Note 9 — The Conquest of Mindanao

These deceptions and obstacles of the invisible enemy being overcome, we came in sight of Mindanao, without recognizing it, on Friday the thirteenth of March, with four caracoas. When I had finished saying mass—this was before dawn—his Lordship embarked in the falua, and with only six soldiers went to reconnoiter the place, to sound the rivers and harbors of the coast, and to see whether any Moro who could serve as a guide might be captured, for we had none. He pursued several of them up to their own shore, discharged two muskets at them, and nevertheless they fled up the river, abandoning their vessels. In response to these shots, the report of a cannon was heard from inland; this gave us much cause for fear, seeing that his Lordship was so bold, and we dreaded lest he had engaged with the enemy. Then we recited the litany, and other prayers; and, rowing as fast as possible, met them coming back. The governor embarked in his caracoa at eleven o’clock in the morning, and placed in order all four of the caracoas, with the two champans of our fleet—those of Captains Don Rodrigo and Ugalde, which had arrived three days before, and captured three caracoas from the enemy.9 From another direction there came, under a white flag, a letter from the Recollect fathers whom the Moros held captive there, that [our men?] should inform them of what was going on. He cast anchor near the mouth of the river, where some huts were to be seen, without knowing what village it was;10 and turning to me, said: “I will quarter my men in those cabins tonight.” Then he ordered all to eat; and having sent Adjutant Don Francisco Olazaran to land with twenty-five musketeers to seize the shore, and sounding the trumpets and the drums, discharging the ship’s cannon in the direction of the harbor, his Lordship disembarked, with all his soldiers—who, between Spaniards and Pampangos, amounted to seventy men. The sargento-mayor of the forces and the admiral of the fleet, Don Pedro Hurtado de Corcuera, drew up the forces on the beach, placing, at his Lordship’s direction, two field-pieces in the vanguard; and these were the terror of the enemy. Here, after I had aroused and encouraged the soldiers with the [sight of the] miraculous picture of St. Francis Xavier on one side, and that of the holy Christ (which I mentioned above) on the other—the two suspended from a lance—I walked between the vanguard and the body of the troops, with Father Juan de Barrios, the Augustinian father, and the chaplain of the fleet, which line of march we preserved during the whole campaign. At the time when we were disembarking one of our captive Indians came swimming toward us from the land, and we learned from him that this was the port of Corralat; but he was in such terror of the many musket-shots which the Moros, on seeing us, fired at him from an ambuscade which they had prepared against our people, that he could tell us nothing more. And so we marched on without knowing whether in the aforesaid port there were any force of arms or soldiers; we took for granted that what had always been said of the place was true—namely, that all the defenses of Corralat were upon the hill above, and not in the town below. Yet because this was the cause of God, where human means failed, I besought His Divine Majesty, together with the saints, to illumine with especial light his Lordship [the governor], so that, leaving the open road from the shore to the town, he should march with his soldiers by the road on the right. This route compelled us to cross the river twice, with considerable difficulty for the two cannon and for the person of his Lordship, who plunged into the water with all the rest of the soldiers. In spite of all this, it saved us from two very great dangers: one of them the armed ambuscade on the left side of the road, in the thickly-wooded part of a little hill—which we could hardly have escaped, as the road was very marshy, and was blocked by reeds, fruit plantations, and houses. The other peril was even greater; all the cannon of the fort were trained in the aforesaid direction [toward the left], and could not harm us, because they could not be turned to the right. The truth is that they had trained two chambered culverins very low against our path at the foot of the fortification—which would doubtless have done us much injury, but, through their great fear and confusion, no one succeeded in firing them.