Christian Revolts, Muslim Raids

THE ROOTS OF THE FILIPINO NATION by Onofre D.
Corpuz
Chapter 3
CHRISTIAN REVOLTS,
MUSLIM RAIDS
Many peoples were conquered, because they did not know their
own strength until they found that they were subdued.
An Augustinian friar on the Christian revolts of the 1660s.
The loss of our harvests for one year is a small price to pay for
liberty. Sultan Kudarat of Maguindanao. 1667
The initial opposition to the Spaniards was the resistance to the conquest.
Where the conquistadors were concentrated in force, as they were in Cebu
over 15651568, the resisting barangays fell easily, so that the conquest of the
surrounding area was effected early. The same process worked out in the
Manila region beginning in 1571. In the outlying and hinterland area of
Luzon, where the Spanish presence was in the form of small groups in the
cabecera towns, the conquest took very much longer, as we saw in the Tuy
valley and will see again in the Cagayan area in northern Luzon.
The next phase of the resistance took the form of revolts and uprisings
against the regime. Whether the barangays submitted to the Spaniards
meekly, or welcomed them in friendship, or resisted with arms and were
overcome by force, the colonial regime weighed down heavily upon them all.
The gifts of Hispanic Christianity and government that were brought by the
Spaniards were a heavy cross, and produced a harvest of uprisings.
In the southern islands the establishment of Filipinos was a challenge to
the sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao. The latter not only met the
Christian challenge. They brought the war to the enemy as if the waters of
the Visayas were their roadways; their raiding fleets would swoop down on
the new Christian pueblos, drawn by the prize of more captives, and by the
gold and silver ornaments in the churches of the Spanish friars.
Christian Revolts, Muslim Raids 1
THE ROOTS OF THE FILIPINO NATION by Onofre D. Corpuz
The Christian Uprisings
The first outbreaks under the new regime were the people's reactions to
the brutish cruelty of the tribute collections. The barangays that had
submitted rose in arms. But their revolts were born of despair and wanting in
concert. A friar account of the Visayan revolts of the late 1640s notes that
uprisings broke out “in the provinces that were most subjugated and had
never tested the keenness of our arms; for they had yielded to the echoes of
our trumpets, receiving our troops in peace.” In other words, the people
fought after they had given up their liberty.
Written references to the early outbreaks are sketchy. The friar chronicles
were still few and dealt with the concerns of the religious orders in getting
themselves established, or with the arrivals and assignments of friars and
priests. But there were occasional indications of these outbreaks. For
instance, the Spanish king instructed the new governorgeneral in 1589 to
undertake a pacification campaign. The king was informed that this was
required even “in the very districts where the Spaniards live and travel, for
all the natives are in revolt and [are] unsubdued....” Pardo de Tavera also
notes that revolts had taken place earlier, in 1583 and again in 1585, among
the Tagalogs and Pampangos. Fuller accounts of the early uprisings appear
more frequently from the 1590s onwards.1
There was a very interesting plot in the latter 1580s. It is interesting

partly because we come across the names of Filipinos in Luzon almost for the
first time since the conquest began. It was equally noteworthy because the
plot was a conspiracy of former barangay datus. To them it was not only the
harshness of the regime that had become intolerable. It was also the loss of
their old status and the freedom and privileges that went with it. This
haunted them and confused them, and from this a hatred built and grew up
against the authors of their despair. They contained their sense of loss and
oppression patiently, initially reposing trust in the Spanish king, but in the
end they staked everything towards rebellion and death, because the regime
could not give them justice.
A ship was to leave Manila for Nueva España for the 1582 voyage. Several
principales of the villages around Manila called on the bishop of Filipinas on
15 June 1582. They made a deposition which they asked the latter to forward
to the Spanish king, in time for the ship's sailing. Some of these chiefs were:
Luis Amanicalao, Martin Panga, Gabriel Luanbacar, Juan Bautangad,
Francisca [sic] Saygan, Salalila, Calao, and Amarlenguaguay. (At least three
of the names are garbled in our source.) They were chiefs from Tondo and
Maysilo. The last three are described as nonChristian – they were
presumably native converts to Islam who had not embraced the new religion;
the others had converted and carried Christian names.
The bishop wrote the Spanish king on 20 June about the call. He reported
that the chiefs had asked him to make report of their grievances. These
grievances, said the bishop, confirmed his other reports about the cruelty and
oppression suffered by the natives. After the first visit he had informed his
callers to decide what they wished reported; on the same day, some
principales and about forty other people had called again. “Without doubt,”
the bishop writes, “it would break your Majesty's heart if you could see them
as they are, and how pitiable are their appearance and the things that they
relate.”
Other chiefs, upon learning of the visits, also called on the bishop. On the
same day that he wrote his letter a group of ten to twelve chiefs from the
village of Mauban went to the bishop; they were all nonChristians; they
asked him to include their complaints in his report. The bishop assured the
Spanish king that he did not admit the existence of abuses other than those
specified by the earlier chiefs. Had he done otherwise, he said, “it would make
a disturbance in this land, should they all come here to complain.”
The grievances of the chiefs who called on the 15th June are familiar by
now. The alcaldes bought up the people's rice and other produce at low prices,
and then sold them back dear. They impressed the people as rowers at all
times; after a month as oarsmen the latter would be required to get ready for
another without having been. paid wages. Yet the other people left in the
pueblos would be made to pay the wages that were supposed to have been
paid to the rowers. Many of the chiefs' people had left their villages, but the
chiefs would be made to pay the tributes of those who had left, and even of
those were dead. When they failed to pay they would be placed in the stocks
and flogged.
There were other grievances. If the common people complained to the

alcaldes they were also placed in the stocks or in prison. When in jail, they
(the commoners) had to pay for the costs of their maintenance. As a result of
all their hardships they all wished to leave, or at least go to a private
encomienda. (This was because much of the Manila area was a royal
encomienda, and the alcalde was the king's tribute collector.)
What happened to the ship carrying the bishop's report to the Spanish
king is not known, and we do not read about the chiefs again until five years
later.
The village of Tondo, it will be recalled, was situated at the mouth of the
Pasig River, on the north bank just opposite the Spanish city. The Manila
area was still fairly small in the latter 1580s. In the pueblos outside the
walls, including Tondo, lived about 7,500 people, of whom some 3,000 were
under private encomienderos, the rest being in royal encomiendas. Although
Spanish Manila had been founded in 1572 and enjoyed the title
“Distinguished and Ever Loyal City,” its growth was slow. It had only eighty
Spanish citizens in 1588, that is, except the clergy in churches, hospitals and
monasteries, some of them located outside the walls. Fifty of the men had
Spanish wives; some of the others were married to native women. In addition
to the clergy and citizens, there were usually some 200 Spanish soldiers in
the area, because Manila was also a fort. The soldiers were generally a low
class sort, poor and living on alms; quartered in the houses of the citizens and
others in the nearby houses of natives. At this time only twenty Chinese
trading ships were calling at Manila each year although, for two years
running, some merchants had been coming from Japan, Macao, Siam, and
other countries.
The next time we hear of the Tondo chiefs is in 1587, when Martin Panga
had become gobernadorcillo. Unfortunately, he was in jail. Together with him
were the former gobernadorcillo and Panga's cousin Agustin Legaspi; Gabriel
Tuambasan (Luanbacar in the bishop's 1582 letter), who was Legaspi's
brother; Tuambasan's son Francisco Acta; and Pitongatan, another member
of the Tondo principalia. From the regime's viewpoint, Panga and
Tuambasan, both among the 1582 complainants, must have been
troublemakers. It is reported that while they were in prison, all these chiefs
pledged help to each other, to be rendered whenever required in the future.
This was the beginning of the most ambitious and most haphazard
conspiracy for a revolt during the sixteenth century, or at any time thereafter
until the Revolution of 1896.
After serving time in jail, Panga was exiled from Tondo, and he had to go
to Tambobong (the modern town of Malabon). The exile was not stringent.
Tambobong was a nearby pueblo. Here Panga and Legaspi invited other
principales for secret talks. The following chiefs attended the meetings,
accompanied by their followers and servants: Agustin Manuguit and his
father Phelipe Salalila, a chief from Maysilo; Magat Salamat, chief of Tondo
and reportedly son of the old raja of Tondo; Pedro Bolinguit, chief from
Pandacan; Geronimo Basi and Gabriel Tuambasan, both of Tondo and
Legaspi's brothers; Luis Amanicalao and his son Calao,_both of Tondo;
Francisco Acta, another chief from Tondo; Dionisio Capolo,chief of Candaba
(who was to escort the Isinay chief Ybarat to Manila in late 1591 see
Chapter 2), Capolo's brother Phelipe Salonga, chief of Polo; Amaghicon, chief
of Navotas; and Phelipe Amarlangagui, chief of Catangalan.
Some characteristics of the chiefs in this group are worth noting. First,
although most of them were of Tondo and its neighbor villages (Maysilo,
Tambobong, and Navotas), some were chiefs from relatively distant towns:
Candaba and Polo in the provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan, and Pandacan
south of the Pasig. Second, although it was now almost a generation since the
fall of Manila, some of the principales were holding out against baptism and
conversion to Christianity. In 1582 the former datus Salalila, Magat Salamat,
and Amarlangagui, and also the Calaos, were still nonChristian – they and
some others were Muslim or believers of the old faith. In this year of 1587,
however, Amarlangagui and Salalila had Christian first names, both

“Phelipe,” indicating a possible recent conversion. Third, many of the
participants were relatives. As the conspiracy progresses, other relatives and
chiefs from other villages will be involved.
The chiefs met for three days. They recalled the old days and their former
positions as datus and leaders. It hurt to talk of their former slaves, who had
been freed. Their gold was being taken away from them. The colonial laws
provided that the Spanish king was entitled to onefifth of all the gold
discovered in the colonies, but even the old gold that the natives wore as
ornaments was being “discovered” by the Spaniards. Some had also lost their
wives, because it was determined that these had been married to others first.
They yearned to be real chiefs again. They had no plans yet. They were
drinking a lot. But they swore to act as one should an opportunity arise, and
they also pledged to help any enemy of the Spaniards.
Then Legaspi informed the group that he had entered into a compact with
the captain of a Japanese trading boat. He had entertained this captain,
named Joan Gayo, in his house. This was in 1586, when Legaspi was
gobernadorcillo. Gayo would bring back soldiers from Japan. According to
Legaspi he had already delivered some weapons. The other chiefs would
contribute provisions and anything else necessary. They would join forces,
kill the Spaniards, and Legaspi would be crowned king. As king he would
collect tributes, and these would be shared with Gayo. The group adopted the
idea. But Legaspi apparently did nothing to further the hazy plan, and
nothing came out of it.
In February 1588, rumors reached Manila of the capture of the galleon
Santa Ana by the English corsair Thomas Candish, and that he had
threatened the Spaniards with the capture of the city. These reports were
true. The conspirators' hopes rose, and they awaited the Englishman's
coming. However, Candish headed for the Visayas, where he made a half
hearted attempt to burn a galleon which was being built in Arevalo. Failing
in this and already rich with prize, he left for India and thence to England.
As the days passed, it became clear that Candish would not come to
Manila. It was equally clear that reliance on strangers would not further the
conspirators' goals, and a major decision was made. The revolt would have to
be an allnative effort. To this end Esteban Taes, a chief from the village of
Bulacan, sped to Martin Panga in Tondo. They reviewed the understandings
made in Tambobong, and agreed that a meeting among more chiefs be held.
Taes undertook to invite all the chiefs from Bulacan to Tondo. Panga declared
that he would carry letters to the gobernadorcillos of Malolos and Guiguinto,
adding that he and Legaspi had planned to invite the chiefs from as far as
Laguna and Batangas. The idea of an allTagalog rebellion was shaping up.
The meeting would discuss means for the recovery of the chiefs' former
freedoms and positions. The rebels would assemble in Tondo and attack the
Spanish city. Arrangements had also been made with Luis Balaya, chief of
Bangos, a settlement near Tondo, and with the chiefs of Batan.
It is not possible to ascertain whether these were hopes or real plans. It
would have required major movements to get people from Bulacan, Laguna,
Batangas, and from the other villages to Tondo. It would have been virtually
impossible to conceal such movements from the Spaniards. The laws
prohibited residents of a pueblo from going to another without an official
permit. Besides, assembly in Tondo was impractical for rebel groups coming
from south of the Pasig: this would entail their crossing the river, organizing
in the pueblo (Tondo), and then recrossing for the attack on the city. Anyway,
the idea died aborning; the planned assembly of chiefs did not take place.
Panga and his associates began clutching at straws. A group of Pampango
chiefs chanced to pass Tondo on their way to Manila. Panga invited them,
and with his coconspirators Legaspi, Magat Salamat, and Amanicalao,
guilelessly tried to get the Pampangos to join them. The latter were on their
way to petition the regime to suspend the lawsuits freeing slaves in
Pampanga, at least until after the harvest. Panga said that they had the
same problem with their slaves; he suggested that they all unite and have a
leader whom all should obey as king. Nobody should act separately.
Unwittingly, Panga was talking to people who were to become the Spaniards'
staunchest military supporters. Pampangos declared that they had no
quarrel with the Spanish king, and declined a second invitation to visit Tondo
after their business in Manila was concluded.
After the rebuff from the Pampangos and the failure of the other Tagalog
chiefs to attend a meeting, the plotters next held a meeting in Tondo. They
had been unable to get the cooperation of their fellow chiefs. They had run
out of options but one. In desperation, they recalled a preSpanish contact:
the old Muslim connection. Their hopes were renewed. They decided to Invite
the Borneans to attack the Spaniards. They anticipated that when the
Bornean fleet reached Cavite, the Spaniards would call on them to help
defend their city. The chiefs would be waiting, but they would turn around
and kill the Spaniards. This plan was agreed upon by the following: Panga
and Legaspi; Balaya and his nephews Agustin Lea and Alonso Digma;
Salalila and Manuguit; Amanicalao and Calao; Tuambasan and Acta; and
Salonga with some others.
To execute the plan it was necessary to send a deputation to Borneo, and
Magat Salamat was chosen to serve as the envoy. Shortly after this decision,
Panga and Legaspi were observed to have begun selling off some of their
lands.
And so it was that in the latter half of 1588, Magat Salamat with his
brotherinlaw Joan Banal and Manuguit took to the sea and sailed for the
Calamianes. Manuguit's father Phelipe Salalila had been a holdout against
Christian conversion. Salamat was not Christian – the Spanish sources cite a
man named Magat as having been an emissary with letters to the sultan of
Borneo in 1578; he had relatives there. Banal was almost surely a scion of the
old chiefs of Quiapo.
From the Calamianes the trio proceeded to Cuyo, and convinced the chief
Sumaelob to join in the conspiracy. What Sumaelob could do from far off
Cuyo in an attack on Tondo is not clear. Anyway, they returned to the
Calamianes in October.
Their next stop was Borneo, and they had some weapons and other gifts
for the Sultan. At this point, grasping every chance to recruit confederates,
they committed a fatal error. They tried to enlist the native servant of the
encomendero of the Calamianes Islands. This man was named Antonio
Surabao; he feigned support and help, but as soon as he learned the details of
the plot he hastened to betray the trusting conspirators to his master, who
immediately sailed for Manila and, on arrival there on 4 November 1588,
made a full report to the authorities.
The Spaniards acted quickly. Of the twentyfive principales who were

brought to trial in this case, Agustin Legaspi and Martin Panga were dragged
and hanged. Their heads were cut off and exhibited from the gibbet in iron
cages. After their houses were torn down the ground was plowed, and salt
was mixed into the earth to make the soil barren. Magat Salamat, Legaspi's
brother Geronimo Bassi, Salalila, Amaghicon, Taes, the Japanese Joan Gayo
and his interpreter were executed. Four of the conspirators were sentenced to
exile in Nueva España. Several others were banished from the territory of
Manila (five leagues around the city) or from their villages, for periods
ranging from two to eight years, and fined various amounts of gold. Dionisio
Capolo was in this group; he was imposed a final sentence of four years' exile
and a gold fine. Only one, Agustin Lea, was acquitted. The verdict on
Sumaelob of Cuyo Island is not known.2
This plot is referred to in the sources as the “conspiracy of the Tondo

chiefs.” It is more than a mere curiosity. Of course it was doomed. From so
many chiefs not a single workable plan was conceived,except for the scheme
to enlist the aid of Borneo. The plotters were too trusting; sharing their fatal
secret with just about everyone, and it was incredible that the Spaniards did
not discover the plot earlier. But the conspiracy must be regarded in the
context of its time. It will be the only reported attempt during the Spanish
regime when Luzon chiefs, some of them already baptized Christians, will
seek Muslim help. With the passing away of this generation of Tagalog datus,
the influence and memory of Islam effectively disappeared from the Manila
and Tagalog area, and Christianity's future in Luzon was assured.
It is also useful to note that although the immediate causes of the

conspiracy were the grievances felt by the former datus, the plotters thought
and behaved as the chiefs they were, and not as commoners. In the scores of
uprisings during the seventeenth century, the objectives of the revolt were
attained when the tribute collector or alcalde or friar was killed. To the
Tondo chiefs, the goal was not the death or removal of this or that Spanish
oppressor or official, but the overthrow of Spanish rule itself. It is ironic that
the chiefs did not unite before the loss of their liberties to the handful of
Spaniards, and then spent the better part of two years trying to forge a
common effort to recover them.
Finally, this abortive revolt of 15871588 also marks the early appearance
of the traitor, whose persona will become a familiar and often decisive
character in the story of many later Filipino rebellions.
The Tondo conspiracy was not an isolated case. The report of the governor
general for 1589 informed the Spanish king that after the Tondo plotters had
been punished, the chiefs of Cebu and Panay had also conspired to kill the
Spaniards.3
We will now survey a number of actual uprisings in various provinces and
islands.
The province of Cagayan in northern Luzon is an example of the provinces
where the outbreaks during this era lasted almost unbroken for a half
century. The small new Spanish settlement of Nueva Segovia served as the
capital; it was located on the site of the old native barangay of Lallo, which
was itself the leading preSpanish settlement in the area. The province was
formally called Nueva Segovia after its capital town. In the capital there were
the alcaldemayor and some friars; there was also a small presidio manned by
a few soldiers. The Spaniards established themselves this far north because
they viewed Cagayan as the frontier with the great empire of China, which
the friars deeply yearned to convert to Christianity. It was rough country, its
plains girt by rugged mountains.
In 1594 a reported 45,000 inhabitants were under the regime, their

tributes assigned in Manila to twelve encomenderos. There were at this time
hardly any friars available for assignment in the province, except those in the
cabecera. Most of the people were therefore free of religious instruction. Their
only link to the regime was the collection of tribute.
As in most of the other cases, the trigger for the Cagayan outbreak of 1589
was the insistence of the Spaniards on levying tribute on people they had not
reduced. In March or April a mob entered the town of Nueva Segovia and
killed some Spaniards. The alcalde could not raise a force immediately, and it
was only in July that an expedition of sixty Spaniards and some 800 Filipino
auxiliaries went after the rebels. The latter abandoned their villages. The
expedition therefore destroyed their palm groves and crops, and then
withdrew. The governorgeneral reported that Cagayan was in “a worse state
of war than before,” since the collection of the tributes became more difficult
during the next year. Outbreak upon outbreak followed each other, and by
the middle of the next decade we learn that two leaders had become
prominent: Magalat, a chief, and his brother. A brief respite was enjoyed
when the two were taken to Manila, but in 1589 Magalat was back in
Cagayan rousing the people anew against the excesses in the tribute
collections. This latest uprising lasted eight months, and was quelled when
Magalat was killed.
A different type of uprising broke out in 1607, starting in the village of
Nalfotan, where the Dominicans had just built a church in August. The
people were reported to be grateful. Unfortunately, the friar account of this
era says, “The devil at these things suffered from rage and the worst pains of
hell, as he saw himself losing, all at once, villages which had been his for so
many ages.” So the devil caused the people, still according to the friar
account, to return to their old worship and rites; the devil's agent was
Caquenga, a woman who was the village anitera. The people fled to the
mountains but the friar sought out their leader, Furaganan, and eventually
pacified him. The other rebels burned the church and violated the ornaments.
This outbreak lasted until 1608.
Religion and tribute collection were interwoven as causes of the more

serious revolt of 16211622 One of the largest villages in the Cagayan region
was the Gaddang village of Abuatan, next to which was another, called
Pilitan. This was beautiful country, described in a Dominican history as

follows:
In this place it seemed that another climate had been found, different
from that of the rest of this province, other fields and spacious meadows,
another temperature, and another race of people. The country is very
fertile, and abounds in game. It is very well watered, very pleasant, and
very healthful.
The friars had set up a large cross in the churchyard in Abuatan. The
history then says that the devil instigated the people to burn their churches.
In another place it says that the Gaddangs' aim was to secure the release of
some of their chiefs who were being held hostage by the Spaniards in Nueva
Segovia. Still later, the same history has the rebels saying that they revolted
because of the oppressive abuses of the Spaniards. The church was sacked.
The rebels went to the mountains. But a friar is reported to have persevered
in going to their stronghold, and he brought back some 300 families who were
then settled by the mouth of the Maquila River. He joined the alcalde and
soldiers on an expedition against the rebels. The leader, Gabriel Dayag, is
said to have repented and helped the Spaniards in the pacification, and later
himself returned in peace.
In 1625, nevertheless, the governorgeneral again reported that “Cagayan
has continued in revolt,” although he followed this up the next year with a
report that the situation had improved.
The Cagayan revolt of 16251626 was due partly to the people's resistance
to resettlement, and “their affection for their ancient places of abode.” Two
new villages, Nuestra Senora de Fotol and San Lorenzo de Capinatan, had
been formed by the regime from separate barangays, and located above the
village of Abulug near a river fed from the mountains. Among the people
settled in Capinatan were the Mandayas, who kept trying to go back to their
old mountain homes. This time, the third time, they succeeded, and also
persuaded the inhabitants of Fotol. The Mandaya leaders were Miguel Lanab
and Alababan. A recently arrived friar and a visiting lay religious were killed
in Capinatan. Peace was restored in 1626.
A report of 16271628 says that a great portion of Cagayan remained in
revolt. In 1628 an expedition of Spaniards and 2,000 Filipino auxiliaries
attacked and burned eight native villages. “The country was laid waste, with
the fields that the enemy had there; and thus were they punished for the
insolent acts that they had committed.” This report lists the major wars of
the regime at the time: the war in Formosa against the Dutch; in Ternate and
Moluccas, also with the Dutch; in Jolo and the nearby islands against the
Muslims; and in Cagayan against the rebels.
The governorgeneral's report in 1630 presented an unstable situation:

some of the rebels in Cagayan were subdued, but others kept the government
forces occupied. An Augustinian history of this year says of the Cagayanos
that “daily they rise and burn convents and churches and kill some of the
religious.” But in 1632 the governorgeneral's report was that the province
was quieter.
The Mandaya people were like the Gaddangs, lovers of the mountains, so
that the alcalde had a presidio built, manned by a garrison, to contain the
people in their new lowland settlements. A Dominican history has a report of
the Mandaya uprising of 1639, caused by the usual oppressions, but triggered
by the abuse on a woman who belonged to the principalia.
So many were the burdens that they [the soldiers] put upon the
shoulders of the wearied Indians for their support that the latter
considered themselves as conquered, especially because of the ill
treatment that they experienced from the commandant of the said fort.
The mine of anger exploded, because the said commandant punished one
of the principal women, because she had displeased him, by forcing her to
pound rice for a whole day; she and her husband were so angry thereat
that they became the chief promoters of the insurrection. The nearby
villages, which were tormented by the burden of the fort and the
oppressions practiced by the soldiers, were invited [to aid in the
conspiracy). They entered the sentrypost at ten on the morning of March
6 with their arms, and killed the sentinel and others who offered them
some resistance.
They went thence to the fort, and breaking down the doors, or having
them opened by the spies inside, they killed about twenty unarmed and
naked soldiers, who formed the garrison; only five soldiers escaped, by
hiding; but later, the fire increasing, these perished. The Indians entered
the convent, and killed a Sangley, at the door of the cell of the father
vicar, who had just been baptized that day (whose death, we must
believe, would be most fortunate for his soul)....
It was learned afterward that they proceeded with their frenzied

sacrilege, and burned the church and the convent Although the attempt
has been made more than once to obtain satisfaction, yet those people are
so favored by their inaccessible mountains that this effort has been
abandoned, as it is impossible to subdue them.
The valley of Cagayan would not be effectively conquered until after

several more decades. Since the Spanish accounts say that the Spaniards had
taken “possession” of the region long ago, we read that the Cagayanos were
“rebelling.” But we know that they had not yet been conquered, there was no
Spanish regime over them, and so there was no regime against which they
were rebelling.
The colonial system, with its laws and religion, was still largely limited to
Manila and the cabeceras, in the process of securing itself and trying to
organize the people preparatory to their exploitation. The resistance of the
Cagayanos was still resistance to the conquest.4
It was in the more organized areas, where the colonial burden bore down
systematically on the colonial subjects, that the people's uprisings were in the
nature of rebellions. We have seen the evidence of heavy and sustained losses
in the tributary population since 1591. The people bore exactions to support
the regime in order that it could exploit them. Even the friars who baptized
them into Christianity were taking away their worldly goods, as in the case of
Miguel Banal and his people in Quiapo in 1603 – yet he was delivering the
tributes of this people to the regime, and the stipends of the clergy came from
these tributes.
We will now briefly review the rebellions of the Christianized Filipinos.
The new century of the Spanish era was unusually harsh. The weary
Filipinos were drawn into the contests between Spain and her foreign
enemies: the occasional Chinese or English pirate, and the Dutch. Of these
none were nearer, and none posed a more immediate threat during the first
half of the seventeenth century, than the latter. The Spaniards hated and
dreaded them as Protestant heretics. The Dutch were based in Java,
contesting all rivals to the prize of the Orient trade. They maintained forty to
fifty armed ships in the waters of Filipinas in any one year, awaiting every
opportunity to expel the Spaniards from the archipelago. The naval
engagements of 1601, 1616, 1617, and 1626 show the intensity of the Dutch
pressure. The Dutch maintained this pressure until midcentury, inciting the
Filipinos, urging them to overthrow the Spaniards, explaining that they were
unlike the Castilians, promising that they would not collect tributes and
would deal with them only as friends. Later naval engagements were fought
from 1644 to 1648 along the Ilocos coast, and off Manila, Mindoro,
Marinduque, Bataan, and Cavite.
To meet the threat from their foreign enemies, the Spaniards needed
supplies, rowers, and auxiliary fighters. The Filipinos were impressed into
these services. The Spaniards also had to have warships. In addition, for
their dreams of great riches, the Spaniards had to have galleons for the trade
with Acapulco and, for some time also, with the Moluccas. These galleons
were the largest vessels anywhere. The Filipinos built these ships with
absolutely no profit to them. The galleon trade of the Spaniards, precisely
because of the fantastic returns for each successful voyage, was also
enormously risky because of the English pirates, the Dutch enemy, and the
typhoons. A summary of the trade during the fiftyfive years from 1572, for
instance, records that only fifteen of those years were free from loss and
disaster.
The call on the Filipinos' resources and services naturally intensified

whenever there was rumor of a Dutch armada, or when the Spaniards
decided to strengthen their defenses in anticipation of the next encounter.
Perhaps the most physically exacting burdens carried by the Filipinos were
those attendant to shipbuilding. The building of a manofwar or a galleon –
sometimes, in anticipation of an English pirate, the Spaniards would cut out
ports in the galleon's sides, and mount as many as a hundred cannon – or a
smaller trading vessel for a provincial alcalde or a friar engaged in business,
began with the felling of great trees in the forests. These labors were the
notorious cortes de madera. The huge trees would then have to be hauled
from forest or mountain. Next they had to be sawed and the timbers prepared
before actual work on the ship construction. The shipbuilding would then be
followed by the fitting and provisioning of the vessels. All the labor and the
other resources needed in these tasks were provided by the Filipinos by
repartimiento.
In 1600, for instance, the construction of the galleon San Diego meant
“great vexations, wrongs, and expenses heaped upon the natives...; it is
impossible to build galleons in any other way.” Each month 1,200 men were
drafted from the provinces of Tondo, Bulacan, Batangas, and Tayabas for the
construction work. By Spanish accounting the galleon cost the royal treasury
in Manila 60,000 pesos; the Filipinos were credited with more than 150,000
pesos. In truth, of course, all of this then prodigious amount was borne by the
Filipinos.5
But this was not all, because the costs were continuing. When they worked
for the Spaniards, the Filipinos could not work their own fields; if they did
not plant, their families had no food, fell sick, and sometimes died; they
would have no products or money to pay the tribute; and if they did not pay
their tributes they suffered even more. In 1614 there were uprisings in many
provinces because of the cortes de madera. The deaths and wasting of men in
the provinces around Manila as a result of years of corvées for shipbuilding
moved the governorgeneral to order a quota of men together with their wives
and children, to be brought from the various provinces to the shipyards in
Cavite. This drastic move was in anticipation of another Dutch threat in
1649. The inevitable consequences followed.
Palapag, a coastal pueblo in northern Samar with an unbroken prospect of
the Pacific Ocean to the east and north, was the base of Jesuit missionary
activity in the island province. This Jesuit residence served eight other
principal pueblos. There was a small presidio or fort in the pueblo. The area
was unfortunate twice over: it was exposed to Muslim raids, and it was a

frequent source of workers in the cortes de madera. Epidemics made matters
worse, and the population of the province fell from some 80,000 around 1590
to only 30,000 to 35,000 by 16371638.
On 1 June 1649, when the people of Palapag saw the alcalde gathering the
men and their families to be sent to Cavite, their patience gave out and they
declared rebellion. The leaders were chosen by the townspeople: Juan
Sumuroy, castellan (keeper) of the presidio and later said to be the son of the
local priest of the native religion; Juan Ponce; and Pedro Caamug. Sumuroy
had the Jesuit in Palapag killed right away. Then the people sacked the
church and took over the town. This was in June. News of the insurrection
spread south to Catubig and west to Catarman. These were large villages.
Here and in Bayugo and Bonan the people declared their own rebellions.
From Samar the outbreaks spread across the narrow strait to Leyte and then
to the provinces of Albay and Camarines, the islands of Masbate and
Camiguin; and to the Mindanao mainland, in Caraga, Cagayan, and even
Zamboanga. In each place the church and the friar were the insurgents' first
targets, and occasionally some Spanish soldiers in a presidio. Cebu and Bohol
wavered, and the friars there were able to soothe the people.
The rebels were to have their way for one year. In Palapag the church was
rebuilt and a new friar assigned; the rebels burned the former and killed the
latter. Then they prepared for the expected counterattack and built a redoubt
on a high hill by the village. They protected it with trenches and stockades,
with stakes and traps, while they placed boulders on the hilltop to roll down
on attackers.
In Manila a force made up of chosen Spanish soldiers and Pampangos was
organized. The expedition left Manila on two champans and thirteen other
boats with rowers. Provisions came from Capiz and Iloilo. This force was then
joined by a contingent from Cebu. The fleet of Zamboanga, the southern
outpost against the Sulu and Maguindanao Muslims, was also mobilized to
augment these forces, and all three assembled by the cabecera of Catbalogan,
midway along the west coast of the island. The Zamboanga fleet carried, in
addition to Spaniards, 400 Lutaos (natives of the Zamboanga peninsula,

mostly partMuslims who had submitted to the Spaniards because of the
fort's guns). The composite force was then divided into three subcommands.
In the face of this well organized enemy the rebel villages still did not unite
their efforts, and so they fell to the regime's forces one by one. The Spaniards
adopted a conciliatory approach due to the scale of the revolts, and the rebels
turned themselves in gradually, except for Sumuroy's group in Palapag.
The hilltop redoubt stood defiant, but now it faced a siege by the combined
enemy forces. In the early part of the siege the warriors of Palapag carried
the fight into the Spanish camp one night. They were forced to retire,
carrying their fallen comrades back with them. The Spaniards in turn
mounted a frontal assault by the uphill path. The fight was bloody for both
sides and lasted for hours, but it was a standoff, and the Spaniards were
forced to acknowledge that “they had many brave and well armed men on the
hill.”
The Sumuroy stronghold was accessible only via a steep climb up the
rugged hillside, at the rear, leading to a small cave that allowed only one man
to pass through at a time; this cave gave on to the rebel camp at the top. The
enemy could not normally attack by this route in force; the climb was steep
and slippery, for it was the season of rains. On the night of 2 July 1650,
under cover of darkness and in heavy rain that made the native sentinel
unwary, a group of attackers made the arduous ascent, and the rebel camp
was caught by surprise. The rebels were now assaulted from the rear and
from in front, and the defenders lost.
Circumstances again constrained the regime to issue a general pardon to
the rebel followers. An account of this uprising notes that the Spaniards had
to “overlook much on that occasion, as the quiet of all the Pintados islands,
who were waiting the end of the rebels of Palapag, depended on it.” Of the
leaders, Pedro Caamug gave himself up, and helped in the surrender of his
former comrades. Juan Ponce escaped to Cebu and received a pardon; he
returned to Palapag but apparently continued to cause trouble; he was seized
and brought to Manila, where he was executed. Sumuroy valiantly refused to
surrender, but he was betrayed by some of his former followers, who

beheaded him and brought the head to the Spaniards.6
The seventeenth century passed into its second half without bringing
relief. An Augustinian history describes the period 16531663 as “a
melancholy period of troubles and misfortunes, greater and more continual
than these islands had ever before suffered....” According to another friar
history the 1660s were “a time for recovering their liberty, a gift of priceless
value.” But, the history reflects, the natural inclination of men to free them
selves from subjugation was met by the Spaniards with greater coercion and
with greater violence. And so the Filipinos who were subjected must await a
time when their masters an oppressors are weak. The theory of the friar
author was that the Filipinos were always prone to rebellion; he did not take
account of their sufferings.
The province of Pampanga, for instance, had mixed fortune. According to a
friar historian (1620s): “When the religious arrived there, that province had
many inhabitants,” But then it observed “Now … it lacks that great number
of former years . . Very many people have been conscripted from this district,
and I wonder that a man is left.”
Pampanga, in the rich central Luzon plain, was the major source of
Manila's rice supply. Its fields were watered by many rivers, and the people
had developed a basic irrigation system that let the water in and cut it off in
season. In the 1620s it still enjoyed an abundance of coconut trees. The
Pampangos were said to have accepted Christianity more readily than all the
other Filipinos. The people were hospitable; several Spaniards had settled
there before the enforcement of the laws prohibiting the from residing in
native communities; they had taken Pampanga wives. If the Spaniards
regarded a province highly, this was Pampanga, because it gave to the
Spanish regime its finest: its men. An Augustinian friar who was very anti
Filipino in his views on the native character singled out the Pampangos as
exceptions, calling them the “Castilians among the natives.”
Pampangos manned the principal Spanish presidios: in Cebu, Arevalo,
Caraga, Zamboanga, and the far off garrisons in the Moluccas. The Spanish
forts in Maluco and Ternate (when Spain and Portugal were one monarchy)
were defended by Pampango soldiers; their officers proudly boasted that not
one of them ever deserted. They were so highly regarded by the Spaniards
that in most cases, the Pampango soldiers served under Pampango officers,
unlike men from the other provinces who always served under Spanish
commanders. The esteem in which they were held was expressed in a saying
that was popular among the troops that one Spaniard and three Pampangos
were “equal to four Spaniards.” The Pampango pueblos were therefore proud
of their men. When the soldiers were called to Manila they were attired in
uniforms which the townspeople paid for. They were a great help in the
suppression of many Filipino uprisings.
In 1660 the time came for the Pampangos to rise. The galleon San
Sabiniano was scheduled for construction in the yards in Cavite. The timber
for the galleon was to be supplied from the tall trees in the forests near the
village of Samal, of Bataan. The cortes de madera was to last for four months.
A thousand men were drafted by repartimiento from Pampanga. The overseer
was a violent man who abused and overworked them. He had now kept the
men at this cortes de madera for eight months. They had not worked their
fields during the planting season; they were worried for their families; their
children would be hungry; and when they returned home they would face the
prospect of not being able to pay their tributes.
On top of this, in 1660 the regime was in arrears on many levies of rice
under the reales compras. The people were assigned quotas of goods to
produce; they would then have to deliver the products to the alcaldes or other
agents, who would pay at prices arbitrarily fixed by the regime. The system
was devised in order to stock the regime's magazines and warehouses with
provisions and material for the presidios, forts, and other establishments.
The buyers customarily exacted goods in excess of the quotas, for the purpose
of trading in these, often selling them back to the people at higher prices.
Common items involved in the compras included rice, fowl, and other food
products; wood for fuel; cloths; sailcloth for the ships; and coconut oil for
lighting. The regime's unpaid accounts for its purchases of rice from the
Pampangos had accumulated, and now reached the reported total of 200,000
pesos.
The men in the polos, felling trees in the Bataan forests, could not endure
the abuse and their anxieties any longer. They burned down their huts and,
under their leader Francisco Manago of Mexico (a Pampanga pueblo),,
declared rebellion. They ignored the pleas of their chaplain in the polos, and
those of the friars of Sexmoan and Guagua – most of the men evidently came
from these two towns. They armed themselves and took the pueblo of Lubao.
They overran the prosperous pueblo of Bacolor. They drove stakes into the
river here, in order to close off travel to and from Manila. From Bacolor,
Manago sent letters to the northern provinces of Pangasinan and Ilocos,
informing the native leaders there of his revolt and urging them to revolt
against Spain and to kill all Spaniards. The bearer of these letters to the
north was Agustin Pimintuan.
The governorgeneral handled the matter adroitly. He gathered twelve

military commanders and their men, rowed up the Rio Grande de Pampanga
from Manila, arriving in the pueblo of Macabebe in the early evening of the
day after the news from Bacolor reached Manila. He won over a chief of
Arayat, which was a key town guarding the river route to Pangasinan. This
chief was Juan Macapagal; he left his home and traveled through the rebel
camp to Macabebe, where he pledged his loyalty to Spain. The Spaniards
treated him well, but took the precaution of having his wife and children
brought to Manila as hostages, and also made sure that the news of their
good treatment in Manila reached the rebels.
The peaceful response of the authorities seemed to calm down the rebels.
They presented a letter to the governorgeneral with a statement of the
overdue obligations of the regime for their produce and services. They were
promised a partial payment of 14,000 pesos against the regime's debt of
200,000 pesos; they were told that the royal treasury was spent. The rebel
leaders must have accepted the promise; a general amnesty proclamation was
drafted and read before the people. However, the local scribe who read out
the proclamation in the local language, a man named Baluyot, deliberately
changed the wording in order to agitate the people anew. As a result, the
crowd seized two of the Spanish officers.
But the ardor of the people had cooled down. Pampanga was essentially a
loyal province. The regime granted another general amnesty. The governor
general ordered the rebels to go back to the cortes de madera; they asked to
be given time to repair their houses and to work their fields. This was
granted. Manago was brought to Manila on the pretext that he was to be
made an independent commander of Pampango soldiers in the capital. It was
December, and peace was restored.7
The uprising in Pampanga lasted only two months, but is said to have
inspired the Pangasinan revolt under Andres Malong. The people of
Pangasinan and Ilocos, as well as those in the other provinces, had been
watching the developments in Pampanga.
Pangasinan up to this era was still largely unexplored. The friar

chronicles provide scanty information on its early history. In 1588, when
Pampanga had 22,000 tributarios (then equivalent to some 88,000 people),
and the Ilocos 27,000, Pangasinan had only 5,000. This indicates that the
Spanish drive had leapfrogged from Pampanga to the Ilocos, due to the
rumors of Ilocos gold. Much of Pangasinan still awaited reduction. A friar
account of 1618 says that Pangasinan was peopled chiefly by “negrillos,”
mountain people who were either black or swarthy. The negrillos were the
indigenes of the area. There were Christianized inhabitants, reportedly
immigrants who had taken over the plains and coastal areas. In 1618 the
province had an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 tributes. Its cabecera was the
pueblo of Binalatongan, located in the geographical center of the province.
Like most of the other cabeceras of the period which had Spanish residents,
Binalatongan had suffered a population loss from a former 3,000 houses to
2,000 in 1618. The province at this time included Agoo (now in La Union)
which was called the “port of Japan” because Japanese trading ships often
called there.
The uprising in Pangasinan started with a minor disturbance in the
village of Malunguey, and by midDecember 1660 had spread to the new

capital town, the pueblo of Lingayen. Andres Malong, the Filipino masterof
camp or commander of all native soldiers in the province, was the leader.
After killing the Spanish officials, the 4,000 strong rebel group attacked and
sacked the town of Bacnotan. Here they caught up with the fleeing Spanish
alcalde mayor, and they killed him and his household and guard. With this
victory, Malong began to entertain larger ideas, and he had himself
proclaimed King of Pangasinan. He invited the Zambals to join him, which
they did. Now it was his turn to write letters to the chiefs of Ilocos and Nueva
Segovia, and another to Francisco Mañago of Pampanga.
The letter to Mañago required him to bring Pampanga to Malong's side, or
be punished by an invasion of 6,000 Pangasinan soldiers. This was rather
presumptuous, since Pampanga was much larger than Pangasinan. Besides,
Mañago's rebellion had already been suppressed by this time, and he had
fallen into Spanish hands. But Malong's forces now numbered 11,000 strong,
divided into 6,000 under Melchor de Vera, 3,000 Pangasinenses and Zambals
under Pedro Gumapos (Malong had bestowed the title of Count on Gumapos)
and a reserve force of 2,000 under Malong himself.
The Spanish forces consisted of a land force and an armed fleet. The men
of the latter were a mixed lot with blacks, Malays from Tidore, and the
Japanese residents of Pandacan, Manila, presumably because they would
have business connections with the port of Japon in Agoo. The land force
included some Pampangos. The fleet passed by Bolinao and pacified it, since
the people of the town had already killed a Spaniard. A loyal chief named
Luis Sorriguen was installed as gobernadorcillo. The fleet reached the bar of
Lingayen in January 1661, but a storm forced it to take shelter in Sual. News
of threatened excesses by the rebels in Lingayen pressed the Spaniards to
hasten, and they landed there three or four days later. They entered the town
at sunset, to see the heads of the new alcalde, his wife, sisterinlaw, and of
two other Spaniards impaled on stakes for public view.
Meanwhile the Spanish land force halted in Arayat, which had been
secured for them by their ally Macapagal. More Pampangos were drafted.
News arrived that Melchor de Vera had invaded the province and that he was
encamped in Magalang. A detachment of Spanish cavalry and thirty foot
soldiers proceeded on a scouting and opportunity mission, and found the
Pangasinenses asleep in the open field. It was night, and they were fatigued
from the long march. The shouts of the surprised Pangasinenses, however,
frightened the Spanish troop, and both sides withdrew. Melchor de Vera
pusillanimously reported a great victory to Malong, who then decided to
extend his revolt into Ilocos and Cagayan. For this purpose Malong placed a
picked force of 4,000 under the military command of Jacinto Macasiag of
Binalatongan.
The sending of such a large force to the Ilocos, far from the rebels' base in
Pangasinan, was a mistake. The Spaniards attacked Lingayen towards the
end of the second week of January.
Malong sent for De Vera, but no relief could arrive in time. The battle of
Lingayen was short. The rebels lost; they retired to Binalatongan, where they
destroyed the church and convent.
They then retreated to the hills in bad order. Malong's followers began to
desert to the Spaniards, and offered to deliver him as prisoner. He was
captured by a Spanish detachment.
Meantime, the rebel force under Pedro Gumapos was in the Ilocos.
Malong's letter to the Ilocos chiefs had also reached the pueblo of Bauang (in
the modern province of La Union). The province of Ilocos (then including the
modern Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, and parts of Abra and La Union) was
densely populated, with extensive fields. It produced abundant rice, which
was shipped to Manila. It was noted for its fields of cotton, from which were
woven the famous mantas that were used as sails for the Manila galleons. A
1618 account says that the Ilocanos “manufacture nothing else” but mantas,
and they paid their tributes in it. The Spaniards conducted many expeditions
chasing after the reports of gold in the province, discovering only later that
the Ilocanos traded for it with their neighbors the Igorots.
The location of the province was favorable; Chinese, Indian, and Macao
traders took their cargoes to its river and coastal pueblos whenever the
weather made it risky to push on to Manila. When this happened, the
merchants from Manila would go to Ilocos, trade, and then wait for the north
wind, the brisa, that would take them and their cargoes to the capital. The
Spaniards admired the Ilocanos for a curious reason. The latter, they noted,
were the cleanest people in all the islands, “especially the women in their
houses...; they have a practice of going three or four times a day to bathe in
the river.”
But the Ilocanos had suffered much under the regime. In 1588 it had
27,000 tributarios. By 1591, when the number of tributepayers in Filipinas
as a whole had increased, the number in the province had diminished
drastically, to 17,130. A 1618 account refers to some “past disturbances” in
the province, but adds that the Ilocanos “are now very peaceable.” This year
the number of tributarios took a further drop, to between 14,000 and 15,000.
The provincial capital was Vigan, oftentimes called “Fernandina” after the
name of the Spanish settlement in the area.
Pedro Gumapos' forces of Zambals and Pangasinenses entered and looted
Bauang in December 1660. The friars fled to Bacnotan. News of these
reverses reached the alcalde and the bishop, and the Spaniards held a council
of war in Vigan. A Spanish force was dispatched to Bauang, only to find it
deserted. It pushed on to Agno, and the father of Gumapos, Miguel Cariño,
was captured and hanged. A battle took place here with the Gumapos forces,
and the Spaniards lost and retreated to Vigan. The alcalde ordered all of his
compatriots who wished to escape to Manila to do so – with him leading the
group. On 20 January 1661 the forces of Gumapos reached Vigan. In church
the mass was going on, officiated by the bishop; the rebels heard mass like
good Christians, and then looted the town. The neighboring villages of
Bantay and Santa Catalina were likewise razed; the Zambals looted as far
north as Badoc.
From Vigan the rebels carried off the bishop and the friars south to
Narvacan. A letter from Malong was received by Jacinto Macasiag, military
commander of the Gumapos group, ordering him to burn all villages and to
kill all Spaniards. The rebels encountered valorous resistance from a

Narvacan chief named Felipe Madamba. They proceeded southward, burning
the villages of Santa Maria, San Esteban, Santiago, San Pedro, Candon, and
Santa Cruz.
By now the Spanish forces had joined up, and the combined army marched
north, encamping in Santa Lucia. Here Gumapos was finally captured and
hanged. The friar account of this battle, full of superstition, claims that all
the dead of the Spaniards fell with faces turned upward, while the Zambal
dead lay with faces downward. The victorious Spaniards prepared to return
to Manila, but news arrived that another uprising had erupted in Bacarra.
The rebel leader in Bacarra was Pedro Almazan, in league with Juan
Magsanop (or Manzano) and Gaspar Cristoval of Laoag. Almazan had his son
marry Cristoval's daughter, and the marriage was celebrated with the
plunder of the church of Laoag.
Almazan was crowned King of the Ilocos. It was at this point that
Malong's letters reached Almazan and Magsanop, informing them that he
had conquered Pangasinan. This new uprising established an alliance with
the nearby hill tribe of the Calanasa. Under Magsanop, they beheaded the
priest in charge of Pata and Cabicungan and, later, the prior of Bacarra.
The Spanish force hastily marched from Narvacan to Bacarra, with

Ilocano and Cagayano auxiliaries. Magsanop was captured, and he killed
himself. Almazan was also caught.
In the proceedings following these uprisings, the following principales

were executed: in Vigan, Pedro Gumapos was shot in the back (by another
account, supra, he was hanged in Santa Lucia); Pedro Almazan, Cristoval
Ambayan, Tomas Boaya, Pedro de la Pena, and twelve others were hanged.
In Binalatongan Melchor de Vera, Francisco de Padua, Jacinto Macasiag, and
eleven others were hanged. Andres Malong was made to sit on a rock, and
then shot. In Mexico the Spaniards reneged on their undertaking with
Mañago, and he and his brother Carlos were shot. Juan Palasigui, Marcos
Marcasian, Chombillo, Supil, and Baluyot of Guagua (the scribe who
distorted the amnesty proclamation), and many others were also hanged.8
The Spanish author of these accounts of the principal revolts of the 1660s
notes that the other Filipinos were awaiting the outcome of these uprisings,
for they also wished to rebel, and “to gain what seemed to them liberty.”
The Pangasinan and Ilocos revolts were the most ambitious and extensive
uprisings of conquered Filipinos during the seventeenth century. Their
failure found the Pangasinenses and Ilocanos spent and exhausted. The
participation of so many of their men in the struggles, whether in the role of
rebel or of Spanish auxiliary, meant the neglect of their fields and
occupations. The provinces suffered for years afterward. The failure,
moreover, was not lost on the other Luzon provinces, so that no uprisings of
similar magnitude would occur on the island again until the next century. It
is interesting that, almost exactly one hundred years later, the two most
important revolts of the eighteenth century would also break out in
Pangasinan and Ilocos.
Meanwhile, the dominant theme in the Christian Filipino resistance to the
regime would persist no matter how like and unchanging was the oppression
that all of them suffered, and occasionally drove them to rebellion, the
Christian Filipinos always suffered them separately, and never fought their
colonial masters as one. The irony was that the people did not sense this, but
the Spaniards knew it well, and so the latter maintained their rule over the
conquered Filipinos by keeping them divided, always suppressing the
rebellions of some by using the services of others.
Perhaps the most meaningful words written of the colonized Filipinos

during this era, words that deserve reflection in the light of the ultra
refractory nature of modern Filipino politics, are the following, by a Spanish
friar:9
Some of them could not unite with the others, and although, and they
desired liberty, they did not work together to secure the means; for
obtaining it, and therefore they experienced a heavier (yoke of)
subjection. And among the peoples whom God seems to have created that
they may live in subjection to others who govern them with justice and
authority are those of these Filipinas islands; for when the Spanish arms
conquered them with so great facility they were living without a head,
without a king or lord to obey ....
The Muslim Wars
There were no Muslim revolts against the colonial regime. This was
because rebellion is the recourse of aggrieved subjects, which the Muslims
were not. They did not submit to, nor were they conquered by, the Spaniards.
The Muslim Filipinos were enemies of the regime. They were in a relation of
permanent war, at least for as long as the latter wanted war. The barangays
of Luzon and the Visayas could submit to entradas composed of a squad or
platoon of Spanish soldiers armed with muskets and arquebuses, usually
supported by native auxiliaries and bearers. The Muslims of Sulu and
Maguindanao would fight off specially organized expeditions of conquest and
pacification; the Spanish officers and soldiers on these expeditions would be
enemies twice over, for they would be fighting for personal plunder and for
their Spanish king – the Muslims would fight all of them. They would stand
up to a Spanish invasion force composed of land troops, a fleet armed with
artillery. They would win some and lose some of these engagements.. If they
lost and had to submit, their submission was never more than temporary, for
it was only a tactical move, good only until the moment when the enemy fleet
would have to sail away, or until they had regained strength.
The Spanish accounts often would not even record the names of the
leaders of a Christian Filipino rebellion – once it was put down that was the
end of it. But we will read the names of Muslim datus and sultans in the
Spanish documents over and over, because the contest was a continuing
struggle, and it was larger than a merely episodic encounter. The fact is that,
of all the Filipinos of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries; it was
only the Muslims who were consciously sustained by a cause that made
surrender or submission to the Spaniards morally impossible. This moral
cause was Islam.
In addition to the moral principle that forbade submission to unbelievers,
especially the Spaniards who had themselves been subjects of the Moorish
occupation, the Muslim Filipinos drew strength from the sultanate as an
institution. The barangay datus of Luzon and Visayas owed no loyalty to a
higher authority, since they were separate. But the datus in a sultanate, as
well as the nonMuslim datus owing tributary obligations to a sultan, were
under the protection of a paramount leader; they had duties and statuses
that were institutionalized. The sultanates were still developing during this
era, but the sultans knew that there were records of their reigns; they had
Earsilas that set down their names and noted down their essential
personalities. Around the sultan was also a council of datus, and they had
some claim to his official accountability. Even the recognized claims of an
heir to the sultanate had to be confirmed by the council before his formal
accession. Thus, the sultans would not surrender to the enemy
pusillanimously.
The Spanish clergy, especially the Jesuits who were assigned to
Zamboanga and other parts of Mindanao or Sulu, would at least be aware of
the rulerstatus of the sultans, so that the Spaniards often dealt with the
Muslims by treaty, a relationship that was out of the question with virtually
all of the nonMuslim leaders. This was particularly true when the Spaniards
felt threatened by enemies such as the Dutch. In negotiating treaties with
the Muslim sultans and leading datus, the Spaniards demonstrated a special
regard for their resolute foes.
The Muslims' loyalty to their Islamic faith was noted by the Spaniards.
Sometimes this was done with envy, though grudgingly. Witness what the
bishop of Filipinas has to say (1583):
The reason which they give – to our shame and confusion – is that

they were better treated by the preachers of Mahoma than they have
been and are by the preachers of Christ. Since through kind and gentle
treatment, they received that doctrine willingly, it took root in their
hearts, and so they leave it reluctantly.
Of course it was also obvious that the Muslims resisted submission
because they did not care to suffer the burdens that the colonized Filipinos
were made to bear under the Spanish regime. The knowledge of these
burdens came to the Muslims in the course of their raids on the Christianized
pueblos.10
It is this history of raids, above all, that characterized the relationship
between the colonial regime and the Muslims. The latter were not passive,
waiting for an entrada or expedition to conquer them. They had raided the
Visayan barangays long before the Spanish era. The old barangays did not
hold much wealth, but the captives taken, who could be sold in the slave
markets in the islands to the south of the archipelago, had been enough prize.
Now the policies of the colonial regime made the Christianized barangays
even more tempting targets. This was because the new pueblos were larger
than the old barangays, and therefore offered a richer prize. The locations of
most of the pueblos, especially in the Visayas – coastal, rivermouth – made
them more vulnerable to the raiders. Finally, the pueblodoctrina system that
was based on agriculture and the church made the community relatively
immobile and less capable of flight.
By gathering more people in its pueblos; by adorning its churches with
gold and silver ornaments and fine altar pieces, and by pushing the
missionary effort into Muslim territory, the Spanish regime locked itself with
the Muslims into permanent war.
Thus, by a fortuitous combination of circumstances, the Christian

Filipinos were caught between oppression by their colonial masters, on the
one hand, and attack by their masters' enemies, on the other. It is a truism
that one of the essential elements of subjection is the loss of a people's right
to choose its foes and friends. The Muslim Filipino resistance to the Spanish
regime did not take the form of uprisings and revolts, but that of aggressive
forays and raids against an ancient enemy and its new colonial subjects.
The strongholds of the Muslim Filipinos, naturally enough, were Sulu and
Maguindanao. We have no early descriptions of Jolo or Sulu, but a 1599
perspective of Maguindanao (the early Spanish accounts almost invariably
call this area "Mindanao" or "island of Mindanao") has the following:
The island of Mindanao is almost three hundred leguas in

circumference. It is a land of slight elevation; although of good climate, it
is sparsely settled, and its inhabitants very warlike and inclined to arms.
Their only aim is to rob and kill. There is a scarcity of supplies in some
parts, though cinnamon is found in some districts, and a large quantity of
wax everywhere. Tortoise shells are also found. They weave cloth from
medrifiaque and some from cotton. All the inhabitants on the coast
profess the doctrine of Maoma, and those of the uplands are heathens.
Although it cannot be maintained [as a Spanish fort] without assistance,
still it is necessary to maintain it, in order to avert the injuries which on
the other hand would be received by the islands of the Pintados. It would
usually be necessary to bring an army for their defense, if the Spaniards
should abandon the island of Mindanao, and the chiefs rebel.
A 1579 list of all the villages along the Maguindanao river, with their
respective numbers of inhabitants, shows twentyeight of these settlements,
with only two (Tampacan and Balete).having a thousand or more people.
Most had between one hundred and two hundred. The total of inhabitants
was some 7,850. The population of Jolo could not have been much more. A
total of 16,000 people in the two sultanates, say, a maximum of 20,000
including women and children, would hold the Spaniards at bay. Their
descendants would retain their independence for three centuries.
The Muslim problem came up early before the Spanish regime. The
sixteenth century was almost a Spanish century, with Spain's incredible
conquests in the New World. The extravagance of nerve and outlook that led
the Spaniards to these achievements also led them, in Asia, to claim that the
jurisdiction. of their capital in Manila included China, to wit: “the island of
Luzon and the other Filipinas islands of the archipelago of China, and the
mainland of the same, whether discovered or yet to be discovered”! This
claimed jurisdiction also covered Borneo, among others. In 1603 Morga,
lieutenantgovernor of Filipinas, wrote: “the Filipinas are located in the
eastern ocean. Among the most famous of them are the islands of Maluco,
Celeves, Tendaya, Luzon, Mindanao, and Borneo, which are now called the
Filipinas.”
Moved by this hubris, a Spanish expedition set out to subjugate Borneo in
April 1578. Its chief town Mohala was taken, but Sultan Lijar (Seif urRijal)
escaped, to return after the enemy had left. From Borneo an expedition was
commissioned to reduce Jolo to Spanish rule, specifically because the
Joloanos raided the Visayas every year; the expedition was also instructed to
campaign against Maguindanao.
Rahayro (Raja Iro), Sultan of Jolo, acknowledged submission to Spain this
year. This was a tactical submission, and the Joloanos will resume their raids
later.
Another expedition was dispatched to Maguindanao in 1579. The

Spaniards reached the Pulangui River on 13 March, in pursuit of Datu
Dimansancay. He eluded his pursuers, and they pushed their way up river
laboriously. The people of the villages along the river were vassals of
Dimansancay; he gave them orders not to surrender. They mocked the
Spaniards and called them “rogues.” That Dimansancay had several villages
owing allegiance to him confirms that he was unlike the usual nonMuslim
barangay datus. The people of the Muslim barangays were also different.
During the latter days of this expedition, on 27 March, the Spaniards were in
Tampacan along the river, and the Maguindanao warriors were on the other
side. The latter loosed a round of arrows at the Spaniards. The Spanish
commander ordered his men to fire their guns. “Yet,” he noted, “they refused
to desist and sent another volley of arrows.” After twentyfour days the
Spaniards ran out of food and gave up the pursuit. They wrote a letter to
Dimansancay. This letter was written “in the Moro tongue” by Laquian, the
expedition's native Muslim interpreter.11
There is a hiatus in the accounts after these expeditions. Then in 1595 the
Maguindanaos and their allies, Muslims from Ternate, invaded the Visayas.
They took 1,500 captives. In retaliation, the Spaniards decided to subdue and
pacify the Maguindanaos once and for all. In the Spanish system, major
expeditions of discovery and conquest were royally sponsored and financed.
In order to save the king additional expenses, expeditions of reduction in
claimed territories were often contracted out to conquistadors, who would
recruit the men, raise the fleet, and pay for all costs, in return for
appointment as governor of the territory, grants of encomiendas, and other
privileges or concessions. This system was followed in this case.
The Spanish fleet under its conquistador sailed from Arevalo in 1596. The
Spanish soldiers were supported by 1,500 Christian Filipinos. The expedition
reached the Pulangui River, gateway to Maguindanao. The people of the first
village fled up river to Buayan (Buhayen, Buyahen), seat of the powerful Raja
Sirungan, half brother of Dimansancay. The Spaniards gave pursuit, passing
the village of Tampacan, ruled by Datu Buisan, until they reached Buayan.
Here they landed with great confidence, and “with but little order, for they
had not fought the Maguindanaos, and thought that it would be easy to rout
them.” The conquistador, clad in strong armor but leaving his helmet to a
bearer, joined his men. With a bodyguard of five soldiers, he sallied forth, but
fifty paces was all he took; his head was cleft in two by a kampilan, a long
and straightedged Muslim Filipino cutlass. The weapon was wielded by
Ubal, a leading datu.
The leaderless Spaniards retired, set up camp in Tampacan, and waited
for instructions from Manila. The regime decided to send a new commander,
and the force carried out raids against Buayan. But the Maguindanaos were
fighting on home grounds, in swampy country they knew; they had a number
of fortified positions with their own cannon and arquebuses; and so they were
able to harass the Spaniards. The stalemate weighed on the latter. They
planned to chastise the Maguindanaos in one major engagement, then break
camp and retire to La Caldera, Zamboanga, where they would establish a
fort.
Meanwhile, in 1597, Datu Buisan, successor of Dimansancay, was able to
negotiate assistance from Ternate. The Ternatans sent 1,000 fighting men
with artillery. The allies now carried the fight against the Spaniards in
Tampacan. The contest was hard fought, and soon turned into a bloody hand
tohand struggle with swords against kampilans. The Spanish defenders won,
and carried the fight to Buayan itself. At this point, Buayan submitted. The
people of Tampacan and Buayan arranged an alliance of friendship,,. sealed
by the marriage of the Raja Mura (presumptive heir to the sultanate) with a
daughter of Dongonlibor, a leading Tampacan chief. The victorious
Spaniards, with the remnants of the expedition, carried out their earlier
decision to go to La Caldera and there set up the fort, garrisoned with a
hundred soldiers.
La Caldera, near the tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula, was earlier also

called Cauit (or "hook," like Cavite in Manila Bay), sometimes La Canela –
or Cinnamon Point. It was a forward outpost, a fortified presidio,
strategically located to monitor movement in the waters including Ternate
and Maluco, but especially Jolo and Maguindanao. From La Caldera the
Spaniards went to Jolo, where the Sultan reiterated his pledge of submission.
After the main Spanish force retired, however, the uncle of the Maguindanao
sultan, brotherinlaw of the Sultan of Jolo, killed thirteen Spanish soldiers; a
punitive expedition was sent after him, and nineteen more Spaniards died. In
the face of these heavy losses, Manila ordered that further engagements be
avoided, for lack of men and resources.
The pledges of allegiance of Raja Iro of Jolo (1578) and the Raja Mura of
Maguindanao (1598) notwithstanding, the Muslims made the Spaniards pay
for their forays into their home land. In 1599 and 1600 the Visayas were
ravaged by raids. Churches were burned, chalices and images abused, and
captives taken. In 1602 the Maguindanao raiders infested the coasts near
Manila. The Muslim Filipinos were in fact encouraged by their agreements
with the Dutch and the English to fight the Spaniards. A witness records that
the Maguindanaos had one hundred boats to raid the Pintados and Cebu. The
overall leaders were Datu Buisan, the Raja Mura, and Raja Sirungan. The
raiding force was extraordinarily large, for one hundred men from each
village of Maguindanao had been mobilized. Actually, unexpected by the
Spaniards, the fleet divided into two, one attacking the Calamianes and
neighboring islands, and the other attacking Mindoro and the southern
Luzon coast.
The modern Jesuit historian De la Costa has a short account of the

Maguindanao raids of this decade, woven around the story of a Jesuit
captured by Datu Buisan in the 1603 raid on Leyte. An interesting dialogue
between Buisan and the datus of Leyte, on the former's invitation, is
summarized. Buisan asked whether the datus and their people, as well as the
people of Panay, Mindoro, and Balayan, who were all Spanish subjects, had
been protected by their Spanish masters. He told them that if they allied with
the Maguindanaos, it would be easy to rid themselves of the Spanish yoke;
after all the Spaniards were few and could be defeated, if the people of Leyte
united themselves.
He would send a fleet next year, and together they would drive the
Spaniards away from the whole island. The datus and Buisan entered into a
blood compact, drawing blood from each other and mixing it into a vessel of
liquor, from which each drank, thus becoming ritual brothers.
The account also reports on the treatymaking between the governor

general of Filipinas and the Maguindanaos, the latest one being in written
form, signed in Buayan in 1605. The Maguindanaos were allied to the
Ternatans. In 1606 a Spanish expedition, with Pampango and Tagalog
auxiliaries, invaded and defeated Ternate. This did not seem to have daunted
the Maguindanaos. Buisan sent a humble letter to the Spaniards, but in 1608
they again raided the Visayas, overrunning Leyte and Samar and taking rich
booty and captives.
The leaders of the Pulangui region at this time were Datu Buisan; the
Raja Mura, son of Dimansancay and presumptive heir to the leadership of
Maguindanao and Buayan; Raja Sirungan of Buayan who had charge of war
matters; and Datu Umpi. Although these chiefs were often rivals, they were
always united against the Spaniards.
Sirungan was regarded by the Spaniards as having the most power. The
following account by Chirino portrays him as an extraordinarily brave man.
Two galliots of Spaniards escorted the bride from Tampacan for her wedding
up river (supra):
when the escort was coming back downstream, Sirungan came out
unarmed to the riverbink in.full attire and with measured step, a fan in
hand, watching the galliots and soldiers go by, with an air of dignity and
hauteur. Upon recognizing him our soldiers, from the bravado of youth
and hatred for the enemy, set their fuses and fired some arquebuses (the
bullets aimed at his feet, out of chivalry); but although the bullets hit
nearby, his composure was undisturbed, he treated the matter with
unconcern, as if it was nothing but a joke.
Sirungan was brother to Ubal, who killed the Spanish conquistador in
1596. Sirungan was also known to be wily; he was not above assuring the
Jesuits that he intended to be baptized.
In 1616 the Maguindanaos organized a fleet of sixty caracoas, outriggered
vessels with thirty to forty rowers on each side. In October they struck at
Pantao in Camarines, site of the royal shipyard, guarded by troops and
artillery. They took the fort, burned the yards, the galleon and two tenders,
captured two Franciscan friars, and took the cannon. According to the
Spanish account, these cannon “are now in Jolo.” From this attack the raiders
took home some 400 captives. By 1621 there were no less than 10,000
Christians held captive in Maguindanao.
In 1618 the Camucones, a small partly Muslim group inhabiting the

islands between Palawan and Borneo, harassed the Visayas. The Camucones
were feared, for although they did not inflict much damage this time, they
never took captives, but always killed everyone they caught. In 1625 the
Camucones struck again, almost capturing the archbishop of Manila who was
then visiting the Visayas. The foray was not wasted, for they were able to
seize all his pontifical robes. They descended on Marinduque, slew a Jesuit
missionary, and used his skull as a drinking cup. Thence they proceeded to
Catbalogan in Samar, and despoiled the church of its silver and ornaments.
The inhabitants here were down with smallpox. The friar account says that,
true to their reputation, the Camucones “relieved them of their suffering by
cutting off their heads.” In 1666 the Spaniards sent an expedition against the
Camucones, who were subjects of Borneo. But they were boat people, “today
here and tomorrow there;” and the expedition was in vain. The Spanish fleet
awaited the Camucones' next move, and the latter sallied forth again; the
Spaniards pursued them, but lost half their ships in a storm.12
After a period of inactivity the Joloanos under Raja Bongsu set out in 1627
with 2,000 fighting men. His target was the Camarines shipyards, which had
been raided by the Maguindanaos in 1618. It was in full operation again,
commissioned to build two galleons, two or three galleys, and another two or
three brigantines. The shipyards were manned by some Spaniards with
native and Chinese workers; there was a large store of iron for nails, much
rice, artillery, and other supplies. The Joloanos surprised the defenders,
captured two ships, killed a few Spaniards, but kept a Spanish woman and
sixty Filipino captives.
The rest of the Spaniards took flight. The raiders spent a few days
feasting in the camp, loaded the captured artillery in their boats, plus all the
iron they wanted. They dumped 1,000 fanegas of rice into the sea. The Sultan
left a letter for the governorgeneral; the Spanish account says of this letter:
“and one of the seigniors of Europe could not apparently write more
prudently or in more just manner.”
The Sultan's letter informed the Spaniards that the raid was in retaliation
for the improper and insulting treatment received by an embassy he had sent
to Manila, including the seizure of three large and beautiful pearls belonging
to the Sultan. From Camarines the Joloanos attacked Bantayan Island, took
captives, and then Ormoc, where they pillaged the church and this time took
more than three hundred captives. A Spanish fleet from Cebu sped in pursuit
but was easily outdistanced, and it lost the raiders by nightfall. Raja Bongsu
and his men returned to Jolo in triumph.
Notice of the Joloano attack was brought from Cebu to Manila by a Jesuit,
with the commission to obtain authority for a retaliatory expedition as well
as additional soldiers and provisions to supplement the Visayas resources.
The order from Manila obtained, the resources of Arevalo and Cebu were
mobilized for the reprisal. Two squadrons composed of 200 Spaniards and
more than 1,600 Christian Filipinos embarked on thirty to forty caracoas; the
expedition adopted St. Francis Xavier as its patron. They reached Jolo on 22
April. Now luck was with the Spaniards. The Sultan and his fighting men
withdrew to the fort or cotta on the hill that overlooked the town, and twice
in previous years attacking Spanish forces were defeated in the fight for this
stronghold. But the business of Jolo, for it was the commercial center of the
region, was in the town on the plain by the river, with wares of gold, cloths,
and other trade goods. The town had an alcaiceria, a Chinese silk market.
The Spaniards put the town to the torch, took some artillery, recovered a
Spanish flag that the Joloanos had captured in Camarines, as well as 150
muskets and arquebuses. They burned the Joloano fleet.
Pursuant to the orders from Manila, the Spaniards looked for the tombs of
the sultans of Sulu. They found “three wonderful and splendid ones,” and
burned them. The conflict was not without ceremony. The instructions from
Manila had ordered the expedition not to attack the Sultan's fort on the hill,
since the Spanish force would not be strong enough. This explains why the
Joloano defense up to this point appeared to have been token, for they
apparently were waiting for a battle for the cotta, which they expected to win.
In any case, the governorgeneral had a letter in reply to the earlier one of
the Sultan, to be delivered by the Spanish commander after the town had
been destroyed. The Spanish account states that the Sultan received the
letter and replied, “as the senate of Venecia might have done, with more
courtesies and reasons of state.” The Sultari's letter was written by the
Spanish woman whom he had captured, of whom the Spanish account says he
had become very fond, refusing to deliver her in exchange for a ransom of
money. However, the account also says that the Sultan offered to return her
in exchange for the artillery pieces the Spaniards had taken, plus a slave
woman that the latter held. The Spaniards preferred to keep the artillery,
although they returned the slave. Their mission accomplished, they withdrew
and proceeded to Basilan, whose people were under Jolo influence, and
ravaged the place.
The instructions to the 1628 expedition not to attack the Sultan's cotta
were due to the Spanish governorgeneral's plans to mount an attacking fleet
that was equal to the task: “in order to destroy that enemy and conquer a
stronghold which nature has made in their island – so lofty and so difficult of
approach, that there is no better stone castle; for the approach to it is by one
path, and it has some artillery which defends it. The people are courageous
and warlike.” This conquest the governorgeneral decided to accomplish in
1630. The fleet that was mobilized was unusually large, for: “never has one
like it been made for the Yndias in these islands.” It consisted of about fifty
caracoas, twelve freight champans, one galley, and three brigantines. There
were 400 Spanish soldiers, and the entire fighting force numbered almost
3,000. The expedition assembled in Dapitan and sailed for Jolo on the 17th
March.
The expedition was a failure. The force landed in Jolo at dawn and began
the ascent to the cotta. The Joloanos defended stoutly, the Spanish
commander was wounded and fell tumbling downhill, some Spaniards were
killed, and others were wounded. They withdrew in disorder, and to speak
plainly, in the words of the Spanish account, “such terror entered into them
that they did not dare to attack again. The Spaniards returned to their ships,
cruised around the island and, as in other Spanish offensives in Muslim
territory, they attacked and burned the small settlements on the island
before leaving. They were caught in a violent storm, and “the Joloan enemy
were left triumphant, and so insolent that we fear that they will make an end
of the islands of the Pintados which are the nearest ones to them, and which
they infest and pillage with great facility:13
In 1634 the Maguindanaos swept through Ormoc, Soyor, Baybay,

Binnagan, Cabalian, and Canamucan; they met some resistance in Bohol and
Dapitan on their way home. The Camucones also raided Panay, attacking the
villages of Batan, Domayan, Mahanlur, Aklan, and Bahay.
The governorgeneral's report to the Spanish king in 1635 was a litany of
calamities:
the losses which these islands have suffered, during the past thirty
years and more, from Cachil Corralat, king of the great island of
Mindanao, from the kings of Jolo and Burney, and from the Camucones.
They have plundered the islands, and taken captive the poor Christian
Indians, selling them as their slaves, seizing the religious and the
ministers of the holy gospel, burning the villages, and devastating
everything. In the year when I arrived here, they did not content
themselves with taking captive more than twentyfive or thirty thousand
vassals of your Majesty.
But the Spaniards' fortunes were due for a change. The night of 25 May
1637 was a gala night in Manila. Soldiers rode on horseback through the city
streets brandishing torches. Their mounts were splendidly caparisoned. The
walls of the city were awash with lights. A triumphal procession took place in
the afternoon. A company of Spanish troops followed their captain at the
head of the parade; his shieldbearer marched amid several pages carrying
weapons captured in the great victory over the Maguindanaos. Another
company of soldiers followed in two orderly files; in between walked Filipinos
and some Sangleys who had been rescued from their Maguindanao captors.
Many of the Filipinos carried their rosaries. Behind followed the
Maguindanao captives, the men in chains and shackles. Then followed more
soldiers, including a company of Pampangos who had taken part in the
campaign. Wagons were full of muskets and arquebuses won from the enemy.
Artillery pieces, also captured, were pulled by ropes, and the largest piece
was drawn by four horses. Six boys carried six flags, all taken from Kudarat's
stronghold.
The governorgeneral, who had commanded the expedition, joined the

parade after a salvo from the cannon of the Bagumbayan gate in the walls. At
the triumphal arch a poem extolling him was read. The entire procession
halted in front of the cathedral. Here the governorgeneral dismounted,
entered the church, prostrated himself on the floor, and gave thanks to God.
Then he remounted, thanked the troops, and received their salutes. From
here he proceeded to the palacio del gobernador.
That was only the beginning of the Spanish celebrations, which lasted for
weeks. On the seventeenth June the cathedral was filled to overflowing for a
thanksgiving mass. On the same day, in the naval town of Cavite, the
children in the two schools were dismissed early in the afternoon. They were
actors in a play for the townspeople. The group from one school acted out the
role of Muslims defending their fort; the boys from the other took the more
heroic role of the attacking Christians. This play is called moromoro; it was
popular in the Philippines as part of the entertainment fare during town
fiestas (the Christians always won) until the 1940s. The game was restaged
the next day with flags and wooden and bamboo swords. The boy who played
the role of Sultan Kudarat is reported to have done so with admirable valor,
but the Christians were no less enthusiastic, and the boy was manhandled;
his head was cut and required five stitches to dress afterward.
The events leading to the jubilation of the Spaniards began in April 1636.
Tagal, a leading Maguindanao chief, had raided the islands from Cuyo to the
Calamianes to Mindoro, capturing friars; profaning church vestments,
vessels, and images; and seizing prize and captives. By past midDecember,
the raiding fleet was homebound southsouthwesterly off the coast of
Zamboanga, almost clear, after a profitable seven to eight months at sea.
Tagal had only to continue a few more leagues due south, round the island of
Basilan to avoid the Spanish fort of Zamboanga, and speed safely home.
Instead the raiders entered the strait between the southern tip of Zamboanga
and Basilan, under cover of night, and audaciously slipped by the fort at La
Caldera. The passage was successful.
Now there was nothing between the raiders and a celebrative

homecoming, except a Maguindanao custom. The Punta de Flechas is the
headland that divides the two bays of Illana and Dumanquilas; the point is a
hill of soft rock. "Flechas" means arrows, and the point was so called by the
Spaniards because the seaward side of the hill bristled with the arrows and
spears that victorious Maguindanao raiders must shoot and hurl before
proceeding home.
A slightly different version of the origin of this custom is as follows:
Between La Caldera and the river in the island of Mindanao, a great
point of land runs into the sea, which makes the coast dangerous and
very high. The sea beats violently against that cape, which is very
difficult to double. The Indians in passing offered it their arrows as a
sacrifice, praying it to allow them to pass. They shot them with so great
force that they made them enter, the rock, and hence it is called the
Punta de Flechas. One day the Spaniards burned a number of those
arrows to show their hatred of so vain a superstition; and in less than one
year more than four thousand were found there.
Tagal halted his force for his men to observe the custom. They let loose
showers of arrows and spears which bit into the soft rock, quivered, then
stuck still. While thus engaged, the raiders were overtaken by a fleet from
Zamboanga. In. the ensuing fight the Maguindanaos were at a disadvantage:
their boats were heavy with booty and captives. They could not escape. Tagal
was slain, along with about 300 of his men, and the captives were rescued.
In Manila, the Spaniards decided to bring the war to the Maguindanaos.
An expedition of 500 soldiers, of whom 150 were Pampangos, was mobilized;
the governorgeneral took command. The force reached Zamboanga on 22
February; all men confessed and took communion. They went to Punts de
Flechas, where they pulled out all the arrows and spears, burned them, and
purified the area by setting up several crosses. They renamed the place Punts
de San Sebastian. They sighted Maguindanao in March. Their first target
was Lamitan (approximately modern Magalang), Kudarat's chief village. The
vanguard of the Spanish force, with two field guns hauled ashore, won a
great victory on the 13th. The mosque was taken and purified; books of the
Koran, in Arabic, were burned; the Spaniards then heard mass. Sultan
Kudarat and his warriors took up defensive positions on a hill called Ylihan,
which overlooked the village. The rest of the Spanish force arrived on 16
March, and the contest was resumed in earnest. The first battle was hard
fought but the defenders held fast, and the Spaniards withdrew. The second
assault was successful. Kudarat was wounded and escaped. Fifty women of
the leading Maguindanao families, and many more men, were taken captive.
They were later sold in Manila, the proceeds going into the royal treasury.
After returning to Zamboanga, the Spaniards sent detachments to lay

waste the north coast of Mindanao until Caraga. “Eighty Spaniards, and
twenty Pampangos, with a thousand fighting Indians;” harried the land,
“burning the villages and grain fields, and destroying the trees, and cutting
off more than seventy heads.” On 20 August the governorgeneral wrote to
the Spanish king that the next year he planned to conquer the Maranao lake
area, “and even to bring down from his lofty stronghold the king of Jolo, and
reduce him to obedience to your Majesty.” He also had plans for an expedition
against Borneo.14
The 1637 expedition against the Maguindanaos marked the start of allout
war by the Spaniards, for “the sword was drawn, and the scabbard thrown
away.” The governorgeneral was true to his word, and prosecuted his plan
against Jolo in 1638. The Spanish fleet carried a large force of 500 Spanish
soldiers and 1,000 native warriors. There were eighty vessels in the fleet,
with oarsmen drafted by repartimiento. The attack force anchored on the
roadstead off Jolo on 4 January. Against them the forces of Sultan Raja
Bongsu numbered some 4,000 men, including allies from Macassar and
Borneo. As usual the latter retired to the cotta on the hill, with the queen and
some women and children. The fort was protected by ramparts with
earthwork parapets for the defenders' guns. The attackers were personally
led by the governorgeneral, fresh from his victory in Maguindanao.
It was to be a long and difficult contest. The Spaniards rushed the cotta in
the first engagement. They were repulsed. The Spanish account does not
report a second offensive until weeks later. Meantime, the Spaniards dug in
and began constructing a moat and stockade around the cotta. The second
assault was supported by mines exploded by the Spaniards in order to breach
the walls of the fort. But they had to withdraw some distance to the rear in
order to escape the blasts; when they advanced again the defenders would be
in position, and they would fall back anew, with casualties on both sides.
The weeks passed. Holy Week passed. The Spaniards mounted a third
assault; the fighting was close but the attackers had to withdraw, carrying
back their wounded. The Spaniards had now lost four of their best captains.
At this point the governorgeneral called off all further assaults on the cotta;
time was on their side. But the defenders were not passive. A force of about
fifty Spaniards and some 200 warriors from Caraga tried to establish a
flanking outpost; at night the Muslims slipped out and attacked the
detachment, killed twentysix of the enemy and took twenty guns with fuses,
powder, and balls. A fifth Spanish captain was killed in this sortie.
By now the besiegers had considerably strengthened their position. A

stockade and a ditch completely encircled the cotta, with three to six men
posted at intervals all around, so close they almost touched each other. There
was also a tall bulwark, higher than the cotta walls, so that the Spaniards
could aim their guns down into the interior of the fort. The Muslims
continued to defy the enemy; they would shout from the cotta walls, calling
the Spaniards “chickens” and “pigs.”
In the end it was neither valor and courage nor resolution and strategy
that settled the issue. In the first week of April, three months after the war
began, the defenders were doomed. News trickled out to the Spaniards that
disease had penetrated the walls of the fort. The warriors with their women
and children were weak from hunger, worse, they had been struck by
smallpox and “discharges of blood” possibly cholera or dysentery. Some of
the Sultan's allies inside the gate began to offer feelers for surrender,
probably with his permission. Tuambaloca, his queen, wrote to the governor
general with an offer of surrender and a plea for pardon. The latter
demanded an offer from Raja Bongsu himself, and the latter sued for peace
after which, he proposed, a discussion of terms would follow.
The governorgeneral astutely rejected this proposal and demanded

immediate delivery of weapons and other items earlier taken by the Muslims,
before talk of any surrender. The Sultan sent artillery pieces and muskets
together with a few Christian captives. He then came out of the cotta, was
received properly, formally acceded to the Spanish terms, and returned to the
fort to get his datus' consensus. After some delay he sent the queen to the
governorgeneral. She was treated graciously. Spanish flags were flown over
the cotta. (A stone fort manned by 400 soldiers, half Spaniard, half
Pampango, was later built in Jolo.) The Sultan, the queen, and the weary
warriors surrendered. However, between 17 and 19 April, they escaped in a
heavy downpour, leaving all their possessions behind.15
So far our story has dealt mostly with the Maguindanaos and Joloanos.
The other large community of Muslim Filipinos in modern times, the
Maranaos, figured in the wars during this era because the governorgeneral
had decided to conquer them. They were not yet converted to Islam at this
time, although they were tributary vassals of Kudarat, who had for some
time now been the recognized Sultan of neighboring Maguindanao. A Spanish
perspective of the Lake Lanao area at this time is as follows:
Inland from the coast which faces Bohol on the north of Mindanao,
and in the latter island, is located the lake of Malanao. Its shape is
triangular; one of its angles extends about four leguas eastward, another
southward for three, and the third and longest of all, westward. Its
shores contain many small villages, where live about six thousand
inhabitants, although united to them is the district of Butig, with about
two thousand warriors. Through this route they communicate with the
Mindanaos, a circumstance which renders them formidable. The land is
sterile, and yields no other products than rice and a few edible roots.
Their clothing is wretched, for cotton is scarce. All their textiles are of
larmte, a sort of wild hemp – not that it is that plant, but it resembles it
because of the fibers, which they obtain from a wild banana [i.e., abaca],
to which they impart a blue color. This constitutes their gala attire.
Heavy storms of wind and water are experienced on this lake, and are
called "mangas" by sailors.... This lake furnished such convenience to the
Mindanaos for their incursions, as the ports nearest to our islands were
easily reached by it. For since the deep bay of Panguil penetrates far
inland, and is quite near their lands, they thus save many leguas of
navigation – about one hundred – and a rough coast.
This note concludes that the raids of the Maranaos made a joke of the
Spanish fort in Zamboanga, which had been established as a brake to the
Muslims of Maguindanao and Jolo.
The Augustinian Recollects had been in charge of missionary work in the
area since the 1620s. They had made some progress and established a
mission in Bayug (the area around modern Iligan). From here they planned
to penetrate further into the Lake Lanao region, “a stronghold of
heathenism.” Their energetic friars set up missionary bases in the pueblos of
Cagayan (now Cagayan de Oro) and Linao (near Butuan). These activities
brought them into Sultan Kudarat's sphere of influence, making conflict
inevitable. The friar in Cagayan built it into a fortified village. It was
attacked by Kudarat's vassals, but the latter were repulsed. At this point
JesuitRecollect rivalry over missionary jurisdiction in the Lake Lanao
region, the details of which do not belong to this story, complicated the
Spanish campaign.
In 1639 a Spanish expedition encamped in Baloi, near the big lake. The
Spaniards met with the Maranao datus and demanded their submission; no
agreement was reached. The datus then discussed the situation by
themselves. They would not submit, although a tactical submission, good only
until the Spaniards left, was proposed by some. Another group held that 'if
the Spaniards were to gain control of the lake, they would establish and build
presidios there, and would have war craft on it, with which they would
entirely rule the natives, at their own pleasure.” This group maintained that
it was more important to resist than to allow their entrance. The war faction
prevailed, and hostilities began. The datus lost in the initial encounters.
Some fifty villages that were formerly subject to Kudarat were reduced. They
were made tributary to Spain, and were reported to have agreed not to accept
Muslim preachers or teachers; instead, they were to receive the friars and to
build churches. Moreover, their children and some relatives were to be taken
as hostages to Manila.
The Spaniards decided to build a fort with the end in view of establishing
a presidio to deny the area to Kudarat. Now the differences between the
Recollects and the Jesuits over “spheres of interest” delayed further Spanish
moves, but in October Manila dispatched a force of fifty Spaniards and 500
Boholanos to garrison the fort. The arrival of this force was not propitious.
The Maranaos had burned all the makeshift churches and uprooted the
Christian crosses. The return of the hostages with the Spanish detachment
somewhat assuaged them, but their hostility was clear because they stopped
their contributions to the building of the fort, and it stood half finished.
The reason for this change of mind was the personal intervention of
Sultan Kudarat. After his defeat the previous year he had retired to
Malabang, on the coast but easily accessible by river from Butig, to
recuperate. Here he summoned the Maranao datus. There are a Jesuit and a
Recollect account of Kudarat's words to the datus. Since these two religious
orders were rivals, but their accounts agree in virtually every detail, these
reports may be deemed reliable. Kudarat rebuked the datus for having
submitted to the Spaniards. He explained what had happened to the
Tagalogs and the Visayans as a consequence of submission to the Spaniards:
any Spaniard could trample them underfoot. Here, the accounts clearly show
Kudarat's familiarity with the system of repartimientos of forced labor
imposed by the Spaniards upon those people whom they had converted as
their fellow Christians.
Kudarat's “lecture” is remarkable. He is the first native leader cited in the
Spanish sources as having expressly bidden his followers to reflect on
concepts that modern intellectuals discuss as political obligation and political
liberty. He bade the datus to compare their lot with that of the subjugated
people of the Tagalog and Visayas regions, and to reckon, one against the
other, the cost of resistance and the value of liberty. His is the first recorded
instance of Filipino moral thinking on political issues.
In the Jesuit account, Kudarat is speaking.
What have you done? Do you know to what submission will reduce
you? A toilsome slavery to the Spaniards! Turn your eyes to the nations
that have submitted, look at the misery to which these once proud
nations have been reduced. Look at the Tagalogs, the Visayans. Are you
better than they? Or do you think that the Spaniards believe that you are
better men? Do you not see how any Spaniard tramples them underfoot?
You do not see how every day they are made to work at the oars, or how
they are exploited as workers in the Spaniards' building works, with all
the attendant rigor and toil. Will you suffer just anybody with some
Spanish blood to thrash you, or that he seize the fruit of your sweat and
labor?
Then submit to the Spaniards: tomorrow you will be at the oars. At
least I would be a pilot; this is a favor that they extend to chiefs. (But] do
not allow their pleasing words to fool you; every word they speak to you is
a deception until, step by step, they have you completely in their power.
Consider that they promised things to the chiefs of the other nations, and
did not honor their least undertaking until they became lords of them all.
Look at those chiefs now; see how the Spaniards rule them as subjects.
Kudarat, who was regarded as an oracle by the dates, convinced them; he
promised to help them fight and assured them likewise of help from Datu
Matundin, leader of Butig. They decided to take his advice and resist, and
here the Jesuit report has Kudarat explaining to the datus that the most that
they would lose by resistance would be “their harvests of one year, which is
not much, when at that price they would win their freedom, and ensure the
wellbeing of their posterity.”
The Recollect account is in narrative form:
He told them that they did not know to what that surrender bound
them, and that it was nothing else than a toilsome slavery under the
domination of the Spaniards. He bid them look at the nations subjected
to us, and these would be seen to be reduced to extreme misery. Let them
contemplate the Tagalogs and the Visayans whom any Spaniard could
trample underfoot; and if they were not of better stuff than these, they
must not expect better treatment. They would be obliged to row, to toil at
the shipbuilding, and on other public works, and would only experience
severe treatment in doing these.
With these commonplace arguments, and without reflecting on the

tyrannical dominion of Corralat, the latter reduced those unhappy
creatures to the last stage of desperation. He offered to give them his aid,
and to employ the strength of his kingdom in their defense [saying that]
even if the Spaniards were successful, it meant only the loss, of harvests
for one year; but that they would obtain their liberty at that small cost.
The lake area leaders united their forces and attacked the Spanish fort.
The contest quickly developed into a siege. Although the defenders fought
bravely, time was against them, for provisions ran low. A force sent from
Butuan to lift the siege was ambushed by warriors of Butig and 4,000
Muslims sent by Kudarat. By the twentyninth day of the siege the Spaniards
were desperate. The Maranaos were preparing to burn down the fort; the
defenders had no food; they now. had. only the wine and the hosts for the
mass. They resolved to take their last communion and prepared for death.
Fortunately for them, another relief force arrived in time, and the siege was
raised. The Spaniards retired, but first they burned and destroyed the
settlements and fields around the lake. Then they left for the coast, and built
a fort on the bar of the Iligan River, the outlet of Lake Lanao to the sea.
The victory of the Maranaos under Kudarat's inspiration is historic. The
region would not be disturbed by the Spaniards again until late in the
nineteenth century. It would remain under Kudarat's influence for a long

time more. Above all, due to Kudarat's wisdom and leadership, the beautiful
Lake Lanao country was saved for Islam, and the Maranaos became the third
important group of Muslim Filipinos.16
By the 1640s the edge in the costly war seemed to be with the Muslim
side. This became even clearer in the year 1662, when the regime would be
forced to dismantle its forts and presidios in the south. An informal truce
period began in the early 1670s following the death of Sultan Kudarat.
Meantime the Joloanos, who were traditionally allied with the Borneans,
resumed their raids in 1640. The friar accounts of the Muslim raids of 1640
1643 are bloodcurdling, highlighted by superstitious explanations of natural
phenomena. In 1640, according to one account, the era of raids was presaged
by heavenly signs, followed by the eruption of a volcano near Cape San
Agustin (extreme southern point of the Davao Peninsula); ashes were cast
and thrown as far as Cebu. Another volcanic eruption took place on an islet
near Jolo. There was a furious typhoon in Luzon. Then an earthquake
swallowed three mountains; so strong was the noise that it could be heard as
far as Maluco, Cambodia, and China!
In 1645 the Joloanos celebrated the replacement of the governorgeneral
who had pressed them so hard. They campaigned three fleets and raided
everywhere virtually without opposition.
Kudarat was quiescent. He signed a treaty of peace with Manila in 1645,
and had even persuaded Butria Bongsu, Sultan of Jolo, to enter into a peace
with the Spaniards a year later. But the Raja Mura of Jolo, Sarikula, and his
allies the Guimbanons (people of the interior of Sulu Island), fielded their
own raiding fleets. During this era, also, the Dutch were increasing their
pressure on the Spaniards, abetting the Muslim Filipinos and encouraging
the Christians to revolt. The Dutch threat, however, finally ended with the
peace in Europe, signed in Munster in 1649.
The period 16491655 was a calamitous period of Muslim raids. “Without
fear of our arms,” according to a friar account, “they overran these seas at
will, trusting their security to their swiftness; for their boats were built on
purpose for piracy, and ours compared to theirs of lead.”
Kudarat regarded his treaties of peace as devices to secure himself against
attack, while biding for time and opportunity. In 1655 it was his turn to
proclaim allout war, inviting the Joloanos, Borneans, and Tidorans to join in.
The war lasted until 1668. “There was not a single instant of rest; so
shameless that ruin was seen almost at the very gates of Manila.”
The intensification of the Muslim raids, the revolts and their aftermath in
Luzon and the Visayas, found the regime in desperate straits in 1662. This
year the Chinese adventurer Koxinga (also Kuesing) overran and took
Formosa and sent a Dominican friar as his envoy to Manila, demanding
tribute from the Spaniards. The regime was bankrupt. In order to
concentrate its resources against this new threat, the regime decided to
abandon the forts of Zamboanga, Calamianes, Iligan, and Sabanilla (this last
was the outpost against the Maranaos, located in Tuboc or Tubod south of the
lake). The Zamboanga fort was accordingly turned over to the friendly
Lutaos. This meant that the strategic base would not be used against the
Muslims. When Alonso Macombon, the Lutao chief, solemnly took possession
of the Spanish installations and was asked to swear fidelity to Spain and to
defend the fort against the enemies of the Spanish king, he did so, but not
with respect to Sultan Kudarat.17
The abandonment of the forts did away with the outposts that sometimes
deterred the Muslims. Their worth as deterrents against the Muslims was
questionable, for in truth these forts “defend only a small space, and the sea
has many roads.” Linao and Libot, two chiefs of Sulu, and Sacahati, a chief of
TawiTawi, took to the Pintados, Masbate, and Batangas, and outsailed every
pursuing Spanish force. Many of the Lutaos left Zamboanga for Cebu or
Dapitan and other parts of Mindanao, and reverted to Islam. A Spanish
history of the Muslim wars says of this era that for a half century, no year
passed without the Christian villages of Mindanao and the Visayas suffering
enormous material losses and people being taken into slavery:
Wherever one looked could be seen pueblos ruined, churches sacked,
and unfortunate natives killed, their defensive efforts unavailing against
the increasing savagery of the ferocious Muslims, in spite of the
continuous encounters between their fleet craft and the Armada of the
Pintados, the latter composed of some one hundred boats built for the
specific purpose of pursuing the raiders.
The most lasting significance of the temporary weakness of the colonial
regime and of the loss of the southern forts was that Sulu and Maguindanao
were afforded precious time to consolidate: to strengthen the institutions of
the sultanate under conditions of reduced external pressures, and sometimes
to extend their influence and jurisdiction. Maguindanao became the most
extensive indigenous political dominion in the history of the Filipinos. From
the Pulangui region which was the heart of the sultanate, the sway of
Maguindanao reached all along the coast to Zamboanga in the north, and
downward to the bay of Sarangani and around to the Davao Gulf in the
south. Inland, the Maguindanao hegemony was secure; from west and
northeast of the bay of Panguil along the north coast of Mindanao until the
old province of Caraga, only the presidio settlements remained under
Spanish authority.
In 1671 a historic event took place: the death of Sultan Kudarat. He was
over ninety years old. He was the son of Datu Buisan, leader of the 1603 raid
on Leyte, his mother was named Imbog. He ruled as sultan for a half century.
A friar account roundly damns him with praise; Kudarat was: “the
thunderbolt of Lucifer, the scourge of Catholicism, and the Attila of the
evangelical ministers.” His understanding of the meaning of Spanish rule
over its subjects was both rare and profound. He recognized that people must
sacrifice and pay the price of freedom, but he always deemed that price to be
cheap, and thus he taught his people. As a warrior he fought the enemy on
equal terms. His death was followed by a truce which lasted many years, for
he had charged his successors to keep the peace. The leaders in Sulu
respected Kudarat's counsel on this point because, in the appreciation of a
Spanish friar, “all the Moro tribes of these regions reverenced Corralat as if
he was Mahoma himself. For he was a Moro of great courage, intelligence,
and sagacity, besides being exceedingly zealous for his accursed sect....”
Sultan Kudarat deserves recognition, until nowwithheld, as one of the

Filipino nation's earliest authentic heroes.18
The long period of peace also helped Sulu, in an unexpected way. An
opportunity for intervention in Brunei was exploited by the Sultan to obtain
not only some artillery pieces from his relative the Sultan of Brunei, but also
the bonus of the cession of what is now the modern Sabah. Majul places this
“in the middle of the second half of the seventeenth century.”19
This was the basis of the Philippine Government claim, during the 1960s,
of sovereignty over North Borneo. But the claim was made at precisely the
time when an independent state of Malaysia was being formed. North Borneo
was crucial to the new Malaysia; without it the latter would have an
overriding Chinese majority in its population, because Singapore was to be
part of Malaysia. The United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan had
interests in the new state based on global strategic considerations. The claim
would be pursued, if at all, in diplomatic isolation. The future of the
Philippine claim, into the 1980s, was not bright.
The archipelago during the eighteenth century was divided into three
established dominions: the sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu, and the
Spanish kingdom of Filipinas.
Notes
The first quotation is from "Insurrections by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," BR,
XXXVIII, 142. The second quotation is Francisco Combes, Historic de Mindanao y Jolo, Retana
ed. (1897), 164165 – this work was first published in 1667; there is a similar version in Luis de
Jesus, BR, XXXV, 108.
1 Re note on the Visayas revolts: "Insurrections by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," ibid.,
XXXVIII, 100. Re 1589: "Instructions to Comez Perez Dasmarinas," ibid., VII, 166. Re Pardo
de Tavera on earlier revolts: ibid., L, 164, Note 95.
2 Re chiefs' complaints: "Letter from Domingo de Salazar to Felipe II," ibid., V, 188191. Re

Manila in late 1580s: Salazar and others, ibid., VII, 3233.
The principal account of the plot is in "Conspiracy Against the Spaniards," ibid., 95111.
3 Re governorgeneral's 1589 report: "Letter from Santiago de Vera to Felipe II;" tbid., 8385.
4 Re 1589 Cagayan revolts: "Ayala to Felipe II;" ibid., 123, 135; and Dasmarinas, ibid., VIII,
141. See also, for 15971598, Morga (1961), 6263. Re 16071608: Aduarte, BR, XXXI, 267
271. Re 16211622 ibid., XXXII, 112122. Re 1625: "Silva to Felipe IV," ibid., XXII, 69, 95.
Re 16251626: Aduarte, ibid., XXXII, 147152. Re 16271628: "Relation of 16271628,"
tbid., XII, 211. Re 1630: Medina, ibid., XXIII, 233234. Re 1639: 'The Dominican Missions,
16351639," tbid., XXXV, 4851.
5 Re Dutch: "Recollect Missions, 16461660," ibid., XXXVI, 126127; "Affairs in Filipinas,
16441647," {bid,, XXXV, 227249, 252275; "The AugusHnians in the Philippines, 1641
1670," ibid., XXXVII, 159, 167169; "Recollect Missions in the Philippines, 16611712,"
ibid., XLI, 108.
Re summary of trade: "Crauy Monfaleon's Informatory Memorial of 1637," ibid., XXVII,
187197.
Re San Diego: 'The Augustiniana in the Philippines, 16411670," ibid., XXXVII, 211212.
6 Re Palapag and Samar revolt: "Jesuit Missions in 1656," ibid., XXVIII, 9293; "Insurrections
by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," ibid., XXXVIII, 114128.
7 Re Pampanga and revolt: ibid., 140161; Ferrando and Fonseca, III, 6769. Re related matters:
"San Agustin's Letter on the Filipinos," BR, XL, 252; Medina, ibid., XXIII, 244, 290.
8 Re Pangasinan and revolt: "Description of the Philippinas Islands," ibid., XVIII, 9799;
"Insurrections by the Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century;' ibid., XXXVIII, 161181;
Ferrando and Fonseca, III, 7073.
Re Ilocos revolt: "Relation of the Philipinas Islands;' ibid., BR, VII, 37; Dasmarinas, ibid.,
VIII, 105109; "Description of the Philippinas Islands;" ibid., XVIII, 99100; Medina, ibid.,
XXIII, 277279; "Relation of the Philipinas Islands;' ibid., XXXIV, 382383.
9 The quotation is from: "Insurrections by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," ibid.,

XXXVIII, 212.
10 The quotation on loyalty to Islam is from: "Affairs in the Philipinas Islands," ibid., V, 225.
11 Re Maguindanao and villages: "Military Affairs in the Islands," ibid., X, 225226;
"Expeditions to Borneo, jolo, and Mindanao," ibid., IV, 282283.
Re Morga's definition of Filipinas: Morga (1961), 1; and "Foundation of the Audiencia at
Manila," in BR, V, 275.
Re expedition to Borneo and other early expeditions: "Expeditions to Borneo, jolo, and
Mindanao;' ibid., IV, 148343.
12 Re 1595 expedition to Maguindanao and aftermath: Bartolome Argensola, "Conquest of the
Malucas Islands;' ibid., XVI, 270274 the report on the matchmaking and wedding in this
source differs from that in Majul, 114; "Glorious Victories Against the Moros of
Magindanao," BR, XXD(, 9093 this account exaggerates; and Morga (1961), 5562, 8890,
140145, 179181.
Re 1599 and 1600 raids: "Complaint of the Cabildo of Manila Against Morga;' BR, XI,
238239.
Re Buisan and Maguindanao raids: H. de la Costa, "A Spanish Jesuit Among the
Magindanaos;' Proceedings of the First International Conference of Historians of Asia (1%2),
7399.
Re Sirungan: Chirino, Chap. 36.
Re 1616 raid: "Grau y Monfalcon's Informatory Memorial," BR, XXVII, 195.
Re Camucones raid of 1618: "Events in the Filipinas Islands," ibid., XVIII, 79. Re
captives: "Memorial and Relation of the Filipinas," ibid., XIX, 264. Re Camucones raid of
1625: "Relation of 1626," ibid., XXII, 132134. A description of the Camucones and their
other raids is in "Glorious Victories Against the Moros of Mindanao," ibid., XXIX, 98100.
13 Re Joloano raids and counter expedition: "Relation of 16271628," ibid., XXII, 203211. Re
1630 expedition: "Relation of 16291630," ibid., XXIII; 8788.
14 Re 1634 raids: "Conflicts Between Civil and Ecclesiastical Authorities," 16351636, ibid.,
XXV, 153155; Joseph Torrubia, Disertacibn histbrico polttica (1736), 23. Re the governor
general's report: "Letters from Corcuera to Felipe IV," BR, XXVII, 346347.
Re 1637 festivities: "Corcuera's Triumphant Entry into Manila," ibid., 330340. Re raids
and Spanish retaliation: "Defeat of Moro Pirates," ibid., 215222; The Conquest of
Mindanao," ibid., 253305; "Events in Filipinas, 16361637," ibid., 316325; "Letters from
Corcuera to Felipe IV," ibid., 346359; "Fortunate Successes in Filipinas and Terrenate,"
16361637," ibid., XXIX, 118133; and. Torrubia, 3639.
Re Tagal's defeat: A different detail on the Spanish victory over Tagal is in H. de la Costa,
The Jesuits in the Philippines (1961), 384.
Unlike our account, attributed to a Jesuit writing in 1637 from Dapitan (BR, XXVII, 216
217), which says that Tagal "actually passed, in the darkness of night, before the fort at
Sanboangan, in the strait which is made by the said island with Basilan," De la Costa writes
that "Tagal's armada, laden with spoils, had sought to avoid an encounter with the forces of the
Zamboanga fort by sailing around Basilan island in the south instead of through the strait."
Consequently, this latter account says, the Spaniards sent a force speeding toward Punta de
Flechas, arriving there ahead of Tagal, and lay an "ambush" for him. This De la Costa
account explains that a friendly Lutao datu had sighted the Tagal fleet, and he "flew to
Zamboanga with the news." This explanation needs a closer look. If the Lutao had seen
the Tagal force south of or rounding Basilan island, it would have taken him time to "fly"
north to alert his friends or masters in Zamboanga. By the time he would have reached
Zamboanga, the Tagal group would also have been in the open sea to the north, more or less
abreast of the exit from Basilan Strait. Since it would have required time for the Spaniards
after receipt of the Lutao's news to muster and ready the pursuit party, this Spanish force and
the Tagal fleet would have sighted each other before either reached the Punta de Flechas.
There are other alternatives, under any of which the Spaniards could have literally ambushed
Tagal. However, our source positively states that the Maguindanao raiders discharged their
arrows and spears into the hill, in the course of which they were overtaken by the pursuing
Spanish party.
15 Re 1638 expedition against Jolo: "Corcucra's Campaign in Jolo;" ibid., XXVIII, 4163.
16 Re campaign against Maranaos: "The Recollect Missions, 16251640," ibid., XXXV, 92112;
this is a continuation of the Luis dc Jesus chronicle, and the Recollect report on Kudarat's
"lecture" is on pp. 107108. The Jesuit report is in Combos, 164165.
17 Re period of 16401668: "[Recollect] Missions in the Philippines, 16611712," BR, XLI, 104
113.
Re Koxinga: "Events in Manila, 16621663," ibid., XXXVI, 218219.
Re abandonment of the forts: "Moro Pirates and their Raids in the Seventeenth Century;'
ibid., XLI, 311316; Torrubia, 4347.
18 Re ensuing raids, and Kudarat's death: "Moro Pirates and their Raids in the Seventeenth
Century," ibid., XLI, 315322 Francisco Combes, "The Natives of the Southern Islands," BR,
XT, 126129, has background material on the Sulu and Maguindanao sultans. This BR
material is an excerpt from the 1897 edition of Combos' Historia de Mindanao y Jnlb.
Torrubia, 3638, calls Kudarat "the Barba Roja of these islands."
19 Re cession of Sabah: Majul, 176184.

Christian Revolts, Muslim Raids

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Christian Revolts, Muslim Raids

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THE ROOTS OF THE FILIPINO NATION by Onofre D.

There was a very interesting plot in the latter 1580s. It is interesting

There were other grievances. If the common people complained to the

however, Amarlangagui and Salalila had Christian first names, both

The Spaniards acted quickly. Of the twenty­five principales who were

This plot is referred to in the sources as the “conspiracy of the Tondo

It is also useful to note that although the immediate causes of the

In 1594 a reported 45,000 inhabitants were under the regime, their

Religion and tribute collection were interwoven as causes of the more

Pilitan. This was beautiful country, described in a Dominican history as

The governor­general's report in 1630 presented an unstable situation:

It was learned afterward that they proceeded with their frenzied

The valley of Cagayan would not be effectively conquered until after

The call on the Filipinos' resources and services naturally intensified

was unfortunate twice over: it was exposed to Muslim raids, and it was a

addition to Spaniards, 400 Lutaos (natives of the Zamboanga peninsula,

surrender, but he was betrayed by some of his former followers, who

Pampangos manned the principal Spanish presidios: in Cebu, Arevalo,

The governor­general handled the matter adroitly. He gathered twelve

Pangasinan up to this era was still largely unexplored. The friar

The uprising in Pangasinan started with a minor disturbance in the

village of Malunguey, and by mid­December 1660 had spread to the new

kill all Spaniards. The rebels encountered valorous resistance from a

The Spanish force hastily marched from Narvacan to Bacarra, with

In the proceedings following these uprisings, the following principales

Perhaps the most meaningful words written of the colonized Filipinos

The reason which they give – to our shame and confusion – is that

Of course it was also obvious that the Muslims resisted submission

Thus, by a fortuitous combination of circumstances, the Christian

The island of Mindanao is almost three hundred leguas in

Another expedition was dispatched to Maguindanao in 1579. The

La Caldera, near the tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula, was earlier also

The modern Jesuit historian De la Costa has a short account of the

The account also reports on the treaty­making between the governor­

In 1618 the Camucones, a small partly Muslim group inhabiting the

In 1634 the Maguindanaos swept through Ormoc, Soyor, Baybay,

The governor­general, who had commanded the expedition, joined the

Now there was nothing between the raiders and a celebrative

After returning to Zamboanga, the Spaniards sent detachments to lay

By now the besiegers had considerably strengthened their position. A

The governor­general astutely rejected this proposal and demanded

With these commonplace arguments, and without reflecting on the

nineteenth century. It would remain under Kudarat's influence for a long

Sultan Kudarat deserves recognition, until now­withheld, as one of the

2 Re chiefs' complaints: "Letter from Domingo de Salazar to Felipe II," ibid., V, 188­191. Re

9 The quotation is from: "Insurrections by Filipinos in the Seventeenth Century," ibid.,

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The Spaniards acted quickly. Of the twentyfive principales who were

The governorgeneral's report in 1630 presented an unstable situation:

The governorgeneral handled the matter adroitly. He gathered twelve

village of Malunguey, and by midDecember 1660 had spread to the new

The account also reports on the treatymaking between the governor

The governorgeneral, who had commanded the expedition, joined the

The governorgeneral astutely rejected this proposal and demanded

Sultan Kudarat deserves recognition, until nowwithheld, as one of the

2 Re chiefs' complaints: "Letter from Domingo de Salazar to Felipe II," ibid., V, 188191. Re