The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 48, 1751-1765: 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 48, 1751-1765: 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
he converted eighty families in the Jumangi tribe, and gathered
them into a village, with their own church; and he converted great
numbers from the Italon, Abaca, Ibilao, Irapi, and Ilongot tribes,
and even some of the blacks (Negritos). Mozo cites their labors in
order to show that the missionary spirit was then even more active
and aspiring than in the early days of the conquest; and confirms
it by describing the mode of life of these mountain tribes, and the
consequent difficulties in missionary labor among them, saying:]
The tribes converted by the early missionaries were more civilized,
dwelt on the plains, and had a more orderly mode of life, sowing grain
and gathering enough for their support; but these of whom we speak,
besides being rough in their behavior, hardly know any tillage of
the soil, living generally by hunting. Their mode of cultivating what
little they plant is as follows: They first clear some little piece
of ground from the brush and weeds on it, with their knives (which
resemble those which the butchers use); then with the point of the
knife they make holes in the ground, in rows, and throw into each
a few grains of seed; they know no other plow, or any other thing
which might serve as one, for which reason the harvest that they
gather is always very small. They do the same for any planting of
sugarcane which they make--from which, when the cane is mature, they
press out the juice and make wine for drinking at their feasts; after
cutting out of the soil the grass to the roots, they make little holes
in it, and then thrust into these the shoots from the mature canes
which they had cut. For this reason, and because it is necessary to
provide means by which those who are converted may obtain a suitable
support, so that for lack of this they may not go wandering about,
as soon as we begin to confer baptism we endeavor to find animals
and other necessaries for the cultivation of the land--the religious
being often the first one who begins to plow and sow, directing them
in this way, so that they may learn how to do it. The same thing
occurs with reaping. They do not use sickles, but go on picking the
grain spike by spike; and, as there is so little of it, they soon
end their task. But, now that they are taught to plow, it is also
necessary to teach them to cut and winnow the grain; and this is done,
the religious being the ones who commence it, in order that the people
may imitate them--in which the work alone is for them, as they give
up all the fruit of it for the benefit of the said barbarians. [The
missionaries also had to contend with the attachment of the savages
to their mountains, for they abhorred the life on the plains. One
reason was, their dread of the smallpox, which never entered the
mountains, because these savage dwellers there instituted a strict
quarantine--closing up the roads and paths with logs and brushwood,
and sending out the declaration that they would immediately kill any
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