Part 16 (1/2)
See also First Voyage Around the World, Antonio Pigafetta.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 33, p. 105, for description of how the palm sap was obtained, oil made, and of other uses of the coconut.
[57] Relacion, Miguel de Loarca; June, 1582.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 5, pp. 34-188.
Conquest of the Island of Luzon. Manila, April 20, 1572.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 3, p. 171.
[58] Relation and Description of the Philippine Islands, Francisco de Sande; Manila, June 8, 1577.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 4, p. 98.
”Cotton is raised abundantly throughout the islands. It is spun and sold in the skein to the Chinese and other nations, who come to get it. Cloth of different patterns is also woven from it, and the natives also trade that. Other cloths, called medriniques, are woven from the banana leaf.” (Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, Antonio de Morga; Bl. and Rb., Vol. 16, p. 106.)
Cotton was woven into sail. ”The canvas (lienzo) from which the sails are made in the said islands is excellent, and much better than what is s.h.i.+pped from Espana, because it is made from cotton. There are certain cloths (lienzos) which are called mantsa from the province of Ilocos, for the natives of that province manufacture nothing else, and pay your Majesty their tribute in them. They last much longer than those of Espana.” (Philippine s.h.i.+ps and s.h.i.+pbuilding, Sebastian de Pineda, 1619.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 18, p. 178.)
[59] Relation of the Western Islands called Filipinas, Diego de Artieda, 1573.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 3, p. 203.
Fray Rada's Opinion, Guido de Lavezaris and others, Manila, June, 1574.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 3, p....
”The island of Zubu produces a small quant.i.ty of rice, borona, and millet and little or no cotton; for the cloth which the natives use for their garments is made from a kind of banana. From this they make a sort of cloth resembling colored calico, which the natives call medrinaque (Relacion, Miguel de Loarca, June, 1582.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 5, pp. 43-45.)
[60] T. H. Pardo de Tavera, Census, 1903, Vol. I, p. 329.
[61] Ibid. ”The women have needlework as their employment and occupation, and they are very clever at it, and at all kinds of sewing. They weave cloth and spin cotton, and serve in houses of their husbands and fathers. (Antonio de Morga, Sucesos.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 16, p. 79.)
[62] ”Their houses are constructed of wood, and are built of planks and bamboo, raised high from the ground on large logs, and one must enter them by means of ladders. They have rooms like ours; and under the house they keep their swine, goats, and fowls.” (Antonio Pigafetta, First Voyage Around the World.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 33, p. 153.)
”The houses and dwellings of all these natives are universally set upon stakes and arigues (i. e., columns) high above the ground. Their rooms are small and the roofs low. They are built and tiled with wood and bamboos, and covered and roofed with nipa-palm leaves. Each house is separate, and is not built adjoining another. In the lower part are enclosures made by stakes and bamboos, where fowls and cattle are reared, and the rice pounded and cleaned. One ascends into the houses by means of ladders that can be drawn up, which are made from two bamboos. Above are their open batalanes (galleries) used for household duties; the parents and (grown) children live together. There is little adornment and finery in the houses, which are called bahandin.
”Besides these houses, which are those of the common people, and those of less importance, there are the chiefs' houses. They are built upon trees and thick arigues, with many rooms and comforts. They are well constructed of timber and planks, and are strong and large. They are furnished and supplied with all that is necessary, and are much finer and more substantial than the others. They are roofed, however, as are the others, with the palm-leaves called nipa.” (Antonio de Morga, Sucesos.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 16, pp. 117-118.)
[63] ”The edifices and houses of the natives of all these Filipinas Islands are built in a uniform manner, as are their settlements; for they always build them on the sh.o.r.es of the sea, between rivers and creeks. The natives generally gather in districts or settlements where they sow their rice, and possess their palm trees, nipa and banana groves, and other trees, and implements for their fis.h.i.+ng and sailing.” Ibid., p. 117.)
[64] Especially in La Indolencia de los Filipinos, in ”La Solidaridad,”
1890, which develops the idea advanced by Sangcianco y Gozon.
[65] ”* * * As already seen, we must reject so often reiterated of late years that the early missionaries found nomadic or half-fixed clans and taught them the ways of village life. Village life there was already, to some extent, and it was upon this that the friars built. Doubtless they modified it greatly until in time it approached in most ways as closely to European village life as might be expected in tropical islands whose agricultural resources are not as yet well developed. From the first there would be a tendency to greater concentration about the churches, beginning with the rude structures of cane and thatch, which are replaced before 1700 in all the older settlements by edifices of stone, frequently ma.s.sive and imposing, especially, so as they tower over the acres of bamboo huts about them, from the inmates of which have come the forced labor which built them. From the first, too, it was to the interest of the Spanish conquerors, lay and priestly, to improve the methods of communication between the communities which formed their centers of conversion or of exploration and collection of tribute. Yet to represent either the friars or the soldiers as great pathfinders and reconstructors of wilderness is the work of ignorance. When Legaspi's grandson, Juan de Salcedo, made his memorable marches through northern Luzon, bringing vast acres under the dominion of Spain with a mere handful of soldiers, he found the modern Bigan a settlement of several thousand people; his successors in the conquest of the Upper Kagayan Valley, one of the most backward portions of the archipelago to-day, reported a population of forty thousand in the region lying around the modern Tuguegarao, and so it was quite commonly everywhere on the seacoasts and on the largest rivers. Some very crude deductions have been made as to the conquest period by writers of recent years who a.s.sume that the natives were at the beginning mere bands of wandering savages, and that all the improvements visible in their external existence to-day were brought about in these early years.” (James A. LeRoy, The Americans in the Philippines, Vol. I, pp. 8-10.)
”The friar missionaries did not bring about the first settlement and conquests under Legaspi; they did not blaze the way in wildernesses and plant the flag of Spain in outlying posts long in advance of the soldiers, the latter profiting by their moral-suasion conquests to annex great territories for their own plunder; they did not find bloodthirsty savages, wholly sunk in degradation, and in the twinkling of an eye convert them to Christianity, sobriety, and decency, * * *; they did not teach wandering bands of huntsmen or fishermen how to live peacefully in orderly settlements, how to cultivate the soil, erect buildings (except the stone churches), and did not bind these villages together by the sort of roads and bridges which we have today, though they had considerable share in this work, especially in later time; they did not find a squalid population of 400,000 to 750,000 in the archipelago, and wholly by the revolution wrought by them in ways of life make it possible for that population to increase by ten or twenty times in three centuries.” (Ibid., pp. 10-11.)
[66] Relacion de las Islas Filipinas, Pedro Chirino, S. J., Roma 1604.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 12, p. 188.
[67] Morga's Sucesos.--Bl. and Rb., Vol. 16, p. 105.
[68] Census of the Philippine Islands, 1903, Vol. I, p. 329.
[69] In La Indolencia de los Filipinos, Rizal continues thus:
”And if this, which is deduction, does not convince any minds imbued with unfair prejudices, perhaps of some avail may be the testimony of the oft-quoted Dr. Morga, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Manila for seven years and after rendering great service in the Archipelago was appointed criminal judge of the Audiencia of Mexico and Counsellor of the Inquisition. His testimony, we say, is highly credible, not only because all his contemporaries have spoken of him in terms that border on veneration but also because his work, from which we take these citations, is written with great circ.u.mspection and care, as well with reference to the authorities in the Philippines as to the errors they committed. 'The natives,' says Morga, in chapter VII, speaking of the occupations of the Chinese, 'are very far from exercising those trades and have even forgotten much about farming, raising poultry, stock and cotton, and weaving cloth AS THEY USED TO DO IN THEIR PAGANISM AND FOR A LONG TIME AFTER THE COUNTRY WAS CONQUERED.'”
”The whole of Chapter VIII of his work deals with this moribund activity, this much-forgotten industry, and yet in spite of that, how long is his eighth chapter!
”And not only Morga, not only Chirino, Colin, Argensola, Gaspar de San Agustin and others agree in this matter, but modern travelers, after two hundred and fifty years, examining the decadence and misery, a.s.sert the same thing. Dr. Hans Meyer, when he saw the unsubdued tribes cultivating beautiful fields and working energetically, asked if they would not become indolent when they in turn should accept Christianity and a paternal government.
”Accordingly, the Filipinos, in spite of the climate, in spite of their few needs (they were less then than now), were not the indolent creatures of our time, and, as we shall see later on, their ethics and their mode of life were not what is now complacently attributed to them.”