The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 43, 1670-1700: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 43, 1670-1700: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
In general, the datos and their families do not work. At the most they
fish and hunt for sport, and to stifle the pangs of hunger. Their
chief and most honorable receipts are from the tributes which they
collect from their subjects and from the heathens whom they have
subdued. That tribute is called the pagdato. Although that source of
wealth is the chief, it is not the only source. Although the Moros of
this gulf are conquered and subdued, they have not completely forgotten
their former customs of piracy. Slavery and captivity with their awful
accompaniment of murders, thefts, poisons, and violence of every sort,
and further, the human sacrifices which accompany them at times, form
a very productive source of wealth for the ever exhausted chests of
their treasuries. I could write a very thick volume of the deeds of
this particular people which are very well known to me.
All the heathens dominated by the Moros, and even many of the Moros
themselves, on approaching me, through the little confidence that
my person inspires, molest me by the relation of the Moro misdeeds,
telling me of the troubles and injustice which they suffer from the
Moros, and the acts of inhumanity of which they are the victims;
for they hope that I will protect them by causing that the guilty
ones will be given their deserts.
As a proof of what I have said, and of the many things which I could
add, I give below the relation of what happened to me about one
year ago. I was on my way from Cuaba to Mati, and was accompanied
by a young man of about twenty years of age of the Mandaya race. He
together with his mother and two younger sisters had formerly been
captured by the Moro datos of the bay of Mayo. When we reached
Valete, pointing to a gagátpat tree, [89] he said to me: "Father,
they bound my mother by the hands and neck to that branch, and left
her half hanging there while they ate and rested." "And what was
their reason for binding your mother there in so inhuman a manner,"
I asked. "In order that, since she would be tired out," he replied,
"by the forced position in which they kept her, she might not have
the strength to escape on the journey from this place to Súmlug." I
believe that that unfortunate woman is no longer living. The Moros
took her to Daron and no more has been heard of her, in spite of the
repeated efforts which her son has made to find her. The latter having
escaped from that bondage and having become a Christian, has not ceased
to employ all the resources that his filial love has roused in him in
order to see whether he can discover the abiding-place of his dear
mother. He thinks that the Moros of Daron sold her to the Bagabos,
and that the latter sacrificed her according to their custom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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