The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 47, 1728-1759: 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 47, 1728-1759: 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
It has been father Fray Domingo Escalera who has already learned
their language, and has gone communicating it from one to the other,
until there are now very few who do not understand this. When said
father explains to them something of which they have not heard,
all look at one another, as if surprised to hear what they are
hearing. I have not had the capacity to do as much as the said
father, but I have managed to explain it also in the Tagálog tongue
to those who understand it. But they do not understand many things,
and I cannot tell them to them. Consequently, I trust, God helping,
that said father will produce great fruit among these Indians, as
he has learned their language. These Indians did not observe any
festivals or Sunday, or Lent, or vigil, or Friday. Consequently,
although there are many Christians baptized from childhood, it was
the same as if they were heathen, and there was no difference between
heathens and Christians. Having explained to them on one occasion the
seriousness of the sin of breaking feast days, one of them went to
the mountain and one Sunday while cutting some bamboos he hurt his
foot. The rumor spread among the Indians that God had punished that
Indian because he worked on Sunday, and from that time they have
observed feast days and Sundays. On another occasion, namely, Ash
Wednesday, the said father told them that they ought to abstain from
eating meat throughout Lent, and that God would punish whoever broke
said precept. Next day an Indian went hunting, and having killed a
carabao calf, while he was cutting it up and carrying it to his house
or to the village, the mother of the calf came out of the thicket
and killed the Indian. Thereupon, the father took occasion to again
charge them to abstain from meat during Lent, Friday, and vigil. All
through Lent there was scarcely one Christian or heathen who dared to
eat meat. For about eight months we lived in a small house which had
scarcely room for the two beds of two religious. We had three Indians
of Abucay who built us another larger house where we could live with
some freedom. There was no Indian who would be so kind as to aid them
in their customs in anything, until they saw that the presidio of
the Spaniards which is located twelve leguas from the village where
we united these Indians, had already about forty men, and as soon
as they heard the arquebuses in Buquil, which was ten leguas from
the said village, they moved quickly, and no longer answered a dry
"no quiero" [i.e., "I will not"], for whatever we commanded them, as
they had before answered us all the time. I have already said above
that the devil had discredited the rosary of the most holy Virgin,
our Lady, among these Indians, and although some had rosaries which
some faithful ones or religious had given them, in order to incline
them to that holy devotion, yet no one of them could recite it, for
there was no one who knew anything of the prayer. They only kept it
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