Note 2 — Customs of the Tagalogs

Juan de Plasencia, who entered the Franciscan order in early youth, came to the Philippine Islands as one of the first missionaries of that order, in 1577. He was distinguished, in his labors among the natives, for gathering the converts into reductions (villages in which they dwelt apart from the heathen, and under the special care of the missionaries), for establishing numerous primary schools, for his linguistic abilities—being one of the first to form a grammar and vocabulary of the Tagal language—and for the ethnological researches embodied in the memoir which is presented in our text. He died at Lilio, in the province of La Laguna, in 1590. See account of his life in Santa Inés's Crónica, i, pp. 512–522; and of his writings, Id., ii, pp. 590, 591.