History of the Philippine Islands (Vol. 1&2). Joaquín Martínez De Zúñiga
whose employment or amusement consists in preventing, by certain means peculiar to itself, the delivery of a woman in labour. To counteract the malignity of this spirit, the husband, fastening the door, reduces himself to a state of complete nudity, lights a fire, and arming himself with his sword, continues to flourish it furiously, until the woman is delivered. The tigbalang is another object of which they stand in great awe. It is described as a phantom, which assumes a variety of uncouth and monstrous shapes, and interposes its authority, to prevent their performing the duties, prescribed by our religion.
These and other superstitions, formerly had extensive influence, and are still resorted to by impostors, who find their account in persuading those, who are silly enough to listen to them, that they are able to cure them of dangerous illness, or to recover any thing they may have lost, by having recourse to such absurdities; and so much do the love of life, and our own individual interests prevail, that although they believe these customs sinful, and although they do not entirely give credit to their efficacy, yet they put them in practice, because, they say, chance may be in their favour: this is a proof that as yet they are very superficial christians14. Indeed, all their religious impressions, seem rather the result of a slavish dread, than the effect of rational piety.
They practise no external adoration, and have no other form of address to their gods, than what has been mentioned. They do not believe, that the good will be rewarded, or the wicked punished, but they acknowledge the immortality of the souls of the deceased, and that they are capable of doing them mischief. They persuade themselves, that these retain all the natural wants incident to the mortal state, and accordingly, place on their tombs, clothes, arms, and food, and on the fourth day, when the funeral ceremony is performed, a vacant seat is left at the table for the deceased, whom they believe to be actually present, though not obvious to sight. To prove this, sand is strewed on the floor, on which the prints of the feet of the deceased are often found. This may be presumed, to be the pious trick of some of the friends, but it answers the purpose, of inducing a belief in the actual presence of the party; and in order to deprecate the injury he may do, offerings of eatables are made to him, and which ceremony, is perfectly conformable, to the cowardly and timorous nature of the Indians.
CHAPTER III.
ANNO DOM. 1519 to 1564.
Comprising the Discovery of the Philippines.
After the conquest of the Americas, and discovery of the South Sea, Hernando de Magellan, a Portuguese, affirmed there must be a communication with that sea by the antarctic pole, and proposed to his sovereign, to make the discovery by the route of the Moluccas. The king, Don Manuel of Portugal, either not believing there was such a passage, or prejudiced against Magellan, received his proposal with contempt. This disgusted him, and he came into Spain, where, at Saragossa, he was presented to Charles V., to whom he promised the complete discovery of the Moluccas, and the adjacent islands, within the Spanish line of demarcation, by a distinct route from that used by the Portuguese, pursuing his object by the expected antarctic passage to the South Sea. By the brief of Pope Alexander VI., expedited at Rome the 4th of May 1493, Magellan secured a patent, attaching such discoveries to the crown of Castile. This brief enjoined, that the globe should be equally divided, by a line drawn from the north, by the isles of the Azores, towards the south, embracing the conquests, which formed the western boundaries of the Atlantic; the portion to the west, to belong to the crown of Spain, and leaving to the crown of Portugal, the hemisphere to the eastward of this line. Having discovered the Brazils, however, and the king of Portugal being desirous of preserving it, he requested his Holiness, that the line might be drawn, four hundred and sixty leagues more to the westward of the Azores, in order, that no other power, might interfere with that valuable acquisition. The line was so drawn on the map, and the Moluccas, were accordingly, placed out of the line of territory, thus appropriated to the Portuguese, and within that of Spain15: they were not able, however, at that time, to adjust the other point as to the route; but the Cape of Good Hope, interposing in their voyages to India, it was not doubted, that America might be like this hemisphere, and finish also in a cape, and passage to the South Sea. The desire of the Spaniards to take possession of the Spice Islands, or, as they were called, the Moluccas, instigated them to ascertain the truth of this conjecture; and a squadron of five ships, was fitted out for that purpose, viz. La Trinidad, in which Magellan himself embarked; San Antonio, La Concepcion, Santiago, and La Victoria; the whole manned with two hundred and thirty-four men, and paid and victualled for two years.
Magellan sailed from Seville with this armament on the 10th of August 1519, and on the 13th of December he arrived at the Brazils, and coasting the land in quest of the expected passage to the South Sea, on Easter day, he entered the Bay of Saint Julian, in fifty degrees of south latitude, where he intended remaining, finding the winter had commenced in those regions. Here his people mutinied, upon an idea that their provisions were exhausted, and that it was impossible to discover the pass they were in search of. Magellan quelled this mutiny; but immediately after understood, that another had broken out in the ship San Antonio, and that the crew had murdered the commander, and confined his cousin Alvaro de Mesquita, who was made captain on the arrest of Juan de Cartagena. The leader on this occasion was Gaspar de Quezada, whom he ordered to be hanged; and setting on shore a Franciscan friar and Juan de Cartagena, on account of their turbulent disposition, he sailed in prosecution of his voyage, by the much desired pass to the South Sea. On the 1st of November 1520, he discovered the straits which bear his name; and having occupied twenty days in passing through them, he found himself in the South Sea with three ships, the Santiago having been wrecked, and having separated from the San Antonio, which his cousin commanded, and which, by the route of the coast of Guinea, returned to Spain. Magellan, with fair winds and pleasant weather, ploughed that sea, which never before had been navigated. Uninterrupted in the pursuit of his object, he discovered, on the Sunday of Saint Lazarus, a great number of islands, which he named the Archipelago of Saint Lazarus; and on Easter Day, he arrived at the island of Mindanao, where he ordered the first mass which was said in the Philippines. This took place in the town of Batuan, in the province of Caraga, where he set up the cross, and took possession of these islands, in the name of the King of Spain.
From Batuan, Magellan proceeded to Zebu, and, in passing the island of Dimasaua, he formed an alliance with its chief, who accompanied him to Zebu. The inhabitants of Zebu, received him with such kindness, that their king, Hamabar, his whole family, with the chief of Dimasaua, and many of the people of the island, were baptized. The King of Mactan alone, a very small island in front of the town of Zebu, resisted the Spaniards, and was sufficiently confident in his strength, to challenge Magellan, who was weak enough to accept the challenge. He selected for the enterprize fifty Spaniards, who attacked the Indians in morasses, the water up to their breasts, and approached so near them, that Magellan was wounded with an arrow, and died on the field with six other Spaniards, the rest saving themselves by flight.
The friar Calancha, an Augustine, remarks in his history of Peru, that all those engaged in the discovery of the South Sea, came to no very enviable end: for, that a seaman of the name of Lopez, who was the first that beheld it from the mast-head, renounced his faith, and turned Moor. Basco Nunez de Balbua, who took possession of those regions, lost his head; and Magellan himself, finished his days in the abovementioned manner. I can add, that almost all those, who have been concerned in the discovery of the Philippines, have suffered so much, that the history of these islands, forms a tissue of tragedies.
On the death of Magellan, the Spaniards chose Juan Serrano as Commander of the expedition; and, alarmed at their defeat at Mactan, they remained on board their ships, apprehensive of the treachery of the other Indians. In fact, the people of Zebu, began to think lightly of the strangers, whom they had hitherto considered as invincible, and proceeded to plan their destruction. Abundantly deceitful by nature, they concealed their designs, and succeeded in persuading our General to be present, with twenty-four Spaniards, at a feast, which the chief of Zebu had prepared for him. In the middle of the feast, a great number of armed Indians, whom Hamabar had concealed, rushed in, and murdered them all, Serrano alone excepted, who escaped to the sea side, and implored the