Note 1 — Defeat of Moro Pirates

Tagal, a chief of Mindanao,1 who was entitled Captain-general of Corralat on sea and land, had performed exploits in his service for many years, both in wars waged with the Goloes and in various incursions, and on all these occasions came off with good fortune. In the past year of 636, in the beginning of April, he asked Cachil Corralat, king of Mindanao, to give him four caracoas, with which he would go over to the islands of the Castilians, and spend nine months plundering them—urging that he would return rich, with his ships laden not only with Vissayans but Castilians; and that he would bring him the God of the Christians a prisoner; and other inducements. Corralat gave him the vessels, and with them he went, in the said month of April, to the chiefs of Taguima and Jolo, urging them to accompany him. They excused themselves, saying that they were near neighbors of the Spaniards, and desired no wars with them. No one accompanied him from those islands, but he, with the four joangas, entered among the islands of Cuyo and Calamianes, and the coast of Mindoro, where he remained almost eight months, robbing and inflicting enormous damage. He plundered the churches of Cuyo and Calamianes, profaning the vessels and holy vestments, breaking the holy images, and capturing the ministers in these islands. He seized three Augustinian Recollect fathers, and captured the corregidor of Cuyo2 and another Spaniard. The Moro committed and uttered many blasphemies against our Lord and His saints, and the holy images and consecrated things, calling out in a loud voice that Mahomet had taken prisoner the God of the Christians. Having seized a chalice, with the paten that belonged to it, they used the latter for a plate for buyos, and the chalice to spit in. They made a hole through the linen cloth on the image of Christ our Lord, through which a man would thrust his head, wearing it as one would a scapulary, suspending it mainly over the breast and shoulders. They also kept the choristers’ mantles, in order to wear them when they entered Mindanao. Returning, then, with much booty and many captives, their four large caracoas and three smaller vessels, seven in all, laden with the plunder which they had seized, the Moro dared to go where his sins carried him, to pay for his arrogance and madness. Although he had a large force, he did not choose to pass between Jolo and the island of Basilan, or Taguima, as he had done in coming; but he actually passed, in the darkness of night, before the fort at Sanboangan, in the strait which is made by the said island with Basilan, for a distance of a league and a half, more or less, from the fort. This was astonishing audacity; and if, for our sins, he had returned unhindered to Mindanao, they would have lost all fear of that fort and the royal arms. He actually passed the strait without being noticed, and at dawn arrived at a place where he could not be seen by our people. The day on which he passed before our fort was a Wednesday, December seventeenth, on the evening of the Expectation of our Lady, about eight o’clock. The next day just as Father Gregorio Belin3 was preparing to say mass, there arrived a Lutao Indian, who has always displayed fidelity to the Spaniards; and told him, as above, how that night the enemy had passed near there on their return, and that it would be easy to go forth in pursuit of them, because they were heavily loaded and weighed down, for they had been at sea for eight months. Beside this, the Mindanaos had a superstition or idolatry according to which all those who are returning to their land victorious are obliged to proceed to a hill that is encountered after doubling Punta de Flechas,4 and at the point. Each man brings from the ships one of the lances that they carry, made of bamboo hardened in the fire; and these are usually hurled into the ground on this hill, because it is of soft stone. The Indian said that this superstition was so infallible and established among them that on no account would they omit going together to this place; and thus it was necessary that we should come to blows with them. The father placed the whole matter before Sargento-mayor Bartolome Diaz Barrera, governor of Sanboangan, and Sargento-mayor Nicolas Gonzales—who is an excellent officer, a captain of infantry in the garrison there. These men, overcoming many difficulties, prepared, in two hours, with incredible promptness and diligence, a fleet of six ships with one hundred infantrymen and one hundred and fifty volunteer Bisayan warriors, with their cannon and all necessary supplies; and the said governor detailed Sargento-mayor Nicolas Gonzales to pursue the enemy. The latter set out with his fleet, with such energy that although some of our vessels were mere rafts, and all had but scanty equipment, and let in much water, he allowed nothing to hinder him, but [kept on his course], overcoming many difficulties. On the first day he sent back to the fort one of his six vessels, because he saw that it was falling behind the rest on account of leaking badly; and with only the five remaining he pursued the enemy, with remarkable persistence, for three days and three nights.