christian revolts, muslim raids

THE ROOTS OF THE FILIPINO NATION by Onofre D. Corpuz

Chapter 3

CHRISTIAN REVOLTS,

MUSLIM RAIDS

Many peoples were conquered, because they did not know their own strength until they found that they were subdued. An Augustinian friar on the Christian revolts of the 1660s.

The loss of our harvests for one year is a small price to pay for liberty. Sultan Kudarat of Maguindanao. 1667

The initial opposition to the Spaniards was the resistance to the conquest. Where the conquistadors were concentrated in force, as they were in Cebu over 15651568, the resisting barangays fell easily, so that the conquest of the surrounding area was effected early. The same process worked out in the Manila region beginning in 1571. In the outlying and hinterland area of Luzon, where the Spanish presence was in the form of small groups in the cabecera towns, the conquest took very much longer, as we saw in the Tuy valley and will see again in the Cagayan area in northern Luzon.

The next phase of the resistance took the form of revolts and uprisings against the regime. Whether the barangays submitted to the Spaniards meekly, or welcomed them in friendship, or resisted with arms and were overcome by force, the colonial regime weighed down heavily upon them all. The gifts of Hispanic Christianity and government that were brought by the Spaniards were a heavy cross, and produced a harvest of uprisings.

In the southern islands the establishment of Filipinos was a challenge to the sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao. The latter not only met the Christian challenge. They brought the war to the enemy as if the waters of the Visayas were their roadways; their raiding fleets would swoop down on the new Christian pueblos, drawn by the prize of more captives, and by the gold and silver ornaments in the churches of the Spanish friars.

Christian Revolts, Muslim Raids 1


The Christian Uprisings

The first outbreaks under the new regime were the people's reactions to the brutish cruelty of the tribute collections. The barangays that had submitted rose in arms. But their revolts were born of despair and wanting in concert. A friar account of the Visayan revolts of the late 1640s notes that uprisings broke out “in the provinces that were most subjugated and had never tested the keenness of our arms; for they had yielded to the echoes of our trumpets, receiving our troops in peace.” In other words, the people fought after they had given up their liberty.

Written references to the early outbreaks are sketchy. The friar chronicles were still few and dealt with the concerns of the religious orders in getting themselves established, or with the arrivals and assignments of friars and priests. But there were occasional indications of these outbreaks. For instance, the Spanish king instructed the new governorgeneral in 1589 to undertake a pacification campaign. The king was informed that this was required even “in the very districts where the Spaniards live and travel, for all the natives are in revolt and [are] unsubdued....” Pardo de Tavera also notes that revolts had taken place earlier, in 1583 and again in 1585, among the Tagalogs and Pampangos. Fuller accounts of the early uprisings appear more frequently from the 1590s onwards.1

There was a very interesting plot in the latter 1580s. It is interesting partly because we come across the names of Filipinos in Luzon almost for the first time since the conquest began. It was equally noteworthy because the plot was a conspiracy of former barangay datus. To them it was not only the harshness of the regime that had become intolerable. It was also the loss of their old status and the freedom and privileges that went with it. This haunted them and confused them, and from this a hatred built and grew up against the authors of their despair. They contained their sense of loss and oppression patiently, initially reposing trust in the Spanish king, but in the end they staked everything towards rebellion and death, because the regime could not give them justice.



A ship was to leave Manila for Nueva España for the 1582 voyage. Several principales of the villages around Manila called on the bishop of Filipinas on 15 June 1582. They made a deposition which they asked the latter to forward to the Spanish king, in time for the ship's sailing. Some of these chiefs were: Luis Amanicalao, Martin Panga, Gabriel Luanbacar, Juan Bautangad, Francisca [sic] Saygan, Salalila, Calao, and Amarlenguaguay. (At least three of the names are garbled in our source.) They were chiefs from Tondo and Maysilo. The last three are described as nonChristian – they were presumably native converts to Islam who had not embraced the new religion; the others had converted and carried Christian names.

The bishop wrote the Spanish king on 20 June about the call. He reported that the chiefs had asked him to make report of their grievances. These grievances, said the bishop, confirmed his other reports about the cruelty and oppression suffered by the natives. After the first visit he had informed his callers to decide what they wished reported; on the same day, some principales and about forty other people had called again. “Without doubt,” the bishop writes, “it would break your Majesty's heart if you could see them as they are, and how pitiable are their appearance and the things that they relate.”

Other chiefs, upon learning of the visits, also called on the bishop. On the same day that he wrote his letter a group of ten to twelve chiefs from the village of Mauban went to the bishop; they were all nonChristians; they asked him to include their complaints in his report. The bishop assured the Spanish king that he did not admit the existence of abuses other than those specified by the earlier chiefs. Had he done otherwise, he said, “it would make a disturbance in this land, should they all come here to complain.”

The grievances of the chiefs who called on the 15th June are familiar by now. The alcaldes bought up the people's rice and other produce at low prices, and then sold them back dear. They impressed the people as rowers at all times; after a month as oarsmen the latter would be required to get ready for another without having been. paid wages. Yet the other people left in the pueblos would be made to pay the wages that were supposed to have been



paid to the rowers. Many of the chiefs' people had left their villages, but the chiefs would be made to pay the tributes of those who had left, and even of those were dead. When they failed to pay they would be placed in the stocks and flogged.

There were other grievances. If the common people complained to the alcaldes they were also placed in the stocks or in prison. When in jail, they (the commoners) had to pay for the costs of their maintenance. As a result of all their hardships they all wished to leave, or at least go to a private encomienda. (This was because much of the Manila area was a royal encomienda, and the alcalde was the king's tribute collector.)

What happened to the ship carrying the bishop's report to the Spanish king is not known, and we do not read about the chiefs again until five years later.

The village of Tondo, it will be recalled, was situated at the mouth of the Pasig River, on the north bank just opposite the Spanish city. The Manila area was still fairly small in the latter 1580s. In the pueblos outside the walls, including Tondo, lived about 7,500 people, of whom some 3,000 were under private encomienderos, the rest being in royal encomiendas. Although Spanish Manila had been founded in 1572 and enjoyed the title “Distinguished and Ever Loyal City,” its growth was slow. It had only eighty Spanish citizens in 1588, that is, except the clergy in churches, hospitals and monasteries, some of them located outside the walls. Fifty of the men had Spanish wives; some of the others were married to native women. In addition to the clergy and citizens, there were usually some 200 Spanish soldiers in the area, because Manila was also a fort. The soldiers were generally a lowclass sort, poor and living on alms; quartered in the houses of the citizens and others in the nearby houses of natives. At this time only twenty Chinese trading ships were calling at Manila each year although, for two years running, some merchants had been coming from Japan, Macao, Siam, and other countries.

The next time we hear of the Tondo chiefs is in 1587, when Martin Panga



had become gobernadorcillo. Unfortunately, he was in jail. Together with him were the former gobernadorcillo and Panga's cousin Agustin Legaspi; Gabriel Tuambasan (Luanbacar in the bishop's 1582 letter), who was Legaspi's brother; Tuambasan's son Francisco Acta; and Pitongatan, another member of the Tondo principalia. From the regime's viewpoint, Panga and Tuambasan, both among the 1582 complainants, must have been troublemakers. It is reported that while they were in prison, all these chiefs pledged help to each other, to be rendered whenever required in the future. This was the beginning of the most ambitious and most haphazard conspiracy for a revolt during the sixteenth century, or at any time thereafter until the Revolution of 1896.

After serving time in jail, Panga was exiled from Tondo, and he had to go to Tambobong (the modern town of Malabon). The exile was not stringent. Tambobong was a nearby pueblo. Here Panga and Legaspi invited other principales for secret talks. The following chiefs attended the meetings, accompanied by their followers and servants: Agustin Manuguit and his father Phelipe Salalila, a chief from Maysilo; Magat Salamat, chief of Tondo and reportedly son of the old raja of Tondo; Pedro Bolinguit, chief from Pandacan; Geronimo Basi and Gabriel Tuambasan, both of Tondo and Legaspi's brothers; Luis Amanicalao and his son Calao,_both of Tondo; Francisco Acta, another chief from Tondo; Dionisio Capolo,chief of Candaba (who was to escort the Isinay chief Ybarat to Manila in late 1591 see Chapter 2), Capolo's brother Phelipe Salonga, chief of Polo; Amaghicon, chief of Navotas; and Phelipe Amarlangagui, chief of Catangalan.

Some characteristics of the chiefs in this group are worth noting. First, although most of them were of Tondo and its neighbor villages (Maysilo, Tambobong, and Navotas), some were chiefs from relatively distant towns: Candaba and Polo in the provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan, and Pandacan south of the Pasig. Second, although it was now almost a generation since the fall of Manila, some of the principales were holding out against baptism and conversion to Christianity. In 1582 the former datus Salalila, Magat Salamat, and Amarlangagui, and also the Calaos, were still nonChristian – they and some others were Muslim or believers of the old faith. In this year of 1587,



however, Amarlangagui and Salalila had Christian first names, both “Phelipe,” indicating a possible recent conversion. Third, many of the participants were relatives. As the conspiracy progresses, other relatives and chiefs from other villages will be involved.

The chiefs met for three days. They recalled the old days and their former positions as datus and leaders. It hurt to talk of their former slaves, who had been freed. Their gold was being taken away from them. The colonial laws provided that the Spanish king was entitled to onefifth of all the gold discovered in the colonies, but even the old gold that the natives wore as ornaments was being “discovered” by the Spaniards. Some had also lost their wives, because it was determined that these had been married to others first. They yearned to be real chiefs again. They had no plans yet. They were drinking a lot. But they swore to act as one should an opportunity arise, and they also pledged to help any enemy of the Spaniards.

Then Legaspi informed the group that he had entered into a compact with the captain of a Japanese trading boat. He had entertained this captain, named Joan Gayo, in his house. This was in 1586, when Legaspi was gobernadorcillo. Gayo would bring back soldiers from Japan. According to Legaspi he had already delivered some weapons. The other chiefs would contribute provisions and anything else necessary. They would join forces, kill the Spaniards, and Legaspi would be crowned king. As king he would collect tributes, and these would be shared with Gayo. The group adopted the idea. But Legaspi apparently did nothing to further the hazy plan, and nothing came out of it.

In February 1588, rumors reached Manila of the capture of the galleon Santa Ana by the English corsair Thomas Candish, and that he had threatened the Spaniards with the capture of the city. These reports were true. The conspirators' hopes rose, and they awaited the Englishman's coming. However, Candish headed for the Visayas, where he made a halfhearted attempt to burn a galleon which was being built in Arevalo. Failing in this and already rich with prize, he left for India and thence to England.



As the days passed, it became clear that Candish would not come to Manila. It was equally clear that reliance on strangers would not further the conspirators' goals, and a major decision was made. The revolt would have to be an allnative effort. To this end Esteban Taes, a chief from the village of Bulacan, sped to Martin Panga in Tondo. They reviewed the understandings made in Tambobong, and agreed that a meeting among more chiefs be held. Taes undertook to invite all the chiefs from Bulacan to Tondo. Panga declared that he would carry letters to the gobernadorcillos of Malolos and Guiguinto, adding that he and Legaspi had planned to invite the chiefs from as far as Laguna and Batangas. The idea of an allTagalog rebellion was shaping up. The meeting would discuss means for the recovery of the chiefs' former freedoms and positions. The rebels would assemble in Tondo and attack the Spanish city. Arrangements had also been made with Luis Balaya, chief of Bangos, a settlement near Tondo, and with the chiefs of Batan.

It is not possible to ascertain whether these were hopes or real plans. It would have required major movements to get people from Bulacan, Laguna, Batangas, and from the other villages to Tondo. It would have been virtually impossible to conceal such movements from the Spaniards. The laws prohibited residents of a pueblo from going to another without an official permit. Besides, assembly in Tondo was impractical for rebel groups coming from south of the Pasig: this would entail their crossing the river, organizing in the pueblo (Tondo), and then recrossing for the attack on the city. Anyway, the idea died aborning; the planned assembly of chiefs did not take place.

Panga and his associates began clutching at straws. A group of Pampango chiefs chanced to pass Tondo on their way to Manila. Panga invited them, and with his coconspirators Legaspi, Magat Salamat, and Amanicalao, guilelessly tried to get the Pampangos to join them. The latter were on their way to petition the regime to suspend the lawsuits freeing slaves in Pampanga, at least until after the harvest. Panga said that they had the same problem with their slaves; he suggested that they all unite and have a leader whom all should obey as king. Nobody should act separately. Unwittingly, Panga was talking to people who were to become the Spaniards' staunchest military supporters. Pampangos declared that they had no



quarrel with the Spanish king, and declined a second invitation to visit Tondo after their business in Manila was concluded.

After the rebuff from the Pampangos and the failure of the other Tagalog chiefs to attend a meeting, the plotters next held a meeting in Tondo. They had been unable to get the cooperation of their fellow chiefs. They had run out of options but one. In desperation, they recalled a preSpanish contact: the old Muslim connection. Their hopes were renewed. They decided to Invite the Borneans to attack the Spaniards. They anticipated that when the Bornean fleet reached Cavite, the Spaniards would call on them to help defend their city. The chiefs would be waiting, but they would turn around and kill the Spaniards. This plan was agreed upon by the following: Panga and Legaspi; Balaya and his nephews Agustin Lea and Alonso Digma; Salalila and Manuguit; Amanicalao and Calao; Tuambasan and Acta; and Salonga with some others.

To execute the plan it was necessary to send a deputation to Borneo, and Magat Salamat was chosen to serve as the envoy. Shortly after this decision, Panga and Legaspi were observed to have begun selling off some of their lands.

And so it was that in the latter half of 1588, Magat Salamat with his brotherinlaw Joan Banal and Manuguit took to the sea and sailed for the Calamianes. Manuguit's father Phelipe Salalila had been a holdout against Christian conversion. Salamat was not Christian – the Spanish sources cite a man named Magat as having been an emissary with letters to the sultan of Borneo in 1578; he had relatives there. Banal was almost surely a scion of the old chiefs of Quiapo.

From the Calamianes the trio proceeded to Cuyo, and convinced the chief Sumaelob to join in the conspiracy. What Sumaelob could do from far off Cuyo in an attack on Tondo is not clear. Anyway, they returned to the Calamianes in October.

Their next stop was Borneo, and they had some weapons and other gifts for the Sultan. At this point, grasping every chance to recruit confederates,



they committed a fatal error. They tried to enlist the native servant of the encomendero of the Calamianes Islands. This man was named Antonio Surabao; he feigned support and help, but as soon as he learned the details of the plot he hastened to betray the trusting conspirators to his master, who immediately sailed for Manila and, on arrival there on 4 November 1588, made a full report to the authorities.

The Spaniards acted quickly. Of the twentyfive principales who were brought to trial in this case, Agustin Legaspi and Martin Panga were dragged and hanged. Their heads were cut off and exhibited from the gibbet in iron cages. After their houses were torn down the ground was plowed, and salt was mixed into the earth to make the soil barren. Magat Salamat, Legaspi's brother Geronimo Bassi, Salalila, Amaghicon, Taes, the Japanese Joan Gayo and his interpreter were executed. Four of the conspirators were sentenced to exile in Nueva España. Several others were banished from the territory of Manila (five leagues around the city) or from their villages, for periods ranging from two to eight years, and fined various amounts of gold. Dionisio Capolo was in this group; he was imposed a final sentence of four years' exile and a gold fine. Only one, Agustin Lea, was acquitted. The verdict on Sumaelob of Cuyo Island is not known.2

This plot is referred to in the sources as the “conspiracy of the Tondo chiefs.” It is more than a mere curiosity. Of course it was doomed. From so many chiefs not a single workable plan was conceived,except for the scheme to enlist the aid of Borneo. The plotters were too trusting; sharing their fatal secret with just about everyone, and it was incredible that the Spaniards did not discover the plot earlier. But the conspiracy must be regarded in the context of its time. It will be the only reported attempt during the Spanish regime when Luzon chiefs, some of them already baptized Christians, will seek Muslim help. With the passing away of this generation of Tagalog datus, the influence and memory of Islam effectively disappeared from the Manila and Tagalog area, and Christianity's future in Luzon was assured.

It is also useful to note that although the immediate causes of the conspiracy were the grievances felt by the former datus, the plotters thought



and behaved as the chiefs they were, and not as commoners. In the scores of uprisings during the seventeenth century, the objectives of the revolt were attained when the tribute collector or alcalde or friar was killed. To the Tondo chiefs, the goal was not the death or removal of this or that Spanish oppressor or official, but the overthrow of Spanish rule itself. It is ironic that the chiefs did not unite before the loss of their liberties to the handful of Spaniards, and then spent the better part of two years trying to forge a common effort to recover them.

Finally, this abortive revolt of 15871588 also marks the early appearance of the traitor, whose persona will become a familiar and often decisive character in the story of many later Filipino rebellions.

The Tondo conspiracy was not an isolated case. The report of the governorgeneral for 1589 informed the Spanish king that after the Tondo plotters had been punished, the chiefs of Cebu and Panay had also conspired to kill the Spaniards.3

We will now survey a number of actual uprisings in various provinces and islands.

The province of Cagayan in northern Luzon is an example of the provinces where the outbreaks during this era lasted almost unbroken for a half century. The small new Spanish settlement of Nueva Segovia served as the capital; it was located on the site of the old native barangay of Lallo, which was itself the leading preSpanish settlement in the area. The province was formally called Nueva Segovia after its capital town. In the capital there were the alcaldemayor and some friars; there was also a small presidio manned by a few soldiers. The Spaniards established themselves this far north because they viewed Cagayan as the frontier with the great empire of China, which the friars deeply yearned to convert to Christianity. It was rough country, its plains girt by rugged mountains.

In 1594 a reported 45,000 inhabitants were under the regime, their tributes assigned in Manila to twelve encomenderos. There were at this time hardly any friars available for assignment in the province, except those in the



cabecera. Most of the people were therefore free of religious instruction. Their only link to the regime was the collection of tribute.

As in most of the other cases, the trigger for the Cagayan outbreak of 1589 was the insistence of the Spaniards on levying tribute on people they had not reduced. In March or April a mob entered the town of Nueva Segovia and killed some Spaniards. The alcalde could not raise a force immediately, and it was only in July that an expedition of sixty Spaniards and some 800 Filipino auxiliaries went after the rebels. The latter abandoned their villages. The expedition therefore destroyed their palm groves and crops, and then withdrew. The governorgeneral reported that Cagayan was in “a worse state of war than before,” since the collection of the tributes became more difficult during the next year. Outbreak upon outbreak followed each other, and by the middle of the next decade we learn that two leaders had become prominent: Magalat, a chief, and his brother. A brief respite was enjoyed when the two were taken to Manila, but in 1589 Magalat was back in Cagayan rousing the people anew against the excesses in the tribute collections. This latest uprising lasted eight months, and was quelled when Magalat was killed.

A different type of uprising broke out in 1607, starting in the village of Nalfotan, where the Dominicans had just built a church in August. The people were reported to be grateful. Unfortunately, the friar account of this era says, “The devil at these things suffered from rage and the worst pains of hell, as he saw himself losing, all at once, villages which had been his for so many ages.” So the devil caused the people, still according to the friar account, to return to their old worship and rites; the devil's agent was Caquenga, a woman who was the village anitera. The people fled to the mountains but the friar sought out their leader, Furaganan, and eventually pacified him. The other rebels burned the church and violated the ornaments. This outbreak lasted until 1608.

Religion and tribute collection were interwoven as causes of the more serious revolt of 16211622 One of the largest villages in the Cagayan region was the Gaddang village of Abuatan, next to which was another, called



Pilitan. This was beautiful country, described in a Dominican history as follows:

In this place it seemed that another climate had been found, different from that of the rest of this province, other fields and spacious meadows, another temperature, and another race of people. The country is very fertile, and abounds in game. It is very well watered, very pleasant, and very healthful.

The friars had set up a large cross in the churchyard in Abuatan. The history then says that the devil instigated the people to burn their churches. In another place it says that the Gaddangs' aim was to secure the release of some of their chiefs who were being held hostage by the Spaniards in Nueva Segovia. Still later, the same history has the rebels saying that they revolted because of the oppressive abuses of the Spaniards. The church was sacked. The rebels went to the mountains. But a friar is reported to have persevered in going to their stronghold, and he brought back some 300 families who were then settled by the mouth of the Maquila River. He joined the alcalde and soldiers on an expedition against the rebels. The leader, Gabriel Dayag, is said to have repented and helped the Spaniards in the pacification, and later himself returned in peace.

In 1625, nevertheless, the governorgeneral again reported that “Cagayan has continued in revolt,” although he followed this up the next year with a report that the situation had improved.

The Cagayan revolt of 16251626 was due partly to the people's resistance to resettlement, and “their affection for their ancient places of abode.” Two new villages, Nuestra Senora de Fotol and San Lorenzo de Capinatan, had been formed by the regime from separate barangays, and located above the village of Abulug near a river fed from the mountains. Among the people settled in Capinatan were the Mandayas, who kept trying to go back to their old mountain homes. This time, the third time, they succeeded, and also persuaded the inhabitants of Fotol. The Mandaya leaders were Miguel Lanab and Alababan. A recently arrived friar and a visiting lay religious were killed



in Capinatan. Peace was restored in 1626.

A report of 16271628 says that a great portion of Cagayan remained in revolt. In 1628 an expedition of Spaniards and 2,000 Filipino auxiliaries attacked and burned eight native villages. “The country was laid waste, with the fields that the enemy had there; and thus were they punished for the insolent acts that they had committed.” This report lists the major wars of the regime at the time: the war in Formosa against the Dutch; in Ternate and Moluccas, also with the Dutch; in Jolo and the nearby islands against the Muslims; and in Cagayan against the rebels.

The governorgeneral's report in 1630 presented an unstable situation: some of the rebels in Cagayan were subdued, but others kept the government forces occupied. An Augustinian history of this year says of the Cagayanos that “daily they rise and burn convents and churches and kill some of the religious.” But in 1632 the governorgeneral's report was that the province was quieter.

The Mandaya people were like the Gaddangs, lovers of the mountains, so that the alcalde had a presidio built, manned by a garrison, to contain the people in their new lowland settlements. A Dominican history has a report of the Mandaya uprising of 1639, caused by the usual oppressions, but triggered by the abuse on a woman who belonged to the principalia.

So many were the burdens that they [the soldiers] put upon the shoulders of the wearied Indians for their support that the latter considered themselves as conquered, especially because of the illtreatment that they experienced from the commandant of the said fort. The mine of anger exploded, because the said commandant punished one of the principal women, because she had displeased him, by forcing her to pound rice for a whole day; she and her husband were so angry thereat that they became the chief promoters of the insurrection. The nearby villages, which were tormented by the burden of the fort and the oppressions practiced by the soldiers, were invited [to aid in the conspiracy). They entered the sentrypost at ten on the morning of March 6 with their arms, and killed the sentinel and others who offered them some resistance.



They went thence to the fort, and breaking down the doors, or having them opened by the spies inside, they killed about twenty unarmed and naked soldiers, who formed the garrison; only five soldiers escaped, by hiding; but later, the fire increasing, these perished. The Indians entered the convent, and killed a Sangley, at the door of the cell of the fathervicar, who had just been baptized that day (whose death, we must believe, would be most fortunate for his soul)....

It was learned afterward that they proceeded with their frenzied sacrilege, and burned the church and the convent Although the attempt has been made more than once to obtain satisfaction, yet those people are so favored by their inaccessible mountains that this effort has been abandoned, as it is impossible to subdue them.

The valley of Cagayan would not be effectively conquered until after several more decades. Since the Spanish accounts say that the Spaniards had taken “possession” of the region long ago, we read that the Cagayanos were “rebelling.” But we know that they had not yet been conquered, there was no Spanish regime over them, and so there was no regime against which they were rebelling.

The colonial system, with its laws and religion, was still largely limited to Manila and the cabeceras, in the process of securing itself and trying to organize the people preparatory to their exploitation. The resistance of the Cagayanos was still resistance to the conquest.4

It was in the more organized areas, where the colonial burden bore down systematically on the colonial subjects, that the people's uprisings were in the nature of rebellions. We have seen the evidence of heavy and sustained losses in the tributary population since 1591. The people bore exactions to support the regime in order that it could exploit them. Even the friars who baptized them into Christianity were taking away their worldly goods, as in the case of Miguel Banal and his people in Quiapo in 1603 – yet he was delivering the tributes of this people to the regime, and the stipends of the clergy came from these tributes.

We will now briefly review the rebellions of the Christianized Filipinos. The new century of the Spanish era was unusually harsh. The weary



Filipinos were drawn into the contests between Spain and her foreign enemies: the occasional Chinese or English pirate, and the Dutch. Of these none were nearer, and none posed a more immediate threat during the first half of the seventeenth century, than the latter. The Spaniards hated and dreaded them as Protestant heretics. The Dutch were based in Java, contesting all rivals to the prize of the Orient trade. They maintained forty to fifty armed ships in the waters of Filipinas in any one year, awaiting every opportunity to expel the Spaniards from the archipelago. The naval engagements of 1601, 1616, 1617, and 1626 show the intensity of the Dutch pressure. The Dutch maintained this pressure until midcentury, inciting the Filipinos, urging them to overthrow the Spaniards, explaining that they were unlike the Castilians, promising that they would not collect tributes and would deal with them only as friends. Later naval engagements were fought from 1644 to 1648 along the Ilocos coast, and off Manila, Mindoro, Marinduque, Bataan, and Cavite.

To meet the threat from their foreign enemies, the Spaniards needed supplies, rowers, and auxiliary fighters. The Filipinos were impressed into these services. The Spaniards also had to have warships. In addition, for their dreams of great riches, the Spaniards had to have galleons for the trade with Acapulco and, for some time also, with the Moluccas. These galleons were the largest vessels anywhere. The Filipinos built these ships with absolutely no profit to them. The galleon trade of the Spaniards, precisely because of the fantastic returns for each successful voyage, was also enormously risky because of the English pirates, the Dutch enemy, and the typhoons. A summary of the trade during the fiftyfive years from 1572, for instance, records that only fifteen of those years were free from loss and disaster.

The call on the Filipinos' resources and services naturally intensified whenever there was rumor of a Dutch armada, or when the Spaniards decided to strengthen their defenses in anticipation of the next encounter. Perhaps the most physically exacting burdens carried by the Filipinos were those attendant to shipbuilding. The building of a manofwar or a galleon – sometimes, in anticipation of an English pirate, the Spaniards would cut out



ports in the galleon's sides, and mount as many as a hundred cannon – or a smaller trading vessel for a provincial alcalde or a friar engaged in business, began with the felling of great trees in the forests. These labors were the notorious cortes de madera. The huge trees would then have to be hauled from forest or mountain. Next they had to be sawed and the timbers prepared before actual work on the ship construction. The shipbuilding would then be followed by the fitting and provisioning of the vessels. All the labor and the other resources needed in these tasks were provided by the Filipinos by repartimiento.

In 1600, for instance, the construction of the galleon San Diego meant “great vexations, wrongs, and expenses heaped upon the natives...; it is impossible to build galleons in any other way.” Each month 1,200 men were drafted from the provinces of Tondo, Bulacan, Batangas, and Tayabas for the construction work. By Spanish accounting the galleon cost the royal treasury in Manila 60,000 pesos; the Filipinos were credited with more than 150,000 pesos. In truth, of course, all of this then prodigious amount was borne by the Filipinos.5

But this was not all, because the costs were continuing. When they worked for the Spaniards, the Filipinos could not work their own fields; if they did not plant, their families had no food, fell sick, and sometimes died; they would have no products or money to pay the tribute; and if they did not pay their tributes they suffered even more. In 1614 there were uprisings in many provinces because of the cortes de madera. The deaths and wasting of men in the provinces around Manila as a result of years of corvées for shipbuilding moved the governorgeneral to order a quota of men together with their wives and children, to be brought from the various provinces to the shipyards in Cavite. This drastic move was in anticipation of another Dutch threat in 1649. The inevitable consequences followed.

Palapag, a coastal pueblo in northern Samar with an unbroken prospect of the Pacific Ocean to the east and north, was the base of Jesuit missionary activity in the island province. This Jesuit residence served eight other principal pueblos. There was a small presidio or fort in the pueblo. The area



was unfortunate twice over: it was exposed to Muslim raids, and it was a frequent source of workers in the cortes de madera. Epidemics made matters worse, and the population of the province fell from some 80,000 around 1590 to only 30,000 to 35,000 by 16371638.

On 1 June 1649, when the people of Palapag saw the alcalde gathering the men and their families to be sent to Cavite, their patience gave out and they declared rebellion. The leaders were chosen by the townspeople: Juan Sumuroy, castellan (keeper) of the presidio and later said to be the son of the local priest of the native religion; Juan Ponce; and Pedro Caamug. Sumuroy had the Jesuit in Palapag killed right away. Then the people sacked the church and took over the town. This was in June. News of the insurrection spread south to Catubig and west to Catarman. These were large villages. Here and in Bayugo and Bonan the people declared their own rebellions. From Samar the outbreaks spread across the narrow strait to Leyte and then to the provinces of Albay and Camarines, the islands of Masbate and Camiguin; and to the Mindanao mainland, in Caraga, Cagayan, and even Zamboanga. In each place the church and the friar were the insurgents' first targets, and occasionally some Spanish soldiers in a presidio. Cebu and Bohol wavered, and the friars there were able to soothe the people.

The rebels were to have their way for one year. In Palapag the church was rebuilt and a new friar assigned; the rebels burned the former and killed the latter. Then they prepared for the expected counterattack and built a redoubt on a high hill by the village. They protected it with trenches and stockades, with stakes and traps, while they placed boulders on the hilltop to roll down on attackers.

In Manila a force made up of chosen Spanish soldiers and Pampangos was organized. The expedition left Manila on two champans and thirteen other boats with rowers. Provisions came from Capiz and Iloilo. This force was then joined by a contingent from Cebu. The fleet of Zamboanga, the southern outpost against the Sulu and Maguindanao Muslims, was also mobilized to augment these forces, and all three assembled by the cabecera of Catbalogan, midway along the west coast of the island. The Zamboanga fleet carried, in



addition to Spaniards, 400 Lutaos (natives of the Zamboanga peninsula, mostly partMuslims who had submitted to the Spaniards because of the fort's guns). The composite force was then divided into three subcommands. In the face of this well organized enemy the rebel villages still did not unite their efforts, and so they fell to the regime's forces one by one. The Spaniards adopted a conciliatory approach due to the scale of the revolts, and the rebels turned themselves in gradually, except for Sumuroy's group in Palapag.

The hilltop redoubt stood defiant, but now it faced a siege by the combined enemy forces. In the early part of the siege the warriors of Palapag carried the fight into the Spanish camp one night. They were forced to retire, carrying their fallen comrades back with them. The Spaniards in turn mounted a frontal assault by the uphill path. The fight was bloody for both sides and lasted for hours, but it was a standoff, and the Spaniards were forced to acknowledge that “they had many brave and well armed men on the hill.”

The Sumuroy stronghold was accessible only via a steep climb up the rugged hillside, at the rear, leading to a small cave that allowed only one man to pass through at a time; this cave gave on to the rebel camp at the top. The enemy could not normally attack by this route in force; the climb was steep and slippery, for it was the season of rains. On the night of 2 July 1650, under cover of darkness and in heavy rain that made the native sentinel unwary, a group of attackers made the arduous ascent, and the rebel camp was caught by surprise. The rebels were now assaulted from the rear and from in front, and the defenders lost.

Circumstances again constrained the regime to issue a general pardon to the rebel followers. An account of this uprising notes that the Spaniards had to “overlook much on that occasion, as the quiet of all the Pintados islands, who were waiting the end of the rebels of Palapag, depended on it.” Of the leaders, Pedro Caamug gave himself up, and helped in the surrender of his former comrades. Juan Ponce escaped to Cebu and received a pardon; he returned to Palapag but apparently continued to cause trouble; he was seized and brought to Manila, where he was executed. Sumuroy valiantly refused to



surrender, but he was betrayed by some of his former followers, who beheaded him and brought the head to the Spaniards.6

The seventeenth century passed into its second half without bringing relief. An Augustinian history describes the period 16531663 as “a melancholy period of troubles and misfortunes, greater and more continual than these islands had ever before suffered....” According to another friar history the 1660s were “a time for recovering their liberty, a gift of priceless value.” But, the history reflects, the natural inclination of men to free them selves from subjugation was met by the Spaniards with greater coercion and with greater violence. And so the Filipinos who were subjected must await a time when their masters an oppressors are weak. The theory of the friar author was that the Filipinos were always prone to rebellion; he did not take account of their sufferings.

The province of Pampanga, for instance, had mixed fortune. According to a friar historian (1620s): “When the religious arrived there, that province had many inhabitants,” But then it observed “Now … it lacks that great number of former years . . Very many people have been conscripted from this district, and I wonder that a man is left.”

Pampanga, in the rich central Luzon plain, was the major source of Manila's rice supply. Its fields were watered by many rivers, and the people had developed a basic irrigation system that let the water in and cut it off in season. In the 1620s it still enjoyed an abundance of coconut trees. The Pampangos were said to have accepted Christianity more readily than all the other Filipinos. The people were hospitable; several Spaniards had settled there before the enforcement of the laws prohibiting the from residing in native communities; they had taken Pampanga wives. If the Spaniards regarded a province highly, this was Pampanga, because it gave to the Spanish regime its finest: its men. An Augustinian friar who was very antiFilipino in his views on the native character singled out the Pampangos as exceptions, calling them the “Castilians among the natives.”

Pampangos manned the principal Spanish presidios: in Cebu, Arevalo,



Caraga, Zamboanga, and the far off garrisons in the Moluccas. The Spanish forts in Maluco and Ternate (when Spain and Portugal were one monarchy) were defended by Pampango soldiers; their officers proudly boasted that not one of them ever deserted. They were so highly regarded by the Spaniards that in most cases, the Pampango soldiers served under Pampango officers, unlike men from the other provinces who always served under Spanish commanders. The esteem in which they were held was expressed in a saying that was popular among the troops that one Spaniard and three Pampangos were “equal to four Spaniards.” The Pampango pueblos were therefore proud of their men. When the soldiers were called to Manila they were attired in uniforms which the townspeople paid for. They were a great help in the suppression of many Filipino uprisings.

In 1660 the time came for the Pampangos to rise. The galleon San Sabiniano was scheduled for construction in the yards in Cavite. The timber for the galleon was to be supplied from the tall trees in the forests near the village of Samal, of Bataan. The cortes de madera was to last for four months. A thousand men were drafted by repartimiento from Pampanga. The overseer was a violent man who abused and overworked them. He had now kept the men at this cortes de madera for eight months. They had not worked their fields during the planting season; they were worried for their families; their children would be hungry; and when they returned home they would face the prospect of not being able to pay their tributes.

On top of this, in 1660 the regime was in arrears on many levies of rice under the reales compras. The people were assigned quotas of goods to produce; they would then have to deliver the products to the alcaldes or other agents, who would pay at prices arbitrarily fixed by the regime. The system was devised in order to stock the regime's magazines and warehouses with provisions and material for the presidios, forts, and other establishments. The buyers customarily exacted goods in excess of the quotas, for the purpose of trading in these, often selling them back to the people at higher prices. Common items involved in the compras included rice, fowl, and other food products; wood for fuel; cloths; sailcloth for the ships; and coconut oil for lighting. The regime's unpaid accounts for its purchases of rice from the



Pampangos had accumulated, and now reached the reported total of 200,000 pesos.

The men in the polos, felling trees in the Bataan forests, could not endure the abuse and their anxieties any longer. They burned down their huts and, under their leader Francisco Manago of Mexico (a Pampanga pueblo),,

declared rebellion. They ignored the pleas of their chaplain in the polos, and those of the friars of Sexmoan and Guagua – most of the men evidently came from these two towns. They armed themselves and took the pueblo of Lubao. They overran the prosperous pueblo of Bacolor. They drove stakes into the river here, in order to close off travel to and from Manila. From Bacolor, Manago sent letters to the northern provinces of Pangasinan and Ilocos, informing the native leaders there of his revolt and urging them to revolt against Spain and to kill all Spaniards. The bearer of these letters to the north was Agustin Pimintuan.

The governorgeneral handled the matter adroitly. He gathered twelve military commanders and their men, rowed up the Rio Grande de Pampanga from Manila, arriving in the pueblo of Macabebe in the early evening of the day after the news from Bacolor reached Manila. He won over a chief of Arayat, which was a key town guarding the river route to Pangasinan. This chief was Juan Macapagal; he left his home and traveled through the rebel camp to Macabebe, where he pledged his loyalty to Spain. The Spaniards treated him well, but took the precaution of having his wife and children brought to Manila as hostages, and also made sure that the news of their good treatment in Manila reached the rebels.

The peaceful response of the authorities seemed to calm down the rebels. They presented a letter to the governorgeneral with a statement of the overdue obligations of the regime for their produce and services. They were promised a partial payment of 14,000 pesos against the regime's debt of 200,000 pesos; they were told that the royal treasury was spent. The rebel leaders must have accepted the promise; a general amnesty proclamation was drafted and read before the people. However, the local scribe who read out the proclamation in the local language, a man named Baluyot, deliberately



changed the wording in order to agitate the people anew. As a result, the crowd seized two of the Spanish officers.

But the ardor of the people had cooled down. Pampanga was essentially a loyal province. The regime granted another general amnesty. The governorgeneral ordered the rebels to go back to the cortes de madera; they asked to be given time to repair their houses and to work their fields. This was granted. Manago was brought to Manila on the pretext that he was to be made an independent commander of Pampango soldiers in the capital. It was December, and peace was restored.7

The uprising in Pampanga lasted only two months, but is said to have inspired the Pangasinan revolt under Andres Malong. The people of Pangasinan and Ilocos, as well as those in the other provinces, had been watching the developments in Pampanga.

Pangasinan up to this era was still largely unexplored. The friar chronicles provide scanty information on its early history. In 1588, when Pampanga had 22,000 tributarios (then equivalent to some 88,000 people), and the Ilocos 27,000, Pangasinan had only 5,000. This indicates that the Spanish drive had leapfrogged from Pampanga to the Ilocos, due to the rumors of Ilocos gold. Much of Pangasinan still awaited reduction. A friar account of 1618 says that Pangasinan was peopled chiefly by “negrillos,” mountain people who were either black or swarthy. The negrillos were the indigenes of the area. There were Christianized inhabitants, reportedly immigrants who had taken over the plains and coastal areas. In 1618 the province had an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 tributes. Its cabecera was the pueblo of Binalatongan, located in the geographical center of the province. Like most of the other cabeceras of the period which had Spanish residents, Binalatongan had suffered a population loss from a former 3,000 houses to 2,000 in 1618. The province at this time included Agoo (now in La Union) which was called the “port of Japan” because Japanese trading ships often called there.

The uprising in Pangasinan started with a minor disturbance in the



village of Malunguey, and by midDecember 1660 had spread to the new capital town, the pueblo of Lingayen. Andres Malong, the Filipino masterofcamp or commander of all native soldiers in the province, was the leader. After killing the Spanish officials, the 4,000 strong rebel group attacked and sacked the town of Bacnotan. Here they caught up with the fleeing Spanish alcalde mayor, and they killed him and his household and guard. With this victory, Malong began to entertain larger ideas, and he had himself proclaimed King of Pangasinan. He invited the Zambals to join him, which they did. Now it was his turn to write letters to the chiefs of Ilocos and Nueva Segovia, and another to Francisco Mañago of Pampanga.

The letter to Mañago required him to bring Pampanga to Malong's side, or be punished by an invasion of 6,000 Pangasinan soldiers. This was rather presumptuous, since Pampanga was much larger than Pangasinan. Besides, Mañago's rebellion had already been suppressed by this time, and he had fallen into Spanish hands. But Malong's forces now numbered 11,000 strong, divided into 6,000 under Melchor de Vera, 3,000 Pangasinenses and Zambals under Pedro Gumapos (Malong had bestowed the title of Count on Gumapos) and a reserve force of 2,000 under Malong himself.

The Spanish forces consisted of a land force and an armed fleet. The men of the latter were a mixed lot with blacks, Malays from Tidore, and the Japanese residents of Pandacan, Manila, presumably because they would have business connections with the port of Japon in Agoo. The land force included some Pampangos. The fleet passed by Bolinao and pacified it, since the people of the town had already killed a Spaniard. A loyal chief named Luis Sorriguen was installed as gobernadorcillo. The fleet reached the bar of Lingayen in January 1661, but a storm forced it to take shelter in Sual. News of threatened excesses by the rebels in Lingayen pressed the Spaniards to hasten, and they landed there three or four days later. They entered the town at sunset, to see the heads of the new alcalde, his wife, sisterinlaw, and of two other Spaniards impaled on stakes for public view.

Meanwhile the Spanish land force halted in Arayat, which had been secured for them by their ally Macapagal. More Pampangos were drafted.



News arrived that Melchor de Vera had invaded the province and that he was encamped in Magalang. A detachment of Spanish cavalry and thirty foot soldiers proceeded on a scouting and opportunity mission, and found the Pangasinenses asleep in the open field. It was night, and they were fatigued from the long march. The shouts of the surprised Pangasinenses, however, frightened the Spanish troop, and both sides withdrew. Melchor de Vera pusillanimously reported a great victory to Malong, who then decided to extend his revolt into Ilocos and Cagayan. For this purpose Malong placed a picked force of 4,000 under the military command of Jacinto Macasiag of Binalatongan.

The sending of such a large force to the Ilocos, far from the rebels' base in Pangasinan, was a mistake. The Spaniards attacked Lingayen towards the end of the second week of January.

Malong sent for De Vera, but no relief could arrive in time. The battle of Lingayen was short. The rebels lost; they retired to Binalatongan, where they destroyed the church and convent.

They then retreated to the hills in bad order. Malong's followers began to desert to the Spaniards, and offered to deliver him as prisoner. He was captured by a Spanish detachment.

Meantime, the rebel force under Pedro Gumapos was in the Ilocos. Malong's letter to the Ilocos chiefs had also reached the pueblo of Bauang (in the modern province of La Union). The province of Ilocos (then including the modern Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, and parts of Abra and La Union) was densely populated, with extensive fields. It produced abundant rice, which was shipped to Manila. It was noted for its fields of cotton, from which were woven the famous mantas that were used as sails for the Manila galleons. A 1618 account says that the Ilocanos “manufacture nothing else” but mantas, and they paid their tributes in it. The Spaniards conducted many expeditions chasing after the reports of gold in the province, discovering only later that the Ilocanos traded for it with their neighbors the Igorots.

The location of the province was favorable; Chinese, Indian, and Macao



traders took their cargoes to its river and coastal pueblos whenever the weather made it risky to push on to Manila. When this happened, the merchants from Manila would go to Ilocos, trade, and then wait for the north wind, the brisa, that would take them and their cargoes to the capital. The Spaniards admired the Ilocanos for a curious reason. The latter, they noted, were the cleanest people in all the islands, “especially the women in their houses...; they have a practice of going three or four times a day to bathe in the river.”

But the Ilocanos had suffered much under the regime. In 1588 it had 27,000 tributarios. By 1591, when the number of tributepayers in Filipinas as a whole had increased, the number in the province had diminished drastically, to 17,130. A 1618 account refers to some “past disturbances” in the province, but adds that the Ilocanos “are now very peaceable.” This year the number of tributarios took a further drop, to between 14,000 and 15,000. The provincial capital was Vigan, oftentimes called “Fernandina” after the name of the Spanish settlement in the area.

Pedro Gumapos' forces of Zambals and Pangasinenses entered and looted Bauang in December 1660. The friars fled to Bacnotan. News of these reverses reached the alcalde and the bishop, and the Spaniards held a council of war in Vigan. A Spanish force was dispatched to Bauang, only to find it deserted. It pushed on to Agno, and the father of Gumapos, Miguel Cariño, was captured and hanged. A battle took place here with the Gumapos forces, and the Spaniards lost and retreated to Vigan. The alcalde ordered all of his compatriots who wished to escape to Manila to do so – with him leading the group. On 20 January 1661 the forces of Gumapos reached Vigan. In church the mass was going on, officiated by the bishop; the rebels heard mass like good Christians, and then looted the town. The neighboring villages of Bantay and Santa Catalina were likewise razed; the Zambals looted as far north as Badoc.

From Vigan the rebels carried off the bishop and the friars south to Narvacan. A letter from Malong was received by Jacinto Macasiag, military commander of the Gumapos group, ordering him to burn all villages and to



kill all Spaniards. The rebels encountered valorous resistance from a Narvacan chief named Felipe Madamba. They proceeded southward, burning the villages of Santa Maria, San Esteban, Santiago, San Pedro, Candon, and Santa Cruz.

By now the Spanish forces had joined up, and the combined army marched north, encamping in Santa Lucia. Here Gumapos was finally captured and hanged. The friar account of this battle, full of superstition, claims that all the dead of the Spaniards fell with faces turned upward, while the Zambal dead lay with faces downward. The victorious Spaniards prepared to return to Manila, but news arrived that another uprising had erupted in Bacarra.

The rebel leader in Bacarra was Pedro Almazan, in league with Juan Magsanop (or Manzano) and Gaspar Cristoval of Laoag. Almazan had his son marry Cristoval's daughter, and the marriage was celebrated with the plunder of the church of Laoag.

Almazan was crowned King of the Ilocos. It was at this point that Malong's letters reached Almazan and Magsanop, informing them that he had conquered Pangasinan. This new uprising established an alliance with the nearby hill tribe of the Calanasa. Under Magsanop, they beheaded the priest in charge of Pata and Cabicungan and, later, the prior of Bacarra.

The Spanish force hastily marched from Narvacan to Bacarra, with Ilocano and Cagayano auxiliaries. Magsanop was captured, and he killed himself. Almazan was also caught.

In the proceedings following these uprisings, the following principales were executed: in Vigan, Pedro Gumapos was shot in the back (by another account, supra, he was hanged in Santa Lucia); Pedro Almazan, Cristoval Ambayan, Tomas Boaya, Pedro de la Pena, and twelve others were hanged. In Binalatongan Melchor de Vera, Francisco de Padua, Jacinto Macasiag, and eleven others were hanged. Andres Malong was made to sit on a rock, and then shot. In Mexico the Spaniards reneged on their undertaking with Mañago, and he and his brother Carlos were shot. Juan Palasigui, Marcos Marcasian, Chombillo, Supil, and Baluyot of Guagua (the scribe who



distorted the amnesty proclamation), and many others were also hanged.8

The Spanish author of these accounts of the principal revolts of the 1660s notes that the other Filipinos were awaiting the outcome of these uprisings, for they also wished to rebel, and “to gain what seemed to them liberty.”

The Pangasinan and Ilocos revolts were the most ambitious and extensive uprisings of conquered Filipinos during the seventeenth century. Their failure found the Pangasinenses and Ilocanos spent and exhausted. The participation of so many of their men in the struggles, whether in the role of rebel or of Spanish auxiliary, meant the neglect of their fields and occupations. The provinces suffered for years afterward. The failure, moreover, was not lost on the other Luzon provinces, so that no uprisings of similar magnitude would occur on the island again until the next century. It is interesting that, almost exactly one hundred years later, the two most important revolts of the eighteenth century would also break out in Pangasinan and Ilocos.

Meanwhile, the dominant theme in the Christian Filipino resistance to the regime would persist no matter how like and unchanging was the oppression that all of them suffered, and occasionally drove them to rebellion, the Christian Filipinos always suffered them separately, and never fought their colonial masters as one. The irony was that the people did not sense this, but the Spaniards knew it well, and so the latter maintained their rule over the conquered Filipinos by keeping them divided, always suppressing the rebellions of some by using the services of others.

Perhaps the most meaningful words written of the colonized Filipinos during this era, words that deserve reflection in the light of the ultra refractory nature of modern Filipino politics, are the following, by a Spanish friar:9

Some of them could not unite with the others, and although, and they desired liberty, they did not work together to secure the means; for obtaining it, and therefore they experienced a heavier (yoke of) subjection. And among the peoples whom God seems to have created that



they may live in subjection to others who govern them with justice and authority are those of these Filipinas islands; for when the Spanish arms conquered them with so great facility they were living without a head, without a king or lord to obey ....

The Muslim Wars

There were no Muslim revolts against the colonial regime. This was because rebellion is the recourse of aggrieved subjects, which the Muslims were not. They did not submit to, nor were they conquered by, the Spaniards. The Muslim Filipinos were enemies of the regime. They were in a relation of permanent war, at least for as long as the latter wanted war. The barangays of Luzon and the Visayas could submit to entradas composed of a squad or platoon of Spanish soldiers armed with muskets and arquebuses, usually supported by native auxiliaries and bearers. The Muslims of Sulu and Maguindanao would fight off specially organized expeditions of conquest and pacification; the Spanish officers and soldiers on these expeditions would be enemies twice over, for they would be fighting for personal plunder and for their Spanish king – the Muslims would fight all of them. They would stand up to a Spanish invasion force composed of land troops, a fleet armed with artillery. They would win some and lose some of these engagements.. If they lost and had to submit, their submission was never more than temporary, for it was only a tactical move, good only until the moment when the enemy fleet would have to sail away, or until they had regained strength.

The Spanish accounts often would not even record the names of the leaders of a Christian Filipino rebellion – once it was put down that was the end of it. But we will read the names of Muslim datus and sultans in the Spanish documents over and over, because the contest was a continuing struggle, and it was larger than a merely episodic encounter. The fact is that, of all the Filipinos of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries; it was only the Muslims who were consciously sustained by a cause that made surrender or submission to the Spaniards morally impossible. This moral cause was Islam.



In addition to the moral principle that forbade submission to unbelievers, especially the Spaniards who had themselves been subjects of the Moorish occupation, the Muslim Filipinos drew strength from the sultanate as an institution. The barangay datus of Luzon and Visayas owed no loyalty to a higher authority, since they were separate. But the datus in a sultanate, as well as the nonMuslim datus owing tributary obligations to a sultan, were under the protection of a paramount leader; they had duties and statuses that were institutionalized. The sultanates were still developing during this era, but the sultans knew that there were records of their reigns; they had Earsilas that set down their names and noted down their essential personalities. Around the sultan was also a council of datus, and they had some claim to his official accountability. Even the recognized claims of an heir to the sultanate had to be confirmed by the council before his formal accession. Thus, the sultans would not surrender to the enemy pusillanimously.

The Spanish clergy, especially the Jesuits who were assigned to Zamboanga and other parts of Mindanao or Sulu, would at least be aware of the rulerstatus of the sultans, so that the Spaniards often dealt with the Muslims by treaty, a relationship that was out of the question with virtually all of the nonMuslim leaders. This was particularly true when the Spaniards felt threatened by enemies such as the Dutch. In negotiating treaties with the Muslim sultans and leading datus, the Spaniards demonstrated a special regard for their resolute foes.

The Muslims' loyalty to their Islamic faith was noted by the Spaniards. Sometimes this was done with envy, though grudgingly. Witness what the bishop of Filipinas has to say (1583):

The reason which they give – to our shame and confusion – is that they were better treated by the preachers of Mahoma than they have been and are by the preachers of Christ. Since through kind and gentle treatment, they received that doctrine willingly, it took root in their hearts, and so they leave it reluctantly.

Of course it was also obvious that the Muslims resisted submission



because they did not care to suffer the burdens that the colonized Filipinos were made to bear under the Spanish regime. The knowledge of these burdens came to the Muslims in the course of their raids on the Christianized pueblos.10

It is this history of raids, above all, that characterized the relationship between the colonial regime and the Muslims. The latter were not passive, waiting for an entrada or expedition to conquer them. They had raided the Visayan barangays long before the Spanish era. The old barangays did not hold much wealth, but the captives taken, who could be sold in the slave markets in the islands to the south of the archipelago, had been enough prize. Now the policies of the colonial regime made the Christianized barangays even more tempting targets. This was because the new pueblos were larger than the old barangays, and therefore offered a richer prize. The locations of most of the pueblos, especially in the Visayas – coastal, rivermouth – made them more vulnerable to the raiders. Finally, the pueblodoctrina system that was based on agriculture and the church made the community relatively immobile and less capable of flight.

By gathering more people in its pueblos; by adorning its churches with gold and silver ornaments and fine altar pieces, and by pushing the missionary effort into Muslim territory, the Spanish regime locked itself with the Muslims into permanent war.

Thus, by a fortuitous combination of circumstances, the Christian Filipinos were caught between oppression by their colonial masters, on the one hand, and attack by their masters' enemies, on the other. It is a truism that one of the essential elements of subjection is the loss of a people's right to choose its foes and friends. The Muslim Filipino resistance to the Spanish regime did not take the form of uprisings and revolts, but that of aggressive forays and raids against an ancient enemy and its new colonial subjects.

The strongholds of the Muslim Filipinos, naturally enough, were Sulu and Maguindanao. We have no early descriptions of Jolo or Sulu, but a 1599 perspective of Maguindanao (the early Spanish accounts almost invariably



call this area "Mindanao" or "island of Mindanao") has the following:

The island of Mindanao is almost three hundred leguas in circumference. It is a land of slight elevation; although of good climate, it is sparsely settled, and its inhabitants very warlike and inclined to arms. Their only aim is to rob and kill. There is a scarcity of supplies in some parts, though cinnamon is found in some districts, and a large quantity of wax everywhere. Tortoise shells are also found. They weave cloth from medrifiaque and some from cotton. All the inhabitants on the coast profess the doctrine of Maoma, and those of the uplands are heathens. Although it cannot be maintained [as a Spanish fort] without assistance, still it is necessary to maintain it, in order to avert the injuries which on the other hand would be received by the islands of the Pintados. It would usually be necessary to bring an army for their defense, if the Spaniards should abandon the island of Mindanao, and the chiefs rebel.

A 1579 list of all the villages along the Maguindanao river, with their respective numbers of inhabitants, shows twentyeight of these settlements, with only two (Tampacan and Balete).having a thousand or more people. Most had between one hundred and two hundred. The total of inhabitants was some 7,850. The population of Jolo could not have been much more. A total of 16,000 people in the two sultanates, say, a maximum of 20,000 including women and children, would hold the Spaniards at bay. Their descendants would retain their independence for three centuries.

The Muslim problem came up early before the Spanish regime. The sixteenth century was almost a Spanish century, with Spain's incredible conquests in the New World. The extravagance of nerve and outlook that led the Spaniards to these achievements also led them, in Asia, to claim that the jurisdiction. of their capital in Manila included China, to wit: “the island of Luzon and the other Filipinas islands of the archipelago of China, and the mainland of the same, whether discovered or yet to be discovered”! This claimed jurisdiction also covered Borneo, among others. In 1603 Morga, lieutenantgovernor of Filipinas, wrote: “the Filipinas are located in the eastern ocean. Among the most famous of them are the islands of Maluco, Celeves, Tendaya, Luzon, Mindanao, and Borneo, which are now called the Filipinas.”



Moved by this hubris, a Spanish expedition set out to subjugate Borneo in April 1578. Its chief town Mohala was taken, but Sultan Lijar (Seif urRijal) escaped, to return after the enemy had left. From Borneo an expedition was commissioned to reduce Jolo to Spanish rule, specifically because the Joloanos raided the Visayas every year; the expedition was also instructed to campaign against Maguindanao.

Rahayro (Raja Iro), Sultan of Jolo, acknowledged submission to Spain this year. This was a tactical submission, and the Joloanos will resume their raids later.

Another expedition was dispatched to Maguindanao in 1579. The Spaniards reached the Pulangui River on 13 March, in pursuit of Datu Dimansancay. He eluded his pursuers, and they pushed their way up river laboriously. The people of the villages along the river were vassals of Dimansancay; he gave them orders not to surrender. They mocked the Spaniards and called them “rogues.” That Dimansancay had several villages owing allegiance to him confirms that he was unlike the usual nonMuslim barangay datus. The people of the Muslim barangays were also different. During the latter days of this expedition, on 27 March, the Spaniards were in Tampacan along the river, and the Maguindanao warriors were on the other side. The latter loosed a round of arrows at the Spaniards. The Spanish commander ordered his men to fire their guns. “Yet,” he noted, “they refused to desist and sent another volley of arrows.” After twentyfour days the Spaniards ran out of food and gave up the pursuit. They wrote a letter to Dimansancay. This letter was written “in the Moro tongue” by Laquian, the expedition's native Muslim interpreter.11

There is a hiatus in the accounts after these expeditions. Then in 1595 the Maguindanaos and their allies, Muslims from Ternate, invaded the Visayas. They took 1,500 captives. In retaliation, the Spaniards decided to subdue and pacify the Maguindanaos once and for all. In the Spanish system, major expeditions of discovery and conquest were royally sponsored and financed. In order to save the king additional expenses, expeditions of reduction in claimed territories were often contracted out to conquistadors, who would



recruit the men, raise the fleet, and pay for all costs, in return for appointment as governor of the territory, grants of encomiendas, and other privileges or concessions. This system was followed in this case.

The Spanish fleet under its conquistador sailed from Arevalo in 1596. The Spanish soldiers were supported by 1,500 Christian Filipinos. The expedition reached the Pulangui River, gateway to Maguindanao. The people of the first village fled up river to Buayan (Buhayen, Buyahen), seat of the powerful Raja Sirungan, half brother of Dimansancay. The Spaniards gave pursuit, passing the village of Tampacan, ruled by Datu Buisan, until they reached Buayan. Here they landed with great confidence, and “with but little order, for they had not fought the Maguindanaos, and thought that it would be easy to rout them.” The conquistador, clad in strong armor but leaving his helmet to a bearer, joined his men. With a bodyguard of five soldiers, he sallied forth, but fifty paces was all he took; his head was cleft in two by a kampilan, a long and straightedged Muslim Filipino cutlass. The weapon was wielded by Ubal, a leading datu.

The leaderless Spaniards retired, set up camp in Tampacan, and waited for instructions from Manila. The regime decided to send a new commander, and the force carried out raids against Buayan. But the Maguindanaos were fighting on home grounds, in swampy country they knew; they had a number of fortified positions with their own cannon and arquebuses; and so they were able to harass the Spaniards. The stalemate weighed on the latter. They planned to chastise the Maguindanaos in one major engagement, then break camp and retire to La Caldera, Zamboanga, where they would establish a fort.

Meanwhile, in 1597, Datu Buisan, successor of Dimansancay, was able to negotiate assistance from Ternate. The Ternatans sent 1,000 fighting men with artillery. The allies now carried the fight against the Spaniards in Tampacan. The contest was hard fought, and soon turned into a bloody handtohand struggle with swords against kampilans. The Spanish defenders won, and carried the fight to Buayan itself. At this point, Buayan submitted. The people of Tampacan and Buayan arranged an alliance of friendship,,. sealed



by the marriage of the Raja Mura (presumptive heir to the sultanate) with a daughter of Dongonlibor, a leading Tampacan chief. The victorious Spaniards, with the remnants of the expedition, carried out their earlier decision to go to La Caldera and there set up the fort, garrisoned with a hundred soldiers.

La Caldera, near the tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula, was earlier also called Cauit (or "hook," like Cavite in Manila Bay), sometimes La Canela – or Cinnamon Point. It was a forward outpost, a fortified presidio, strategically located to monitor movement in the waters including Ternate and Maluco, but especially Jolo and Maguindanao. From La Caldera the Spaniards went to Jolo, where the Sultan reiterated his pledge of submission. After the main Spanish force retired, however, the uncle of the Maguindanao sultan, brotherinlaw of the Sultan of Jolo, killed thirteen Spanish soldiers; a punitive expedition was sent after him, and nineteen more Spaniards died. In the face of these heavy losses, Manila ordered that further engagements be avoided, for lack of men and resources.

The pledges of allegiance of Raja Iro of Jolo (1578) and the Raja Mura of Maguindanao (1598) notwithstanding, the Muslims made the Spaniards pay for their forays into their home land. In 1599 and 1600 the Visayas were ravaged by raids. Churches were burned, chalices and images abused, and captives taken. In 1602 the Maguindanao raiders infested the coasts near Manila. The Muslim Filipinos were in fact encouraged by their agreements with the Dutch and the English to fight the Spaniards. A witness records that the Maguindanaos had one hundred boats to raid the Pintados and Cebu. The overall leaders were Datu Buisan, the Raja Mura, and Raja Sirungan. The raiding force was extraordinarily large, for one hundred men from each village of Maguindanao had been mobilized. Actually, unexpected by the Spaniards, the fleet divided into two, one attacking the Calamianes and neighboring islands, and the other attacking Mindoro and the southern Luzon coast.

The modern Jesuit historian De la Costa has a short account of the Maguindanao raids of this decade, woven around the story of a Jesuit



captured by Datu Buisan in the 1603 raid on Leyte. An interesting dialogue between Buisan and the datus of Leyte, on the former's invitation, is summarized. Buisan asked whether the datus and their people, as well as the people of Panay, Mindoro, and Balayan, who were all Spanish subjects, had been protected by their Spanish masters. He told them that if they allied with the Maguindanaos, it would be easy to rid themselves of the Spanish yoke; after all the Spaniards were few and could be defeated, if the people of Leyte united themselves.

He would send a fleet next year, and together they would drive the Spaniards away from the whole island. The datus and Buisan entered into a blood compact, drawing blood from each other and mixing it into a vessel of liquor, from which each drank, thus becoming ritual brothers.

The account also reports on the treatymaking between the governorgeneral of Filipinas and the Maguindanaos, the latest one being in written form, signed in Buayan in 1605. The Maguindanaos were allied to the Ternatans. In 1606 a Spanish expedition, with Pampango and Tagalog auxiliaries, invaded and defeated Ternate. This did not seem to have daunted the Maguindanaos. Buisan sent a humble letter to the Spaniards, but in 1608 they again raided the Visayas, overrunning Leyte and Samar and taking rich booty and captives.

The leaders of the Pulangui region at this time were Datu Buisan; the Raja Mura, son of Dimansancay and presumptive heir to the leadership of Maguindanao and Buayan; Raja Sirungan of Buayan who had charge of war matters; and Datu Umpi. Although these chiefs were often rivals, they were always united against the Spaniards.

Sirungan was regarded by the Spaniards as having the most power. The following account by Chirino portrays him as an extraordinarily brave man. Two galliots of Spaniards escorted the bride from Tampacan for her wedding up river (supra):

when the escort was coming back downstream, Sirungan came out unarmed to the riverbink in.full attire and with measured step, a fan in



hand, watching the galliots and soldiers go by, with an air of dignity and hauteur. Upon recognizing him our soldiers, from the bravado of youth and hatred for the enemy, set their fuses and fired some arquebuses (the bullets aimed at his feet, out of chivalry); but although the bullets hit nearby, his composure was undisturbed, he treated the matter with unconcern, as if it was nothing but a joke.

Sirungan was brother to Ubal, who killed the Spanish conquistador in 1596. Sirungan was also known to be wily; he was not above assuring the Jesuits that he intended to be baptized.

In 1616 the Maguindanaos organized a fleet of sixty caracoas, outriggered vessels with thirty to forty rowers on each side. In October they struck at Pantao in Camarines, site of the royal shipyard, guarded by troops and artillery. They took the fort, burned the yards, the galleon and two tenders, captured two Franciscan friars, and took the cannon. According to the Spanish account, these cannon “are now in Jolo.” From this attack the raiders took home some 400 captives. By 1621 there were no less than 10,000 Christians held captive in Maguindanao.

In 1618 the Camucones, a small partly Muslim group inhabiting the islands between Palawan and Borneo, harassed the Visayas. The Camucones were feared, for although they did not inflict much damage this time, they never took captives, but always killed everyone they caught. In 1625 the Camucones struck again, almost capturing the archbishop of Manila who was then visiting the Visayas. The foray was not wasted, for they were able to seize all his pontifical robes. They descended on Marinduque, slew a Jesuit missionary, and used his skull as a drinking cup. Thence they proceeded to Catbalogan in Samar, and despoiled the church of its silver and ornaments. The inhabitants here were down with smallpox. The friar account says that, true to their reputation, the Camucones “relieved them of their suffering by cutting off their heads.” In 1666 the Spaniards sent an expedition against the Camucones, who were subjects of Borneo. But they were boat people, “today here and tomorrow there;” and the expedition was in vain. The Spanish fleet awaited the Camucones' next move, and the latter sallied forth again; the Spaniards pursued them, but lost half their ships in a storm.12



After a period of inactivity the Joloanos under Raja Bongsu set out in 1627 with 2,000 fighting men. His target was the Camarines shipyards, which had been raided by the Maguindanaos in 1618. It was in full operation again, commissioned to build two galleons, two or three galleys, and another two or three brigantines. The shipyards were manned by some Spaniards with native and Chinese workers; there was a large store of iron for nails, much rice, artillery, and other supplies. The Joloanos surprised the defenders, captured two ships, killed a few Spaniards, but kept a Spanish woman and sixty Filipino captives.

The rest of the Spaniards took flight. The raiders spent a few days feasting in the camp, loaded the captured artillery in their boats, plus all the iron they wanted. They dumped 1,000 fanegas of rice into the sea. The Sultan left a letter for the governorgeneral; the Spanish account says of this letter: “and one of the seigniors of Europe could not apparently write more prudently or in more just manner.”

The Sultan's letter informed the Spaniards that the raid was in retaliation for the improper and insulting treatment received by an embassy he had sent to Manila, including the seizure of three large and beautiful pearls belonging to the Sultan. From Camarines the Joloanos attacked Bantayan Island, took captives, and then Ormoc, where they pillaged the church and this time took more than three hundred captives. A Spanish fleet from Cebu sped in pursuit but was easily outdistanced, and it lost the raiders by nightfall. Raja Bongsu and his men returned to Jolo in triumph.

Notice of the Joloano attack was brought from Cebu to Manila by a Jesuit, with the commission to obtain authority for a retaliatory expedition as well as additional soldiers and provisions to supplement the Visayas resources. The order from Manila obtained, the resources of Arevalo and Cebu were mobilized for the reprisal. Two squadrons composed of 200 Spaniards and more than 1,600 Christian Filipinos embarked on thirty to forty caracoas; the expedition adopted St. Francis Xavier as its patron. They reached Jolo on 22 April. Now luck was with the Spaniards. The Sultan and his fighting men withdrew to the fort or cotta on the hill that overlooked the town, and twice



in previous years attacking Spanish forces were defeated in the fight for this stronghold. But the business of Jolo, for it was the commercial center of the region, was in the town on the plain by the river, with wares of gold, cloths, and other trade goods. The town had an alcaiceria, a Chinese silk market. The Spaniards put the town to the torch, took some artillery, recovered a Spanish flag that the Joloanos had captured in Camarines, as well as 150 muskets and arquebuses. They burned the Joloano fleet.

Pursuant to the orders from Manila, the Spaniards looked for the tombs of the sultans of Sulu. They found “three wonderful and splendid ones,” and burned them. The conflict was not without ceremony. The instructions from Manila had ordered the expedition not to attack the Sultan's fort on the hill, since the Spanish force would not be strong enough. This explains why the Joloano defense up to this point appeared to have been token, for they apparently were waiting for a battle for the cotta, which they expected to win. In any case, the governorgeneral had a letter in reply to the earlier one of the Sultan, to be delivered by the Spanish commander after the town had been destroyed. The Spanish account states that the Sultan received the letter and replied, “as the senate of Venecia might have done, with more courtesies and reasons of state.” The Sultari's letter was written by the Spanish woman whom he had captured, of whom the Spanish account says he had become very fond, refusing to deliver her in exchange for a ransom of money. However, the account also says that the Sultan offered to return her in exchange for the artillery pieces the Spaniards had taken, plus a slave woman that the latter held. The Spaniards preferred to keep the artillery, although they returned the slave. Their mission accomplished, they withdrew and proceeded to Basilan, whose people were under Jolo influence, and ravaged the place.

The instructions to the 1628 expedition not to attack the Sultan's cotta were due to the Spanish governorgeneral's plans to mount an attacking fleet that was equal to the task: “in order to destroy that enemy and conquer a stronghold which nature has made in their island – so lofty and so difficult of approach, that there is no better stone castle; for the approach to it is by one path, and it has some artillery which defends it. The people are courageous



and warlike.” This conquest the governorgeneral decided to accomplish in 1630. The fleet that was mobilized was unusually large, for: “never has one like it been made for the Yndias in these islands.” It consisted of about fifty caracoas, twelve freight champans, one galley, and three brigantines. There were 400 Spanish soldiers, and the entire fighting force numbered almost 3,000. The expedition assembled in Dapitan and sailed for Jolo on the 17th March.

The expedition was a failure. The force landed in Jolo at dawn and began the ascent to the cotta. The Joloanos defended stoutly, the Spanish commander was wounded and fell tumbling downhill, some Spaniards were killed, and others were wounded. They withdrew in disorder, and to speak plainly, in the words of the Spanish account, “such terror entered into them that they did not dare to attack again. The Spaniards returned to their ships, cruised around the island and, as in other Spanish offensives in Muslim territory, they attacked and burned the small settlements on the island before leaving. They were caught in a violent storm, and “the Joloan enemy were left triumphant, and so insolent that we fear that they will make an end of the islands of the Pintados which are the nearest ones to them, and which they infest and pillage with great facility:13

In 1634 the Maguindanaos swept through Ormoc, Soyor, Baybay, Binnagan, Cabalian, and Canamucan; they met some resistance in Bohol and Dapitan on their way home. The Camucones also raided Panay, attacking the villages of Batan, Domayan, Mahanlur, Aklan, and Bahay.

The governorgeneral's report to the Spanish king in 1635 was a litany of calamities:

the losses which these islands have suffered, during the past thirty years and more, from Cachil Corralat, king of the great island of Mindanao, from the kings of Jolo and Burney, and from the Camucones. They have plundered the islands, and taken captive the poor Christian Indians, selling them as their slaves, seizing the religious and the ministers of the holy gospel, burning the villages, and devastating everything. In the year when I arrived here, they did not content themselves with taking captive more than twentyfive or thirty thousand



vassals of your Majesty.

But the Spaniards' fortunes were due for a change. The night of 25 May 1637 was a gala night in Manila. Soldiers rode on horseback through the city streets brandishing torches. Their mounts were splendidly caparisoned. The walls of the city were awash with lights. A triumphal procession took place in the afternoon. A company of Spanish troops followed their captain at the head of the parade; his shieldbearer marched amid several pages carrying weapons captured in the great victory over the Maguindanaos. Another company of soldiers followed in two orderly files; in between walked Filipinos and some Sangleys who had been rescued from their Maguindanao captors. Many of the Filipinos carried their rosaries. Behind followed the Maguindanao captives, the men in chains and shackles. Then followed more soldiers, including a company of Pampangos who had taken part in the campaign. Wagons were full of muskets and arquebuses won from the enemy. Artillery pieces, also captured, were pulled by ropes, and the largest piece was drawn by four horses. Six boys carried six flags, all taken from Kudarat's stronghold.

The governorgeneral, who had commanded the expedition, joined the parade after a salvo from the cannon of the Bagumbayan gate in the walls. At the triumphal arch a poem extolling him was read. The entire procession halted in front of the cathedral. Here the governorgeneral dismounted, entered the church, prostrated himself on the floor, and gave thanks to God. Then he remounted, thanked the troops, and received their salutes. From here he proceeded to the palacio del gobernador.

That was only the beginning of the Spanish celebrations, which lasted for weeks. On the seventeenth June the cathedral was filled to overflowing for a thanksgiving mass. On the same day, in the naval town of Cavite, the children in the two schools were dismissed early in the afternoon. They were actors in a play for the townspeople. The group from one school acted out the role of Muslims defending their fort; the boys from the other took the more heroic role of the attacking Christians. This play is called moromoro; it was popular in the Philippines as part of the entertainment fare during town



fiestas (the Christians always won) until the 1940s. The game was restaged the next day with flags and wooden and bamboo swords. The boy who played the role of Sultan Kudarat is reported to have done so with admirable valor, but the Christians were no less enthusiastic, and the boy was manhandled; his head was cut and required five stitches to dress afterward.

The events leading to the jubilation of the Spaniards began in April 1636. Tagal, a leading Maguindanao chief, had raided the islands from Cuyo to the Calamianes to Mindoro, capturing friars; profaning church vestments, vessels, and images; and seizing prize and captives. By past midDecember, the raiding fleet was homebound southsouthwesterly off the coast of Zamboanga, almost clear, after a profitable seven to eight months at sea. Tagal had only to continue a few more leagues due south, round the island of Basilan to avoid the Spanish fort of Zamboanga, and speed safely home. Instead the raiders entered the strait between the southern tip of Zamboanga and Basilan, under cover of night, and audaciously slipped by the fort at La Caldera. The passage was successful.

Now there was nothing between the raiders and a celebrative homecoming, except a Maguindanao custom. The Punta de Flechas is the headland that divides the two bays of Illana and Dumanquilas; the point is a hill of soft rock. "Flechas" means arrows, and the point was so called by the Spaniards because the seaward side of the hill bristled with the arrows and spears that victorious Maguindanao raiders must shoot and hurl before proceeding home.

A slightly different version of the origin of this custom is as follows:

Between La Caldera and the river in the island of Mindanao, a great point of land runs into the sea, which makes the coast dangerous and very high. The sea beats violently against that cape, which is very difficult to double. The Indians in passing offered it their arrows as a sacrifice, praying it to allow them to pass. They shot them with so great force that they made them enter, the rock, and hence it is called the Punta de Flechas. One day the Spaniards burned a number of those arrows to show their hatred of so vain a superstition; and in less than one year more than four thousand were found there.



Tagal halted his force for his men to observe the custom. They let loose showers of arrows and spears which bit into the soft rock, quivered, then stuck still. While thus engaged, the raiders were overtaken by a fleet from Zamboanga. In. the ensuing fight the Maguindanaos were at a disadvantage: their boats were heavy with booty and captives. They could not escape. Tagal was slain, along with about 300 of his men, and the captives were rescued.

In Manila, the Spaniards decided to bring the war to the Maguindanaos. An expedition of 500 soldiers, of whom 150 were Pampangos, was mobilized; the governorgeneral took command. The force reached Zamboanga on 22 February; all men confessed and took communion. They went to Punts de Flechas, where they pulled out all the arrows and spears, burned them, and purified the area by setting up several crosses. They renamed the place Punts de San Sebastian. They sighted Maguindanao in March. Their first target was Lamitan (approximately modern Magalang), Kudarat's chief village. The vanguard of the Spanish force, with two field guns hauled ashore, won a great victory on the 13th. The mosque was taken and purified; books of the Koran, in Arabic, were burned; the Spaniards then heard mass. Sultan Kudarat and his warriors took up defensive positions on a hill called Ylihan, which overlooked the village. The rest of the Spanish force arrived on 16 March, and the contest was resumed in earnest. The first battle was hard fought but the defenders held fast, and the Spaniards withdrew. The second assault was successful. Kudarat was wounded and escaped. Fifty women of the leading Maguindanao families, and many more men, were taken captive. They were later sold in Manila, the proceeds going into the royal treasury.

After returning to Zamboanga, the Spaniards sent detachments to lay waste the north coast of Mindanao until Caraga. “Eighty Spaniards, and twenty Pampangos, with a thousand fighting Indians;” harried the land, “burning the villages and grain fields, and destroying the trees, and cutting off more than seventy heads.” On 20 August the governorgeneral wrote to the Spanish king that the next year he planned to conquer the Maranao lake area, “and even to bring down from his lofty stronghold the king of Jolo, and reduce him to obedience to your Majesty.” He also had plans for an expedition against Borneo.14



The 1637 expedition against the Maguindanaos marked the start of allout war by the Spaniards, for “the sword was drawn, and the scabbard thrown away.” The governorgeneral was true to his word, and prosecuted his plan against Jolo in 1638. The Spanish fleet carried a large force of 500 Spanish soldiers and 1,000 native warriors. There were eighty vessels in the fleet, with oarsmen drafted by repartimiento. The attack force anchored on the roadstead off Jolo on 4 January. Against them the forces of Sultan Raja Bongsu numbered some 4,000 men, including allies from Macassar and Borneo. As usual the latter retired to the cotta on the hill, with the queen and some women and children. The fort was protected by ramparts with earthwork parapets for the defenders' guns. The attackers were personally led by the governorgeneral, fresh from his victory in Maguindanao.

It was to be a long and difficult contest. The Spaniards rushed the cotta in the first engagement. They were repulsed. The Spanish account does not report a second offensive until weeks later. Meantime, the Spaniards dug in and began constructing a moat and stockade around the cotta. The second assault was supported by mines exploded by the Spaniards in order to breach the walls of the fort. But they had to withdraw some distance to the rear in order to escape the blasts; when they advanced again the defenders would be in position, and they would fall back anew, with casualties on both sides.

The weeks passed. Holy Week passed. The Spaniards mounted a third assault; the fighting was close but the attackers had to withdraw, carrying back their wounded. The Spaniards had now lost four of their best captains. At this point the governorgeneral called off all further assaults on the cotta; time was on their side. But the defenders were not passive. A force of about fifty Spaniards and some 200 warriors from Caraga tried to establish a flanking outpost; at night the Muslims slipped out and attacked the detachment, killed twentysix of the enemy and took twenty guns with fuses, powder, and balls. A fifth Spanish captain was killed in this sortie.

By now the besiegers had considerably strengthened their position. A stockade and a ditch completely encircled the cotta, with three to six men posted at intervals all around, so close they almost touched each other. There



was also a tall bulwark, higher than the cotta walls, so that the Spaniards could aim their guns down into the interior of the fort. The Muslims continued to defy the enemy; they would shout from the cotta walls, calling the Spaniards “chickens” and “pigs.”

In the end it was neither valor and courage nor resolution and strategy that settled the issue. In the first week of April, three months after the war began, the defenders were doomed. News trickled out to the Spaniards that disease had penetrated the walls of the fort. The warriors with their women and children were weak from hunger, worse, they had been struck by smallpox and “discharges of blood” possibly cholera or dysentery. Some of the Sultan's allies inside the gate began to offer feelers for surrender, probably with his permission. Tuambaloca, his queen, wrote to the governorgeneral with an offer of surrender and a plea for pardon. The latter demanded an offer from Raja Bongsu himself, and the latter sued for peace after which, he proposed, a discussion of terms would follow.

The governorgeneral astutely rejected this proposal and demanded immediate delivery of weapons and other items earlier taken by the Muslims, before talk of any surrender. The Sultan sent artillery pieces and muskets together with a few Christian captives. He then came out of the cotta, was received properly, formally acceded to the Spanish terms, and returned to the fort to get his datus' consensus. After some delay he sent the queen to the governorgeneral. She was treated graciously. Spanish flags were flown over the cotta. (A stone fort manned by 400 soldiers, half Spaniard, half Pampango, was later built in Jolo.) The Sultan, the queen, and the weary warriors surrendered. However, between 17 and 19 April, they escaped in a heavy downpour, leaving all their possessions behind.15

So far our story has dealt mostly with the Maguindanaos and Joloanos. The other large community of Muslim Filipinos in modern times, the Maranaos, figured in the wars during this era because the governorgeneral had decided to conquer them. They were not yet converted to Islam at this time, although they were tributary vassals of Kudarat, who had for some time now been the recognized Sultan of neighboring Maguindanao. A Spanish



perspective of the Lake Lanao area at this time is as follows:

Inland from the coast which faces Bohol on the north of Mindanao, and in the latter island, is located the lake of Malanao. Its shape is triangular; one of its angles extends about four leguas eastward, another southward for three, and the third and longest of all, westward. Its shores contain many small villages, where live about six thousand inhabitants, although united to them is the district of Butig, with about two thousand warriors. Through this route they communicate with the Mindanaos, a circumstance which renders them formidable. The land is sterile, and yields no other products than rice and a few edible roots. Their clothing is wretched, for cotton is scarce. All their textiles are of larmte, a sort of wild hemp – not that it is that plant, but it resembles it because of the fibers, which they obtain from a wild banana [i.e., abaca], to which they impart a blue color. This constitutes their gala attire.

Heavy storms of wind and water are experienced on this lake, and are called "mangas" by sailors.... This lake furnished such convenience to the Mindanaos for their incursions, as the ports nearest to our islands were easily reached by it. For since the deep bay of Panguil penetrates far inland, and is quite near their lands, they thus save many leguas of navigation – about one hundred – and a rough coast.

This note concludes that the raids of the Maranaos made a joke of the Spanish fort in Zamboanga, which had been established as a brake to the Muslims of Maguindanao and Jolo.

The Augustinian Recollects had been in charge of missionary work in the area since the 1620s. They had made some progress and established a mission in Bayug (the area around modern Iligan). From here they planned to penetrate further into the Lake Lanao region, “a stronghold of heathenism.” Their energetic friars set up missionary bases in the pueblos of Cagayan (now Cagayan de Oro) and Linao (near Butuan). These activities brought them into Sultan Kudarat's sphere of influence, making conflict inevitable. The friar in Cagayan built it into a fortified village. It was attacked by Kudarat's vassals, but the latter were repulsed. At this point JesuitRecollect rivalry over missionary jurisdiction in the Lake Lanao region, the details of which do not belong to this story, complicated the Spanish campaign.



In 1639 a Spanish expedition encamped in Baloi, near the big lake. The Spaniards met with the Maranao datus and demanded their submission; no agreement was reached. The datus then discussed the situation by themselves. They would not submit, although a tactical submission, good only until the Spaniards left, was proposed by some. Another group held that 'if the Spaniards were to gain control of the lake, they would establish and build presidios there, and would have war craft on it, with which they would entirely rule the natives, at their own pleasure.” This group maintained that it was more important to resist than to allow their entrance. The war faction prevailed, and hostilities began. The datus lost in the initial encounters. Some fifty villages that were formerly subject to Kudarat were reduced. They were made tributary to Spain, and were reported to have agreed not to accept Muslim preachers or teachers; instead, they were to receive the friars and to build churches. Moreover, their children and some relatives were to be taken as hostages to Manila.

The Spaniards decided to build a fort with the end in view of establishing a presidio to deny the area to Kudarat. Now the differences between the Recollects and the Jesuits over “spheres of interest” delayed further Spanish moves, but in October Manila dispatched a force of fifty Spaniards and 500 Boholanos to garrison the fort. The arrival of this force was not propitious. The Maranaos had burned all the makeshift churches and uprooted the Christian crosses. The return of the hostages with the Spanish detachment somewhat assuaged them, but their hostility was clear because they stopped their contributions to the building of the fort, and it stood half finished.

The reason for this change of mind was the personal intervention of Sultan Kudarat. After his defeat the previous year he had retired to Malabang, on the coast but easily accessible by river from Butig, to recuperate. Here he summoned the Maranao datus. There are a Jesuit and a Recollect account of Kudarat's words to the datus. Since these two religious orders were rivals, but their accounts agree in virtually every detail, these reports may be deemed reliable. Kudarat rebuked the datus for having submitted to the Spaniards. He explained what had happened to the Tagalogs and the Visayans as a consequence of submission to the Spaniards:



any Spaniard could trample them underfoot. Here, the accounts clearly show Kudarat's familiarity with the system of repartimientos of forced labor imposed by the Spaniards upon those people whom they had converted as their fellow Christians.

Kudarat's “lecture” is remarkable. He is the first native leader cited in the Spanish sources as having expressly bidden his followers to reflect on concepts that modern intellectuals discuss as political obligation and political liberty. He bade the datus to compare their lot with that of the subjugated people of the Tagalog and Visayas regions, and to reckon, one against the other, the cost of resistance and the value of liberty. His is the first recorded instance of Filipino moral thinking on political issues.

In the Jesuit account, Kudarat is speaking.

What have you done? Do you know to what submission will reduce you? A toilsome slavery to the Spaniards! Turn your eyes to the nations that have submitted, look at the misery to which these once proud nations have been reduced. Look at the Tagalogs, the Visayans. Are you better than they? Or do you think that the Spaniards believe that you are better men? Do you not see how any Spaniard tramples them underfoot? You do not see how every day they are made to work at the oars, or how they are exploited as workers in the Spaniards' building works, with all the attendant rigor and toil. Will you suffer just anybody with some Spanish blood to thrash you, or that he seize the fruit of your sweat and labor?

Then submit to the Spaniards: tomorrow you will be at the oars. At least I would be a pilot; this is a favor that they extend to chiefs. (But] do not allow their pleasing words to fool you; every word they speak to you is a deception until, step by step, they have you completely in their power. Consider that they promised things to the chiefs of the other nations, and did not honor their least undertaking until they became lords of them all. Look at those chiefs now; see how the Spaniards rule them as subjects.

Kudarat, who was regarded as an oracle by the dates, convinced them; he promised to help them fight and assured them likewise of help from Datu Matundin, leader of Butig. They decided to take his advice and resist, and here the Jesuit report has Kudarat explaining to the datus that the most that



they would lose by resistance would be “their harvests of one year, which is not much, when at that price they would win their freedom, and ensure the wellbeing of their posterity.”

The Recollect account is in narrative form:

He told them that they did not know to what that surrender bound them, and that it was nothing else than a toilsome slavery under the domination of the Spaniards. He bid them look at the nations subjected to us, and these would be seen to be reduced to extreme misery. Let them contemplate the Tagalogs and the Visayans whom any Spaniard could trample underfoot; and if they were not of better stuff than these, they must not expect better treatment. They would be obliged to row, to toil at the shipbuilding, and on other public works, and would only experience severe treatment in doing these.

With these commonplace arguments, and without reflecting on the tyrannical dominion of Corralat, the latter reduced those unhappy creatures to the last stage of desperation. He offered to give them his aid, and to employ the strength of his kingdom in their defense [saying that] even if the Spaniards were successful, it meant only the loss, of harvests for one year; but that they would obtain their liberty at that small cost.

The lake area leaders united their forces and attacked the Spanish fort. The contest quickly developed into a siege. Although the defenders fought bravely, time was against them, for provisions ran low. A force sent from Butuan to lift the siege was ambushed by warriors of Butig and 4,000 Muslims sent by Kudarat. By the twentyninth day of the siege the Spaniards were desperate. The Maranaos were preparing to burn down the fort; the defenders had no food; they now. had. only the wine and the hosts for the mass. They resolved to take their last communion and prepared for death. Fortunately for them, another relief force arrived in time, and the siege was raised. The Spaniards retired, but first they burned and destroyed the settlements and fields around the lake. Then they left for the coast, and built a fort on the bar of the Iligan River, the outlet of Lake Lanao to the sea.

The victory of the Maranaos under Kudarat's inspiration is historic. The region would not be disturbed by the Spaniards again until late in the



nineteenth century. It would remain under Kudarat's influence for a long time more. Above all, due to Kudarat's wisdom and leadership, the beautiful Lake Lanao country was saved for Islam, and the Maranaos became the third important group of Muslim Filipinos.16

By the 1640s the edge in the costly war seemed to be with the Muslim side. This became even clearer in the year 1662, when the regime would be forced to dismantle its forts and presidios in the south. An informal truce period began in the early 1670s following the death of Sultan Kudarat. Meantime the Joloanos, who were traditionally allied with the Borneans, resumed their raids in 1640. The friar accounts of the Muslim raids of 16401643 are bloodcurdling, highlighted by superstitious explanations of natural phenomena. In 1640, according to one account, the era of raids was presaged by heavenly signs, followed by the eruption of a volcano near Cape San Agustin (extreme southern point of the Davao Peninsula); ashes were cast and thrown as far as Cebu. Another volcanic eruption took place on an islet near Jolo. There was a furious typhoon in Luzon. Then an earthquake swallowed three mountains; so strong was the noise that it could be heard as far as Maluco, Cambodia, and China!

In 1645 the Joloanos celebrated the replacement of the governorgeneral who had pressed them so hard. They campaigned three fleets and raided everywhere virtually without opposition.

Kudarat was quiescent. He signed a treaty of peace with Manila in 1645, and had even persuaded Butria Bongsu, Sultan of Jolo, to enter into a peace with the Spaniards a year later. But the Raja Mura of Jolo, Sarikula, and his allies the Guimbanons (people of the interior of Sulu Island), fielded their own raiding fleets. During this era, also, the Dutch were increasing their pressure on the Spaniards, abetting the Muslim Filipinos and encouraging the Christians to revolt. The Dutch threat, however, finally ended with the peace in Europe, signed in Munster in 1649.

The period 16491655 was a calamitous period of Muslim raids. “Without fear of our arms,” according to a friar account, “they overran these seas at



will, trusting their security to their swiftness; for their boats were built on purpose for piracy, and ours compared to theirs of lead.”

Kudarat regarded his treaties of peace as devices to secure himself against attack, while biding for time and opportunity. In 1655 it was his turn to proclaim allout war, inviting the Joloanos, Borneans, and Tidorans to join in. The war lasted until 1668. “There was not a single instant of rest; so shameless that ruin was seen almost at the very gates of Manila.”

The intensification of the Muslim raids, the revolts and their aftermath in Luzon and the Visayas, found the regime in desperate straits in 1662. This year the Chinese adventurer Koxinga (also Kuesing) overran and took Formosa and sent a Dominican friar as his envoy to Manila, demanding tribute from the Spaniards. The regime was bankrupt. In order to concentrate its resources against this new threat, the regime decided to abandon the forts of Zamboanga, Calamianes, Iligan, and Sabanilla (this last was the outpost against the Maranaos, located in Tuboc or Tubod south of the lake). The Zamboanga fort was accordingly turned over to the friendly Lutaos. This meant that the strategic base would not be used against the Muslims. When Alonso Macombon, the Lutao chief, solemnly took possession of the Spanish installations and was asked to swear fidelity to Spain and to defend the fort against the enemies of the Spanish king, he did so, but not with respect to Sultan Kudarat.17

The abandonment of the forts did away with the outposts that sometimes deterred the Muslims. Their worth as deterrents against the Muslims was questionable, for in truth these forts “defend only a small space, and the sea has many roads.” Linao and Libot, two chiefs of Sulu, and Sacahati, a chief of TawiTawi, took to the Pintados, Masbate, and Batangas, and outsailed every pursuing Spanish force. Many of the Lutaos left Zamboanga for Cebu or Dapitan and other parts of Mindanao, and reverted to Islam. A Spanish history of the Muslim wars says of this era that for a half century, no year passed without the Christian villages of Mindanao and the Visayas suffering enormous material losses and people being taken into slavery:



Wherever one looked could be seen pueblos ruined, churches sacked, and unfortunate natives killed, their defensive efforts unavailing against the increasing savagery of the ferocious Muslims, in spite of the continuous encounters between their fleet craft and the Armada of the Pintados, the latter composed of some one hundred boats built for the specific purpose of pursuing the raiders.

The most lasting significance of the temporary weakness of the colonial regime and of the loss of the southern forts was that Sulu and Maguindanao were afforded precious time to consolidate: to strengthen the institutions of the sultanate under conditions of reduced external pressures, and sometimes to extend their influence and jurisdiction. Maguindanao became the most extensive indigenous political dominion in the history of the Filipinos. From the Pulangui region which was the heart of the sultanate, the sway of Maguindanao reached all along the coast to Zamboanga in the north, and downward to the bay of Sarangani and around to the Davao Gulf in the south. Inland, the Maguindanao hegemony was secure; from west and northeast of the bay of Panguil along the north coast of Mindanao until the old province of Caraga, only the presidio settlements remained under Spanish authority.

In 1671 a historic event took place: the death of Sultan Kudarat. He was over ninety years old. He was the son of Datu Buisan, leader of the 1603 raid on Leyte, his mother was named Imbog. He ruled as sultan for a half century. A friar account roundly damns him with praise; Kudarat was: “the thunderbolt of Lucifer, the scourge of Catholicism, and the Attila of the evangelical ministers.” His understanding of the meaning of Spanish rule over its subjects was both rare and profound. He recognized that people must sacrifice and pay the price of freedom, but he always deemed that price to be cheap, and thus he taught his people. As a warrior he fought the enemy on equal terms. His death was followed by a truce which lasted many years, for he had charged his successors to keep the peace. The leaders in Sulu respected Kudarat's counsel on this point because, in the appreciation of a Spanish friar, “all the Moro tribes of these regions reverenced Corralat as if he was Mahoma himself. For he was a Moro of great courage, intelligence, and sagacity, besides being exceedingly zealous for his accursed sect....”



Sultan Kudarat deserves recognition, until nowwithheld, as one of the Filipino nation's earliest authentic heroes.18

The long period of peace also helped Sulu, in an unexpected way. An opportunity for intervention in Brunei was exploited by the Sultan to obtain not only some artillery pieces from his relative the Sultan of Brunei, but also the bonus of the cession of what is now the modern Sabah. Majul places this “in the middle of the second half of the seventeenth century.”19

This was the basis of the Philippine Government claim, during the 1960s, of sovereignty over North Borneo. But the claim was made at precisely the time when an independent state of Malaysia was being formed. North Borneo was crucial to the new Malaysia; without it the latter would have an overriding Chinese majority in its population, because Singapore was to be part of Malaysia. The United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan had interests in the new state based on global strategic considerations. The claim would be pursued, if at all, in diplomatic isolation. The future of the Philippine claim, into the 1980s, was not bright.

The archipelago during the eighteenth century was divided into three established dominions: the sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu, and the Spanish kingdom of Filipinas.

§



Notes

The first quotation is from "Insurrections by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," BR, XXXVIII, 142. The second quotation is Francisco Combes, Historic de Mindanao y Jolo, Retana ed. (1897), 164165 – this work was first published in 1667; there is a similar version in Luis de Jesus, BR, XXXV, 108.

1 Re note on the Visayas revolts: "Insurrections by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," ibid., XXXVIII, 100. Re 1589: "Instructions to Comez Perez Dasmarinas," ibid., VII, 166. Re Pardo de Tavera on earlier revolts: ibid., L, 164, Note 95.

2 Re chiefs' complaints: "Letter from Domingo de Salazar to Felipe II," ibid., V, 188191. Re Manila in late 1580s: Salazar and others, ibid., VII, 3233.

The principal account of the plot is in "Conspiracy Against the Spaniards," ibid., 95111.

3 Re governorgeneral's 1589 report: "Letter from Santiago de Vera to Felipe II;" tbid., 8385.

4 Re 1589 Cagayan revolts: "Ayala to Felipe II;" ibid., 123, 135; and Dasmarinas, ibid., VIII, 141. See also, for 15971598, Morga (1961), 6263. Re 16071608: Aduarte, BR, XXXI, 267271. Re 16211622 ibid., XXXII, 112122. Re 1625: "Silva to Felipe IV," ibid., XXII, 69, 95. Re 16251626: Aduarte, ibid., XXXII, 147152. Re 16271628: "Relation of 16271628," tbid., XII, 211. Re 1630: Medina, ibid., XXIII, 233234. Re 1639: 'The Dominican Missions, 16351639," tbid., XXXV, 4851.

5 Re Dutch: "Recollect Missions, 16461660," ibid., XXXVI, 126127; "Affairs in Filipinas, 16441647," {bid,, XXXV, 227249, 252275; "The AugusHnians in the Philippines, 16411670," ibid., XXXVII, 159, 167169; "Recollect Missions in the Philippines, 16611712," ibid., XLI, 108.

Re summary of trade: "Crauy Monfaleon's Informatory Memorial of 1637," ibid., XXVII, 187197.

Re San Diego: 'The Augustiniana in the Philippines, 16411670," ibid., XXXVII, 211212.

6 Re Palapag and Samar revolt: "Jesuit Missions in 1656," ibid., XXVIII, 9293; "Insurrections by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," ibid., XXXVIII, 114128.

7 Re Pampanga and revolt: ibid., 140161; Ferrando and Fonseca, III, 6769. Re related matters: "San Agustin's Letter on the Filipinos," BR, XL, 252; Medina, ibid., XXIII, 244, 290.

8 Re Pangasinan and revolt: "Description of the Philippinas Islands," ibid., XVIII, 9799; "Insurrections by the Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century;' ibid., XXXVIII, 161181; Ferrando and Fonseca, III, 7073.

Re Ilocos revolt: "Relation of the Philipinas Islands;' ibid., BR, VII, 37; Dasmarinas, ibid., VIII, 105109; "Description of the Philippinas Islands;" ibid., XVIII, 99100; Medina, ibid., XXIII, 277279; "Relation of the Philipinas Islands;' ibid., XXXIV, 382383.



9 The quotation is from: "Insurrections by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," ibid., XXXVIII, 212.

10 The quotation on loyalty to Islam is from: "Affairs in the Philipinas Islands," ibid., V, 225.

11 Re Maguindanao and villages: "Military Affairs in the Islands," ibid., X, 225226; "Expeditions to Borneo, jolo, and Mindanao," ibid., IV, 282283.

Re Morga's definition of Filipinas: Morga (1961), 1; and "Foundation of the Audiencia at Manila," in BR, V, 275.

Re expedition to Borneo and other early expeditions: "Expeditions to Borneo, jolo, and Mindanao;' ibid., IV, 148343.

12 Re 1595 expedition to Maguindanao and aftermath: Bartolome Argensola, "Conquest of the Malucas Islands;' ibid., XVI, 270274 the report on the matchmaking and wedding in this source differs from that in Majul, 114; "Glorious Victories Against the Moros of Magindanao," BR, XXD(, 9093 this account exaggerates; and Morga (1961), 5562, 8890, 140145, 179181.

Re 1599 and 1600 raids: "Complaint of the Cabildo of Manila Against Morga;' BR, XI, 238239.

Re Buisan and Maguindanao raids: H. de la Costa, "A Spanish Jesuit Among the Magindanaos;' Proceedings of the First International Conference of Historians of Asia (1%2), 7399.

Re Sirungan: Chirino, Chap. 36.

Re 1616 raid: "Grau y Monfalcon's Informatory Memorial," BR, XXVII, 195.

Re Camucones raid of 1618: "Events in the Filipinas Islands," ibid., XVIII, 79. Re captives: "Memorial and Relation of the Filipinas," ibid., XIX, 264. Re Camucones raid of 1625: "Relation of 1626," ibid., XXII, 132134. A description of the Camucones and their other raids is in "Glorious Victories Against the Moros of Mindanao," ibid., XXIX, 98100.

13 Re Joloano raids and counter expedition: "Relation of 16271628," ibid., XXII, 203211. Re 1630 expedition: "Relation of 16291630," ibid., XXIII; 8788.

14 Re 1634 raids: "Conflicts Between Civil and Ecclesiastical Authorities," 16351636, ibid., XXV, 153155; Joseph Torrubia, Disertacibn histbrico polttica (1736), 23. Re the governorgeneral's report: "Letters from Corcuera to Felipe IV," BR, XXVII, 346347.

Re 1637 festivities: "Corcuera's Triumphant Entry into Manila," ibid., 330340. Re raids and Spanish retaliation: "Defeat of Moro Pirates," ibid., 215222; The Conquest of Mindanao," ibid., 253305; "Events in Filipinas, 16361637," ibid., 316325; "Letters from Corcuera to Felipe IV," ibid., 346359; "Fortunate Successes in Filipinas and Terrenate," 16361637," ibid., XXIX, 118133; and. Torrubia, 3639.

Re Tagal's defeat: A different detail on the Spanish victory over Tagal is in H. de la Costa,



The Jesuits in the Philippines (1961), 384.

Unlike our account, attributed to a Jesuit writing in 1637 from Dapitan (BR, XXVII, 216217), which says that Tagal "actually passed, in the darkness of night, before the fort at Sanboangan, in the strait which is made by the said island with Basilan," De la Costa writes that "Tagal's armada, laden with spoils, had sought to avoid an encounter with the forces of the Zamboanga fort by sailing around Basilan island in the south instead of through the strait." Consequently, this latter account says, the Spaniards sent a force speeding toward Punta de Flechas, arriving there ahead of Tagal, and lay an "ambush" for him. This De la Costa account explains that a friendly Lutao datu had sighted the Tagal fleet, and he "flew to Zamboanga with the news." This explanation needs a closer look. If the Lutao had seen the Tagal force south of or rounding Basilan island, it would have taken him time to "fly" north to alert his friends or masters in Zamboanga. By the time he would have reached Zamboanga, the Tagal group would also have been in the open sea to the north, more or less abreast of the exit from Basilan Strait. Since it would have required time for the Spaniards after receipt of the Lutao's news to muster and ready the pursuit party, this Spanish force and the Tagal fleet would have sighted each other before either reached the Punta de Flechas. There are other alternatives, under any of which the Spaniards could have literally ambushed Tagal. However, our source positively states that the Maguindanao raiders discharged their arrows and spears into the hill, in the course of which they were overtaken by the pursuing Spanish party.

15 Re 1638 expedition against Jolo: "Corcucra's Campaign in Jolo;" ibid., XXVIII, 4163.

16 Re campaign against Maranaos: "The Recollect Missions, 16251640," ibid., XXXV, 92112; this is a continuation of the Luis dc Jesus chronicle, and the Recollect report on Kudarat's "lecture" is on pp. 107108. The Jesuit report is in Combos, 164165.

17 Re period of 16401668: "[Recollect] Missions in the Philippines, 16611712," BR, XLI, 104113.

Re Koxinga: "Events in Manila, 16621663," ibid., XXXVI, 218219.

Re abandonment of the forts: "Moro Pirates and their Raids in the Seventeenth Century;' ibid., XLI, 311316; Torrubia, 4347.

18 Re ensuing raids, and Kudarat's death: "Moro Pirates and their Raids in the Seventeenth Century," ibid., XLI, 315322 Francisco Combes, "The Natives of the Southern Islands," BR, XT, 126129, has background material on the Sulu and Maguindanao sultans. This BR material is an excerpt from the 1897 edition of Combos' Historia de Mindanao y Jnlb. Torrubia, 3638, calls Kudarat "the Barba Roja of these islands."

19 Re cession of Sabah: Majul, 176184.


christian revolts, muslim raids

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