevicium accipere, libertatem
vendere est— To accept a favor is to sell your freedom." Thirty-four
of these were ransomed off by rescue missions from the Moluccas,
though sometimes only after considerable haggling over prices, but
five others could not be located on the Mindanao coast around
Caraga, and another three were left behind in Samar because the
Spanish commander could not meet the price demanded. Ten others,
believed to have been drowned at the mouth of the Basey River, also
survived for years in Filipino servitude, most of them as warriors
who finally died in battle. (The last of them, Juan Flores, disappeared
on a raid with 30 of his Filipino townmates in 1562.) But a Mexican
cabin boy by the name of Juanes actually survived to be recovered
by Miguel de Legazpi in 1566, by which time he was thoroughly
tattooed and could speak no language but Waray. He had also sired
two children by one of his master Subuco's daughters, and his
father-in-law was so reluctant to part with him that he accepted his
price only under duress. Juanes was then carried off to Cebu where,
deprived of the protection of any Filipino in-laws in a seaport in
which law and order had been undermined by foreign occupation,
he was poisoned to death by a jealous Cebuana.
To what class of Filipino society did all these alien migrants
belong? Those who were promptly sold to international merchants
presumably belonged to no class, and may be written off as captives.
But the last of Magellan's survivors must have been in his late 60's
when he changed hands for the last time. In what healthy servitude
86
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Oripun and Alipin . . . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 87
l
had he been employed for 40 years to enjoy twice the normal life
expectancy of a 16th-century seaman? Those who married into Fili-
pino villages and bore on their bodies the decorations of valor in
Filipino wars could hardly have been non-persons in society: were
they slaves? And if not, how were they so readily resold? Specifically,
when Subuco handed over his son-in-law Juanes for gold, was he
selling a slave— or recovering the bride-price he had advanced to a
destitute suitor for his daughter's hand?
Our inability to answer these questions underscores the diffi-
culty of trying to apply a European political concept to a Philippine
social class, and recommends instead an examination of the condi-
tion of this third category in 16th-century Filipino terms. Members
of this class were called oripun in Visayan and alipin in Tagalog.
Since economic and political conditions differed significantly in
these two language areas, we will examine each of them separately.
The Visayan Oripun
Visayan society as known to early Spanish recorders was thinly
scattered along the coasts of the major islands between Luzon and
Mindanao— for example, Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte and
Samar— and the northeastern corner of Mindanao. Its political units
were small— less than a thousand persons at most— and were poten-
tially hostile to one another unless related by blood, intermarriage,
trading partnerships, or subjugation through conquest. Weaponry
was too unsophisticated to be monopolized by individuals, so politi-
cal power was exercised through client-patron relationships. The
economy was based on products from swiddens, forests and the sea,
and their redistribution by a pattern of trade-raids which made
public protection necessary. Chiefs fulfilled this function by means
of specialized warships designed for speed, maneuverability and
operation in shallow, reef-filled waters, but with limited cargo
capacity. Penal measures were largely fines and indenture so that a
limited labor force would not be taken out of production.
A Visayan myth recorded by more than one observer divides
society into three divinely sanctioned orders— da tus, timawa and
oripun . The word datu was used for both a social class and a political
office: the class was a birthright aristocracy or royalty careful to
preserve its pedigree, and the office was the captaincy of a band of
warrior supporters bound by voluntary oath of allegiance and
entitled to defence and revenge at their captain's personal risk. These
supporters were timawa and they were not only their datu's com-
rades-at-arms and personal bodyguards, testing his wine for poison
before he or any other datu drank it, but usually his own relatives
or even his natural sons. Everybody else was oripun. They supported
timawa and datu alike with obligatory agricultural and industrial
labor, or its equivalent in rice. When the Spaniards reached Cebu in
1565, they found the subordination of the oripun to the other two
orders so obvious and the distinction between datu and timawa so
slight that they did not at first recognize the existence of three orders.
Twenty years earlier, Descalante Alvarado thought that Samar chief-
tain Iberein was being rowed about by galley-slaves wearing gold
collars, not recognizing such a Viking elite.
As a matter of fact, these observers were unconsciously record-
ing a normal flexibility of Visayan society: if timawa multiplied
beyond their datu's trade-raiding needs, they had either to attach
themselves to another warlord, or become sedentary vassals render-
ing foodstuffs or export products. Thus Miguel de Loarca, a tribute-
collecting encomendero who operated a government shipyard in
Panay in the 1570's and wrote our earliest major account, found it
necessary to say he was describing the "true* 1 or "recognized" timawa.
Their normal decline was accelerated by Spanish conquest into what
modern textbooks fondly think of as a middle class, and found its
final debasement in the modern Visayan word, which means "poor,
destitute." But Legazpi in 1565 at first thought there were only two
social classes: a timawa flanking his lord and sharing his accolades
looked like a member of the upper class, but one who handed over
tribute in rice looked like an oripun.
Oripun were commoners in the technical sense of the word: that
is, they could not marry people of royal blood (datus) and were
under obligation to serve and support the aristocracy of the first class
and the privileged retainers of the second. Their usual service was
agricultural labor, and a distinctive characteristic of the upper two
classes of society was that datus and timawa did not ordinarily
perform agricultural labor. Within this limitation, however, mem-
bers of the third class varied in economic status and social standing
from men of consequence (who might actually win datu status
through repute in battle) to chattel slaves born into their condition
in their master's house. And at the very bottom of the social scale.
88
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Oripun and Alipin . . . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 89
the oripun included— if for no other reason than that there was no
other place to assign them— those persons seized in mangayaw raids
or purchased in a domestic slave trade which was literally big
business. ( Bahandi was heirloom wealth like gold, brass gongs,
Chinese porcelains and slaves, and the merchandising of it was
called alang or boton.)
The class of oripun was common to all the Visayan accounts, but
the particular sub-classes which reflected the socio-economic varia-
tions within it differed considerably. The differences were not
merely in terminology, as would be expected in an area extending
from Samar to Mindanao, but in actual specifications. In the most
favored condition, for example, were Loarca's tumataban and
tumaranpok, the horohanes of the so-called Boxer Codex, and the
gintobo or namamahay of Francisco Alcina's unpublished 1668
manuscript on Visayan culture. All of these could commute their
agricultural duties into other forms of service such as rowing or
fighting or actual payments in kind called bandug or dagupan. (If a
timawa made such payments, they were called buis, like harbor
fees.) Loarca's ayueyC the most enslaved of all") only served in their
master's house three days out of four, and in the Boxer manuscript
(which spells it hayoheyes), they moved into their own house upon
marriage and became tuhey— a word which literally means their
payment in kind— and did not even continue further service if they
produced enough offspring. However, what some authors called
"whole slaves"— the four-generation lubus nga oripun , for instance-
handed over the whole fruits of their labor. This stricture may have
been the result of social breakdown under colonial domination, since
a characteristic of Philippine slavery, otherwise universally reported,
was the theoretical possibility of manumission through self-im-
provement. These variations no doubt illustrate different economic
conditions, crops, markets and demands for labor, as well as in-
dividual datus' responses to them. They also illustrate a social mobil-
ity which ultimately embraces all three social classes.
Oripun were born into their social class just as datus and timawa
were born into theirs. But their position within that class depended
upon inherited or acquired debt, commuted criminal sentences or
victimization by the more powerful— in the latter case they were
said to be lopot, "marked, creased," or, as Alcina put it, "unjustly
enslaved." Those in serious need might mortgage themselves to some
datu for a loan, becoming kabalangay ("boat-mates"?), or might
attach themselves to a kinsman as bondsman, but debts could also
be underwritten by anybody able and willing to do so. The
-tumataban, for example, whom Loarca calls "the most respected”
slaves, could be bonded for six pesos, their creditor then enjoying
five days of their labor per month. The status of tumaranpok, on the
other hand, was reckoned at twelve pesos, for which four days' labor
out of seven was rendered. (The labor performed for their masters
was tampok, and that for themselves tagolaling, while lan-o were
free work days granted at their master's discretion.) Both of these
oripun occupied their own houses and maintained their own
families, but their wives were also obligated to perform services if
they already had children, namely, spinning and weaving cotton
which their master supplied in the boll, one skein a month in the case
of the tumaranpok . Either could commute these obligations to pay-
ment in palay: 15 cavans a year for the former, 30 for the latter. Thus
a tumataban's release from field labor was calculated at five gantas
a day and a tumaranpok's at three and a half. So, too, the creditor
who underwrote a 12-peso tumaranpok debt received 208 days of
labor a year, but one who invested in a six-peso tumataban , only 72.
Since Loarca states that rice was produced in the hills in exchange
for coastal products, such commutation enabled an uplander to
discharge his obligations without coming down to till his master's
fields. A coast dweller, on the other hand, had to be a man of
considerable means to assume such a tribute-paying pechero role.
Another oripun condition was that of horo-han (probably
uluhan, "at the head"). These performed lower-echelon military
service in lieu of field labor, acting as mangayaw oarsmen or
magahat "foot-soldiers," and their children took their place upon
their death (but had no obligation prior to it). They were part of the
public entertained and feasted during a datu's ceremonial functions,
where their presence moved the author of the Boxer manuscript to
comment with tourist-like wonder, "They are taken into their houses
when they give some feast or drunken revel to be received just like
guests." The oripun called gintobo, mamahay or johai also par-
ticipated in raids, though they received a smaller portion of the booty
than timawa, and if they distinguished themselves regularly enough
by bravery in action, they might attract a following of their own and
actually become datus. They were also obliged to come at their datus'
summons for such communal work as house-building, but did
not perform field labor; instead, they paid reconocimiento (that is.
90
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Oripun and Alipin . . . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 91
recognition-of- vassalage fee) in rice, textiles or other products. But,
like the timawa above them and the indentured bondsmen and
slaves below, they could not bequeath their property to their heirs:
their datus shared it with them at his own pleasure. This arbitrary
inheritance tax. enabled a ruling datu to reward and ingratiate his
favorites, and left others under threat of the sort of economic reversal
which set downward social mobility in motion. A 12-peso debt could
plunge a man into the depths of ayuey household slavery, with the
high probability of transmitting that status to his offspring since any
children born during his bondage became the property of his master.
Those ayuey were at the bottom of the oripun social scale in a
society which must have been notable for its high incidence of debt.
Hired hands were called lihog, but palihog meant to compensate
simply by the day's meals. Li to was an oripun who had been
frequently transferred from creditor to creditor for liquidated debts,
and horiwai meant "restless— like a runaway slave who has one
master today and another tomorrow." The ayuey were literally
domestics who lived in their master's house and received their food
and clothing from him, and were really chattels. As Loarca says,
"Those whom the natives have sold to the Spaniards are ayuey for
the most part." They either hacTno property of their own or only
what they could accumulate by working for themselves one day out
of four. They were generally field hands with the same manumis-
sion price as the tumaranpok, namely, 12 pesos, and their wives
worked as domestic servants in their master's house if they were
married. Usually they were single, however, but were given a
separate house when they married and became tuhey, working two
days out of five. Their wives continued to serve until they had
children; then, if they had many, they and their husbands might be
absolved of all further ayuey servitude and moved up the social
scale.
First-generation ayuey were debtors, purchases, captives or
poverty-stricken volunteers seeking security. Those who were
enslaved in lieu of payment of fines were called sirot, which means
"fine," and those seized for debts, or imputed debts, were lupig,
"inferior, outclassed." The frequency of such imputed debts is im-
plied by the definition of malupig in the M&itrida 1637 dictionary:
"A violent man who makes slaves by force." Creditors were respon-
sible for their debtors' obligations, so another route by which
commoners were reduced to ayuey status was for their creditors to
cover some fine they had incurred. Purchases might be out-
right-adults or children in abject penury, for example— or by buying
off somebody's debt, in which case the debtor became gin tubus,
"redeemed." Redeemed slaves or captives were loas, but alien cap-
tives were bihag, whether slave or not in their own society, and
sharply to be distinguished from other ayuey because of their
liability to serve as offerings in some human sacrifice. (Loarca notes
approvingly, "They always see that this slave is an alien and not a
native, for they really are not cruel at all.") It is not impossible that
Spanish disruption of traditional slaving patterns produced an
increase in domestic oppression on the part of these datus
whom the Spaniards called principales. At least, Alcina comments:
"They oppressed the poor and helpless and those who did not resist,
even to the point of making them and their children slaves, [but]
those who showed their fangs and daws and resisted were let go
with as much as they wished to take because they were afraid of
them." But, in any event and whatever their origin, first-generation
ayuey all had one thing in common: they were the parents of the
second-generation "true" slaves.
These "true" slaves, as distinguished from those commoners of
varying degrees of servitude who were slaves in name only ( nomine
tenus, as Alcina says), were those born in their master's house. The
children of purchased or hereditary slaves were called hashai . If both
their parents were houseborn slaves like themselves, they were
ginlubusi from lubus, "all one color, unvariegated"), and if they were
the fourth generation of their kind, lubus nga oripun. But if only one
of their parents was an ayuey of their status, they were "half-
slaves ( bulan or pikas), and if three of their grandparents were
non-slave commoners, they were "one-quarter slaves" ( tilor or
sagipat). The master of such a "partial" slave might pay him the
balance to retain his services as a "full" slave, a transaction called
sapao. "Whole slaves" might also be known as bug-us ("given total-
ly") or tuman ("utmost, extreme"). But some of them were cherished
and raised like their master's own children and suckled at the same
breast, often being permitted to reside in their own house and
usually being set free on their master's death. These were the silin,
si bin or ginogatan.
Thus there was no given word for "slave" in the 16th-century
Visayan society, but only a graduated series of terms running from
the totally chattel bihag to the horohan commoner "at the head" in
92 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
the upper level of the oripun social order. And the initial step up this
social ladder was the normal expectation of the houseborn ayuey at
the bottom, for when his master married him off to another house-
born ayuey, he was set up in his own house where he and his wife
served both masters. Then when his children were born, they became
slaves to both masters, too, but as soon as they grew up, he himself
assumed tumaranpok status. Thus, as Visayan slaves moved upward
into the dignity of vassalage, they left enough of their offspring
behind to supply their master's needs.
The Tagalog Alipin
Luzon culture as described by Dr. Antonio de Morga and Father
Francisco Plasencia in the last decade of the 16th century differed
from the Visayan in at least three particulars: it enjoyed more exten-
sive commerce, it had been influenced by Bornean political contacts,
and it lived off irrigated rice. Spanish records of the first generation
of the Conquest consistently refer to Tagalog business interests as
exceeding those of the Visayans, which, on the testimony of tribute-
collector Loarca, were hardly undeveloped. The Augustinian friar,
Martin de Rada, attributed the absence of human sacrifice in the
Manila area to the fact that Tagalogs were ’’more traders than war-
riors,” and Legazpi found Philippine internal trade dominated, or
monopolized, by ships from Borneo and Luzon, which the Visayans
called "Chinese" because of the origin of their wares. Rice was grown
under controlled irrigation in Pampanga, and in such deep water
along the shores of Laguna de Bay that it was harvested from boats;
and the San Buenaventura 1613 Tagalog dictionary lists 13 terms for
rice and six for "transplant," and gives a detailed description of the
process. This last consideration alone would be enough to account
for three constant references in the descriptions of Tagalog social
structure missing from the Visayan accounts— those to land use,
inheritance and universal field labor.
Rulers of Tagalog communities were called datus but the social
class to which they belonged was maginoo . Their supporters in the
second class, bound to them by client-patron contract rather than
debt or inheritance, were of two kinds— timawa and maharlika. The
timawa rendered labor — in the fields, or at oars or fishnets— or a
portion of their crops, and absorbed manumitted members from the
Oripun and Alipin . . . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 93
third class below and the genetic overflow from secondary wives in
the first class above. The maharlika, however, were a birthright
aristocracy that supplied seafaring military services, but in at least
some places— Pila, Laguna, for example— they also paid agricultural
tribute. Both the maharlika and timawa had the right to attach
themselves to the overlord of their choice. But a datu had the right
to call out all his manpower — maharlika, timawa and alipin alike —
to plant or harvest his fields, or to roof his house. The alipin con-
stituted the lowest class— or lowest two classes according to a
refinement by Father Plasencia.
An alipin was a man in debt to another man. His subordination
was therefore obligatory, not contractual: the other man was techni-
cally his creditor rather than his lord, and might be a maginoo,
maharlika, timawa or another alipin. The alipin had birthright claim
to work a piece of community land which could not be taken away
from him or he from it, except in the case of a commuted death
sentence by which he became a chattel slave. The alipin might be
born as such— in which case he was called gintubo— but what he
really inherited from his parents was their debt, indenture or
sentence. Although he could not be legally seized or sold, his debt
could be transferred from one creditor to another for profit and to
his detriment For this reason, a man who fell into debt sought to
become alipin to one of his own relatives if possible. As a matter of
fact, men in extreme penury might voluntarily seek the security of
alipin status, that is, be napaaalipin as opposed to naaalipin. Since
the degree of alipin indebtedness could vary, when that debt was
passed on to heirs it also varied according to the mother's status and,
indeed, according to the debts either parent had inherited from
preceding generations. For example, if alipin and timawa married,
their offspring would be only half alipin; or if an alipin had three
non-alipin grandparents, he would be only one-quarter alipin—
social conditions referred to by such expressions as "half slave" and
"quarter slave." What this meant in practical terms was that such
alipin only worked off half their father's, or one-fourth their
grandfather's indebtedness, and only during alternate months. Such
partial alipin, moreover, had the right to enforce their manumission
if they could afford the price.
The normal alipin with land rights was called namamahay
(householder), and one who had lost that right, alipin sa gigilid
(hearth slave), a category which also included those who never
i
r
94 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
had such a right in the first place, namely, captives or purchases.
The Spanish accounts never actually describe the role of alipin, but
only the separate roles of alipin namamahay and alipin sa gigilid.
On the face of it, the only recorded feature which distinguished the
rice-farming alipin householder from the rice-farming timawa
’'freeman' 1 was probably largely theoretical—the right to change
masters at will. If, on the other hand, the distinction was really
functional, the former would have been a ’’serf 1 ’ and the latter a
"tenant." In addition to these alipin, the Boxer manuscript makes
the curious remark that there was a kind of slave of both namama-
hay and gigilid status called tagalos. If this is not a flat error, it may
have been data obtained from some informant of Bornean descent,
and may thus reflect an attitude based on a former relationship
between the two peoples.
Alipin Namamahay
Spanish accounts consistently translate alipin as "slave," but their
authors just as consistently deplore the illogic of including the
namamahay in the same category as the gilid, or even in the category
of esclavo at all. That a gigilid—or at least some gigilid— were
chattel house slaves "like those we have," as Morga said, was
obvious, but it was just as obvious that the serf-like namamahay
were not. One of the longest entries in the San Buenaventura diction-
ary belabors the point, and includes the following passage:
These namamahay slaves in Silanga, which is on the way to
Giling-giling from Lumban, make one field called tongo, and it
is to be noted that they have no further obligation to their master;
in Pila, Bay, Pililla and Morong, they are almost free for they
serve their master no more than from time to time, and they say
he almost has to beg them to go with him to other places or to
help him with something, the same as he does with the freemen;
in all the hills as far as Calaylayan, they serve their master from
time to time if he calls them, but if he calls them too often it's
considered an abuse.
The Franciscan friar, Francisco Plasencia, writing about the lake
district east of Manila in 1589, solved the problem directly and
Oripun and Alipin . . . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 95
sensibly; he called them pecheros (tribute-payers). The pecho they
paid was called buwis and amounted to half their crop, and the one
who paid it was called nunuwis . Or his lord might agree to a fixed
fee of four cavans of palay a year instead, the same rate the Datu of
Pila was charging his maharlika for their land use at that time. In
addition, he was expected to present a measure of threshed rice or a
jar of wine for his master's feasts or funerals, and generally a share
of any special foodstuffs he might acquire for himself— the leg of a
deer taken in the hunt, for example. Like everybody else, he came at
his master's call to plant and harvest his fields, build his houses, carry
his cargo, equip his boat, and row it when he went abroad— not as a
warrior but as an oarsman, unless relieved of this status as an
accolade for bravery— and in any emergency such as his master's
being sick, captured or flooded out. He owned his own house,
possessions and gold, and bequeathed them to his heirs, but his
ownership of the land he used was restricted: he could not alienate
it. If his master moved out of the settlement, he continued to serve
him as a kind of absentee landlord, and if his master died, he was
obligated to all his heirs, and had to divide his services among them.
Upon his own death, his creditor had the right to take one of his
children for gigilid domestic service in his own house, but if he took
more, he was considered a tyrant.
A man entered namamahay status by three routes: inheritance
from namamahay parents, dropping down from the second class, or
rising up from gilid status. If his debt stemmed from legal action or
insolvency, he and his creditor agreed about the duration of the
bondage and an equivalent cash value for its satisfaction. In Father
Plasencia's day this never exceeded ten taels of gold, or roughly the
market value of 320 cavans of rice at Manila prices. This custom
continued under the Spanish occupation and so exercised the friars'
consciences that their theologians argued the fine points of its
morality for a century. (How long could a man justly be indentured
for such-and-such a debt? At what age did a child handed over for
its father s debts become productive enough to be reckoned an asset
rather than a liability?) Those who had risen from the ranks of the
gigilid hearth slaves might actually have purchased their freedom,
but mainly they were transferred to namamahay householding when
they married, for their master's own convenience. Namamahay
—from bahay, house— is the ordinary term for living in a house of
your own. (A sermon by Father Blancas de San Jose says a father
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Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Oripun and Alipin . . . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 97
doesn't worry about a son who is independent and living in his own
hou se—anak ay namamahay na.) For this reason it also seems likely
—though the Spanish sources do not say so— that captives and pur-
chased slaves may have been set up in namamahay housekeeping
status from the beginning. Indeed, the experience of all those Spanish
captives suggests even a bihag could wind up a timawa.
Alipin sa Gigilid
Gilid is the "innermost [or nethermost] part of the house where
the hearth is," and the use of the term to distinguish a kind of alipin
calls attention to the typical place of their service - or, perhaps,
conception. They were members of their master's household who,
unlike namamahay householders, ate out of their master's pot. They
were as dependent upon him as his own children, and from this
circumstance arose his moral right to sell them. In actual practice,
however, he rarely did. He might transfer them to some other
creditor, but raw material for the slave trade or human sacrifice was
not procured from the household, or even from the alipin labor pool
which implemented a datu's public and private projects. Quite the
opposite, they might be rewarded at their master's pleasure— or his
hope of motivating them— by being permitted to retain some of the
fruits of their labor, even to the extent of eventually purchasing their
liberty. Indeed, if they could accumulate enough gold— say, through
the trade of goldsmith or participating in raids— they could buy their
way not only into namamahay status, but even timawa. (Juan Fran-
cisco de San Antonio, reporting the old 30-peso manumission price
130 years later, comments, "And if he gave sixty or more, he was free
of everything and became an hidalgo")
The main sources of alipin sa gigilid recruitment were the
children born in their master's house, not infrequently natural
children by his own alipin of either status, or children of men under
commuted death sentence mortgaged to somebody who could afford
to raise them, thus preserving the liberty of the father to support
the rest. Once a hearth slave grew up, however, it was more prac-
tical —and profitable— to set him up in his own house instead of
feeding and housing him and his new family. All the accounts
distinguish the namamahay not only as having his own house
separate from his master's, but as being married and having
his own family. The author of the Boxer manuscript described the
situation as follows:
His master can sell him because none of these slaves who are
in their master's house are married, but all maidens and
bachelors, and in the case of a male who wishes to marry, the
chief does not lose him; and such a one is called namamahay
when married, and then lives by himself, but rarely would they
give the [female] slaves who were in the chief's houses permis-
sion to marry, though they would hinder none of the men.
The terms gigilid and namamahay, therefore, more accurately
distinguished a man's residence than his economic status, and were
incidental to a sliding scale of downward social mobility occasioned
by punitive disfranchisement and economic reversal. The con-
demned man's debt to society or fiscal creditor could be under-
written by some other man motivated by kin loyalty or hope of gain.
If both were alipin and neighbors and relatives, their new relation-
ship might have been no more visible than a redistribution of their
labor. But the social stigma was considerable, for the gigilid of a
namamahay was called by the insulting term bulisik, "vile" or
"despicable." Still worse, the poor wretch who became gigilid of a
gigilid of a namamahay was branded bulislis, "exposed,” like the
private parts when one's dress is hitched up—a term which might
have reflected a relationship between master and slave.
Slaves purchased from outside the community, and captives
taken in war or raids, were also counted among the gigilid and
might be real chattel without even the security of the parental
affection of some master in whose house they grew up. If they were
destined for resale or sacrifice, they might have been temporarily
employed— as field hands, for example—but would literally be non-
persons in society. But if they were brought into the community as
functioning alipin, they would perforce enjoy the right of food,
shelter and work of other alipin. Their children would then be born
into society not as aliens but as gintubo r "children of alipin," and as
such be eligible for whatever upward social mobility fortune might
offer them.
Confusion of the two kinds of alipin status was brought to
Spanish attention by an ill-fated attempt to replace Filipino concepts
of slavery with Christian concepts of slavery. Most contemporary
98 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
sources attribute the confusion to a combination of Filipino cupidity
and Spanish ignorance, the former using the latter for their own
purposes. Typical is the following entry in the San Buenaventura
dictionary:
Gintubo: [slavery] inherited from one to another; this is the
first kind of slaves. Nagkakagintubo: slaves of this kind. Gintubo
ni ama: "My father inherited it"; this the Filipinos say before the
judges, and those who do not know the significance of the word
judge the slaves to be sa gigilid, so it should be noted that under
this name, gintubo, the two kinds which follow [viz., gigilid and
namamahay] are covered, and they should not say that gintubo
is a gigilid since it also includes the namamahay.
But the real source of the confusion appears to be deeper than
mere Spanish ignorance: the categories of namamahay and gigilid
actually appear to have been dysfunctional at the time they were first
described by Spanish observers.
The categories as described would have been fully functional
only in a society in which real slavery was limited to domestic service
and slaves therefore lived in their master's houses— like Visayan
ayuey— and men were born alipin but not alipin namamahay or
alipin sa gigilid. Gintubo, the birthright status of such alipin com-
moners, would then serve to distinguish the operative core of the
class from social transients or newcomers who had not yet learned
their role. But the Tagalog namamahay, unlike the Visayan tuey, had
no alipin above him with oripun status like tumaranpok or gintubus:
these socio-economic slots were being filled by timawa descending
from above. That these conditions were the result of changes actually
taking place in Tagalog society in the late 16th century is suggested
by the following passage in the Boxer manuscript:
If they have many children, when many have been taken and
he takes more, they consider it a tyrannical abuse, and once those
who are leaving the chief's house to marry leave, they do not
return to render him any more service than the namamahay do,
unless he uses force, and this they consider a worse tyranny
inasmuch as they were given permission to leave his house and
he makes them return to it; and these slaves inherited these
customs from their ancestors.
Oripun and Alipin — Sixteenth-Century Philippines 99
A nice assessment of this social structure is provided by Father
Juan Oliver in a hortatory exposition of the Ten Commandments
intended for the Tagalog faithful of Batangas in 1590. Addressing his
listeners as Maginoo f he asks rhetorically what rich man with many
alipin would not get angry if they did not obey him (How much more
so God!); and does that man not have the duty to order them what
to do and teach them what is right? After all, it is he who "took them
in"— inalila (San Buenaventura: " Alila: to take care of something, like
the sick, or some other thing, such as the shepherd his sheep"). But
outright enslavement is inveighed against under the sin of usury:
how many maharlika have been thus enslaved (inaalipin) these days!
That is why God likens men to the fishes in the sea, the larger
gobbling up the smaller. But the householding alipin is mentioned
under the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy: just as the alipin
namamahay and his master divide his working days alternately
between them, fifty-fifty, so the infinitely more generous overlord-
ship of God divides labor in man's favor, six to one.
Conclusions
In a 1668 attempt to reconstruct prehispanic Visayan social
structure, Jesuit Father Francisco Alcina devoted four chapters of his
Historia to a consideration of the concepts of nobility, bondage and
slavery. Although he listed more than a dozen Filipino terms for such
social roles, none of them were really the equivalent of nobleman,
bondsman or slave. All of them, however, could have been assigned
to one of two categories— oripun or non-oripun— a division which
makes clear the fact that the former were the majority population
and the latter the exceptions. These exceptions, in turn, were distin-
guished by relationships among themselves. Datus were primary
birthright rulers; tumao were collateral or subordinate rulers recog-
nized or invested by the former; and timawa were members of a
warrior elite attached by personal fealty to a given ruler. (In Alcina's
day, the timawa were functioning "commoners," but the Visayans
still fondly recalled them as the lowest rank of a pre-Conquest
aristocracy.) The members of this non-oripun elite ruled, ad-
ministered, fought or traded according to their roles and
opportunities, but they all had one thing in common— they did not
grow their own rice.
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Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Oripun and Alipin . . . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 101
Oripun were the basic producers in society. By their labor in
fields, forests and fishing grounds they produced foodstuffs for local
consumption or exchange in domestic markets, and by their exploita-
tion of natural resources and handicrafts, they produced the export
products marketed by non-oripun. Their varying conditions were
distinguished in the Visayan vocabulary by a series of terms not in
complementary distribution. Some indicated degree of servitude—
that is, the proportion of produce or productive labor expropriated
by another person. Thus ayuey and tuhey distinguished different
divisions of labor by which the most totally indentured met their
obligations, while tumaranpok and tumataban specified not only the
value of the indenture but alternate methods for working or paying
it off. Terms like sirot, tobus and bihag, on the other hand, indicated
the route by which the servitude was entered— penal conviction,
liquidated debts or outright seizure, respectively. And some terms
referred to a particular role or status which did not parallel any of
the other distinctions. Sandil, for instance, a concubine or secondary
wife, or silin, a fostered child, indicated captives who shared the
privileges of a non-oripun master. And atubangC face-to-face”) was
a kind of alter-ego to a datu described either as a minister who
exercised his authority, or a personal companion who expected to
follow him into the grave.
The popular understanding of the word "slave" in modern
European languages, though not so defined in standard dictionaries,
is that of a person owned by another person— that is, who can be
legally purchased, rented, mortgaged, alienated or bequeathed like
private property— a condition the United States Constitution deli-
cately refers to as "held to Service or Labor." There appears to be no
such word in any Philippine language, though Filipinos in more than
one named category might find themselves in this condition.
Liability to sale, for example, was incidental not essential to recog-
nized conditions of debt and obligation, not excluding that of a child
to its parents. When the last survivor of the Magellan expedition was
transferred from the Philippines he was vendido in Spanish terms,
"sold"; but when he moved on to Portuguese Malacca, he was
rescatado, "ransomed." This is a distinction classic Philippine culture
did not make: the man would have been equally indebted to whoever
handed over his worth in gold. Such indebtedness was a normal
function of Filipino social obligation, and such debtors could expect
increased security from their creditors' protection. What happened
to Magellan's survivor could have happened to any captive, various
kinds of oripun, or the child of an impecunious parent seeking to
better his own or his child's condition. But had it happened to all of
them, there would have been no single term applicable to all. There
was, therefore, no such simple category as slavery distinguished in
prehispanic Filipino society.
But if the Visayan oripun and Tagalog alipin therefore did not
constitute a slave class, what class did they constitute? Friar jurists
for a while considered the category of "unnatural slavery" as distinct
from that European slavery which was presumably "natural" to
domestics of other races who had been captured in "just wars" or
sold by their "natural lords." Yet the fact that the oripun only served
his master part-time mitigated against any European concept of
slavery at all. Neither were they serfs bound to the soil since they
were clearly bound to other men, and in Spain serfdom was called
servidumbre real ("royal servitude") precisely to distinguish it from
servidumbre personal, or slavery. The oripun or alipin had no class
equivalent in any 16th-century European society.
Nowadays, however, the progressive economist or social scien-
tist might label their class. Noting that they supported a sea-raiding
elite with pretensions to royalty and personal interests in maritime
trade, he would recognize them as "the masses." The Visayan oripun
and Tagalog alipin, in short, were the Filipino people.
Sources
Alcina, Francisco Ignacio de. Historia de las islas eindios
de Bisayas, MS 1668 (Madrid: Biblioteca de Palacio: Munoz
transcript).
Blancas de San Josd, Francisco, MS Sermones. Rare Books and
Manuscript Section, Filipiniana Division, Philippine National
Library.
"Boxer Codex": "The manners, customs, and beliefs of the Philip-
pine inhabitants of long ago; being chapters of 'A late 16th-century
Manila manuscript/" transcribed, translated and annotated by C.
Quirino and M. Garcia, The Philippine Journal of Science, 87:4:325-
453.
102
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Oripun and Alipin . , . Sixteenth-Century Philippines 103
Chirino, Pedro, Relation de las islas Filipinas i de lo que en ellas
an trabaiado los padres de la Compania de Jesus (Rome, 1604).
Colection de Docmumentos ineditos relativos al Descubrimien-
to, Conquista y Colonization de las Fosesiones espanoles en America
y Oceania \, sacados, en su mayor Parte , del Real Archivo de India s,
vol. 5 (Madrid, 1866).
Coleccion de Documentos ine'ditos relativos al Descubrimiento,
Conquista y Organization de las antiguas Posesiones espanoles de
Ultramar, II Serie, vol. 2 (Mandrid, 1886).
Loarca, Miguel de, "Relacion de las Yslas Filipinas (Tratado de
las Islas Philipinas, en que se contiene todas las islas i poblaciones
que estan reducidas al servicio de la Magestad real del Rei don
Philipe," MS- 1580), E.H. Blair and J.A. Robertson, The Philippine
Islands 1493-1898, vol. 5 (Cleveland, 1903).
M^ntrida, Alfonso de, Diccionario de la Lengua bisaya,
hiligueina y bar ay a de la Isla de Panay (Manila, 1637).
Morga, Antonio de, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Mexico, 1609,
Retana ed. Madrid, 1909).
Plasencia, Juan de, "Los costumbres de los Tagalos en Filipinas
(Relacion de las costumbres que los yndios se han tener en el
yslas)" MS 1589, Francisco de Santa Ine's, Cronica de la Provintia de
san Gregorio Magno, "Biblioteca Historica Filipina, " vol. 2 (Manila
1892).
"Instrucion de las costumbres que antiguamente tenian
los naturales de la Pan Panga en sus Pleytos (MS 1589, Seville
Archivo General de Indias).
Rada, Martin de. Letter to Father Alonso de la Veracruz from
Calompit, 16 July 1577, Isacio Rodriguez, Historia de la Provintia
agustiniana del Smo. Nombre de Jesus de Filipinas, vol 14 (Manila,
1978).
Rosales, Antonio-Maria, A Study of a 16th-Century Tagalog
Manuscript on the Ten Commandments: Its Significance and Im-
plications (Quezon City, 1984).
San Agustm, Gaspar de, Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas
(Madrid, 1698; Merino ed., 1975).
San Antonio, Francisco de, Chronicas de la apostolica Provintia
de San Gregorio de Religiosos Descalzos, vol. 3 (Manila, 1744).
San Buenaventura, Pedro de, Vocabulario de lengua tagala el
romance Castellano presto primero (Pila, 1613).
Sanchez, Mateo, Vocabulario de la lengua bisaya (MS ca. 1616.
Manila, 1711).
Lost Visayan Literature
105
LOST VISAYAN LITERATURE
It is most unfortunate but not particularly surprising that no
prehispanic Visayan literature has survived. Filipinos did not use
their alphabet for literary composition, and friar ethnographers did
not record oral literature. The recording and preservation of the
spoken word has historically been associated with a priestly or
secretarial caste serving the needs of royal courts or state administra-
tions. And the very concept of oral literature would have seemed like
a contradiction in terms to any European scholar before the intro-
duction of folklore studies in the 19 th century.
The well-known Boxer Codex of the early 1590's, written by one
of the Governors Dasmariftas or by somebody who traveled in their
company, states umambiguously that Filipinos only used their script
for letters and messages. Father Pedro Chirino says the same thing
in his 1604 Relacion, and his testimony is especially weighty since
he was a sympathetic observer of Philippine customs who thought
Visayan tattoos were handsome, admired Visayans' ability to carry
their liquor, and would certainly have been pleased to mention any
bark or bamboo records or books. On the other hand, the Tondo datu
conspiring against Spanish occupation in 1587 communicated in
writing, and a Bikol chief named Panpanga sent his brother Antonio
Simaon in Manila a scathing letter in 1595 about conquistador mis-
conduct. The Boxer Codex also gives reason to suspect the existence
of written charms (anting-anting?) Perhaps these were among the
"instruments" for practicing the native religion that Spanish mis-
sionaries were so fond of collecting and burning, or persuading their
converts to collect and burn.
It was Chirino who first stated that it was a rare Filipino or
Filipina who could not read and write, an opinion repeated by his
Jesuit brothers Francisco Colin and Francisco Alcina in the next
century. That this is a fond exaggeration is indicated by a number of
Spanish documents containing notarial statements that the litigants
did not sign because they did not know how to. When Bartolome
Alison and Andres Duarte donated land to the Franciscan hospital
at Los Banos in 1608, they asked Juan Mabinit and Miguel de Silva — a
Spaniard, no less— to sign the title deed in their stead. It is
palaeography's loss that Filipinos affixing their signatures to 16th-
century legal documents only signed the original, so that surviving
copies that were sent to Spain do not contain them. Even when
Quiapo chief Miguel Banal made an appeal to the King in 1609, it
was only the Spanish translation that was forwarded to Madrid.
Ironically, the only surviving native documents from the Philippines
in the Archives of the Indies is one Sultan Adil Sula of Brunei wrote
to Governor Francisco de Tello in 1599, which probably survived
because the translation happens to be on the back of the letter itself,
which is written in elegant Arabic calligraphy.
Literacy came late to the Visayans. Both Colin and Alcina
thought in the 1660's that it had been received from the Tagalogs
only a few years before the arrival of the Spaniards. Actually, it
seems to have come a little later. Antonio Pigafetta said that Rajah
Kolambu of Limawasa was amazed to see writing for the first time
in 1521; Miguel Loarca said the "Pintados" had no writing at all in
1582; and when Legazpi's royal notary took the sworn testimony of
a number of Visayans and Borneans in Bohol in 1565 including the
famous Si Katuna— none of them were able to sign their names. As
it happens, the only known specimens of Visayan penmanship today
are the signatures of Bernardino Dimabasa and Maria Mutia of
Bantay Island which appear in their 1647 divorce proceedings. In
Alcina's day it was assumed that Philippine literacy was ultimately
derived from non-Filipino Muslims because the first literate
Filipinos the Spaniards encountered were the Muslim rulers of
Manila. Thus the Visayans referred to the Philippine script as "Moro
writing," perhaps with a smug sense of Christian satisfaction.
But Visayan oral literature was well-developed, sophisticated,
and ubiquitous in Visayan life, and it was created and presented by
artists rewarded for their skill. This is amply shown by dictionaries
and descriptions from the early 17th century— Alonso Mentrida's
1637 Diccionario de la Lengua Bisaya, Hiligueina yHaraya de la Isla
de Panai, Mateo Sanchez's Vocabulario de la Lengua Bisaya written
in Dagami, Leyte, between 1615 and 1618, and Francisco Alcina's
monumental 1668 "Historia de las Islas e Indios de Bisayas." Part of
Father Alcina's survey of Visayan culture has been published with
an English translation in Philippiniana Sacra (1978-1985), including
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107
a chapter entitled, "Concerning the alphabet and manner of writing
of the Bisayans [and] the various and particular types of poetry in
which they take pride." In addition, incidental references and a few
direct quotations are scattered through other chapters, as well as a
full summary of what must have been an actual epic.
There is no evidence of any prose literature, but ordinary
Visayan speech was itself rich with metaphor and colorful imagery,
and their poetry must have been even more so. A high proportion of
the dictionary terms have both a literal and figurative meaning, and
a wide selection of pejorative terms to apply to common objects
when angry. Men, women and children are referred to by the names
of birds and animals they resemble in appearance or behavior, or
trees and baskets whose shapes they share. The well-dressed are like
the brilliant kakanog butterfly, the red-faced like dapdap blossoms,
and a timawa commoner who' is treated like a datu is timinduk— a
big banana. Conversely, kusi parrots come in three kinds: the little
green ones are slaves, green ones with red breasts are timawa, and
the real beauties with red and green plumage all over are datos.
Somebody who is articulate and talkative is likened to luxuriant
foliage, while one who speaks ill of his own relatives is like a big
bat— because these creatures are believed to defecate in their own
face when hanging upside-down. A man who goes unpaid for his
labor is an empty honeycomb, and one who buckles down and
overcomes some difficulty is a gahuk, digging stick, the Visayan
equivalent of a plow. An untattooed man is called plain white,
undecorated teeth, a slice of coconut meat, and foreheads not suf-
ficiently flattened by headbinding as a baby, bulging or overstuffed.
Finally, a tired oarsman calls his oar a kabkab when irritated— the
heart-shaped leaf of the malu-ibon vine— and a cat is called
musankay or mosaraw in such sentences as "Damned cat stole my
food again!"
Naturally, formal poetry had a special vocabulary of its own.
Handoy, for example, was the poetic term for damsel, and slaves
were called guhay in epics and eulogies. But the essence of Visayan
poetic skill lay not so much in a command of vocabulary as in the
ability to use words figuratively to create subtle images. Father
Alcina says:
In their poetry, even if not with the variety of rhyme schemes
and meters of ours though they do have their own rhymes
somewhat different from ours, they no doubt excel us, for the
language they use in their poems, even most of the words, is
very different from what they use in common everyday speech,
so much so that there are very few Europeans who understand
their poems or rimes when they hear them, even if they are very
good linguists and know a lot of Visayan, because, besides the
words and meanings which they use in verse being so different,
even when using the ordinary words they sometimes apply to
their courtesies, what they say in verse is so figurative that
everything is the subtlest metaphor, and for one who doesn't
know and understand them, it is impossible to understand them
in it.
To this may be added that less sophisticated Visayans were also
unable to follow "deep" poetry, and that when lovers sang to each
other, their words became mere symbols that were understood by
nobody but the two of them.
All this poetry was generally sung or chanted rather than recited,
so our sources include songs in the same category as poems. Even
real songs— that is, melodies with lyrics— were poetic rather than
musical compositions: the singer set his words to common tunes
known to all. For community respect, a man must be able to par-
ticipate in the spontaneous versifying that accompanied social
gatherings, and for peer acceptance, youths had to compete in
amatory jousts. The really skillful were practically professionals:
they were eagerly sought after for weddings and prestige feasts and
were rewarded not only with ample food, drink and public acclaim,
but with a payment called bakayaw. Many were said to be more
articulate in verse than in ordinary conversation, and all were
able to perform for hours at a time, even whole days or nights,
"without dropping a syllable or fumbling a word," Alcina says.
Funerals, on the other hand, called for female eulogists able to
improvise dirges which combined grief and laud, while slave-raid-
ing caracoa required the services of a master singer intoning sea
chanteys to keep the oarsmen in stroke.
The simplest form of verse, popular among children and adults
of both sexes, was the ambahan, which used the ordinary vocabulary
though often figuratively. It consisted of an unrhymed seven-syll-
able couplet which had to contain a complete thought— like a Greek
distich— whose two lines could be interchanged and still make sense.
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109
Some singers composed their own words, others repeated well-
known verses, and listeners could join in by repeating the couplet,
either as sung or inverted. The ambahan form was also used in the
balak, a poetic debate between a man and a woman on the subject
of love. They might also accompany themselves with musical instru-
ments— the man on a kind of bamboo lyre called a korlong, the
woman on the well-known two-stringed kudyapi— but in either case
they used many subleties of speech which not everybody under-
stood. The bikal was another kind of contest which used the
ambahan form, a poetic joust between two men or two women in
which they satirized each other's physical or moral shortcomings,
but were expected to harbor no hard feelings afterwards. They could
continue without pause for an hour or two, encouraged by raucous
laughter and occasional help from the sidelines. Since the ambahan
was a verse form almost as demanding as a Japanese haiku, its wide
currency suggests an extremely poetic populace.
It is strange that although the Mentrida dictionary describes the
Panay ambahan in the same terms as Alcina, the word does not
appear in the Sanchez Leyte-Samar vocabulary. Did Father Sanchez
miss this important term despite his thorough coverage of the other
literary forms— or was the ambahan introduced into the eastern
Visayas during the half century between him and Father Alcina? The
same question occurs about the Juan Pusong tales. Mentrida defines
posong as 'To trick others by taking or stealing something from
somebody and selling it back to them, or giving it to them to eat;
hence, Posong, the fool in the comedia"— and the San Buenaventura
Tagalog dictionary adds, "They don't consider him a good one unless
he's impudent and gets pummeled, which makes them laugh
loudly." But Sanchez doesn't include the term, and Alcina recounts
the tale of a giant Pusong who, far from being a fool, was a terrible
raider who preyed on the towns north of Borongan until he was
finally trapped by his victims or done in by a kind of elfs called
bongan who swarmed all over him like ants.
A wit was the general term for singing and a paraawit was an
expert "considered a professional singer," Sanchez says, "like a
leader whom the others follow." Biyaw was to sing solo, while a
mamaratbat was the precentor who set the tune and beat by singing
a couplet, to which the others— mananabat- responded in chorus,
batbat meaning to beat metal flat Bagaw or dagaw was for two or
more singers to reinforce or complement each other in male drink-
fests, during which daihuan might be sung— songs in which drinkers
made fun of one of their fellows. The narrative content of these songs
was called biriyawan— tales or fables— or karanduun if it was of epic
length and loftiness. And hiya or heJe was the shout of men putting
their shoulders to a common task like dragging a log or rowing a
boat, whence sea chanteys were called otohele .
When distinguishing different types of song, however, awit was
used as a specific term for sea chanteys, which were called hilimba-
nganon in Panay. The cantor, pulling an oar himself— a paddle,
actually— would lead off with an unrhymed couplet and the whole
crew would respond in a heavy beat with a refrain (hollo) like
"Hod-lo, he-le, hi-ya, he-le!" The lines themselves were relieved of
ambahan-like strictness by poetic license to transfer a final syllable
to the next line, but as in most Visayan verse, figurative speech
difficult to follow was admired. A good paraawit or parabele had a
wide repertoire of tunes with different tempos, some of them handed
down from generation to generation by fathers teaching their sons.
The content of these sea chanteys, if not their actual wording, was
also handed down from ancestral times and so perpetuated and
promulgated Visayan traditions and values. More than one Spanish
observer, commenting on the lack of written records, said that
Filipino history and beliefs were preserved in the songs they heard
while rowing boats.
Sabi was the general term for poetry or song in Panay, especially
that with a chorus responding to a precentor, but might also refer
specifically to handum or bat-ar. Handum was to recall somebody
departed with affectionate praise— "like a good minister or alcalde
mayor," Father Mentrida remarks rather fondly— and bat-ar was a
dirge or eulogy addressed to the deceased at a wake. Dirges in Leyte
and Samar were called haya (from dhaya, to be face-up like a corpse
or a canoe carried on the shoulder), and female parahaya were hired
to sing mournful tunes which evoked shrieks of grief from the
widowed and relatives present. Haya were also called anogon or
Cffi!0£Oir~ w Alas! Woe is me!"— and since they not only praised the
dead but petitioned him directly for supernatural favor, the mis-
sionary fathers took a dim view of their performance. As Father
Sanchez says, "Canogon is also to bewail the deceased and is like
paying him an honor, or better said, to sing something which should
be prohibited because in the singing they invoke the deceased and
the diwata."
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111
The noblest literary form was the siday or kandu. This was the
most difficult of all— long, sustained, repetitious, and heavy with
metaphor and allusion. A single one might take six hours to sing or
the whole night through, or even be continued the next night, during
which rapt audiences neither yawned nor nodded, though the fre-
quent repetition of long lines with only the variation of a few words
struck Spanish listeners as tiresome. Subject matter was the heroic
exploits of ancestors, the valor of warriors or the beauty of women,
or even the exaltation of heroes still living. Father Alcina records the
summary of one or two of them with tantalizing brevity, like the
following from the Pacific coast of Samar he knew as Ibabao.
Kabungaw and Bubung Ginbuna
On the coast of Ibabao were two celebrated lovers, the man
called Kabungaw and the woman Bubung Ginbuna. Before they
were married, these two had been in love for a long time, and
once when he had to go on a certain rather long voyage, accom-
panied by others who were setting out on a pangayaw raid, he
left instructions with his sweetheart that she should go straight
to his parents' house to get whatever she needed for her comfort.
(He only had a mother or sister then since his father had already
died.) She went one time when she had to get a little abaca to
weave clothes for her lover, but was so ill received by her swain's
mother and his sister, who was called Halinai, that after abusing
her by word, they did not give her what she had come to get, so
she went.back displeased and determined not to return there or
be seen by her lover again. He learned this as soon as he returned
and asked if she had requested anything, and the bad sendoff
she had been given instead, so after much brooding, he refused
to go up into his house until he learned where and with whom
his lady was living.
He did many things and particular deeds (which I am not
putting down so as not to be too long-winded) until he learned
that she was on a little island where she had fled with her slaves.
He was almost drowned the times he went in search of her and
escaped only by means of supernatural aid, until on the third
attempt he reached there, and pretended to be dead near the
house where she was living, until he was recognized by a slave
who reported it to his lady. She went down drawn by love, and
in her presence he recovered the life he pretended to have lost
in her absence, and both rejoicing, they were married. They
remained there as lords of that little island, which they called
Natunawan in allusion to the love they had felt on first sight,
because natunawan means that they melted together with hap-
piness, or Nawadan, which means "lost steps." There, they say,
not only men followed them from the mainland, but even plants,
attracted by the goodness of the land and the good reception
from those settlers.
The reason why the story of Kabungaw and Ginbuna is so badly
truncated is that it appears in a chapter entitled, "Of the troubles
which some famous princesses made in their antiquity to get married
[and] the efforts of men to abduct others." Thus the whole meat of
what must have been an epic-length tale has been excised as being
of no service to Alcina's purpose— all those adventures which form
the flesh of Philippine epics that he didn't put down so as not to be
too long-winded, those heroic deeds, shipwrecks and drownings, the
intervention of supernatural beings, and the flight to distant lands
to live happily ever after. Moreover, the incident of Kabungaw's
pretending to be dead sounds suspiciously like a modernization in
Alcina's own day, since the magical revival of dead heroes by their
wives or sweethearts is a common climax to Mindanao epics.
The siday or kandu must have been what Philippine folklorists
nowadays call an epic. The epic as a literary form is thought to have
originated in tribal bards regaling a band of warriors gathered
around a campfire with tales that glorified approved standards of
male conduct. These warriors historically fought hand-to-hand in
cattle raids which were eventually recast as the rescue of abducted
wives in great epics like the Iliad and the Mahabharata. In the
societies that produced Philippine epics, however, power and pres-
tige were not based on the ownership of herds of cattle but on the
control of slave labor. Thus, Visayan heroes who were celebrated as
karanduun — that is, worthy of kandu acclaim— would have won
their reputations in real life on slave raids called pangayaw . So
normative were these raids that one kandu says of the heroine, "You
raid with your eyes and capture many, and with only a glance you
take more prisoners than raiders do with their pangayaw."
Father Alcina lived during the twilight of this classic Visayan
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113
culture and recorded it with a surprising lack of prejudice. It is the
background against which Visayan epic literature must be seen. In
his day, Bohol raids as far afield as Ternate were still living
memories, and he knew Samar parishioners who were the descen-
dants of captives taken on the coasts of Luzon. Datos of high rank
demanded brides of equal rank and if they could not obtain them
locally, kidnapped them from other communities, though, as Alcina
says, "their fathers-in-law would be reconciled afterwards when they
saw their grandchildren and were brought ladies in return to marry
their sons and relatives." Raiders even came from Jolo and Mindanao
on such missions, and he attributed the similarity between Visayan
and certain Mindanao languages to this intermarriage. And, of
course, he lived before the modern myth of slave-raiding as a Muslim
monopoly— a rather silly myth at best. Slaving, after all, is a com-
merce that responds to market pressures, not religious scruples. All
the monarchs Alcina served made contracts with commercial slavers
to supply their American colonies with African labor, and collected
import duties on this human merchandise.
Alcina concludes his section on courtship patterns among
Visayan aristocrats by telling the kandu of Datung Sumanga and
Bugbung Humasanun, that princess who captured men with her
eyes. He says he is presenting it in a faithful translation, but what he
presents is obviously a mere summary or scenario. A fleeting
glimpse of one line, however, is incidentally preserved in his chapter
on warfare: "The captives he took on land were 70, and 50 of those
who were as weak and delicate as women so they led them by the
hand, and those taken at sea were 100, so that they were 220 in all,
not counting the rest of the booty and prizes." But even in its
abbreviated outline, it is possible to recognize stylistic features com-
mon to well-known Mindanao epics like the Darangen, Ulahingon
or Agyu, and so to get some sense of what the original epic must
have sounded like. Only the ending seems to be deviant: the hero
sets out to storm heaven itself, fails to do so, comes home empty-
handed, but then claims his bride, a denouement told in Alcina's
version with inappropriate irony.
These epics are characterized by highly repetitious plots: battle
follows battle with only minor variations, and voyage after voyage
by sea or air in search of a kidnapped princess or some hidden
treasure. In Alcina's resume, Datung Sumanga' s six forays are given
only a sentence or two apiece, but if this kandu took all night to sing.
they must have included details like the hero's flashing gold teeth
and magic sword or gong obtained from deities in a many-layered
heaven, and the magnificent plumage at prow and stern of ships
miraculously propelled by guardian spirits rather than oars of sails.
Another characteristic is the amount of space given to betelnut.
The datu's followers turn the ground as bloody as a battlefield with
their spittle, demigods chew bonga of pure gold, ladies make their
appearance preparing quids for their menfolk and serving them
ceremoniously, and lovers seal their commitment by exchanging
them partially masticated. Heroines are royal princesses secluded as
inaccessible binokot in their chambers, where they are found spin-
ning, weaving or embroidering their princes' clothes, and they are
esteemed for such skills as well as for their beauty, a beauty crowned
with a great mass of hair embellished with artificial switches which
it is a great offence for a man even to touch. And a good Philippine
epic ends with a colorful description of the lavish wedding feast in
which its protagonists join to display their wealth and magnanimity.
Alcina's summary of one such classic composition, however
abbreviated, is probably as close as we will come to recovering an
example of ancient Visayan literature — the lost epic of Datung
Sumanga and Bugbung Humasanun.
Datung Sumanga and Bugbung Humasanun
There was, so says the singer, a princess in the island of Bohol
of great repute and fame called Bugbung Humasanun, the most
renowned among all the beauties and of the greatest fame for
her talent among all the damsels, so secluded and enclosed in
her chamber that nobody ever saw her except by sheerest chance.
Her visage was like the sun when it spreads its first rays over the
world or like a sudden flash of lightning, the one causing great
fear and respect, the other, joy and delight. A great chief desirous
of marrying her called Datung Sumanga one day arrived below
her house and, giving a salute, asked for the said princess
without going up by calling out her name and surname and the
other names which she had been given for her beauty. Irritated
by his call, and either really angry or pretending to be, she sent
a maid to ask who he was, and learning his name, acted angrier
still that the courtesy had not been shown according to their
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custom, and replied, why had he come in person? Had he no
negroes to command or slaves to send, perhaps not even some-
one he esteemed like a son whom he trusted as faithful and could
send as a friend? So, without replying or speaking a single word,
the chief had to go right off rebuffed.
Selecting a negro slave, he ordered him to go as intermediary
and ask that princess for buyos, and told him not to come back
without them. The negro go-between went with his message and
asked for the buyos in his master's name, repeating the words of
courtesy and praise which were customarily most polite. To this
she responded with the same courtesy, saying that she had
neither bonga to put in the buyos nor leaves to make them, for
the bonga which she used came from where the sun rose and the
leaves which she added from where it set. And she said nothing
more.
When her reply was received by the suitor chief, he immedi-
ately ordered his slaves to embark and go and search, some to
the east for the bonga, and others to the west for the leaves, just
as the princess had asked for them. This they did at once, and
the same one who had brought the message was sent back with
them, and handed them over and asked her to make the buyos
for his lord. To this the lady replied that she could not make them
because she had no lime, since her lime was only found in a
certain distant and isolated island. With only this reply he
returned. So the datu immediately ordered ships launched at sea
and sent them flying to find the lime in the place indicated. This
the slaves carried out promptly, and returned with all speed and
delivered the lime, which the same experienced messenger took
at once and gave to the lady on behalf of his master, asking her
for those buyos. Her response was that she was not about to
make them until his master went in person to Tandag town on
the coast of Caraga and made a mangayaw raid there and
brought her those he captured.
So he started out at once, and with the joangas or barangays
armed with all his warriors, embarked for the said Caraga, made
his attack, and took 120 persons in all, whom, before even
disembarking or going to his house, he sent to be handed over
to that binokot by the same messenger with the necessary
guards, who did so immediately and asked for the buyos in
return for his lord who was exhausted from the battle.
But still not content with this, she sent back to say she could
not make the buyos until he did the same thing he had done in
Tandag in the islands of Yambig and Camiguing, which the chief
set out to do at once. Reenforcing his fleet and taking only a few
days, he brought his ships back full of captives, some 220 persons
of all kinds, whom he immediately sent to his lady, asking again
for those buyos by means of that slave, to which, stubborn as
ever, she added that he had to perform the same deed with the
people of the island of Siquihor and the town of Dapitan.
This he did at once and sent her all the captives, who were
no fewer than on the past occasions, though still not enough to
win her consent or for her to give the buyos which the gallant
was asking of her. Instead, she sent to tell him that he had to do
the same thing with the towns subject to Mindanao and those of
the island of Jolo. So, undaunted by even this challenge, for a
lover, unless he is mad, fears as little as those who are, he started
out on the fourth expedition. He lifted anchor with his fleet and
went to Mindanao and Jolo, where he fought valiantly and took
many more captives than on the other occasions, and sent them
all to her, once more asking for his buyos, since for these he was
giving her she must surely say yes and set the wedding for
certain.
But not even this time was she willing to give in, but rather,
sent him another demand by the fuming go-between, who told
him: "Sire, what the princess said is that she esteems your favors
and admires your valor, but that in order to demonstrate you
really love her and so your prowess may be better known, she
has heard that not very far from these islands is the great
kingdom of China, a people very rich and opulent who chirp like
birds with a singsong voice and nobody understands them, and
she said no more. 1 ’
When her lover heard this, he fitted out his ships with
stronger rigging, added more vessels, men and arms, and under-
took the fifth voyage for Grand China, at which coasts he arrived
safely, made his assaults on towns little prepared, captured
enough to fill the ships, and made the return voyage to his land
with great speed, laden with captives and spoils, which he
immediately sent to his lady with the oft-repeated plea for the
buyos.
But the lady was not won over by even all of these, but
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rather, setting her contract still higher, asked for the impossible,
for the reply which she gave was to say (and here the poet speaks
in the hyperboles which the Visayans use with much elegance)
that in due time and without fail she would make the buyos if
he performed one more task first, which was that he should bring
her something from heaven as important as what he had brought
her from earth.
On this reply, seeing that she was asking for the impossible,
he said, "Come then, let's get started: we will try to conquer
heaven. Prepare the ships," he said, "and we'll go there. We'll
make an attack on the sky; we'll unhinge a piece of it; we'll
unfold part of one of its eight layers or levels, and we'll seize one
of its greatest thunder claps; we'll rob the moon of a bit of its
splendor, or if nothing else, at least one ray of those that are
forged in its workshops. Come then, let's go, let's go!"
So he embarked, but in vain, and so he sailed, but without
end, for of all the receding horizons, he neither reached one nor
could he cover them all, so he returned satisfied, and sent word
to her that he had done what she had ordered but that he could
only dedicate, not give, the thunder and lightning to her, for
throughout the many regions he had coursed, many were heard
but few were found. He added that unless she sent him the buyos
immediately which had cost him so much and had so tired him
out, he would come and personally remove her hairpiece and
make a sambo7-plume of it for his ship.
On receiving this message, she began to cry and moan,
terrified in her heart lest he dishonor her, and so she decided to
make the buyos so many times denied. When they were made,
she put them in a little casket of marble fashioned with much art,
and this inside another little case like those in which ladies keep
their jewels, and sent them with the negro go-between who had
so many times come and gone with the messages. But when he
told his lord that he had them, he was unwilling to see or receive
them and sent them back instead, saying that he would not accept
them whole but only chewed, and that she should send one in a
perfumed box of gold, all of which was a sign of her consent and
pledge of their intended wedding celebrations, which they per-
formed afterwards with the pomp and ostentation fit for their
class and wealth.
VISAYAN RELIGION AT THE TIME
OF SPANISH ADVENT
The following article is a chapter of a forthcoming study of Philip-
pine culture and society at the time of Spanish advent. It is based on
contemporary sources, compared, assessed and combined to present
a general description of native Visayan religion in the second half of
the 16th century.
Among these sources are the reports of early explorers or settlers
like Antonio Pigafetta, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and Martin de
Rada, and longer accounts like Miguel de Loarca's 1582 Relation,
Pedro Chirino's 1604 Relation de las Islas Pilipinas, and the so-
called Boxer Codex written by one of the Governors Dasmarinas or
somebody who traveled in their company. The earliest Visayan
dictionaries also provide some check on the subjectivity of these
descriptions—Mateo Sanchez's Vocabulario de la Lengua Bisaya
compiled in Dagami, Leyte, in 1615-1617, and Alonso de Mentrida's
1637 Dictionario de la Lengua Bisaya, Hiligueina y Haraya de la Isla
de Panay. In addition, Francisco Alcina's four-volume 1668 Historia
de las Islas e Indios de Bisaya attempts to reconstruct prehispanic
practices by interviews with the oldest Christian converts, and collect
"superstitions" connected with birth, marriage, medicine, death,
farming, hunting, fishing and warfare.
All these accounts must be read against the religious back-
ground of 16th-century Spain common to conquistador and friar
alike. They all believed in witches, ghosts, demon-possession,
miracle-working talismans, and pacts with the Devil, and sought
pagan parallels to Christian cosmogony—a supreme deity, creator
god, and a heaven and hell where the departed were rewarded
or punished according to European standards of morality. On the
other hand, they had all come from Mexico with its ruins of
monumental temples and idols, and vivid memory of altars caked
with human blood, and so regarded Philippine paganism more with
scorn or pity than horror. And missionary fathers were actually
118 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
moved to sympathy for natives they considered child-like victims of
Satanic deceit and delusions.
Visayan Religion
Visayans worshipped nature spirits, gods of particular localities
or activities, and their own ancestors. Religious practitioners were
male or female mediums who contacted spirit patrons in a state of
trance to determine the cause and cure of illness. Sacrifices included
foodstuffs, beverages, and live fowl, hogs or human beings, and
ancestors, spirits and deities were invoked at feasts in which these
were offered up. Ancestors were also invited to partake of any meal
or drinking, and their well being in the next world depended on
sacrifices offered by their descendants both before and after their
death and burial.
Nature Spirits
Natural forces like celestial bodies or flowing waters were per-
sonified for reverence or worship. Chief among them were the sun
and moon, especially the new moon whose regular waxing from a
thin sliver to full brilliance so strongly suggested prosperity and
fertility. Stars and constellations connected with the agricultural
cycle were invoked for good crops, and prayers for fair weather and
favorable winds were addressed to the winds themselves. There
were river gods, both in general and as resident in particular streams,
and important gods and spirits of the sea which received all these
waters. Part of ordinary river traffic were little rafts - or, in the case
of community sacrifices, large ones - headed downstream bearing
the offerings and paraphernalia of ceremonies celebrated along their
bankV And hunters were sure to offer their first catch to the spirits
dewelling in the mountain, banwanun.
Crocodiles were held in special veneration because of their
obvious danger:, they were addressed as Grandfather, and were
offered symbolic foodstuffs by the prudent when crossing rivers or
even on entering boats. The spirit of the strangler fig, or balete tree,
Palahi, was also given offerings in recognition of its sinister powers:
as Father Chirino said, "There's no ancient tree to whom they do not
Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent 119
attribute divinity, and it was a sacrilege to think of cutting one under
any circumstances." 1 Dangerous cliffs or strange rock formations
were also invoked for safe passage: many porcelain plates that had
contained offerings were to be found on a rocky promontory on
Potol Point, the northwestern headland of Panay, and so, too, a
natural formation along the Araut River that looked like a man
paddling a canoe was venerated as epic hero Labaw Donggon.
The Unseen World
Visayans considered themselves vastly outnumbered by a
variety of invisible beings, spirits, and deities. Gods and goddesses
were called diwata and ancestor spirits, umalagad, both words still
in use among Visayans living in the remote mountains of Panay.
These were generally benevolent or neutral and could be approached
ritually for good crops, health and fortune, but they also caused
illness or misfortune if not given due respect. They thus functioned
to sanction approved social behavior. Naturally malevolent beings,
on the other hand, had to be avoided or kept off by precautionary
acts, and ranged from the mischievous to the ghoulish, the most
common and fearful being those who ate away the livers of living
persons. They had no single name as a class - Spanish lexicographers
simply called them witches, brujas or hechiceros— a lack which has
been supplied in modern Visayan by Spanish duende, hobgoblin,
or encanto, enchanted.
Diwata is a Malay-Sanskrit term for gods or godhead, and
Visayan maniwata or magdiwata meant to invoke or deify them,
and diya was a Panay synonym. They had individual personalities
and names, which differed from place to place: as Juan de la Isla said,
"In every town they have their god, all called Diwata in general, but
as a personal name, that of their town." 2 And their number was
legion because individual shamans during seances named different
ones with whom they were in communication or who took posses-
sion of them. Some, however, constituted a genuine pantheon, a
hierarchy with specific roles to play, particularly in connection with
birth, longevity, death and the afterlife. Others were the patrons of
specific human conditions: Dalikmata, a diwata with many eyes, was
invoked in the case of eye ailments, while Makabosog moved men
to gluttony. And Cebuanos referred to the image of the Holy Child
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Visayan Religion . , * Time of Spanish Advent
121
which Magellan gave Humabon's wife as "the Spaniards' diwata,"
and supposedly rendered it homage after Magellan's death, or took
it down to the shore and immersed it in time of drought.
Our earliest list was recorded by Miguel de Loarca in Panay in
1582. 3 Si Dapa was a diwata who marked out one's mortal lifespan
on a tree trunk on Mount Madyaas at the time of birth; Magwayen
ferried the souls of the deceased across to a kind of Inferno, and
Pandaki rescued the deserving for a more pleasant fate. Lalahon was
the fire-breathing goddess of Mount Canlaon who could be invoked
for good crops but who sent out swarms of locusts if angered, while
Mayong was the diw;ata of the volcano in Ibalon ( Albay) which bears
her name. Inaginid and Malanduk were invoked for success in battle
and plunder, and Nagined, Arapayan and Makbarubak could be
appealed to when concocting a poisonous oil. A few were actually
hostile to mankind— Makaptan, for example, who lived in the highest
heaven and so had never tasted human food or drink and, presum-
ably for this reason, capriciously caused them death and disease.
One of the first questions Spanish explorers always asked
Filipinos was what their religion was. When Magellan asked Rajah
Kolambu whether they were Muslims or pagans or what they
believed in, he was told "they didn't worship anything but raised
their face and clasped hands to heaven, and called their god Abba." 4
This was an understandable confusion. Magellan's interpreter was a
Malay-speaking Sumatran and aba is a Malay- Arabic word for
father, while in Visayan, Aba\ was a common expression of wonder
or admiration— like "Hail" in the Ave Maria. Five years later, Sebas-
tian de Puerto reported from the Surigao coast that the natives
sacrificed to a god called Amito— i.e., anito, the ordinary Visayan
term for sacrifice or religious offering.
Father Chirino, on the other hand, stated of the multitude of
Filipino gods, "They make one the principal and superior of all,
whom the Tagalogs call BathaJa Mei-Capa], which means the creator
god or maker, and the Bisayans, Laon, which denotes antiquity.” 5
The Tagalog Bathala was well-known in Chirino's day, but he was
the first to mention a Visayan equivalent, though his statement was
repeated verbatim by Jesuits of the next generation like Diego de
Bobadilla and Francisco Colm. But not by Father Alcina: rather, he
devoted one whole chapter to the thesis that Malaon was simply one
of many names which Visayans applied to the True Godhead of
which they had some hazy knowledge. Thus he equated
Malaon— who the Samarenos thought was a female— with the
Ancient of Days, Makapatag (to level or seize) with the Old Testa-
ment God of Vengeance, and Makaobus (to finish) with the Alpha
and Omega, attributing these coincidences to some long-forgotten
contact with Jews in China or India.
However, none of Chirino's contemporaries mentioned any
Visayan deity by the name of Laon or a creator god by any name,
least of all when recording origin myths, nor did the early dic-
tionaries. Laon was not said of persons but of things: it meant aged
or seasoned like root crops of grain left from last year's harvest, or
a barren domestic animal. But manJaon appeared as the name of a
mountain peak. Thus Laon may well have been the goddess of
Mount Canlaon in Negros— Loarca's Lalahon— but it is unlikely that
the Visayans had a supreme deity by that name.
The soul or elan vital was kalag when people set new rice aside
for the deceased, they said, "Himula w, himula w, manga kalag: aya w
kami pagsuli— Eat, souls, eat: let it not be bad for us, M and a spirited,
forceful man was called kalagan nga tao ." 6 The kalag might separate
from the body during dreams, illness or insanity, or be carried off
by a diwata for envy or desire, especially those who were bugus,
perfect, handsome, or otherwise enviable. Daay was the diwata's
desire for such a person, a beautiful woman for himself, a powerful
man for a son. Women were therefore advised, " Dika magbukas sang
pano sa olo mo kay daayon ka — Don't uncover your head lest you
be desired," The loss of kalag might also result in a kind of
enchanted death— linahosinkamatay— of which Father Sanchez said,
"There are those among the Visayans who remain like dead for two
or three days, and afterwards revive and recount visions ." 8
Ancestor spirits specifically were called umalagad, from alagad,
a follower or voluntary assistant, and they were venerated as per-
sonal guardians or companions. They were invoked on leaving the
house and during agricultural rites in the field, and were considered
essential shipmates on any sea raid, sometimes going on board in
the form of a python. Indeed, some were said to have been born as
snake twins from the same womb as the persons they were destined
to protect. It was these umalagad and kalag, rather than the diwata,
who were the main objects of Visayan adoration, receiving not only
formal worship conducted by priests and priestesses, but domestic
offerings and routinary acts of reverence on the part of laymen.
122 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
The Spirit Underworld
Visayans also believed in a demimonde of monsters and
ghouls who had the characteristics modern medicine assigns to
germs— invisible, ubiquitous, harmful, avoidable by simple health
precautions and home remedies, but requiring professional diag-
nosis, prescription and treatment in the event of serious infection.
Twentieth-century folklore considers them invisible creatures who
sometimes permit themselves to be seen in their true shape or in the
form of human beings, but 16th-century Spaniards thought they
were really human beings who could assume such monstrous forms,
witches whose abnormal behavior and powers were the result of
demon possession or pacts with the Devil. But in either case, if
Visayans became convinced that a death had been caused by one of
their townmates who was such a creature, he or she was put to
death— along with their whole family if the victim had been a datu.
The most common but most feared were the aswang, flesh-eaters
who devoured the liver like a slow cancer. At the least liverish
symptom, people said, "Kinibtan ang a tay— Liver's being chipped
away/’ and conducted a tingalok omen-seeking rite to discover the
progress of the disease. If it appeared that the organ was completely
consumed, emergency appeal had to be made promptly to some
diwata to restore it Aswang also ate the flesh of corpses, disinterring
them if not well guarded, or actually causing them to disappear in
the plain sight of mourners at a wake. Their presence was often
revealed by level spots of ground they had trampled down during
their witches' dance at night, or their singing, which sounded like
the cackling of a hen— nangangakak. But like all other evil creatures,
they were afraid of noise and so could be kept at bay by pounding
on bamboo-slat floors.
Spanish lexicons listed alok, balbal, kakag, oko, onglo and
wakwak as synonyms of aswang, but tiktik as one that flew around
at night, and tanggal one that left the lower half of the body behind,
or even the whole body with only the head flying off by itself.
Mantiw were ghosts or apparitions, and landung were any imagi-
nary visions or phantoms. Yawa was a general term for demons
which came to be adopted for non-Christians— e.g., "Yawa ka pa?—
Are you still pagan?" Ogima were man-shaped demons with the
hind quarters of a beast and were therefore called satyrs or fauns by
Father Mentrida, who soberly reported, "Plenty of them were seen
Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent 123
in Aklan and Ibahay in 1600 and before 1599." 10 Baliw was to
change— that is, from one thing into another, like Lot's wife into a
pillar of salt— and a demon by this name had to be kept away from
the sick. Binaliw was a witch who had become invisible, but also
anyone suffering, a change attributed to divine retribution, like
crossed eyes or a withered limb, so that Binaliw ka! was one of the
worst possible curses.
Omens and Divination
Visayans also believed that supernatural forces filled the natural
world with signs and portents that it would be unwise to ignore.
These were indicated by the behavior of birds and reptiles, or could
be elicited by casting lots or omen-seeking ceremonies conducted by
babaylan or other diviners. Spanish missionaries and commanders
often had to cancel their plans because Filipino guides refused to
continue on after hearing the cry of some bird.
Any snake or lizard crossing the path, even a common house
lizard that "spoke to" somebody descending the housesteps, was a
warning to turn back. A sneeze was also enough to interrupt any
activity, including business transactions that were going badly, and
hunters turned around if somebody happened to ask them about
their plans because their quarry would be forewarned and hide. A
monitor lizard under the house was a sure sign of impending death
or disaster, though if it was killed, enshrouded and buried like a
human being, its life might be accepted as a substitute for the
householder's. But the most famous of these omens was the limokon,
a kind of turtledove with striking green and white plumage and red
feet and beak, also called koro-koro from its call. In a Suban-on epic,
as Taake sinks into the depths of the sea, he laments, "Had the
limokon sounded, I would not have come." 11
Fortune-telling by palmistry was himalad, from palad, the lines
in the palm of the hand. (Old folks were said to be "broken" because
they had as many cracks in their palm as a worn- out pot) Luknit
was to cast lots by four crocodile teeth or boar's tusks, and tali was
a stone or egg which the diviner made stand upright on a plate. The
most popular method was to ask the diwata to answer questions by
causing some inanimate objective to move. Abiyog was to swing,
like a bolo suspended from a cord, and kibang was to move or
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Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent
125
wiggle, like a winnowing tray or a shield laid convex-side down.
Mangayaw raiders before putting to sea were sure to board a small
baroto without outriggers and, sitting perfectly still on the centerline,
ask the diwata to rock the boat if it was propitious to proceed with
the expedition. If they received a favorable response, they asked who
it was who had rocked the boat, naming a list of possibilities, and
then offered a predeparture sacrifice to the one who had favored
them.
Sorcerers were believed to derive their secret knowledge of black
magic— spells and charms— from these unnatural forces. Habit was
a spell and ginhabit the one bewitched by it: bakwit, for example,
was one by which women detained their lovers, lumay a love potion,
and buringot the opposite. Buringot also made its possessor fearless
in the face of danger. Mantala were incantations or verbal for-
mulas— e.g., to request crocodiles not to bite or hot iron not to burn.
Awug was a spell put on coconut palms to make a thief's stomach
swell up; tiwtiw made fish follow the fisherman to shore or wild
boar follow the hunter out of the woods, and oropok caused rats to
multiply in somebody's field. Tagosilangan were persons with a
charm which enabled them to see hidden things, and tagarlum was
a charmed herb that rendered its owner invisible.
A powerful datu's power was enhanced by popular fear of his
arcane knowledge of black magic, sometimes reputed to be handed
down from one generation to another. Ropok was a charm which
caused the one who received it to obey like a slave, and panius was
a spear or G-string which caused leg pains or swelling in the victim
as soon as he stepped over it. Bosong caused intestinal swelling in
those who crossed him; hokhok was to kill simply with a breath or
the touch of a hand, and kaykay was to pierce somebody through
just by pointing a finger at him from a distance. A reputation for such
powers no doubt both facilitated a datu's effective control over his
subjects, and arose from it.
Worship
Anito was a sacrifice, a formal act of worship conducted by a
babaylan. This same word was reported from Luzon as meaning an
idol, ancestor spirit, or deity— that is, an object of worship— but
although Visayan missionaries sometimes used the word in this
sense, their dictionary definitions are unambiguous. Anito was the
root of the words paganito/maganito , an act of sacrifice, naga anito,
to perform that act, and iganito, the thing being sacrificed. But the
idol, diwata or umalagad being worshipped— Father Sanchez
said— was paganitohan }
Paganito were basically seances— that is, ceremonies in which a
medium established audible communications with spirits. They
were conducted for fertility of crops, newlyweds or domestic
animals, for rain or fair weather, for victory in war or plunder in
raids, recovery from illness or the control of epidemics, or the
placating of the souls of the deceased. Minor paganito, however;
could be performed by any householder. Pagobo , for instance, was
offered to the diwata of the family hearth when drought threatened
—a white hen and a bird-shaped rice cake together with leaves or
sprouts from the crops threatened. Pabto was conducted when a
hunting dog's poor performance was attributed to witchcraft: a node
of hot bamboo was struck on the ground to explode in front of the
dog while the hunter said, "PaJas na an palhih- Out with all spells
and curses !" 13 But solemn paganito had to be conducted by a
babaylan.
Babaylan were shamans or spirit mediums, given to seizures and
trances in which they spoke with the voice of their diwata or other
spirits and acted out conflicts in the spirit world, brandishing
spears, foaming at the mouth, and often becoming violent enough
to require restraint. They were also called daitan, befriended, in
recognition of their patronage by particular diwata. They could be
either male or female or male transvestites called asog, but
were most commonly women. They came to their calling through
attacks of illness or insanity which could only be cured by accepting
the call, and then attached themselves as alabay, apprentices, to some
older babaylan, frequently a relative. Their remuneration was a
designated share of the offerings, usually choice cuts of the hog or
the head, but in full-scale paganito sponsored by prominent datus,
they went home with heirloom valuables like porcelain plates or
gold ornaments.
This worship took place in private homes or fields, at gravesites
or sacred spots outside the community, or along beaches or streams
where rafts could be launched with disease and bad luck aboard, or
live pests like locusts or rats. There were no temples, though there
were little platforms or sheds at the entrance to the village
126 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
where offerings were made. Some paganito were for the benefit of
individuals or kindred, some were by nature seasonal, and some
sought relief from a public crisis like drought or pestilence. A solemn
paganito in Cebu was described in the 16th century as follows:
The site was adorned with green branches, palm-leaf cloths and
colorful blankets, and the offerings were set out on large plates— red
blossoms, roasted fish, rice and millet cakes wrapped in leaves, and
a piece of imported Cambay cloth. A large hog, raised and fattened
for this end, lay bound on a grass mat, and cacophonous music was
provided by gongs, drums, and resonant porcelain plates. The
babaylan was an old woman wearing a headdress topped by a pair
of horns and accompanied by a second medium, both of them
carrying bamboo trumpets which they either played or spoke
through. They both proceeded to dance around the hog with scarves
in their hand, acting out a dialogue between the spirits possessing
them, drinking wine on their behalf, and sprinkling some of it on
the hog.
Finally, a spear was given the presiding babaylan, and with it
she began a series of feints at the hog as the tempo of her movements
increased to a frenzy, and then, with a sudden thrust, ran the victim
through the heart with unerring aim. The foreheads of the main
beneficiaries of the ceremony were marked with the victim's blood,
the wounds were stanched, and the mat bloodied during the sacrifice
was carefully burned. The babaylan was then divested of her ac-
coutrements and awakened from her trance, while the hog was
singed, butchered and cooked. The feasting then began, everybody
receiving a share, though the flesh touched by the spear was reserved
for the babaylan. Some of the meat was taken down to an altar on
the seashore or river bank where, after prayers, it was placed on a
little raft together with the altar and all other paraphernalia, and set
adrift. This brought the ritual to a close though the celebrating
continued. 14
Naturally these ceremonies had their own vocabulary. Ginayaw
were offerings of spherical yellow-rice cakes; tinorlok was the hog
reserved for sacrifice, and bani was the tabu requiring the mat to be
burned. Taruk was the babaylan's dance, bodyong her bamboo
trumpet, and banay a fan or fly whisk with which she kept time.
Hola, hulak and tagduk all meant spirit possession, with saob includ-
ing even animals, and taho was the whistling sound when the diwata
was speaking. The little houses or altars on the river bank were
Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent 127
latangan, or maglantang if large enough for major community
sacrifices. And the babaylan's healing prowess was described in
dramatic terms: agaw, to carry off by force, was to snatch a pain from
the sufferer; tawag, to call out, was to summon the spirit that had
kidnapped the soul; and bawi, to rescue, was to free the invalid from
the grip of the afflicting spirit.
Paglehe or magrehe were religious restrictions or tabus, like
mourning restrictions following a datu's death, or a seven-day
thanksgiving period following harvest during which rice could not
be pounded nor outsiders enter the house. Ordinary activities which
involved risk or doubt were always accompanied by prescribed
tabus— planting, setting traps, starting dogs on the hunt, or the
swarming of locusts or the arrival of alien datus, who were con-
sidered naturally hostile if not actually bent on mischief.
Missionaries adopted the word lehe for Lenten abstinences and
restrictions of eating meat on Fridays, and also accepted the pre-
Christian term harang or halad for offering. So, too, Christians
continued darangin, a perfunctory invocation of ancestor spirits
when leaving the house, only they were supposed to murmur,
"Jesus," instead of "Apo-Apo."
Idols
Visayans kept small idols in their homes called taotao, batabata
or larawan, guardians of family welfare and the first recourse in the
case of sickness or trouble. Taotao meant a manikin or little tao,
human being; batabata was a little bata, great grandparent; and
ladawox larawan was an image, mould or model. Idols of individual
diwata with their names and properties, however, did not figure
prominently in Visayan worship. Nor were they annointed, per-
fumed or decked with gold and jewels as they were in the lake
regions of Manila. Thus, members of the Legazpi expedition, fresh
from Mexico with its monumental Aztec imagery, reported that
Cebuanos had neither temples nor idols. But the household idols
were common enough and visible enough to attract Magellan's
disapproving attention. Why were they not all burned? he demanded
after the mass baptisms he instigated.
Hernando de la Torre reported that the natives of Surigao wor-
shipped idols of wood, "and they paint them as well as they can, as
128 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
we do Santos,” 15 and Pigafetta left the following description of one
in Cebu:
These idols are made of wood, and are hollow, and lack the
back parts. Their arms are open and their feet turned up under
them with the legs open. They have a large face with four huge
tusks like those of the wild boar; and are painted all over. 16
But one would wonder if Visayans really represented their ancestral
spirits in such monstrous form. Moreover, the description is at best
confusing, what with its open arms and legs, turned-up feet and lack
of back parts. Perhaps what Pigafetta was describing was really an
animal-shaped ritual bowl for offerings like rice cakes and betelnut,
a container intended to stand on its four legs, being hollow and open
along its back, of course, in order to serve its purpose.
Further confusion is added to the picture of Visayan idol-
worship by the fact that the English word "idol" inevitably suggests
an actual carved figure. But Spanish idolo means not only a graven
image, but anything worshipped, idolized or deified— like an ances-
tor or a balete tree. Father Mdntrida defined diwata as "God, idol of
the pagans, not the images because they worship the Demon in the
spirit." Thus, modern English translations obscure the fact that the
"idols" invoked by a babaylan during a solemn paganito were not
wooden statues, but invisible spirits.
Origin Myths
In the beginning there was only sea and sky— so says a Visayan
myth well known to Spanish chroniclers. The following is the ac-
count attributed to Legazpi himself in 1567:
In the beginning of the world there was nothing more than
sky and water, and between the two, a hawk was flying, which,
getting angry at finding no place to alight or rest, turned the
water against the sky, which was offended and so scattered the
water with islands and then the hawk had some place to nest.
And when it was on one of them along the seashore, the cur-
rent threw up a piece of bamboo at its feet, which the hawk
grabbed and opened by pecking, and from the two sections of
Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent 129
the bamboo, a man came out of one and a woman from the other.
These, they say, married with the approval of Linog, which is the
earthquake, and in time they had many children, who fled when
their parents got angry and wanted to drive them out of the
house and began to hit them with sticks. Some got in the inner
room of the house, and from these the grandees or nobles are
descended; others went down the steps and from these the
timawa are descended, who are the plebian people; and from the
children who remained hidden in the kitchen, they say the slaves
are descended. 18
With local variations, the myth was well known all over the
Visayas. In a Panay version, the bamboo itself was produced by a
marriage between the sea breeze and the land breeze— probably the
primordial pair of deities, Kaptan and Magwayan— but in Leyte and
Samar, the first man and woman issued from two young coconuts
floating on the water and pecked open by the bird. And the high-
landers of Panay listed two other categories of fleeing chil-
dren— those who hid in the kitchen ashbox and became the ancestors
of the blacks, and those who fled to the open sea, the progenitors of
the Spaniards. The most detailed account was recorded by Loarca
from the coastal people of Panay, probably in Oton (Iloilo) where he
was operating a Spanish shipyard.
In this version, the man and woman who came forth from the
bamboo were Si Kalak (i.e., laki, male) and Si Kabai (female), and
they had three children— two sons, Sibo and Pandagwan, and a
daughter, Samar. Samar and Sibo married and had a daughter
named Lupluban, who married her uncle Pandagwan, the inventor
of the fishnet, and they, in turn, had a son named Anoranor, whose
son Panas was the inventor of war. Pandagwan' s first catch was a
shark which died when he took it out of the water, the first death in
the world; grieved, he mourned its death and blamed the gods
Kaptan and Magwayan, who, angered, killed him with a thunder-
bolt. But 30 days later they revived him from the underworld and
restored him to the land of the living. But during his absence his wife
had been won over by Marakoyrun with a stolen pig and would not
now return to him. So he went back to the land of the dead, setting
the pattern of mortality for all mankind.
The Visayan origin myth thus describes the creation of man
and woman, accounts for the introduction of war, death, theft.
130 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
concubinage, and class and race differences into the world, and
provides a human genealogy with divine roots. But it does not
contain any creator god. Christians, however, called the Creator "the
Potter," Mamarikpik, from pikpik or pakpak, the slaps the potter
gives the clay in the paddle-and-anvil technique. Father Sanchez
quoted an educated Cebuano as saying, "Kanino pikpik inin
kalibutan, dile kanan Dios?— Who made this world if not God? An
Dios in mamarappak sinin ngatanan mga yada~God made every-
thing there is .
Death and Burial
When all healing paganito failed to revive the moribund, one last
desperate rite was performed to call back the departed soul— the
Paguli. A coconut shell of water was placed on the stomach of the
inert invalid and rotated to chants of "Uli, uli r kalag-Qomz back,
come back, soul." 20 In the case of a datu, some of his slaves were
sacrificed in the hope they would be accepted in his stead by the
ancestor spirit who was calling him away. Or an itatanun expedition
would be sent to take captives in some other community.
These captives were sacrificed in a variety of brutal ways, though
after first being intoxicated. In Cebu they were speared on the edge
of the houseporch to drop into graves already dug for them, and in
Carigara, a boat was rolled over their prostrate bodies. And in
Butuan, they were bound to a cross, tortured all day with bamboo
spikes, and finally run through with a spear and cast into the river
at dawn— "cross and all," pioneer missionary Martin de Rada said. 21
This violence testifies to the conviction that a datu is the ordinary
target for vengeful spirits of men he has vanquished, and that fitting
retribution is therefore required to satisfy his own ancestors.
The cadaver was usually anointed and groomed as in life, though
in Cebu subjected to a ritual haircut: Pigafetta attended a funeral in
which the widow lay on the body, mouth to mouth, while this
mournful ritual was performed. So as to be assured of a ready recep-
tion in the next life, the deceased was bedecked with the jewelry he
was accustomed to wear on festive occasions, and as much gold as
possible, some even being placed in his mouth and between the
layers of as many as ten blankets with which he was shrouded.
Aromatics like camphor were applied for their embalming effect.
Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent 131
and the house was meanwhile fumigated with porcelain jars of
burning incense.
During a wake which lasted as long as the bereaved family could
supply food and drink for guests, the widow or widower, together
with first-degree kin, were secluded behind tattered white hang-
ings— actually, mapuraw, undyed, not maputi, white. Professional
mourners, generally old women, sang dirges which emphasized the
grief of the survivors (who responded with keening wails), and
eulogized the qualities of the deceased— the bravery and generosity
of men, the beauty and industry of women, and the sexual fulfillment
of either. These eulogies were addressed directly to the deceased and
included prayers of petition: they were therefore a form of ancestor
worship, one of such vigor that Spanish missionaries were never
able to eradicate it.
Though poor Visayans were buried wrapped in a banana leaf in
simple caskets of thin boards or even bamboo, the standard Visayan
coffin was made of a hardwood like ipil, incorruptible enough to
outlast its contents. It was hewn from a single tree trunk with a lid
cut from the same piece, fitted, pegged and caulked airtight with
resin. (This hermetic seal was an essential feature since coffins were
often kept unburied in the house.) These were called longon, a term
Visayans did not apply to the sort of casket introduced by the
missionary fathers. All datus or prominent persons wanted to be
buried in a traditional longon, decorated with fanciful carvings often
executed by the future occupant himself during his lifetime.
The corpse was placed in the coffin with all body cavities filled
with buyo sap, together with its finery and such heirloom valuables
as porcelain jars or plates and saucers placed under the head like a
pillow or over the face and breasts. Some wore actual masks and
mouthpieces of beaten gold, or were provided with bejeweled side-
arms, and an ax handle was placed in the coffin of a bingil, a woman
who had known no man other than her husband— just as the hole in
the ax handle fit only the axhead made for it. Naturally, all this gold
and porcelain attracted grave robbers in the 16th century just as it
does in the 20th: Father Alcina sent a gold earring to Spain which he
purchased from this source. ( Langab meant to bury a coffin in a
secret location in hopes of protecting its contents.)
Infants and newborn or aborted babies were buried in crocks or
jars, sometimes Chinese porcelains with matching lids, but no
Spanish observer seems to have witnessed an adult jar burial. Alcina,
132 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
however, was aware of the practice. He said that Visayans buried
not only in longon, "but in large jars, glazed and strong, in which
they placed the bodies seated, and all the wealth they had when
alive." 1 He received this information from Boholano workmen who
had dug into a burial site full of them when excavating for the Jesuit
chapel in Baklongan earlier in the century, a discovery which at-
tracted Spaniards from Cebu to do some digging of their own. Some
of these must have been secondary burials since the "dragon jars"
mentioned—what Visayans called ihalasan from ihas, snake, and
valued at the price of a slave — would have been too small to
accommodate an adult body, even with the knees drawn up under
the chin.
There was a considerable local variation in Visayan grave sites.
There were graveyards outside village limits, frequently dug into the
banks of upstream rivers or the seacoast, where they were often
exposed by natural erosion: more than a kilometer of them were
revealed along the Mandawi waterfront in Cebu. Caves were also
used where available, or small islets reserved for this purpose: the
reason Homonhon was uninhabited when Magellan landed there
was that Visayans considered it haunted. But shamans and members
of the datu class were never buried in these public graveyards: their
caskets were kept in or under their houses or, in the case of babaylan,
exposed to the elements in the branches of the balete tree where they
had established spirit contact.
Renowned sea raiders sometimes left instructions for their
burial. One in Leyte directed that his longon be placed in a shrine on
the seacoast between Abuyog and Dulag, where his kalag could
serve as a patron for followers in his tradition. Many were interred
in actual boats: the most celebrated case was a Bohol chieftain who
was buried a few years before Legazpi's arrival in a caracoa with 70
slaves, a full complement of oarsmen. Or a slave called dayo might
be stationed at a datu's tomb for the rest of his life to guard it against
robbers or aswang, with the right to feed himself off anybody's
fields, a security considered enviable in a subsistence economy: men
with permanent positions said, "Baga dayo na kita dinhh- We're like
dayo here." Slaves were also sacrificed at a datu's death, even being
killed in the same manner in which he had died— e.g., by drowning.
These slaves were usually foreign captives, but occasionally a
lifelong personal attendant, atobang, who expected to follow his
master to the grave.
Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent 133
Most prestigious, and regarded as especially respectful and
affectionate, was secondary burial— that is, the reburial of bones
exhumed from a primary burial after the body has decomposed.
For one year, the coffin was kept in the house suspended from the
rafters, or in a small chamber extended to one side, a shed under-
neath, or in a field. If it was hung in the house, putrified matter
was drained off as necessary by caulking a bamboo tube into a
small hole in the bottom which was sealed afterwards. If it was
removed from the house, it was not taken out the door— lest the
spirits of the living follow it— but through a temporary opening in
the wall. A year or so later, the bones were removed, given a ritual
cleansing by a babaylan, and placed in a smaller chest: here they
were permanently preserved, venerated, and carried along if the
family moved.
The most dramatic expression of grief for a departed parent was
to dismantle or burn the house in which he died, or cut down trees
he had planted. All these things, like a slave sacrificed to accompany
him, were called onong, something which shares the same fate.
When placing heirloom wealth, bahandi, like gold or porcelain in
the grave, his children said, "Iyonong ta inin bahandi kan ama— May
this bahandi accompany our father"; and when men swore by the
sun, they said, "May I share the sun's fate, nahaonongako sa araw,
if I am not telling the truth"— that is, disappear at sunset. Not
surprisingly, missionaries applied the term to the Christian sacrifice:
"An a tun ginoo Yesu Christo napahaonong dakwa— Our Lord Jesus
Christ took on our fate." 24
Mourning
Both widows and widowers observed three days of fasting and
silence during which they neither bathed nor combed, and might
even shave their hair and eyebrows as a special sign of grief, and
until the full mourning period was ended, they did not eat cooked
food. Family members draped undyed cloth over their heads when
they went out, men let their G-strings drag in the dust, and young
widowers did not don their red pudong or G-strings again until
they had contracted another marriage. The house was fenced off, all
seeds were taken out and planted lest they be contaminated with
death, and all fires were extinguished and rekindled for each use.
134
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent
135
In the case of a datu's death, or one of his wives or children, the
whole community was placed under strict mourning interdict,
pumaraw . Nobody could wear colored clothes, climb palm trees or
fish in certain streams, and spears were carried point down and
sidearms blade up. A mournful silence was to be maintained, and
families are said to have been enslaved as a punishment for breaking
the tabu when their dogs barked or cocks crowed. A datu's mourning
period only ended with the taking of a human life.
This same requirement pertained to any death by violence,
drowning or suspected sorcery, though when the cause was not
certain, a wild boar or deer could be speared instead. Men charged
with responsibility for family honor would tie rings of irritating
vines around their arms or neck, and swear not to remove them or
partake of certain food or drink until they had fulfilled this duty.
Once the requirement was satisfied, the end of the mourning period
was announced by the ranking lady of the household presenting gifts
of wine to allied communities, being rowed there by three respected
warriors singing victory chants and boasting of their exploits. The
oaths were called balata or lalaw, and awut was the promised fast-
ing or abstinence. The fact that these same terms were applied to a
pact two men would make when one of them was leaving on a trip,
swearing to observe awut until they met again, suggests the in-
security of travel outside one's own community in the 16th-century
Visayas.
The Afterlife
The departing Visayan soul was delivered to the land of the
dead, Saad or Sulad, by boat, a passage which is represented by little
ceramic figures on the lid of a famous burial jar dated to 800 B.C.
from Manunggul Cave in Palawan. The boatman sits in the stern with
the steering oar in his hands, his ghostly passenger in front with
hands folded across his chest, staring wide-eyed straight ahead. On
the other shore, the kalag would be met by relatives who had
predeceased him, but they only accepted him if he was well orna-
mented with gold jewelry. If rejected, he remained permanently in
Sulad unless reprieved by a god called Pandaki in response to rich
paganito offered up by his survivors. In Panay, the boatman was
called Magwayan, the lords of the underworld Mural and
Ginarugan, and Sumpoy the one who rescued the souls on Pandaki's
behalf and gave them to Siburanen who, in turn, delivered them to
the place where they would live out their afterlife— Mount Madyaas,
for instance, for the Kiniray-as, or Borneo for the Cebuanos and
Boholanos.
In the afterlife, married couples were reunited to continue accus-
tomed activities like farming, fishing, raiding, spinning and
weaving, but did not bear children. (Babies, who had never engaged
in adult activities, did not have an afterlife.) In this way, they spent
their days for nine lifetimes, being reborn each time smaller than the
last, until in their final reincarnation, they were buried in a coffin the
size of a grain of rice. The souls of those who had drowned, how-
ever, remained in the sea; indeed, drowning was such a common
cause of death that Samarenos used the term figuratively for any
death. Those who died in war, who were murdered or killed by
crocodiles, traveled up the rainbow to the sky; in the Panay epic,
Labaw Donggon, the rainbow itself is formed by their blood falling
to earth. In the skyworld they became gods who, deprived of the
company of their kin, were presumably ready to lend their aid to
survivors who undertook to avenge their deaths.
Sulad was therefore not a Hell where evil-doers were punished,
though, as Father Mentrida said, "because they have no knowledge
of the Inferno, they call the Inferno, Solar [i.e., Sulad], and those who
dwell in the Inferno, solanun," 15 These solanun, of course, were
simply those who went to the grave without sufficient gold and
whose relatives could not afford the paganito to rescue them. And
it was a common belief that there was a deep cave called Lalangban
which was an entrance to this underworld, and that from it a loud
noise like the slamming of a door could be heard prior to a ruling
datu's death.
Nor was the sky a Heaven where the good were rewarded. It was
the abode of Makaptan, that deity who killed the first man with a
thunderbolt and visited disease and death on his descendants. "They
did not realize," Father Alcina complained, "that the sky served as
God's own house and the abode of the blessed." Indeed, the
Visayans long resisted the Christian dogma of a heavenly paradise.
Juan de la Isla wrote, "They believe that their souls go down below
and say that this is better because they are cooler there than up above
where it is very hot ." 27 A century later, a wise old Visayan told Father
Alcina:
136
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Visayan Religion . . . Time of Spanish Advent
137
Father, we do not doubt that there will be a heaven for the
Castilians, but not for the Visayans, because God created us in
this part of the world so very different from you; and since, as
we see, the Spaniards will not even let us sit down in their houses
here, nor show us any respect, how much less there where, as
you say* all is grandeur, majesty and glory without end? 28
Notes
*Pedro Chirino, Relacion de las Islas Filipinas (Rome, 1604;
Manila, 1969), p. 62.
2 Juan de la Isla, "Relacio'n de las Islas del Poniente," Coleccion
de Documentos ineditos relatlvos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y
Organization de las antiguos Posesiones espanoles de Ultramar:
Segunda Serie, Tomo 3 (Madrid, 1887), pp. 233-234.
3
Miguel de Loarca, "Relacion de las Islas Filipinas," Emma Helen
Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine Islands 1493 -
1898 (Cleveland, 1903-19 (9), vol. 5, pp, 120- 140.
4 Antonio Pigafetta, 'Trimo Viaggio intorno al Mondo" (1522),
Blair and Robertson, op. cit., vol. 33, p. 126.
c
Chirino, op. cit., p. 60.
6 Francisco Alcina, Historia de las Islas e Indios de Bisayas (MS,
1668), Part I, Book 3, Chapter 14.
7 ,
Alonso de Me'ntrida, Diccionario de la Lengua bisaya,
hiligueina yharaya de la Isla de Panay (Manila, 1637, 1841), p. 116.
Matheo Sanchez, Vocabulario de la Lengua bisaya (Dagami,
1617 MS; Manila, 1711), fol. 291v.
9 Ibid., fol. 264.
10 Mentrida, op. cit., p. 274.
n Gaudiosa Martinez Ochotorena, "Ag Tobig nog Keboklagan: a
Suban-on Folk Epic,” Kinaadman 3 (1981): 420.
12 Sanchez, op. cit., fol. 25-25v.
13 Ibid., fol. 387v.
14 Pigafetta, op. cit., pp. 168-170; Isla, op. cit, pp. 233-234.
15 Hernando de la Torre, "Relacion del Viage y Navigacion de la
Armada de Laoisa," Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, Coleccion de
los Viages y Descubrimientos que hitieron por Mar los Espanoles
desde Fines del Siglo XV (Madrid, 1825-1837), vol. 5, p. 280.
16 Pigafetta, op. cit., p. 166.
17 Me'ntrida, op. cit., p. 132.
l8 Gaspar de San Agusti'n, Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas
(Madrid, 1698, 1975), pp. 293-294.
19 Sanchez, op. cit., fol. 388 v.
20 Alcina, op. cit, loc. cit.
21 "Carta del P. Martin de Rada," Isacio R. Rodriguez, Historia de
la Provinciana agustiniana del Smo. Nombre de Jesus de Filipinas,
vol. 14 (Manila, 1978), p. 480.
22 Alcina, op. cit., ch. 16.
23 Ibid.
24 Sanchez, op. cit., fol. 379v.
25 Mentrida, op. cit., p. 350.
26 Alcina, op. cit., ch. 11.
Isla, op. cit., loc. cit.
28 Alcina, op. cit, ch. 12.
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 139
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY VISAYAN FOOD
AND FARMING
The staple crops of the Visayans at the time of Spanish advent were
rice, millet, taro, yams and bananas grown in swiddens ( kaingin ),
wild yams and sagu. 1 Rice was grown everywhere and was the
preferred food, but only produced a year's supply in a few places.
Root crops were therefore the most common food for part of the year,
or all of the year for part of the people. This was even more charac-
teristic of the Spanish colony because tribute was collected in rice
from the very beginning. As Jesuit Francisco Alcina observed a
century later, "The rice usually does not last them longer than the
time it takes to harvest it, since the rest they pay in tribute or sell to
get the cash to pay it." 2
Spaniards made much of the fact that Visayans did not produce
a year 's supply of rice, and that even datus with many slaves ate
root crops in certain seasons. They apparently were unaware that
low-intensity farmers wished to distribute the risk of bad weather,
locusts or other pests to several different crops— or that they might
not have found such annual variation in diet a particular hardship
in the first place. Adverse conditions did, of course, cause food
shortages, or even famines so severe parents would sell children for
food from as far away as Borneo. Such painful exchanges enabled
them to provide for other children, while those they lost would be
nourished to adulthood either as slaves or foster children. Indeed,
cases were not unknown of such children returning years later,
married and prosperous.
The fact that Visayans lived in permanent settlements is evidence
that their swiddening techniques were not destructive— meaning
♦
This is a chapter of a forthcoming study of Philippine culture
and society at the time of Spanish advent.
that a favorable balance between their numbers and the land avail-
able to them permitted new swiddens to be made in the secondary
growth on abandoned swiddens without cutting into virgin wood-
land each time. The late 20th-century observer familiar with the
denuded, eroded Visayan terrain can hardly imagine the lushness of
its 16th-century flora and fauna. Forest plants and honey were part
of normal diet in season, wild game was so plentiful swiddens
needed fences like little stockades, and pigs gorging on fallen fruits
grew so fat they were easy prey for hunting dogs. Spanish accounts
regularly speak of the fertility of a soil that produced larger and
better corn, cacao and sweet potatoes than the original specimens
introduced from Mexico. In short, it was an environment which was
able to carry a sparse Visayan population that burned off a small
portion of its cover every year.
Rice farming. Visayans called rice humay, tipasi or paray, but
didn't grow much of it irrigated in the 16th century— that is, in pond
fields with standing water. The early dictionaries include dozens of
terms for rice cultivation and dozens more for different varieties,
but not a word about wet rice— or, more accurately, just one word,
gani, a seedbed for rice to be transplanted to swampland or the
floodplain of rivers, where it was all too frequently drowned. In-
stead, they planted dry rice in hillside swiddens with natural
drainage. This often resulted in a symbiotic relationship between
uplanders and lowlanders on the coast, the one exchanging rice for
seafood, salt and pottery from the other. From Cebu, Legazpi sent
soldiers to look for rice "in the mountains and highlands of the other
islands around," 3 and eventually transferred to Panay because "there
is a great quantity of rice [there], and from the sea [the Portuguese]
can't stop it from coming down the river from the hills."
Swidden farming called for close attention to the weather: fields
had to be dry to burn but sprouting rice needed moisture. Visayans
were aware of the changing seasons from the appearance of stars,
the shifting direction of winds, the flowering of plants and the songs
of birds. Because of varying exposure to monsoon winds, the best
time for beginning the agricultural cycle was not the same on all
islands and coasts. Rajah Kolambu of Limasawa asked Magellan's
help to harvest in late March; Bernardo de la Torre harvested some
Filipinos' rice under arms on the southern coast of Mindanao
in June and July, and Legazpi reported that Panayanos were
140 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
harvesting in October and November. Perhaps two crops were
grown in Iloilo: Miguel de Loarca gave a four-month schedule for'
preparing swiddens beginning in June— that is, when the Pleiades
first appeared— which would presumably have been planted in
September.
Available swidden land was unlimited: a century after Spanish
advent. Father Alcina could still write, "Regarding land, here
there is no difference between mine and thine . . . because it is so
great, so extensive, and in almost all places so good." Farmers
simply drove a stake, patkal, in the ground or cut some branches
off a tree to establish their claim. This claim did not include owner-
ship of the land, however, l>ut only of the crops grown on it: these
could be harvested, traded or sold, even a full field of standing
grain— e.g., "Iyo ako daganihan siningakun tabataba— Help me har-
vest this rice I've bought." 6 Two farmers might work a field in
common, tobong, and all fields were worked by exchange labor, \
alayon, planting or harvesting each one's field in turn, the owner i
feeding them all. |
Most swiddens were made in secondary growth where earlier
ones had been fallowed, bunglayan or habohabun, or even last
year's field with the dried stalks still standing, dinagamian.
Balasubas, kalasokas, kanat, and higabon all meant the process of
clearing off the undergrowth, including goro, to slash through bam-
boo or vines, and harabay or haras, to hack off shrubs and small
plants at the root. Hadhad was to chop down fullgrown trees, though
some were left standing with their branches removed— small ones to
serve. as poles for climbing vegetables, large ones because they were
too laborious to fell— and hilay or hiklay was to cut those along the
edges that would shade the crops. All this debris, dorok or dopok,
was gathered into large piles called tapong for burning when dry,
though pieces of wood large enough to be useful were dragged off
to be saved. The climax came with the actual firing, dobdob, and the
swidden was then a kaingin, ready to be planted and cultivated as a
field, uma (or haul in Cebu).
All of this work would be stopped if the mound of a termites'
nest, posgo, was found, or some evil portent like a balinkokogo
snail, which the Visayans considered unnatural because, they said,
it made a squeaking sound. Once the field was finished, omens were
taken to determine if it would be fruitful, and sacrifices offered at a
bamboo post called bunglan or timbayan in the middle; only then
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 141
could planting begin, pugas . A row of men strode across the field
punching thumb-sized holes with a heavy wooden pole, hasuk or
bakol, as thick as their arm and pointed at the bottom. They were
immediately followed by a row of women who dropped five or six
seeds into each hole and covered them over with their toes, all with
a speed and accuracy which elicited wonder from foreign observers
for three centuries. Some fields were deliberately planted later than
others to stagger the time of reaping and distribute the risk of bad
crops. Taro and millet were often planted along the edges of the field
depending on the type of soil, and weeding was required two or
three times during the season dalos, gunit or hilamon.
Once planted, swiddens had to be protected from birds, wild
boar and deer— though little protection could be taken against a
swarm of locusts. Sturdy fences were constructed all around —tarluk
with fenceposts as thick as a basuk dibble stick with thinner ones
lashed in between close enough together to obstruct a pig's snout, or
saruk, a double row of posts with brush and branches piled in
between and woven tight to make a veritable stockade as high as a
man's chest. Even so, field huts called bugawan or hulayag had to
be manned daily, and reinforced when the grain ripened, to drive
off birds by beating large bamboo rattles, kalakopak, or pulling cords
which jerked dangling scarecrows or wooden noisemakers at the
edge of the field for wild animals, or simply by shouting, clapping
or stomping.
Harvesting was accompanied by strict religious tabus. For three
days before, harvesters had to remain continent and keep away from
fire, nor could outsiders enter the house: otherwise, they believed,
the rice would be all straw with very few grains. In some places they
even camped in the field all during harvest, lest the rice decrease— as
they said— by running away angry that the house had not been left
to it alone. Harvesting was usually done by women, and men could
not join them even if the crop would be lost for want of reapers. Even
where it was the custom for men to join in, the harvest had to be
begun by a woman ritually cutting a prescribed amount at a specific
hour of the day. And once the harvest was finished, more tabus were
enforced for seven days — e.g., houses were closed to outsiders and
cooking fires had to be rekindled each time.
Rice was reaped pannicle by pannicle, leaving the stalks stand-
ing, with a sickle called salat or any kind of knife— e.g., sipol, a little
paring knife women ordinarily carried around with them, or bisong
I
142 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
an even smaller one for cutting threads or betelnut. Green ears were
separated to be pounded and toasted as pilipig, and the rest was
sunned and stored unthreshed in field granaries called korob,
or ologii standing on a tree stump, or under the house in tambobong,
a kind of huge basket of woven reed mats. It was threshed as needed
by being trampled underfoot, giyuk, scraped against a seashell,
kagur, or pulled through the hands, bumo, a term which also meant
to rub ripe grains loose from a growing plant in time of hunger,
leaving the others to mature. After threshing, it was winnowed,
milled with a mortar and pestle, and winnowed again. If especially
white rice was wanted— for example, to dye yellow with saffron for
festive or ceremonial occasions it was pounded again, hashas . (It
was this plain white rice cooked without condiments or seasoning
which the Spaniards came to call morisgueta— because. Father Colin
said, "It was no better than Moro fare.") 7 It could also be pounded as
fine as flour, binokbok, and mixed with ingredients like honey and
grated coconut to prepare confections, or fermented into yeast cakes,
tapay, for brewing whence, tinapay. leavened bread.
Second only to rice in importance and esteem was millet, da wa,
which in some islands was the main crop and rice was not grown at
all. It was sown by broadcasting, sabuag, and could grow in poorer
soil than rice, yielded more bountifully, and ripened sooner. But it
had the great disadvantage that its seeds were so hard they were
tiresome to mill by pounding. Sorghum, batar, was also planted and
eaten as a cereal but was less common, though it was regularly
mentioned in Cebu. The grain-like Job's-tears, arlay, was also eaten
in place of rice: it grew wild, and had large seeds so hard they could
be drilled through and strung as necklaces. But whether rice or
millet was the preferred food, root crops were actually the most
common Bisayan staple.
Root crops. Among their many root crops, or tubers, the one
the Visayans considered most nutritious was taro (CoJocasia), which
required moist soil, even mud or standing water, and had large
shield-shaped leaves. It was called gabi, lagway, gaway or soli in
various places, but one called biga was not Colocasia at all, but
Alocasia. There were many varieties: Father Alcina said he counted
78, including humnaw, "a kind of yellowish gabi so soft and mellow
it might have been mixed with butter." 8 Its prominent place in
Visayan life was reflected by an extensive vocabulary for its parts.
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 143
uses, and stages of growth. Apay were the leaves wrapped around
other food for roasting, laon were edible leaves cooked on coals, and
dagmay was an old leaf. Hungay was gabi too young to harvest, so
they said of little children, "Hungay man an tao" meaning, "Let him
play, he's still growing."
Yams ( Dioscorea ) were the most widespread root crop, growing
both wild and domestic in four or five different species with dozens
of varieties. The most common species was Alata, ubi, while abobo
was Bulbifera, a species so called from the fruitlike little bulbs which
grew on the stem and were eaten cooked rather than the root itself.
But ubi, like the English word yam, was also applied loosely to any
bulky edible root. Sanchez glossed many Samareho terms with "a
root, a kind of ubi," and defined ubi itself simply as "an edible root."
Mentrida called it "a camote, a certain common species" in
Hiligaynon, just as southerners in the United States call sweet
potatoes yams.
The domestic varieties were planted in hard soil too poor for rice
and too dry for taro, in holes opened with a stout planting stick called
gahuk, and a pole called dongdong was inserted alongside for the
stems to climb. But just as important as any domestic variety was the
wild yam called korot or kobong which was caustic to the taste,
intoxicating, or even poisonous, if not well cured. It had to be
treated by being cut in slices, pounded or scalded, soaked in a
wooden tub, preferably in salt water, and squeezed out by fistfulls.
Butwa was the stage in this process when it could be eaten even
though still wet, or pinalagdang, half dry, but if it was kept until it
became hard, it was buggus— and so was a stubborn man who
insisted on having his own way.
Sagu. Another starchy staple food was a kind of flour
made from the inner trunk of the sagu palm, lumbia, or a number of
others like nipa or buri— e.g., ambolong pugaban, or sakol. The
trunk was stripped, cut into pieces (measured by ax-handles if for
sale), pulverized in mortars, and then washed, dissolved and al-
lowed to settle in tubs of water. A reddish sediment, unaw, collected
on the bottom, leaving the lighter bran, olabot, floating on the surface
to be skimmed off, dried, and stored in granaries called sonson or
olog. In Mindanao and islands to the south, it was the main staple,
where it was pressed into moulds to make little cakes, landan, which
dried as hard as bricks but became soft and palatable on boiling— like
144 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
macaroni from Sicily, Father Alcina said. These were commercial
products imported into the Philippines from Macassar packaged in
leaves: Magellan's survivors intercepted a boat loaded with them just
off Basilan.
Bananas. A number of different bananas and plantains (cooking
bananas), boiled still unripe like rice or yams, were also a staple food
crop. Spaniards regularly praised the flavor and variety of Visayan
bananas: Juan Martinez rhapsodized over their Latin name, musa,
"There can be no doubt that they are the same fruit which Jupiter's
nine sisters [i.e.. the Muses] used to eat in their day, because they
gave them the name of musas." 10 Like Spaniards, Visayans ate ripe
ones as fruit or between-meal snacks— though probably not
sprinkled with cinnamon or doused with wine— especially the
fragrant little ones called todlong binokot, "lady-fingers." But the
reason they cultivated them so widely was that before ripening their
sugar content was all starch, and so provided a valuable staple of
diet.
A sampler of Visayan farming terms. Sixteenth-century
Visayan farmers knew neither the plow nor the carabao— and the
rather puny plows which became available in the next century would
have been of little use in swiddens, anyway, because of snagging on
roots. Farming tools and techniques other than those for clearing
swiddens included the following:
Bakar. To till the soil by any method.
Bunyag . To water plants by sprinkling.
Damus or napon . A field of root crops
Gibo. A crude broom for sweeping a field.
Habuk , To cultivate the soil for planting with a bolo.
Kahig. A rake or harrow.
Kuyog. To plant trees, vines, bananas or camotes in rows.
Lalong To transfer a whole plant, including the root with oil
attached.
Pusok. To plant a whole field to one crop or one kind of tree.
SandoL A paganito rite for rain in time of drought.
Sun-ad or sunag . A transplanted tuber.
Tagbung or hamugdas. To plant something whole, like a
coconut.
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 145
Camotes. The camote or sweet potato ( Ipomoea batatas) was a
native of tropical America, not to be confused with that potato
{Solanum tuberosum) so well known nowadays as potato chips or
"French Fries." It spread into the Pacific islands of Polynesia, and as
far south as New Zealand under the name kumara, before the arrival
of the Europeans, but not to Asia. The Spaniards brought it to the
Philippines at a date which cannot be determined because of a
confusion of terms— that is, because 16th-century Spaniards called
all Philippine root crops "camotes."
The problem was that when the Iberians started their maritime
expeditions in the 15th century, they had no word for such tubers.
The only root crops they knew were vegetables like radishes and
turnips— indeed, the Spanish word for turnip, nabo, was used for
roots in general. Thus when the Portuguese found the Africans of
Senegal eating yams, they didn't know what to call them and so
adopted the local word for "eat "—inyamis. Columbus therefore
called the sweet potatoes he found in Santo Domingo names, though
his followers soon learned the native Taino word, batata f and later
in Mexico, the Aztec word, kamotl, which was hispanized as camote .
Both words subsequently became a convenient way to refer to root
crops for which there was no equivalent in Spanish.
Pigafetta reported 'batatas" in Guam and Palawan, for instance,
but used the same word in Tidore for gumbili, a kind of yam. The
Legazpi expedition received "two or three batatas or names" in
Guam, and recorded the same combination, ’batatas and names,"
like a refrain all along the coast of Samar, Leyte, and Bohol, even
interchanging the two words in the same sentence. 11 Loarca said
Visayans ate "some roots like the Santo Domingo batatas they call
camotes," 12 and Juan de la Isla, "some roots almost like the patatas
they call oropisas, names and camotes .” 13 "Oropisa" is presumably
Oropesa, the old Bolivian province of Cochabamba in the Andes,
where potatoes, not sweet potatoes, are still grown.
During the next 50 years of Spanish arrivals from Acapulco, the
Caribbean word batata gave way to its Mexican equivalent, camote.
The first dictionaries of Philippine languages, dating from the early
17th century, always used "camote" as a Spanish word, not Bikolano,
Tagalog or Visayan. Sanchez defined halagbungas "a certain kind of
edible root or camote," and Mentrida, biga as "large camotes with
wide leaves." In Bikol, Marcos de Lisboa called ubi, ’big brown
camotes," and apare, "little white camotes like testicles." 14 The San
146
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming
147
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Buenaventura Spanish-Tagalog dictionary equates camote with gabi,
nami, tugi, and ubi, 15 and the unpublished manuscript dictionary of
Francisco Blancas de San Jose' defines bagingas "some wild camotes,"
and butil as "the bud of the camote they call gabi." 16 The historian
therefore cannot tell whether early Spanish explorers reporting
"camotes" were referring to sweet potatoes or some other root
crops— Da smarinas in Nueva Vizcaya in 1591, for example, or
Quirante in Benguet in 1623.
On the assumption that the "batatas” and "camotes" reported in
1565 were actually New World sweet potatoes, it has sometimes
been suggested that they must have been brought over by the
Villalobos expedition of 1543. It is well known that Villalobos'
starving crewmen tried to grow food on Sarangani Island, but what
they planted was corn, not camotes— and it didn't grow. What is
more likely is that camotes were introduced like corn and cacao as
new crops for the benefit of the colony only after Manila was
established as its capital. A reference by English corsair Thomas
Cavendish in 1588 is suggestive in this connection. He said that while
anchored off Capul Island (he was hoping to intercept the Manila
Galleon), "one of the chief Casiques . . . brought us potato rootes,
which they call camotas." 17 These were probably real camotes, since
it seems unlikely that the Filipino chieftain would have applied the
alien name to a native crop.
At any event, whenever and however they were introduced, both
the word and the plant were widespread in the Visayas in Alcina's
day. He probably gave what was the last word in 1668:
The camotes which were brought here from Nueva Espana
[Mexico] are really what they call batatas in Spain, but these here
differ in size, being generally much larger. There are red ones
and white. The camote is the refuge of the poor. These roots are
rather sweet but of little sustenance and good only for wind. 18
Hunting. Visayans hunted with dogs and nets. The dogs were
called ayam, the hunters mangangayam, and those who could
predict whether the dog would be a good hunter by examining the
teats at birth were inayam. Good ones— karagarahan — were highly
valued, and had to be guarded against poison or witchcraft. \^hen
their mother died, or one of the same litter, a rattan collar was put
on their neck, like a man in mourning, until they took their next prey.
Some were raised in the house, pampered and fondled: their masters
rubbed noses with them — the local equivalent of kissing — and carried
them out to the forest on their shoulders. To file their teeth slightly
was thought to increase their bravery, and so was a crocodile tooth
carried by the hunter, or a boar's tusk grown in a full circle. They
were small but fearless— quick enough to avoid a boar's tusks and
fierce enough to grab one three times their size by the ankle and hang
on until the hunter arrived to spear it. They either took them in the
chase or drove them into a strong net, batung with mesh wide
enough for little shoats to pass through but catching large
on es—hababatung.
Large animals were also caught in pits, a wang, or deadfall traps,
atub, and smaller ones with snares— balolang in general, balyug for
iguanas, gawa for monkeys, anibas for wild chickens, and alikub-
kub, barang or bib'k for birds. The most dangerous trap was the
balatik, an automatic crossbow or ballista which, when triggered by
a line stretched across an animal run, could drive a shaft clean
through a pig's body. Thirty or 40 of them might be set in a line at
different heights, and there were also small ones for rats— alugpit or
padlong. It was a rather sophisticated machine. Standing on two
stout posts driven into the ground in the form of an X, it had a long
stock with a slot to hold the shaft, a powerful bow or spring to propel
it, and a catch to hold the string and release it when triggered. It even
had a safety lock, goom, to prevent it from firing accidentally; thus,
of somebody who was restrained from acting they said, " Ginogoom
kun balatik: 1 And of a man who was all set and "rarin' to go," they
said, "Bingat kun balatik— Cocked like a crossbow."
Hunters stayed out many days, sleeping in huts called hokdong,
and opening trails in the brush to lead the game into the nets. During
their absence their wives could not perform labor like weaving or
pounding rice. Part of the first catch was offered up on a tree-stump
altar to Banwanun, the mountain-dwelling spirit. The rest was car-
ried home slung on the hunter's back by a tumpline over his
forehead, and shared with others: it was never sold or preserved. All
animals whose meat was considered fit for human consump-
tion— e.g., deer or civet cat— were referred to as babuy r pig.
Fishing. Visayan waters literally teemed with fish in the 16th
century. Many swam upstream to spawn in inland streams, and
some inhabited swamps and thick muddy waters, rose to the surface
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Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
to breathe, and even climbed up onto the roots of mangrove trees.
Large ones competed with fishermen by attacking their nets, and
more voracious ones like barracuda actually endangered the fisher-
men themselves. They were caught in nets, traps and corrals at the
mouths of rivers or dammed-up streams, with hook and line, or
speared with harpoons. Most fishing was done close inshore, so there
was little incentive for deep-sea fishing or dragnets large enough to
require organized parties. It was often done at night, because schools
of fish could be seen shimmering in the moonlight, or because they
could be attracted to torches in the boats.
There was a variety of nets. Paggiyod were dragnets used in
shallow water, fastened to the small of the fisherman's back by a
leather brace paholan, like the belt the weaver uses with a backstrap
loom. Laya was a casting net: Sanchez thought it was a recent
introduction in his day, though there was a lighter one, holos,
without lead sinkers. Some were five meters across and so required
considerable dexterity to cast: datus were proud of such skill— as
they were proud of hunting skills. Baringwe re nets woven like loose
cloth, fine ones for catching tiny hipon shrimp in the surf; ho war
were nets with the widest mesh and were used in swamps. Pahsag
was what is nowadays called a salambaw^- a large four-cornered net
lowered by a simple derrick mounted on a raft. Pagbiday was to set
nets upright along the edge of 30 or 40 boats strung out along the
shore, which caught fish leaping into the air to escape fishermen
wading alongside. It was a raucous activity accompanied by much
hilarity as fish fell all over those in the boats, sometimes even
wounding them.
Rivers were dammed to lead fish into nets or traps, and weirs or
corrals, bakod or bobo, were constructed as long as 250 meters. The
roots, bark or berries of more than a dozen different trees, called tubli
in general, were squeezed into the water to stun the fish, and rattan
basket traps were set in creeks— like the one called pidada which had
the shape and name of a particular kind of porcelain jar. A hook and
line was called rombos , and harpoons were made in different
styles— kalawit or isi (also used for hunting) barbed like an
arrowhead; sikap, a two-pronged fork; sarapang, a real trident with
three or more points; and bontal, a heavier one for catching duyong,
the manatee or seacow. They were thrown with a line attached to the
boat, and a powerful fish could pull one out to sea if the line was not
quickly cut.
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 149
Domestic animals. Seafood was the main source of protein in
the Visayan diet, but pigs and chickens were raised for consumption
and sacrificial offerings. Since deer and wild hogs were also called
babuy r domestic pigs were distinguished as sohong Different
islands had their own breeds, some of which yielded 120 liters of
lard or 240 kilos of pork on butchering. They foraged between village
houses and kept the ground clean of offal, or were pastured in
nearby woodlands with their ears clipped for identification. One was
sometimes raised in the house, where it was reported to be cleaner
than a dog, and was called "princess," binokot, like the secluded
daughters of upper-class datus because, like them, it never set foot
on the ground. There was also a cat in every house to keep it free of
rats, and if a civet cat could be caught young enough to tame, it made
an even better mouser. Household dogs were provided with a special
ladder to come and go as they pleased, and pet monkeys also acted
as watchdogs to give noisy warning of approaching strangers.
Goats were rare: Spanish explorers only observed a few on the
coast of Samar and in Cebu. But they were common in Mindanao
and areas in contact with Muslims to the south— e.g., they were
raised for trade in the Semirara Islands between Panay and Mindoro,
which the Spaniards called Goat Islands— Islas de Cabras— because
they were populated with goats that had been turned loose to breed
wild. Horned cattle— that is, cows— were only introduced late in the
century from China and Mexico, with a few bulls brought from Spain
to improve the stock. The absence of the carabao is noteworthy. That
it was not used as a draft animal is not surprising, but that colonial
reports listing natural resources do not mention buffalo meat, hide
or horns, is. Mention was made of small "horn" containers for
perfume, and of one shaman wearing a horn headdress, but not of
buffalo horn armor or battle trumpets. The beast was found wild, or
feral, in Luzon from the Bikol to the IIocos, in all of which places it
was called nowang or anowang, but in the Visayas it was
karabaw— i.e., Malay kerbau . But whether it roamed the Visayan
hills or not, the Visayans evidently did not hunt it in sufficient
quantity to attract Spanish attention.
Cooking. Visayan cooking was done on a clay kalan stove, or
three stones, sugang, in an open hearth. Besides flint-and-steel, there
were three traditional methods of making fire by friction (bag-id):
by pulling a band of rattan back and forth around a split stick stuck
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upright in the ground holding the tinder, by rubbing a knife-shaped
piece of bamboo along another stuffed with tinder and held flat with
the foot, or by rotating a wooden rod between the palms, drill-like,
against a wooden board. The tinder was either fine wood shavings
or the lint-like fuzz of various palms.
Staple foods were boiled, though tubers, bananas and fleshy
leaves or leaf stems were roasted on hot coals. Viands were frequent-
ly fried in coconut oil, and both meat and fish were barbecued or
smoked as tapa. Food of all kinds was steamed in sections of bam-
boo— payla win general, sakol if rice flour with grated coconut, and
lotlot if broken out afterwards to retain their cylindrical shape.
Grain was also parched in dry pots, and so were seeds and fruit pits
intended to be pulverized to mix with rice to stretch a limited supply:
lamur was any such mixing with millet, sorghum, beans or nuts. Pili
seeds were collected for this purpose under the trees where they had
been dropped by kalaw birds after digesting the flesh.
Seafood— not only fish but eels, snails, squid, crabs, mollusks,
turtles and turtle eggs— were the main source of Visayan protein and
was preferred to meat. Wild game was considered a typical mas-
culine food and little preferred by women, and all meat was
forbidden pregnant v^omen— and so was shark flesh because baby
sharks were believed to swim in and out of their mother's womb
during her pregnancy. Fish were preserved and marketed as sun-
dried daing, or barol, split open and salted before sunning. Lasiw as
fermented fish paste or meat brine; dayok, danglusi and ginamus
were high-flavored adobo-like dishes of minced meat or fish, and
yaman or panakot were any kind of spices and seasonings— all
pungent and sour foods fit to supplement a bland starchy diet.
Honey was also an important food, as indicated by the frequent
mention of activities connected with it. Seasons were designated by
the flowering of trees and plants whose nectar fed the bees— like
Katparasan from January to March when the paraasan rattan was in
bloom. Wind and rain could destroy the blossoms, and typhoons the
bees themselves, so the weather was a subject of constant specula-
tion. Conversely, it was believed that for bees to swarm low in the
trees was a sign of a bad year to come, and kagas, a dry honeycomb,
was the euphemism for any vain undertaking or unrewarded labor.
In a good year, a man could expect to find as many as 50 hives in
one expedition, during which he would sleep in the forest and boil
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 151
the honey to prevent its souring before he got back with it. Honey
was eaten as a food together with the white grubs it contained, made
into confections and sauces, used as a preservative for meat and fruit,
and brewed into the mead-like kabara wan.
Rice cakes boiled in a little wrapper of coconut leaves were
called puso after the banana flower, and were prepared in a number
of different sizes and shapes— e.g., hnalaki, masculine, binuwaya,
crocodile-like, or kumul sin data, "datu's fistful.” (The normal way
to eat rice was to squeeze a fistful into a lump— kum ul.) Tambolwere
made with rice flour and coconut milk, linanggang with rice and
grated coconut, and handag were deep fried. Though Visayans did
not make cane sugar, they obtained an unrefined brown sugar called
kalamay— or cbancaca in Spanish— from palm sap, and peddled it in
little square packets of palm leaves called parak, ten parak being tied
together and sold as one dankay. And sarasara was rice mixed with
such sugar, one of a number of snacks or tidbits called doom .
Salt was served in rock-hard lumps to be given a few sharp blows
over the food, or stirred a few turns in liquids. It was made by
pouring a lye drained off saltwater-soaked wood into moulds
shaped like a little boat— baloto, whence the lump was called
binaloto. (Granulated salt was obtained from Chinese or
"Moros"— that is, Tagalogs.) A piece about 5-6 cm. square was called
gantangand served as a medium of exchange— e.g., usa ka gantang
of cloth, about 80 cm., was the length for which a weaver was paid
such a piece of salt.
Betelnut. Betelnut is the fruit of the areca palm, and is chewed
together with a leaf of the betel vine, from which it has borrowed its
name. The nut is cut into segments, sprinkled with lime made from
shells, wrapped in a leaf, and chewed into a quid which produces
blood-red spittle. In Visayan, the nut was called bonga — literally,
"fruit"— the betel piper vine was called buyo, and so was a prepared
quid; to chew* it was mama , whence the quid was also called mamun.
The preparation, exchange and serving of betelnut was the
most important social act among Visayans. Men carried the neces-
sary ingredients with them in little baskets or pouches called
maram-an or maramanan, and those who shared segments of the
same nut, kulo, were kakulo r an essential relationship before begin-
ning any discussion or business. For a householder to fail to offer
betelnut to anyone who entered his house was an insult inviting
f
152 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
enmity. On formal visits, the quids were prepared and served in
valuable metal trays or boxes by females of the household— slaves,
daughters, or the lady herself, depending on the social standing of
the guest. (In Mindanao epic literature, the betelbox moves magically
among the guests all by itself, the buyo leaping bite-size into their
mouths.) A special honor was to add a touch of musk or a slice of
cinnamon bark, or some other aromatic flavoring. And to offer a quid
partially chewed, opa, was an act of flirtation: to send one in
response to a man's clandestine request was an acceptance of his
advances, to send it unbidden, an open invitation.
Bonga palms were extensively cultivated, often with a buyo vine
planted at their base, but inferior nuts from wild palms were used
when necessary e.g., sarwang, which wasn't an areca palm at all.
Youths chewing for the first time usually suffered antung or
alingaya, giddiness like that produced by alcohol or korot root,
and even a young lady's first chew was a kind of puberty rite. In a
Suban-on epic, when heroic Sandayo appears before Datu Daug-
bulawan so young "the sword at his waist scraped the floor,” he is
told, "Bata, k'na ginapog: po dapa no p'nlebon —Child, no lime for
you: you know not woman." 19
Distilling and drinking. One of the first things the Spaniards
learned about the Visayans was that they were good drinkers.
Magellan had no sooner landed on Homonhon, when people from
nearby Suluan presented him with a jarful of what Pigafetta
recorded as uraca— that is, arak, the Malay- Arabic word for distilled
liquors. In Limawasa, Pigafetta drank from the same cup as Rajah
Kolambu, and his translator, Enrique de Malacca, got so drunk he
wasn't much use; and a few days later, the local harvest was delayed
while Kolambu and his brother Awi slept off a hangover. In Cebu,
Pigafetta drank palm wine, tuba nga nipa, straight from the jar with
reed straws together with Rajah Humabon, but in Quipit he excused
himself after one draught when Rajah Kalanaw and his companions
finished off a whole jar without eating anything.
The Spaniards therefore called Visayan social occasions
bacanales, drinkfests. Loarca commented, however, "It's good they
rarely get angry when drunk,” 20 and Father Chirino left a well-
known tribute to the Boholanos' ability to carry their liquor:
It is proverbial among us that none of them who leaves a
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 1 53
party completely drunk in the middle of the night fails to find
his way home; and if they happen to be buying or selling
something, not only do they not become confused in the business
but when they have to weigh out gold or silver for the price . . .
they do it with such delicate touch that neither does their hand
tremble nor do they err in accuracy. 21
There were basically five kinds of Visayan alcoholic drinks—
tuba, kabarawan, int us or kilang, pangasi and alak. Tuba was the sap
of palms which fermented naturally in a few hours and soured
quickly. Kabarawan was honey fermented with a kind of boiled
bark. Intus or kilang was sugarcane wine, which improved with
aging. Pangasi was rice wine or beer, fermented with yeast, but could
also be brewed from other grains like millet, all called pitarrilla by
Spaniards. And alak was any of these beverages distilled into hard
liquor. Alak was drunk from cups, but the others with reed straws
from the porcelain jars in which they were brewed or stored, and
pangasi was required for all formal or ceremonial occasions.
Tuba. Nipa tuba, paog, was made from wild trees, and was
usually strengthened, and given a red color, by the addition of baruk,
ground tungug or lawaan bark. But tuba made from coconut palms
was considered better and was therefore a profitable item of trade.
(Tangway was to deal in wine, and tarangwayan was the equivalent
of a tavern.) Distilled into alak, it could be transported as far as the
oil, vinegar or nuts themselves, but brought a much better price.
Tuba-tappers rented the trees or were hired to tend them, and where
the soil was favorable, whole islands became coconut plantations
with the trees spreading by natural propagation to the exclusion of
all other vegetation. Suluan was one such island: Pigafetta got the
impression that a family of ten could live off two trees there. That is
no doubt why Magellan threatened Lapulapu that he would "burn
their land and the palm groves off which they supported them-
selves." 22
Kabarawan. Kabarawan— from baraw, to temper or mediate—
was the wood whose bark was boiled and mixed with honey to
produce the beverage. It was boiled to half its volume, mixed with
an equal volume of fresh honey, and left to ferment naturally into a
smooth, strong liquor — "muy regala do y fuerte,' ' Father Sanchez said.
154
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming 155
Unlike more ceremonial drinks like pangasi, it was consumed by
men gathered around the jar, all sipping through straws until the
bottom of the jar was visible. Since honey was an important item in
the Visayan diet, kabarawan was produced in sufficient quantity to
market— and its production and consumption were no doubt in-
creased by Spanish tribute demands for candle wax.
Intus. Sugarcane juice was extracted with a simple one-man
press. A long springy pole was pivoted over a tree stump and kept
bouncing up and down with one hand and a foot pedal, while the
cane was inserted to be pinched near the fulcrum with the other. The
juice was boiled, preferably in a cast-iron baong that held as much
as 15 liters, to half its volume. (For Spanish consumption, it was
boiled down to a thick syrup.) It was then sinubaw, and a small
bundle of kabarawan bark was added as seasoning. When cool, it
was stored in Chinese jars and left to ferment and age as intus or
kilang.
Visayans did not make sugar itself. Even after the introduction
of the Chinese sugar mill— the one with two rollers geared together
and turned by a carabao— when sugar was for sale to those who
could afford it, intus remained the main use for sugarcane. The juice
was also drunk as a tonic, and served as a substitute for mother's
milk when necessary. Varieties of cane less suitable for pressing were
eaten as food or snacks, and invariably offered to visitors upon
arrival. Sagaw, for instance, was the sweetest variety, but was too
hard and fibrous for the Visayan press — though these same charac-
teristics were desirable when inserting it between the rollers of the
Chinese mill.
Pangasi. Basi was the mash of cooked rice, already leavened
with tapay, which was placed in the jar to produce the liquid pangasi.
It was let stand until it became strong and sour, and was drunk with
the addition of water and, as the jar was drained, the addition of
more basi. It was drunk through reed straws called tayuk or halasam,
or drawn from the jar with a poot, a node of thin bamboo open at
the bottom with a fingerhole near the top, which was submerged in
the pangasi until it filled, and then withdrawn with the fingerhole
closed to create a vacuum to retain its contents. The mash left in the
drained jar was called borohu.
Pangasi-drinking began with formality and ceremony. The jars
were placed in a long row down, the middle of the room, and the
master of ceremonies, after invoking the diwata (deity) to drink first,
invited the guests to drink in turn, indicating which guest and which
jar. Constantly checking the contents of the jars as the drinking went
on (a procedure called "nesting/ 1 pugad), he would call on drinkers
to add a certain amount of water, and they were then required to
drink that much. These selections were made amid increasing banter
and challenges, and finally the singing of daihuan, a kind of song in
which one man was victimized by rough teasing— but, as Loarca
noted, was expected to show no resentment. In the end, some of the
pangasi might be "bought"—that is, the host compensated by filling
an emptied jar with raw rice.
Alak. Alak or alaksiw was anything made with a still— e.g., alak
sa sampaga: sampaguita perfume— and makialak was a confirmed
drunkard. The still, alakan, was made of a hollow tree trunk, toong,
and two Chinese vats— baong, kawa or karahay. The toong was
caulked on top of the vat containing the tuba or intus to be boiled,
and the other one placed on top. The steam condensed on the upper
vat's round bottom and dripped off its lowest point into a shallow
wooden plate suspended in the middle of the toong, whence the
liquid flowed out through a bamboo tube, tadluyan, run through the
side.
The first liter or two were the strongest and best, and, in the case
of intus, had the qualities of brandy. This was called dalisay, pure
or first-class, a term of high esteem for both wine and gold. (The San
Buenaventura Tagalog dictionary says, "24 karats strong . . . burns
without fire.") Pangasi was not used as a base for alak, though
Pigafetta thought he tasted distilled rice wine in Palawan. Lambug
was to mix, dilute or adulterate any of these liquors, and was a
common practice. Watered wine was thus called linambugan, and so
was the child of a mixed marriage or adulterous union.
Drinking etiquette. Except for outright alcoholics who suffered
poor health and early demise, Visayans did not drink alone, or
appear drunk in public. Drinking was done in small groups or in
social gatherings where men and women sat on opposite sides of the
room, and any passerby was welcome to join in. Women drank more
moderately than men, and were expected to stretch their menfolk
out to sleep off any resulting stupor. But men were proud of their
156
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
capacity. Father Alcina had a Samareno parishioner whom "neither
Spaniards on a bet nor Filipinos with the same intent" could make
drunk, no matter how much they gave him, and a famous Bohol datu
enjoyed the reputation of downing three liters fresh from the still
with one breath. 3 Prudent drinkers, however, prepared beforehand
by "lining the belly with food," like lining the cookpot with banana
leaves.
Drinking etiquette began with agda, exhorting some person — or
diwata to take the first drink. Gasa was to propose a toast to
someone's health, usually of the opposite sex, and salabat was a toast
in which the cup itself was offered, even being carried from one
house to another for this purpose, ltib were milk brothers, and naga
itib was for two to drink together from the same jar, like two babies
nursing at the same breast. Abong was an honor a datu might pay
one of his timawa by presenting his own cup after he had taken a
few sips himself. Sumsum was any food taken with the wine (i.e.,
polutan), like the plate of pork Rajah Kolambu shared with Pigafetta,
who reported, ”We took a cup with every mouthful." 24 And had he
been a Visayan, he would have murmured politely with each piece,
"Tabitabi dinyo — By your leave, sir."
Drinking was commonly called pagampang , conversation, and
neither business deals, family affairs, nor community decisions were
discussed without it. For this reason, Spaniards often attributed
Filipino attempts to subvert their occupation to an overindulgence
in wine. But Alcina assessed the custom more realistically:
When practical matters come up, whether for public projects,
orders from the King or his officials, or any other work, and they
discuss among themselves the best, quickest and most equitable
way to carry it out, if they meet dry and without a little wine first
to enliven their interest, they talk little, discourse poorly and
slowly, and decide worse; but after drinking something, he who
proposes does it with eloquence, those who respond, with dis-
cretion, those who decide, with attention, and all with fairness. 25
NOTES
1 All Visayan terms are taken from Mateo Sanchez's Vocabulario
Sixteenth-Century Visayan Food and Farming
157
de la Lengua bisaya (MS Dagami 1615-1618; Manila, 1711), Alonso
de Mentrida's Diccionario de la Lengua bisaya, hiliguiena y haraya
de la Isla de Panay (Manila, 1637, 1841), or Francisco Alcina's
Historia de las Islas e Indios de Bisayas (MS 1668).
2
Alcina, Historia, Part I, book 1, chapter 8.
Vnformacidn heche en Manila," Isacio Rodriguez, Historia de
la Provincia agustiniana del Smo. Nombre de Jesus de Filipinas vol
16 (Valladolid, 1983), p. 157.
4 "Carta de Miguel Lopez de Legazpi" (Cebu, 7 July 1569), ibid
Vol. 14, p. 20.
5 Alcina, Historia 1:3:5.
6 Sanchez, Vocabulario, p. 24v.
7 Alcina, Historia 1:1:6.
8 Ibid., 1:1:8.
9 /
Sanchez, Vocabulario, p. 257.
™J uan Martinez, "Una descripcion de la vida de Ios naturales"
(Cebu, 25 July 1567), Coleccio'n de Documentos ineditos relativos al
Descubrimiento, Conquista y Organizacio'n de la antiguas
cspaholes de Ultramar, Segunda serie, Vol. 3 (Madrid,
11
"Relacion del viaje y jornada," Rodriguez, Historia 13:434- 451.
12
Miguel de Loarca, "Relacion de las Yslas Filipinas," Emma Helen
Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine Islands 1493-
1898, Vol. 5 (Cleveland, 1903), p. 44.
’Van de la Isla (?), "Relacion de las Islas del Poniente," Coleccio'n
de Documentos 3:236.
Marcos de Lisboa (d. 1628), Vocabulario de la Lengua bicol
(Manila, 1865). s
(PiIa P 1613) de San Buenaventura ' Vocabu lario de la Lengua tagala
Francisco [Blancas] de San Jose', Vocabulario de las Lcneua
tagala (MS, 1610?). b
1 58 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
worshipful! Master Thomas Cavendfs^' Richard^k?^ 56 ° f ^
° f
18 ' r -
Alcina, Historia 1:1:8.
epic/' Kinaadman 4 (198 2?, ^291 3 Sanda y° : a Suban-on folk
^Loarca, "Relacidn," Blair and Robertson 5:116.
Manila, 1969), p. 92. Relaaon de las IsIas Filipinas (Rome, 1604;
23
24^ c ^ na ' H* s torSa 1:3:22.
Blair and Roberfc»n 33^ 18™”° Via S8^° ™tomo al Mondo, text in
Alcina, Historia 1:1:22.
KALANTIAW: THE CODE THAT NEVER WAS
Foreword
I met Kalantiaw for the first time in 1960. It was when I was
beginning the study of Philippine history, as most Filipinos begin it,
with Gregorio F. Zaide's two-volume Philippine Political and Cul-
tural History. Here, in chapter 5, Kalantiaw was presented as the
author of a penal code dated 1433, almost a century before Magellan
reached the archipelago. I was delighted because Philippine history
seemed to be largely the history of what Spaniards and Americans
did in the Philippines. But here was a genuine Philippine penal code,
complete with the name of the Filipino ruler who wrote it and the
date on which it was promulgated.
Penal codes, of course, are very revealing of the society for which
they were written. Therefore I confidently told my students that the
Sixth Order of the Code of Kalantiaw, which fixed a fine as payable
either in gold or honey, indicated that gold was as common as honey
in the ancient Philippines. My students all laughed. So the next year
I told them that the Sixth Order indicated that honey was as expen-
sive as gold. But they also laughed. And they were right. If the Code
wasn't laughable, it was at least very peculiar. It prescribed capital
punishment for entering a datu's house without permisson, but only
a year's slavery for stealing his wife.
Obviously there was something wrong— perhaps an error in
translation. What language was this Code originally written in, and
where was that original? I determined to find out. The opportunity
came when I enrolled as a doctoral candidate in the University of
Santo Tomas in 1965, and included the search in my examination of
prehispanic sources for the study of Philippine history. As it turned
out, the source of the Code of Kalantiaw was Jose Maria Pavon s
1838-1839 Las Antiguas Leyendas de la Isla de Negros ( The ancient
Legends of the Island of Negros).
♦ * * * *
160
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Las antiguas Leyendes de la Isla de Negros
P^pSptiel T dG Negr ° S by Father ^ Maria
bound volumes, 16 x H THf 267?n dT™* * tW ° ,eathei "
presented to the Philippine Library in 1914 S
Pontevedra, Occidental Npornc 2 ru ^ by ^ r ' J ose & Marco of
leather-bound volume by Se same amho^nn? 1 Panied byanother
size, Los Cuentos de lol JnHinc w , r ! ° f _, 103 pages of the 831116
Director James A “ ***«"»* -fated 1838.
pine Library Board for the d annual re P ort to the Philip-
Leyendes Z onTan'im" 8 - 31 D ? Cemb “ 1914 ' ,ha *
which has yet come to light” Then in'MIT”? “if, 0 ? ,he Fill P i " os
translation in his "Social <?frnrHi c , P u ^ ls hed an Engish
P eo P( es ^ a recemty dtecovered^pre Ids' an ) on ^
code of the Philippine Islands" in H S° S P f' hspan,c cr,m 'nal
Bolton's TLePeSrie^^tli^ Ste r>«™ »nd Herbert E.
devoted six chapters of his "Hism^ year Josue Soncuya
tenida en la CorSda * u “ de Fm P ta “
^f^H’Xf'ico-geogrilic, de FlUpLsT'' * b
of thetm^fuh^m in,he dK,r “c«o"
the former survive in the libraries of th^TT • np * co P Ies of the text of
and the University of Florida ^?* UniverSit y of the Phihppines
Photographic reproductions of three ^ Manila '
were published in The PhHinnin* r? f antiguas Leyendes
(19.9), while its i..ustt,ed ISS^SSSS^ >’ ^ 1
sary issue of Renacimiento
d Almonte y Muriel's 1917 b,™, • ' U ~ y ar| d in Enrique
/nd/osis known to have survived the Batt !*V 1 f T"*™ de Ios
translation of both works has Jr, n An annota ted
translations of the Pa von ma published in The Robertson
Studies Program Transcriptions NoITa 5 V 5 C s ™ Up P ine
sity of Chicago 19 * 57 ) ta/iH-. ^ • . » / 5 B, 5 C and 5-D (Univer-
Kalantiaw: The Code That Never Was
161
had got them all from the old convent cook who had stolen them in
the Himamaylan looting of 1899. 3 This contradicts an oral tradition
transmitted by H. Otley Beyer to the late Mauro Garcia in the early
1950's that it was Marco's own father who had been among the
looters who carried away a chest thought to contain valuables but
which, when accidentally dropped in the river, so increased in
weight they realized it contained papers rather than coins or jewelry.
At any event, Marco made no reference to these documents or the
information they contained in his little 1912 Resena historica de la
Isla de Negros, in which he states that the earliest mention of the
island was Loarca's in 1580 [sic].
Jose Maria Pa von himself is first mentioned in the Guia de
Forasteros for 1839 as Catedratico de Sintasis y Retorica in the
conciliar seminary in Cebu; he is not mentioned in a list of priests
and parishes sent by the Bishop of Cebu to the King in 1831,
nor in a list of Negros cures sent in 1830 for aid after the "catas-
trofe de Orihuela." 5 In the Libro de Cosas notables de Himamaylan,
he is listed as taking charge of that parish on 7 September 1842,
succeeding Don Vicente Guillermo who had been incumbent
since 1811 and who died exactly two years later at the age of
77 in the outstation visita of Ginigaran which he had built himself.
Upon Ginigaran's elevation to parish status in 1848, Father Pavon
was transferred there, and his signature appears in an entry of
1849 in the Libro de Cosas notables de Ginigaran. Thus the Guias
for 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846 and 1848 list him as parish priest of
Himamaylan, as does R. Echauz's Apuntes de la Isla de Negros
(Manila, 1894) for 1849, while the 1850 Guia shows him in Giniga-
ran. The Recollect fathers having taken over Negros in 1848-1849,
Pavon presumably returned to Cebu; at least his name does not
appear in an 1851 list of pueblos and parishes made by the Governor
of Negros, and he is known to have been parish priest of Cebu in
1865-1866. His name is missing from the clerical register of the
Diocese of Cebu in 1883, so he presumably had left the diocese by
that time through death or transfer. Thus there is no evidence of his
having been in the Philippines in 1838, or parish priest of
Himamaylan in 1839.
Contents. The three reproductions of Pavon pages show that at
least the chapter title pages were written in a childish imitation of
printing (e.g., the serifs are drawn in but the upper-case I is dotted.
162 Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
and a variety of type styles are mixed together), with an inexplicable
spellings for the middle of the 19th century like Ivan for Juan. The
orthography is peculiar in the extreme-the first book of Lasantiguas
Leyendas employs a spelling more nearly like that of the 16th
century than any other period, while the second book is written in
an exemplary late 19th-century style. 6 This change is referred to in
a note in the text dated 1 August 1839 stating that the author will
henceforth employ the "muchos cambios en la ortografia y en las
frases contained in the "nuevo diccionario de la Real Academia
hspanola. This would presumably be the eighth edition of 1837
which, however, makes no such sweeping reforms, merely increas-
ing the number of words to be spelled with j instead of e> and
condemning such practices as writing esperto for experto— which as
toTo ieT ° f faCt ' 1S exactly what Pav ° n or his amanuensis continued
The contents of the Leyendas and Cuentos taken together show
them to be inappropriately titled, for in addition to 25 chapters of
legends and myths, there are eleven of superstitions current in
Pavon s day, and 26 of straightforward ethnographic nature such as
lists of weapons or musical instruments, an illustrated Philippine
alphabet, a native calendar, and translations of ten documents dated
etween 137 0137?) and 1661. They are written in a personalized
Xn ° f i c ° nsiderab ! e charm ' moralizing digressions, and profuse
acknowledgment of oral and written sources-25 different inform-
ants on 22 different dates between 1830 and 1840. Among the
documents translated are six with prehispanic dates-namely, the
1137 account of old forts, the 1239 narrative of King Maranhig, the
? f iT ial CUStoms ' and 1372 list of extinct animals,
the 1433 Code of Calantiao, and the 1489 formulary for making
talismans and charms.
At the outset, the question of the calendar by which prehispanic
Filipino documents could have been dated must be raised. Eggan
and Hester comment:
For dating old documents, either in romanized Bisayan or
in the old Bisayan syllabary, and ranging from 1239 A.D. to the
Spanish period, he [Pavon] gives no clue as to his procedures,
ince he states that the Bisayans did not keep track of the years
for any extended period, it is possible that the dates are estimated
in terms of genealogical tables, though none is included in the
Kalantiaw: The Code That Never Was
163
text. Internal evidence suggests that several of the dates will have
to be modified. 7
To this understatement must be added the comment that the dates
themselves, like 15 others in the document, are highly suspicious.
They range from the doubtful or meaningless to the anachronistic or
absurd. The date of the invention of coconut wine is given as 1379,
and the invention of a certain kind of weapon as 1332. An official
inscription dated "July 21, 17" (1717?) appears in a document bearing
the rubric "March 31, 14" (1714?). A "translation and exact version of
a Visayan Higuecine document of the year 1489" refers to the "first
Friday of the year," years with "three numbers alike, as for instance,
1777," and coins of Charles V (1519-1556). Reference is made to a
map of the island of Negros by Encomendero Madrigal in A509, and
two talismans of the same person— reyezuelo Aroy of Cebu are
dated 1006 and 1737. The Calantiao Code is stated to have beenm
use in 150 since 1433, and Calantiao himself is referred to in an 1137
source as having built a fort in 1433. ... , .
The Bisayan alphabet by Pavon (but dated 1543 and credited to
17th-century Francisco Daza, SJ) is erroneously presented as a
phonetic alphabet rather than a genuine Philippine syllabary, and
contains a blatant hispanization-"The modulated / N' they supplied
by their combined letter 1STG' and the guttural sign," the guttural sign
being nothing other than a large tilde. He says there is no letter c, o,
or r, but fills Visayan transcriptions with them, and says they use k
instead of c but only uses it once himself (viz., "Ilokano )• And he
thinks the characters representing e or i is ei and o or u is on.
These perplexing details and confused dates are typical of many
peculiarities in Las antiguas Leyendesand Los Cuentos deloslndios.
Their supposed author, for instance, was a secular priest- The entry
'D' (for 'Don') rather than Tr' (for 'Fraile') preceding Pavon s name
in the Guias is evidence of his status as a secular cleric,'; Eggan and
Hester point out— yet he more than a dozen times signs himself Fray
Jose' Maria Pavon" and speaks of making a trip to Borneo together
with some companions of the habit." He also dates his residence m
the "convento de mi parroquia" in Himamaylan as early as 1 J y
1830, and the completion of these books on 1 August 1839, although
official records indicate that he did not become parish P nest > n
Himamaylan until 1842. Moreover, he claims to have come to the
164
Kalantiaw: The Code That Never Was
165
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Philippines in 1810 and been a Seville schoolboy together with Fray
Jorge G. Setien in 1788, which would have made him at least 86 when
he was parish priest of Cebu-to say nothing of the fact that Fr Jorge
Guzman de Setien was identified in Marco's Resena historica as the
author of a 1779 travel book about the Philippines.
Anachronisms. To the peculiarities already mentioned, the
histonan must add the following outright anachronisms in the text
of the Pavon manuscripts:
24 Tim f ° r P reservation of the King of Spain on
J e 1838, and dedicates a book to him on 1 August 1839, although
Spain had no king between 1833 and 1874. 6
M v 2 ^ aUtl u° r e *P resses his gratitude on 14 January 1838 to Don
M.V. Morquecho, although Manuel Valdivieso Morquecho was not
appointed Alcalde Mayor of Negros until 8 January 1847, did not
oehHrf ^ T 1849 ' 3nd ° n 16 ° Ct0ber 1847 was sti11 in ^diz
P b ™ ng th f Queen not to be ^t to the Philippines at all. 8
on «2 Th u - th - prcsents a document signed by Francisco Deza, SJ,
on March 31 of the year 14" which bears a stamp, "Parish of Ilog of
Occidental Negros" with the superscription, "R.S. in the province fnd
town above named on the twenty-first of the month of July in the
year 17. Daza was born in 1620 so the year "14" would have been a
standard contraction for 1714, which would have made him 96 at the
time of executing this document. Moreover, there was no province
of Negros Occidental either then or in Pavon's day, the province of
Negros not having been divided until 1908. F
4) The author refers to an ancient fortress "located on the sea-
s ore next to the barrio occupied by the Monteses Mara and Y-io—
written ^ 8 T S T tK ° f thiS t0Wn -" This was Presumably
written in Himamaylan about Pontevedra (formerly Marayo) which
two towns are approximately 20 kms. apart. The legua has' varied
shorter thanTJ 1^°^ °! S P a £ ish ,^ hist0 ^ bu ‘ a ^ no time was it
shorter than 3.9 kms., and m Pavon's day it was taken as one-
twentieth of one degree of latitude, or 5.5 kms.
(wh fi T R “ referS to ” thC great and extinct Lem urian continent"
(which Robertson misread as "continent of Muriano"). Lemuria was
LuteTv^T 7 \ T SS h yP° thesized b y English naturalist Philip
Lutdy Sclater to explain the distribution of lemuroid animals from
adagascar and Ceylon to Sumatra, and was first presented in a
paper read before the Royal Zoological Society in 1879. The theory
was soon rendered unnecessary by the discovery of lemur fossils in
Europe and North America, but the romantic idea of a lost continent
was later revived by theosophists and anthrophosophists, and was
mentioned in one of the footnotes in Marco's Resena historica.
6) In the Pavon description of the calendar, the author makes the
following statement about the month of November—'They called it
a bad month, for it brought air laden with putrified microbes of evil
fevers/’ The theory that infectious germs could be transmitted
through open air was first seriously argued by Louis Pasteur in the
1850's, and the word "microbe" itself was invented by Dr. Charles
Emmanuel Sedillot and proposed publicly for the first time in a
lecture in Pasteur's honor before the Academy of Sciences entitled,
"De l'influence des traveau de M. Pasteur sur les progres de la
chirurgie," in 1878. 9
AH in all, these ludicrous errors and anachronisms can be ex-
plained by only one conclusion namely, that Las antiguas Leyendas
de la Isla de Negros and Los Cuentos de los Indios de esta Isla de
Negros are deliberate and definite frauds. They were therefore not
written by Father Jose' Maria Pavon, and their contents have no
historical validity.
Kalantiaw: the Code that never was
The Marco-Pavon Antigua Leyendas is the source, and the only
source, of the Kalantiaw Code - chapter 9 of Part I. The Code there-
fore can be no more valid than the forgery which contains it. It is
entitled "The 17 theses, or laws of the Regulos in use in 150 since
1433," and was supposedly discovered in the possession of a Panay
ruler in 1614, its original being still in the possession of one Don
Marcilio Orfila of Zaragoza in 1839. The figure ”150" must mean 1150
in accordance with the usual custom of abbreviating dates and the
example in the second chapter of Part II where the year of a Kalan-
tiaw-built fortress is given as 433 instead of 1433. This makes the
statement, "in use in 1150 since 1433," ridiculous, of course, but no
more ridiculous than the fact that the fort-building date of 1433
appears in a source itself dated 1137. Despite these peculiarities,
however, Robertson published an English translation of the Code in
apparent good faith in 1917, the same year Soncuya published the
Spanish version.
fi
166
Kalantiaw: The Code That Never Was
167
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
The name of Kalantiaw himself appeared in print for the first
time in a 1913 article by Manuel Artigas in the Renacimiento Filipino
"Informes ineditos sobre Filipinas," which made mention
of "prehispanic civilization ... a calendar-written laws-forts." 10
Artigas was the head of the Filipiniana section of the Philippine
Library, and the year before, he had supplied footnotes to Marco's
Resena histonca— which, as a matter of fact, were much more
scholarly than the book itself. The name is documented in no earlier
source, though Digno Alba of Kalibo, in connection with the in-
auguration of the new province of Aklan in 1965, sought it in local
folklore. "I had tried to get stories or legends from the present
generations of Aklanons living in Batan," he later wrote, "but not one
old man can tell me now." 11
• Shift °* tIle ^ oc * e fr° m Negros to Panay presumably began
with Soncuya's conclusion that Rajah Kalantiaw-as he called him
had written the code for Aklan because of the presence of two
Aklanon rather than Hiligaynon words in the text. By the time Zaide
included the Code in his 1949 history, the words "Aklan, Panay" had
been added to the original rubric, "Echo en el ano 1433 — Calantiao—
regulo. This process of naturalization was completed in 1956
when Digno Alba announced that Kalantiaw had organized his
government in Batan as the ancient capital of the sakup of Aklan. A
request by the Philippine Government of the Spanish Government
tor the return of the original codex by the descendants of Marcilio
Orfila elicited the hardly surprising information that the Police
Commissioner could find no record of any such family in Zaragoza.
By this time, Kalantiaw was well on his way to becoming a
National Hero. In 1966, Sol H. Gwekoh's "Hall of Fame" in the old
Sunday Times magazine (21 August) gave new biographic details—
e.g., Datu Bendahara Kalantiaw was born in 1410, his father was
Rajah Behendra Gulah, and he became the third Muslim ruler in
Panay at the age of 16. Then in 1970, Gregorio Zaide's Great Filipinos
in History argued that his real name was Lakan Tiaw and gave a
direct quote— "The law is above all men." The next year, the Manila
Bulletin reported the celebration of the 538th anniversary of the
promulgation of the Code on 8 December with the coronation of the
Lakambmi m Kalantiyaw." Artist Carlos Valino, Jr., depicted the
event itself in oil on canvas with the law-giver reading from a node
of bamboo held vertically. The President of the Republic bestowed
tne Urder of Kalantiaw on deserving justices, and a 30-centavo
postage stamp was issued to commemorate his name. Finally, lest
some future generation forget a Filipino who "possessed the wisdom
of Solomon, the fighting prowess of Genghis Khan, and the saga-
cious statesmanship of Asoka," his Code was fittingly inscribed on
brass in the Kalantiyaw Shrine in Batan, Aklan.
The contents of the Code itself are no less peculiar. They were
presumably promulgated by a central authority of sufficient power
to put local chieftains to death for failure to enforce them, and
prescribe 36 different offenses irrationally grouped in 18 theses,
punishable by 15 kinds of corporal and capital punishment bearing
no relation to the nature or severity of the crimes. None of these
theses can be duplicated in other historic codices, many are hard to
understand, some contradict others, and all are utterly unfilipino in
their harshness. Genuine Philippine custom law as described in early
Spanish accounts permits even the most serious offenses to be settled
by the payment of fines or debt servitude. Only Jose E. Marco
thought that Filipino chieftains ruled with "a strong arm and the
severity and hardness fit and natural to the ancient governments of
the world" ( Resena historica, p. 18).
Legalist commentators have not been wanting to cite the codes
of Leviticus or Hammurabi for comparisons of severity, but what is
incredible about the Kalantiaw Code is not its severity but its capri-
cious viciousness. Its catalogue of punishments alone sounds like the
fantasies of some uninhibited sadist plunging the hand into boiling
water three times, cutting off the fingers, laceration with thorns,
exposure to ants, swimming for three hours, drowning weighted
with stones, beating to death, or being burned, boiled, stoned,
crushed with weights, cut to pieces, or thrown to crocodiles.
One wonders what pedagogical mischief has been done to three
generations of Filipino youth by the belief that their ancestors suf-
fered a society submissive to such a legal system.
* * * * *
Postword
These conclusions were presented in my doctoral dissertation,
and defended on 16 June 1968 before a panel of eminent Filipino
historians which included Teodoro Agoncillo, Horacio de la Costa,
168
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
Kalantiaw: The Code That Never Was
169
Marcelino Foronda, Mercedes Grau Santamaria, Nicolas Zafra, and
Gregorio Zaide. During the revalida, not a single question was raised
about the chapter which I called "The Contributions of Jose E. Marco
to Philippine historiography." Once the degree was granted, the
thesis was published in Unitas 41 (1968), and as Prehispanic Source
Materials for the Study of Philippine History by UST Press the next
year, with a revised edition in 1984 by New Day Publishers. So far
as I know, they have been challenged by no other historian to date.
For some years after these publication, I had reason to hope that
the ghost of Kalantiaw had finally been laid. The popular myth was
not repeated in Amado Guerrero's Philippine Society and Revolu-
tion (1970), Pedro A. Gagelonia's Concise Philippine History (1970),
Ferdinand E. Marcos' Tadhana (1976), or Perfecto V. Fernandez's
Custom Law in Pre-conquest Philippines (1976). And when my own
mentor, Dean Antonio W. Molina, published a Spanish version of his
1960 The Philippines through the Centuries as Historia de Filipinas
(Madrid, 1984), he replaced the Code with one sentence~—"La tesis
doctoral del historiador Scott desbarate la existencia misma de dicho
Codigo (The doctoral dissertation of the historian Scott demolishes
the very existence of the said Code)." Yet, at the time I retired from
teaching Philippine history in 1982, freshmen were still entering the
State University persuaded that Kalantiaw was an actual historic
figure and that he promulgated a genuine Philippine penal code in
1433.
I wonder if my successors are still sharing their classrooms with
this Filipino phantom and the law code that never was.
NOTES
ln The second oldest known written code of the Filipino people
is the Penal Code of Rajah Kalantiaw, the third chief of Panay. It was
written by Kalantiaw in 1433 A.D., after which he submitted it to his
overlord Rajah Besar."— -Gregorio F. Zaide. Philippine Political and
Cultural History (Manila, rev. ed., 1957), Vol. 1, p. 61.
2
Marco's widow, Mrs. Concepcion Abad Marco, stated in 1967
that her husband had been born on 19 September 1866, but his
obituary in the Manila Times on 22 October 1963 gave his age as 86.
He himself informed the Philippine Studies Program of the Univer-
sity of Chicago in 1954 that he had been born in Marayo (Pontevedra)
in 1886, graduated from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, served as
Insular teacher 1903-1910 after taking "special courses in agriculture
and industrial chemistry in the University of Santo Tomas," and as
postmaster-operator 1911-1920; and that he was interpreter and clerk
of court in the Bacolod CFI from 1920 to 1929. His name, however,
does not appear in the records of either the UST or the Ateneo. His
avocational interests are reviewed in W.H. Scott, Prehispanic Source
Materials for the Study of Philippine History (New Day Publishers,
rev. ed., 1984), chapter 5, "The Contributions of Jose E. Marco to
Philippine historiography."
3 Letter from Jose E. Marco to E.D. Hester of the PSP, dated
Bacolod 7 June 1954.
4 Jose E. Marco, Rcseha histories de la Isla de Negros desde los
Tiempos mas remotos hasta nuestros Dias, published serially as a
special supplement to the Renacimiento Filipino, from Ano II, Num.
87 (21 April 1912), p. 1378-a, to Ano III, Num. 128 (28 February 1913),
p. 1104-d.
5 This reference, like the others in this paragraph, was supplied
from archives in Seville and Madrid by Father Angel Martinez
Cuesta, OAR, to whom I am deeply indebted.
Examples are Book 1: "Aquellos qe por lo reglar savuian trazar
garabatos, eran: los qe is po sv fversa, ia por listeza sobre salia de
svs campaneros" (p. 39), and Book 2: "Estos datos no los he recogido
escritos como las otras, y los he recogido en los rincones, en otros
muchos lugares, con fuerza y sacrificio de mi cuerpo y paciencia" (p.
41).
7 Fred Eggan and E.D. Hester, The Robertson Translations of the
Pa von Manuscripts of 1838-1839 (Chicago: Philippine Studies Pro-
gram, 1957), No. 5- A, pp. x-xi.
8 See note 5 above.
9 Rene Vallery-Radot, La Vie de Pasteur (Paris, 1900), p. 382.
10 Renacimiento Filipino, special third anniversary issue, July
1913.
170
Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino
n Personal communication dated Kalibo 15 May 1967, in response
to my inquiry of 5 May, "When you were a child, Don Digno, did not
the old folks of Aklan have stories about Kalantiaw even before the
discovery of the Pavoh documents in 1913? Were there no popular
legends or folklore that the elders told their grandchildren?"
12 Gregorio F. Zaide. Great Filipinos in History { Manila, 1970),
pp. 224-225.
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