Part 16
5. Further, you shall endeavor to have the Indians persuaded to adopt our holy Catholic faith willingly, and to render submission to us. If they do so you shall order that they be exempt from tribute for ten years.
6. Item: You shall order that the Spaniards, who shall settle later in the villages thus established, rule and govern in peace and quiet, and that they shall not molest or injure anyone. They shall appoint their ministers of justice, regidors, and necessary officials, for the meanwhile and until we provide otherwise.
7. Some repartimientos of Indians shall be made to those persons who shall go to make the said settlement, in accordance with their services and the quality of the persons to whom they are made. The chief capitals and the seaports shall be assigned to us, although first and foremost the appraisal of the said tributes of such repartimientos shall have been made. This is understood to be allowed after the expiration of the ten years in which they are to be exempt and free from tribute as abovesaid.
8. You shall also assign salaries to regidors and ministers of justice, and to the seculars and religious. You shall instruct each one in his privileges and duties so that he may know what he has to do, and that those who have charge of the offices shall be obliged to give account for the disorders and excesses that our men commit both against the Indians and the latter among themselves.
9. You shall order that after the abovesaid has been done, the people endeavor to open trade in their districts. You shall provide the Indians with the articles that they need, and shall endeavor also to get from the Indians the things that are needed from them.
10. You shall send religious and other good persons to instruct and persuade the Indians to receive our faith. You shall see to it that if they be sufficient, they endeavor to collect the Indians in villages so that they may be instructed better.
11. You shall always instruct those persons whom you send to spy out the land always to consider where they might find fitting and commodious sites for the new settlements, without any resulting harm to the Indians in accordance with the provision of the first section.
12. You shall provide that after the houses have been built and the fields sown, the people try to discover minerals and other things in which they will be benefited. They shall cultivate the land and enrich it with new plants of vines and fruit trees for its support and gain.
13. Item: If the natives endeavor to prevent the said settlement, they must be told that the men are not trying to settle there in order to do them any harm or wrong, or to seize their possessions, but only to have friendship with them and teach them to live in a civilized manner and recognize God, and to expound to them the law of Jesus Christ by which they will be saved. After that message and warning has been given (which must be made three times as shall seem best to the person appointed by you after consulting with the religious who shall go to such settlement and by the tongue of the religious who shall tell and declare it), then if notwithstanding the abovesaid, the natives refuse to consent to the colony, the colonists shall endeavor to settle and shall defend themselves from the said natives without doing them other injury than that necessary for their defense and for making the said settlement. All the mildness and moderation possible shall be observed in the said defense.
14. Further, after having made such hamlet and settlement you shall see to it that the citizens and religious who shall be there, try to trade and communicate with the natives and to make friends with them, and to make them understand the abovesaid.
15. If the said natives and inhabitants located near the said colony should become friends because of such good efforts and persuasions, so that they give the religious permission to enter to teach them and to preach to them the law of Christ, you shall see that they do it. The religious shall endeavor to convert them and allure them to the faith, and to have them recognize us as sovereign king and lord.
16. Further, if the said natives and the rulers of the Indians refuse to admit the religious preachers, after the announcement of their purpose as above said, and after the natives shall have been petitioned many times to allow the religious to enter to preach and to expound the word of God, you shall make a report of it and send it to our Council with the most justifiable testimony that you have of what has been done, in order that we may have you ordered as to what course you are to pursue. Meanwhile you shall endeavor to retain their friendship and trade, and shall treat them well. You shall endeavor by all possible means to bring them to a knowledge of our Lord.
17. If any of the officials appointed by us die, you shall appoint in each island those that may be lacking, so that in accordance with the instruction and order given them, they may administer our finances and attend to the other things that are entrusted to the other officials of the other provinces of the Indias. You shall make such appointments until we provide for it, and you shall immediately advise us of it so that we may have the proper measures taken.
18. The persons and our officials who shall be entrusted with duties, shall be paid their salaries from the fruits of the land by our treasurer, in accordance with a list made out and signed by the said officials and signed by the governor of the province.
19. Item: You shall endeavor to take the most virtuous and Christian people possible, and those who shall be best fitted for the said colonization.
20. Item: You shall take four of the religious at present in the said islands, and if you do not have them, you shall take two seculars who must be persons of good life and morals, fit to give the instruction, and to administer the holy sacraments.
21. Item: You shall endeavor with great care to see that the Spaniards do no harm and show no force to the Indians, and that they do not wound them or do them any other evil or harm, or deprive them of their possessions, but they shall show them the utmost good treatment. If any of the men offend the Indians, then you and your captains shall punish him rigorously and shall warn him not to continue such actions. If he be careless and negligent in this, then you shall have him punished with great rigor; for this is a matter whose fulfilment we desire greatly, and if this be not obeyed we shall consider ourselves greatly disserved.
22. Item: Upon your arrival at the land you shall report to us the events of your expedition and the manner in which you shall be received, also what you ascertain and discover of the said land, and everything else of which you think we should be advised. You shall accompany it with your opinion of what you think ought to be done, so that we may better order what is necessary for the service of God and our own service; and you shall do the same whenever you deem it necessary.
We charge and order you to observe and perform the above inviolably, for if the contrary be done we shall consider ourselves disserved. Given in Madrid, August xxviii, one thousand five hundred and sixty-nine.
I the King
MIGUEL LOPEZ DE LEGAZPI. CONCESSION OF TWO THOUSAND DUCADOS
The King. Our officials of the Western Islands, whose colonization we have entrusted to General Miguel Lopez de Legazpi: Know that in consideration of the services of the said Miguel Lopez, past and present, in his expedition, and the loss that he has received to his property in a caravel which sunk, I have after consultation with the members of my Council of the Indias, considered it fitting to concede to him, for one time, as I do by this present, a gift of two thousand ducados (a sum equivalent to seven hundred and fifty thousand maravedis). I therefore order you that from whatever gold or silver or any other kind of property you may have in your possession and which may be in charge of you our treasurer, you give and pay to the said Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, or to whomever shall have his powers of attorney, the said two thousand ducados of which we thus make him a concession for this one time for the abovesaid reason. Deliver and pay them to him, and take his receipt, with which and with this my decree, I order that the said two thousand ducados be received from you and placed on your accounts. Given at Madrid, August twenty-nine, one thousand five hundred and seventy.
I the King
LETTER FROM FRANCISCO DE ORTEGA TO THE VICEROY
Your Excellency: May the grace and consolation of the Holy Ghost dwell forever in the soul of your Excellency. Last year I wrote a report and an account to your Excellency of the affairs of this region, in fulfilment of the directions given me by your Excellency when I came to this country. Since in the previous report I wrote at length, I shall be brief in this one, referring to the other one and to the statements in it for the explanation of some things which I say here. I ratify anew everything that I have said, and purpose now to give information to your Excellency of what has happened in this country since my last writing. I have accordingly to inform you that on August 13, of last year, there set sail two vessels named “Santiago” and “San Juan.” One week later, namely, the twenty-first of the said month, our Lord took from this life by sudden death the adelantado and governor, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi (may he be in glory). His death was greatly deplored and is so even at the present day, for doubtless his valor and wisdom have been greatly needed. Those who regarded him as wicked in his life will now canonize him as a saint. I believe that he is in glory or on the way to it, for he was a good Christian and if he erred in some things, I believe that he desired to do right, while in some other things he did the best he could. He died poor, which is a great evidence of his goodness. That was a cause for great confusion to those who regarded him as very rich, and who were murmuring about him saying that he had a chest of gold and more than 25,000 pesos in tostons. All that he was found to have on the day of his death was 460 pesos in two little sacks. These he had asked as a loan a few days before. He had also in gold about 120 pesos not counting one large chain and one small one which he brought from his own land. He had also the wrought silver of his table service. All the rest of this was not worth 500 pesos. This is the whole of the wealth and treasure which he had. Of this fact I am practically an eyewitness, for I was present at his death and at the inventory of his property. Three days after he had died his grandson, Captain Joan de Salzedo, came from the opposite coast of the island, where he had been three months, having gone by the direction of the governor to explore that country and to pacify the people who lived in it. He brought back very good news from there, though he could not give it to him who had sent him out, and hence great sorrow was caused to him who brought the news and even to the rest. They reported that the population there was large and that there were many good settlements close to one another and that they were better ordered and governed than in the other parts. They said that there were villages with 300 or 400 houses together, some more and some less, and that there was among them one village that seemed to contain more than three thousand houses, and another with 800, where he left his alférez with thirty-five soldiers while he came to tell the news and to make an extended report. He accomplished one thing which astonished everybody, because without doubt it was a very daring and courageous exploit. This was to attempt to circumnavigate the island, which he accomplished in two tiny boats with 15 soldiers. These boats did not draw one palmo of water. They are called barangays in this country and are rowed with very short oars by Indians seated in the boat. Though these vessels are of this character, and the sea of that coast is so rough that not one of the natives, as they say, has ventured to navigate it, still he dared to do it in order to know and see what there is on the opposite coast. He suffered great hardships but God delivered him from all of them. His boat was ofttimes almost swamped, and he and the others with him on the point of drowning. Finally he sailed one hundred leguas, coasting along the island to the point of his settlement, and he has explored and circumnavigated it. In all the length of that coast there was not a single village nor one Indian, for the whole country is desolate where they supposed there would be a great many people.
In the villages to which he went on this exploring and pacifying expedition, he collected 800 gold taes in tribute. A tae is a weight of one onza or a little more. Of this amount he gave half to the soldiers and the other half to his Majesty’s treasury. This is the largest amount of treasure that had hitherto been received in these islands. Three months after his alférez, who had remained behind, arrived. The reason of his coming was that almost all his soldiers were taken sick and that they had no ammunition. He brought back a thousand taes of gold in addition to as many more which he shared between himself and the soldiers. All this was put in the royal treasury under the control of our new governor, Guido de Lavezaris. Because of what he heard of the country and its people and their wealth, the latter decided to send the master-of-camp there with one or two captains to inspect the population and the villages which were to be divided into repartimientos. He who should not have gone, went [on that expedition], and with him Captain Lorenço Chacon with more than 130 soldiers and more than 800 Indians who rowed the boats in which they went. Without discovering any new lands or seeing any new villages besides those which Captain Joan de Salzedo had discovered and pacified, they collected in tribute three thousand taes or more. It is fitting that your Excellency should know the manner in which these tributes are collected, and the way in which they are demanded before the time, contrary to the law of God and the directions of his Majesty. The first thing they do when they reach any village or province is to send them an interpreter or two, not with gifts or presents, not to preach to them or to speak to them of the things of God, but to order them to bring tribute immediately and to be friendly to the Castilians. Since this is a so new and strange thing for them, as being something to which they have not been accustomed, as they have not been either subjects or vassals of any native king or lord (of whom they have none in any part of these islands, as was written in my other letter to your Excellency), all this is confusion to them and causes them much evil by forcing them to give as tributes the necklaces which they wear about their necks and the bracelets which they and their women wear on their arms. For few or none of them have any other property but what they wear on their persons. When these so evil abuses are inflicted upon them, some of them refuse to give the tribute or do not give as liberally as those who ask it desire. Others, on account of having to give this and of their fear at seeing a strange and new race of armed people, abandon their houses and flee to the tingues [i.e., hills] and mountains. When the Spaniards see this, they follow them, discharging their arquebuses at them and mercilessly killing as many as they can. Then they go back to the village and kill all the fowls and swine there and carry off all the rice which the poor wretches had for their support. After this and after they have robbed them of everything they have in their miserable houses, they set fire to them. In this way they burned and destroyed more than four thousand houses in this expedition to Ylocos, and killed more than five hundred Indians, they themselves confessing that they committed that exploit. Your Excellency may infer how desolate and ruined this will make the country, for those who have done the mischief say that it will not reach its former state within six years and others say not in a lifetime. Will your Excellency determine whether this is consistent with law, divine or human, with religion or Christian charity. Your Excellency will also consider that in these invasions and explorations the law of Mahomet is followed rather than the law of God; for no account is taken of His precepts and there is no care to follow His law and the Christian instructions conformable with and akin to them, which have been given by our Catholic and very Christian king and lord Don Ffelipe. The latter commanded that by love and kindly treatment and with gifts and presents the natives should be caressed and attracted to love and friendship for us, so that in this manner they might come to the knowledge of our God and Creator, and might subject themselves to his royal protection and might recognize him as their king and lord. For all these purposes, he spends most freely from his royal treasury, buying fine scarlet cloths, stuffs, caps, silks, and other things suitable for this purpose, as your Excellency knows better than I. Yet they do not follow his will but invade the country of the Indians, killing and robbing, burning their villages and houses, and collecting as enemies what his Majesty commands us to take and receive from them as friends. In place of engendering in their breasts and souls love and goodwill, they create and engender hate and abhorrence against us and against the name of Jesus Christ crucified whom they ought to teach and preach to the natives. If by such pilgrimages and pacifications and services God our Lord and his Majesty are pleased, let your Excellency judge. [48]
They also said in the beginning that in the province of Ylocos and in the other three provinces which were explored on the opposite coast and which they declare that they have pacified, there were more than four hundred thousand Indians, and that there were enough to afford repartimientos for all those who are in these regions. Now they declare that there are not enough for forty soldiers, according to the account which they bring back from there, for according to them there are not as many as 40,000 Indians. I say this so that your Excellency may see how closely this report conforms to the others which I wrote in my former letter, and that your Excellency may be informed and may know the truth if it should not be written [by others] from here.
It seems to me also desirable to inform your Excellency how and in what manner they send the present of gold to his Majesty, that you may understand the wealth of this country and the service rendered him in it by them, and how that gold was got. In accordance with what has been related and declared above, the quantity would be at most about 30,000 pesos; and how little appropriate it is to send this quantity of pesos as a present, and to send as many more debts to the royal treasury of this country is very clear. It is also very clear and plain that this present is a trifling one after the royal treasury has spent more than two millions or but little less as I am informed, within the fifteen years since the expense of this expedition [i.e., Legazpi’s] began. How far from the royal magnanimous, Caesarean, and more than Alexandrine heart of our king, Don Ffelipe, this present is, is so plain that the blind could see it and the most ignorant judge it; hence on this point I do not ask your Excellency to form a judgment, but I do ask you to decide what reward it deserves from a king so Catholic as ours to make him a present and a payment into his treasury of what has been robbed and wrung [from the natives] contrary to what God and the king himself have commanded. In conformity with what your Excellency with your delicate and most Christian conscience may feel and judge in this matter, will you send thanks in the royal name. How much more would God our Lord and his Majesty be served if the gold which is sent to him as a present were worn on the arms of the Indians of the Ylucos to whom it belonged, than that the ladies of our lady the queen should wear it about their necks in the court.
This has been said partly that your Excellency might know what takes place here and might understand the way in which this present was sent to his Majesty, and partly to state again that, in spite of the wealth which they will say and write to your Excellency as existing in Ylucos and the other provinces, when his Majesty shall have paid the expenses of this region, he will receive no lawful and Christian profit from these islands, except perhaps the cinnamon which is taken from the island of Bindanao as it is now taken, unless the gold mines in these regions are worked. I believe that they will not be worked except with the great oppression and loss of the natives, and that will mean their total destruction, for experience has undeceived us in this matter by what has happened in the island of Española and in other regions.