Memoranda of the religious of the islands of the West in regard to the
matters to be discussed with his Majesty or his royal Council of the
Yndias by Fray Diego de Herrera.
The matters which father Fray Diego de Herrera is to discuss with his
Majesty or with his royal Council. For the due discharge of our
conscience because of our obligation, your Reverence is going there
[i.e., to Spain], since you were one of the first in the country, in
order to inform him both by word and writing of the evil policy and
regimen in this country, both in the conquest and in the maintenance of
the land, so that his Majesty as a most Christian [king] may provide
their correction and discharge his royal conscience.
First: This is the way in which the land is pacified and colonies
established. A captain goes with soldiers and interpreters to the
village of which he has had notice only, or to one that has been
pillaged by other Spaniards. The people are told that if they wish
friendship with the Castilians they must immediately give them tribute.
If the people acquiesce, then they consider the amount that each man
must pay, and they are compelled to pay it immediately. Sometimes, the
village has been pillaged because the people did not agree to what was
asked from them. It also seems to be the proper thing to pillage them,
if they do not wait and if they abandon their houses. All this takes
place without having benefited the natives at all, and without giving
them to understand that his Majesty sent them to inform the natives of
God. We Spaniards are held in ignominy in this country and our name is
held in abomination, as is even the most holy name of the Lord, and we
are considered as the usurpers of others’ possessions, as faithless
pirates, and as shedders of human blood, because we illtreat our own
friends, and harass and trouble them; while many acts of violence and
force are used toward them both to their own houses and to their wives
and daughters and possessions, and they themselves are illtreated by
word and deed. In this they have no one to defend and protect them. The
most abandoned inhabitants and those at a distance commit the greatest
injuries and murders; and when those in command hear of it, they do not
institute relief by sending to make investigations of events so far
away, for they say that it must appear in writing, and that it is a
great expense and trouble to send to a distance time after time, as [is
said by] the present visitor who is the first to complain of it. But he
gives information of it and asks why he should go to visit all the
land. Item: Because of the great outcries, murders, and captivities
that have been made, both by captains and by other leaders and soldiers
throughout the islands, under pretext that they did not have peace
writs, although Spaniards had never gone there; and also to many who
had the peace writ already and were promised safety in his Majesty’s
name, that writ has been transgressed and broken. There has been no
punishment inflicted for all the above which is very well known and
notorious to all people. Consequently, great dissoluteness has reigned,
and I believe that there are very few whose skirts are clean of this
vice. For example, no aid has been given to the friends who pleading
their just causes and the injuries that they have received from others,
have asked protection and aid. Neither have amends been made to them as
it seemed more trouble than gain. Such have been few [who have thus
pleaded]. I only remember of a chief of Xaro, by name Mamicoan, a
Christian, who pleaded before the alcalde-mayor of Çubu, Don Gonzalo
de Luna, and the justice of Çubu, saying that while he was absent
another old man, his neighbor, had burned his house. His father and
mother had been burned and other damages committed, and that, as the
chief declared, simply because he had just been married and become a
Christian at Çubu. The religious who lived there at the same time
interceded for him, asking that four Spaniards be sent to arrest that
old man. They were answered that it would cause an insurrection in the
land if they did that. Besides the above there is a pirate called
Caxabic, who devastates Çamal and Masbat every year. Item: The Joloans
devastate all the Pintados as well as Camarines, and those of Ylo and
Vilnabagan. The Spaniards never go in pursuit of them or punish them,
or humiliate them, or make them restore their booty. But they only go
to rob those sheep for the second time by demanding tribute from those
whom they know not to have been entirely cleaned up by the others.
It is considered as a just cause for war in the War Council if the
Indians say that they do not care for the friendship of the Spaniards,
or if they build any fort to defend themselves. Such Indians are
killed, captured, pillaged, and their houses burned. For that reason
occurred the war of Bitis and Lubao [53] and the forts which were taken
by Juan de Sauzedo; and those of Cainta, where the night before, an
Indian having climbed into a palmtree cried out: “Spaniards, what did
my ancestors do or owe to you that you should come to pillage us;”
and that of Papagan. In all of the above many people were killed and
captured, and sold as slaves, especially in Papagan, for it is said
that they defied the Spaniards, although there was no resistance in any
of those places. It is considered as an occasion for just war by the
War Council and a village may be destroyed and all those captured may
be enslaved, if any Spaniard has been killed in the village; although
the occasions that the dead man might have given or the wrongs that he
might have committed are not considered, as is neither the fact that
those natives do not understand or have anyone whom they can ask to
avenge them unless it be God and their justice. They formerly had no
king or ruler from whom to ask satisfaction. This chastisement is meted
out without any thought of the guilty ones, and often although only one
man is to blame, the entire village is punished. Almost never has the
guilty one paid for his crime, or the accomplice to it, for they
immediately take to hiding. So was made the war in the island of Çubu,
against those villages of Candaya, because a common seaman was killed;
and in Bohol, because they killed a worthless fellow on account of his
many exactions in the collection of the tribute. There as they did not
find any people in the village where he was killed, they seized seven
Indians from a village lower down which is called Baye, and hanged them
because they confessed that they had known beforehand that the other
villages had agreed to kill the man. Item: Because the natives killed
Mena and three others who asked them for tributes, in the island of
Marinduc [i.e., Marinduque], Captain Luis de la Haya went by the
governor’s orders and that of all the Council of War and destroyed
the islands of Banton and Malindus [i.e., Marinduque], and also that of
Guimbar. [54] The greater portion of the land has no other peace than
that some captain and soldiers have lodged there and told the people
that they must pay tribute if they wished peace with the Spaniards.
They have no other cause or reason for it than being there one or two
days to collect what tribute the people could give and then pass on to
another village. This was the procedure along all the coast of Bulinau
and Ylocos for nearly one hundred leguas, where raids have been made
twice in one year. Thus have more than six thousand taes of gold been
collected, a sum equivalent to about one thousand marcos, and quite
equal to that amount in fact. The same thing has been done along other
coasts although not in the same proportion.
With no greater pacification than the above, the land is assigned and
divided, whereupon the encomendero taking some companions with him goes
to the village or villages which have been given him, and makes them
the following speech: “Take heed that I am your master, and that the
governor has given you to me to protect from other Spaniards who annoy
you.” This is the universal reasoning of most of them, and they make
no mention of God or the king. Then they immediately demand the
tribute, each one the amount that he can get without any limit. They
have generally asked three or four maes apiece from the Lusones, and
two or three from the Pintados. That is a very excessive sum in the
beginning for a people who do not know what it means to pay tribute. If
some of the people do not wait for the encomendero in order to agree to
give him the tribute, their houses and village are burned, as was done
by the master-of-camp in the village of Baban, and Navarro in his
encomienda of Çurigo. Many of the encomenderos stay in their
encomiendas all or the greater part of the year looking after their
interests, where they prove a great hindrance and obstacle to their
Indians.
No attention is paid to the instruction, nor is protection or aid given
to the religious for it. On the contrary they have hitherto opposed us
going out or building houses among the Indians, but [try to force] us
to live among the Spaniards. Neither then nor now has there been any
aid extended on the part of those who govern, either to attract the
natives to our holy faith or to induce them to forsake their evil
customs, for they say that it is too early, although they could be got
rid of with a single word. For as they are a timid race they obey
immediately in this; and the Spaniards have never tried to overlook
anything in the Christians in order thus to invite all the others. On
the contrary they have generally harassed them more than the others as
they are more peaceful and nearer at hand. They have been very slow to
recompense them even in words, and it has consequently happened that
very few natives outside of Çubu have been baptized for the above
reasons. There is in general very little Christianity among the
Spaniards, who pay very little attention to divine worship and to their
ministers and even with great difficulty have poor shacks been erected
in which to celebrate the divine offices. There is great lewdness among
the [native] women both among infidels and the influential women—this
last secretly. Many slaves have been sold and many others have been
retained who have been enslaved and captured illegally and unjustly.
Some, in order that they might be made use of, and might not be taken
from their owners in order to return them to their own villages, have
fraudulently been made to come to ask for baptism and have become
Christians. Many islands and villages are devastated and almost wiped
out, partly by the Spaniards or because of them, and partly by famines
of which, or at the beginning of them, the Spaniards were the reason;
for either by fear or to get rid of the Spaniards the natives neglected
their sowing, and when they wished to sow then anguish came upon them,
and consequently, many people have died of hunger.
Many injuries have been and are still practiced on the Indians by the
Spaniards or by their encomenderos themselves. Even murders have been
committed; and since they live in remote regions, and since the
aggrieved parties cannot go to plead their justice, or have no one to
plead it for them, if it even comes to the ears of the governor, it is
not corrected. For the latter either says that it must appear in
writing or that when he shall go to that place he will inflict
punishment for the matter. So he remarked to me when I told him of an
Indian woman whom Luys Perez had killed, and of the other chief woman
who had been imprisoned, and of the Indian whom Gudinez killed. So
declared the adelantado when the deeds of Luys de la Aya, Andres de
Ybarra, and of the accountant were discussed.
All or most of the Spaniards act as justices when they go through the
villages and decide the suits and quarrels among the natives. They take
pay for it, although they often judge unjustly in favor of him who pays
more. Your Reverence will inform his Majesty of the condition of the
people and that they do not have any king or sovereign, but live in
bands or families where the richest or the most powerful is the leader.
Some tyrannize over and pillage the others. The slaves owned by the
natives are partly so from time immemorial, for their parents and
grand-parents were slaves, as were their ancestors; Some have become
slaves for loans and debts because they always reckon the loans by
usurious rates which are greatly practiced here. Some are slaves for
crimes, either for having stolen the slightest thing or for having
given false testimony, or having dared do anything by word or deed
against a chief. Others, and these are the fewest, are those who have
been captured in the wars which they wage among themselves, some of
which have been waged for many years between enemies, while others are
waged because of some injury done to one side by the other. It is
difficult to ascertain which of those causes is just. However, they are
so evilly inclined a race in respect to this that when occasion offers
they do not keep faith with their friend. Since the coming of the
Spaniards to this land there has been another kind of slaves who have
sold themselves very cheaply in times of famine in order to live during
the famine—the father to his son, the brother to his brother, the
uncle to his nephew, and others likewise—in which he who bought
showed charity to the one purchased. Such slaves were never sold unless
by such an one who could not live through his own efforts. I do not
speak of those who pillaged the timauas and sold them as slaves.