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
... Now considering Mindanao under its social and political aspect,
its population is divided into Christians, heathens, and Moros, all
of whom proceed in general from the Malay, Indonesian races, [125]
and the indigenous or Negrito race, and from crosses of the same
races among themselves and with other superior races, especially
the Chinese and Spaniards. The Christians are divided into old
and new. The old Christians number about 186,000, and occupy in the
ethnographical map accompanying our letters, the place represented by
color no. 1. Their customs smell of the greater or less familiarity
that they have or have had with the heathens from whose races they
proceed. Without the powerful and efficacious influence of religion
one would note in them a marked tendency to idleness, drunkenness,
gambling, and lust. On the other side they are naturally hospitable,
docile, and generous. They are pious in the performance of their
religion. In their family and married life considerable morality is
observed when there exist no rocks of scandal in the villages. I have
observed in certain parish books which register more than two hundred
baptisms per year, that two or three years pass without the notice of a
single natural child. [126] They are given to the cultivation of rice,
abacá, sugar-cane, coffee, tobacco, bananas, lumbias, cocoa-palms,
and other fruit trees, and to that of tubers such as sweet potatoes,
gabe, and arorú, which are an article of prime necessity for them in
times of famine. They extract mastic and other resins, as for example
piao and guísog, and refine the oil of cocoanuts, biao, and balao,
but do not extract castor or peanut oil as they are ignorant of their
use. [127] Wax and honey are very abundant. From the latter, and from
sugar-cane, nipa, cocoanuts, rice and cabo negro they prepare their
drinks, and their vinegars from the last named and from camagon. [128]
They also get salt from sea-water by means of rapid evaporation. [129]
In general, the men are farmers, but among them there are carpenters,
smiths, metal workers, masons, tailors, and even some who devote
themselves to the making of weapons. The women weave the filaments
of piña, tindog, [130] abacá, cotton, and silk. They embroider and
sew most delicately and tastefully. In certain seasons of the year,
many Indians of the coasts, travel and fish especially for sea-turtles,
whether they have any shell or not. [131]
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