Early Contacts with Western
Explorers
PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS VENTURED
IN MINDANAO many years before Ferdinand Magellan “discovered” the Philippines
for the Spanish Crown on 16 March 1521 (actually 17 March reckoned along the
international dateline.) Their logbooks mention the island called Mindanao,
Bendanao, or Mandaña.
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| Ferdinand Magellan |
Francisco Serrano, Magellan’s
cousin, who was shipwrecked off the Turtle Islands, took refuge in Mindanao in
1512. He convinced Magellan to present himself to the Spanish Crown for a
commission to explore new lands in the Eastern World via a new route sailing
west.
Magellan, with Serrano by his
side, made that epochal voyage, and though he died in Mactan, Cebu, history has
since recognized him as the first circumnavigator of the world and the
discoverer of the Philippines, which Magellan named Islas de San Lazaro
(Islands of St. Lazarus). (Davao History by Corcino, 1998)
Magellan’s Pacific Ocean
Ferdinand Magellan crossed a
wide and peaceful ocean before he reached the Philippines. He christened the
ocean Mar Pacifico or Pacific Ocean (Discovery 1978, 84).
While it could not be
ascertained that Magellan himself stepped on Mindanao soil while serving with
the Portuguese explorations, it is recorded that he sailed hereabouts in the
service of his native country as Serrano did.
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| Voyage of Magellan |
One of Spain’s earliest
expeditions to the Philippines reached Mindanao in 1526. Commanded by Juan Jeoffre
de Laoisa, the company included Captain Andres de Urdaneta, a navigator who
later became an Augustinian friar. The expedition’s six vessels were quickly
reduced to three, and Laoisa and two others who took over the helm died.
A town mate Magellan,
Sebastian Oporto, along with some others, were sent down to procure provisions,
but they were captured by the natives.
Oporto was later rescued by
the expedition led by Alvaro de Saavedra, which dropped anchor at Lambajon, a
Mandaya settlement between Dapnan and Baganga in 1528. The favorable north wind
brought them to Tagacabalua (now Cape San Agustin) and on to Davao Gulf, where
they landed on Talicud Island to get food and fresh water. Sailing westward,
they landed at a place called Lobo (now Santa Cruz).
The Spaniards encountered 50
Manobos armed with spears, daggers and krisses (swords) who stopped them from
going inland. Acting as interpreter, Oporto explained to the Datu that Captain
Saavedra, an ambassador of the King of Spain, came in peace and friendship.
Before they could secure provisions, Saavedra and his men had to board the ship
quickly when a favorable wind stirred: the harbor was so deep there was no
place to lower anchor. Consequently, they left without even bidding the Datu
farewell. (Davao History by Corcino, 1998)
Villalobos at Baganga and
Sarangani
Perhaps the most interesting
event that affected Davao during Spain’s series of expeditions to the
Philippines was the exploration headed by Ruy Lopez de Villalobos. Instructed
to settle, colonize, trade, and fortify the coast in Las Islas del Poniente
(Isles of the West) of which the Philippines was a part, Villalobos left
Navidad, New Spain (Mexico), on 1 November 1542. He reached Mindanao in early
February 1543 and made the first extensive investigation of the island.
On 2 February, he anchored in
a beautiful bay which they called Malaga (now Baganga) on the island Cesarea
Karoli (Mindanao) “which the pilots, who afterwards to have a circuit of three
hundred and fifty leagues.” (Davao History by Corcino, 1998)
Mindanao
Mindanao derives its name from
a large take (which is called Danao in the language generally used on the
island) and was applied originally to the lower Rio Grande valley and see coast
that were brought under the rule of the Sultan of Maguindanao (Blair and
Robertson 1903-1909, vol. 37, 259; vol. 40, 310). (Davao History by Corcino, 1998)
Villalobos ‘“Las Islas
Filipinas”
Students of Philippine history
will remember Villalobos for giving the name Las Islas Filipinas to this
country in honor of the Crown Prince Philip II of Spain. He was also the first
Spanish navigator to thoroughly explore and circumnavigate Mindanao which he
named Cesares Karoli (after Charles I, monarch of Spain in 1516-1556). Furthermore,
he deserves to be credited for giving the world an important navigational
landmark, the point on the northeastern side of Davao Gulf, formerly called
Tagacabalua by the natives. This became known as Cape San Agustin, a name giveb
by the Augustinian missionaries, namely Fray Geronimo de San Esteben (a.k.a
Santisteban), Fray Nicolas de Perez, Fray Alonzo Alvarez and Fray Sebastian de
Trasierra who were with Villalobos.
During the exploration of
Mindanao, Villalobos had touched at Surup, a sitio several miles north of Cape
San Agustin inj the Davao Gulf side. Here, Santisteban had the opportunity to
baptize a five-year-old Manobo boy, but the boy later died. This was the first
Spanish apostolic ministration in the Davao Gulf area.
After a month’s residence on
the island they left in search of the Island of Mazagua, but contrary winds
forced them to anchor at an island name Sarangar (Saragani) and by them called
Antonio.
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| Philippine Old Map |
Villalobos reached Sarangani
with one of his ships badly damaged by a storm and his crew suffering from
hunger and sickness. On landing they found the islanders hostile. The natives
not only refused Villalobos offer of gifts, trade and friendship but also started
to assault his men. Therefore, the Castilians. Led by one Alvarado, decided to
subdue them by force. In the fight that ensued, the natives were ousted from a
hill, which had been fortified, leaving behind their wares and supplies that
the Spaniards appropriated for themselves.
The people defended themselves
valiantly with small stones, poles, arrows, mangrove [sic] cudgels as large
around as the arm, the ends sharpened and hardened in the fire . . . Upon
capturing this island, we found a quantity of porcelain and some bells which
are different from ours, and which they esteem highly in their festivities,
besides perfumes of musk, amber, civet, officinal storax, and aromatic and
resinous perfumes. With these they are well supplied, and are accustomed to
their use; and they buy these perfumes from the Chinese who come to Mindanao
and the Philippines.
The offensive arms of the
inhabitants … are cutlasses and daggers: lances, javelins, and other missile
weapons; bows and arrows and culverines. They all, as a rule, possess poisonous
herbs and use them and other poisons in their wars. Their defensive arms are
cotton corselets reaching to the feet and with sleeves: corselets made of wood
and buffalo horn; and cuirasses made of bamboo and hard wood, which entirely
cover them. Armor for the head is made of dogfish-skin, which is very tough. In
some islands they have small pieces of artillery and a few arquebuses.
Fray Santisteben describes the
privation they suffered in a letter to the Viceroy of New Spain:
If I should try to write in
detail of the hunger, need, hardships, disease, and the deaths that we suffered
in Sarragan, I would fill a book … In that island we found little rice and
sogo, a few hens and hogs, and three deer. This was eaten in a few days, together
with what remained of the ship food. A number of cocoa palms were discovered;
and because hunger cannot suffer delay, the buds, which are the shoots of the
palms, were eaten …
Finally, we ate all the dogs,
cats and rats we could find, besides horrid grubs and unknown plants, which all
together caused the deaths, and much of the prevalent disease. And especially
they ate large numbers of a certain variety of gray lizard which emits
considerable glow; very few who ate them are living. Land crabs also were eaten
which caused some to go mad for a day after partaking of them, especially if
they had eaten the vitals. At the end of seven months, the hunger that had
caused us to go to Sarragan withdrew us thence.
Conversion factor
On 8 September 1596, Jesuit
missionaries built in Butuan what was perhaps the first Catholic Church in
Mindanao. They also established a solif Christian foundation in Zamboanga,
which became a base for later evangelizing work in Cotabato and Davao. (Davao History by Corcino, 1998)
Initiating Christianity
Some 30 years after Villalobos
Mindanao experience, Spain succeeded in consolidating its control over Luzon
and Visayas. Expeditions sent to Mindanao, however, failed to accomplish the
same. Moros fiercely resisted military attacks and retaliated by killing
Spaniards and natives in Christian settlements in the north.
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| Religious Missionaries |
In 1546, the great Apostle to
the Indies, later canonized as St. Francis Xavier, went to the same area in
eastern Mindanao, in a place called Kabuaya (near Cape San Agustin) to
propagate the Christian faith. The text of the Papal Bull canonizing St. Francis
affirms his apostolic activities in Mindanao.
Ipse primus malais, saracenis,
mindanais, malacansibus et japonis Evangelicum Cristi anunciaverat. [It can be
said that he himself was also prepared to proclaim the Gospel to the Malaya,
Saracenes, Mindanaoans, infieles and Japanese.]
Spanish censorship, it is
claimed, did not allow any mention of St. Francis Xavier’s evangelizing
activities in the Philippines. (Davao History by Corcino, 1998)
The Society of Jesus
The Jesuit missionaries who
originally came to the Philippines in 1581 were the pioneer evangelists to be
assigned to the northeastern section of Mindanao, and then called Caraga.
Caraga District at that time
encompassed the northern section of Mindanao, from the present day town of
Alubijid in Misamis Oriental eastward to Surigao, including the adjacent
islands nearby, and then southward down the coast to the tip of Cape San
Agustin east of Davao Gulf.
From Butuan, where the first
Jesuit mission house was established (ca. 1596), they reached Fort Linao
(present-day Bunawan, Agusan del Sur) and Monkayo Valley in Davao del Norte in
1608.
Their work, however promising,
had to be abandoned to comply with a church order dividing Mindanao. (Davao History by Corcino, 1998)
Dividing Mindanao
Just as a Papal Bull divided the world between Spain and
Portugal, a church order divided Mindanao between the Order of the Recollects
(or the discalced Augustinians) and the Society of Jesus in 1621. Cebu Bishop
Arre assigned the Recollects to eastern Mindanao (to which Davao belongs) and
the Jesuits to western Mindanao. (Davao History by Corcino, 1998)
The Order of the Recollects
In 1608, the Recollects set up their head mission station
in Tandag, the capital town of Caraga District. From there, they carried out
missionary activities in the district and in the former Jesuit mission stations
of Butuan and Linao .
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Has
St. Francis really come to Davao? This is one issue that more seasoned
historians with access to better sources will someday unravel … possibly.
(Compiled and translated by Vicente Generoso from Pastells 1916 and Blair
and Robertson 1903-1909).
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The Recollects labored for over 260 years to bring about
Christian civilization in this pristine territory, populated by several
indigenous tribes, i.e., the Mandaya, the Manobo, the Dibabaon and the Mansaka
besides other Sungaonon tribes. As a whole, the early missionaries referred to
these peoples as infieles (infidels).
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From the head mission station
in Tandag, other villages gradually developed as the missionaries set up
stations both along Agusan River Valley, the northern and eastern coast of
Surigao and down to Bislig, near the boundary of what eventually became the
town of Cateel. This was the territory of the Mandaya, a freedom-loving people
who preferred to have their family or clan live far apart from others, often
hiding their simple dwellings in the thick forests along the eastern seaboard
or contra costa. Their forebears may have had contact with early Spanish or
Portuguese explorers when some of their shipwrecked crew members drifted ashore
and perhaps were made captives by these natives. These were the infieles living
near the Bislig mission outpost, the potential converts had there been
missionaries to minister amongst them.
Missionary activities on that coastal section dividing
present-day Surigao and Davao remained practically at a standstill for over a
century; meaning that evangelization thrusts southward from Bislig to the
territory, which is now within the boundary of Davao, did not take place as
what normally should have happened. The major reasons for the lack of progress
were the Moro raids and the scares number of missionaries available to
undertake the “winning over” of the infieles to live in the reducciones. The
situation was aggravated when the Jesuits, who were making headway in the
Monkayo-Compostela Valley, were transferred to the western side of Mindanao.
In 1671, a major effort was made to explore the coastal
area south of Bislig for possible mission posts as well as a military outpost.
Raids carried out by Moros led to the abortion of Spanish plane to expand
further south of Bislig as many inhabitants including some missionaries were
killed, taken away as captives with the rest fleeing to safety in the
wilderness.
Amidst these dangers and difficulties, the pioneer
missionaries had to confine themselves to their parish bulwark, suspending
their activities in the form of community-building, construction of parish
churches and spreading the gospel among the natives. (Davao
History by Corcino, 1998)
Updated by Rhey Mark H. Diaz on April 13, 2017@7:45pm
Updated by Rhey Mark H. Diaz on April 13, 2017@7:45pm
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