Note 17 — The Conquest of Mindanao

Father Vera related to us the story of the taking of the hill, as follows: They marched all day Tuesday the seventeenth, the day of our attack, not because the way was so long, but so bad, as I have already said, and because Nicolas Gonçalez had to travel in a hammock. He was actually so weak and ill that, as he afterward admitted to me, his sword served him for a cane the day of the fight; and a boy had to support his arm, which he could not lift for the weight of his shield. They had various encounters with Moros, but, in order to avoid noise, the order was given not to fight; and so on the way they killed only the cachice [i.e., kasis] of Corralat, whom they found hidden in a thicket. They halted that night and fortified themselves in a height which overlooked the hill; and early on the morning of Wednesday (the day of St Joseph’s vigil and of the glorious angel Gabriel) Nicolas Gonçalez had urged on the soldiers, and told them that since there was no avenue of retreat open to them, there was nothing for it but to gain either the hill or heaven. They made a valiant attack upon the enemy, who were awaiting them behind a huge tree lying across the middle of the road—having no other stockades or ditches on this part of the hill, for they could not imagine that we would attack them there. They held their ground, fighting, for a time; but Captain Castelo, who was leading the vanguard, having crossed with some soldiers to the other side of the log, forced them to abandon their position. Then he followed them with his troops, without difficulty or danger, on the rear as far as the stockades and forts, till he remained master of two of these with four pieces of artillery and the king’s strong-house where he kept his treasure. Many Moros were killed, not only by our shots, but by rushing down in a furious and headlong flight through a very narrow ravine which was at the entrance of this very stockade where they expected us—falling, by a just judgment of God, into the very snares which they had laid for us. At the same time Captain Castelo met some Moros who were coming to join the others—the garrison of the third stockade, which we had attacked the day before with our vanguard; and, with the same ease, he compelled them to flee and fling themselves down, he remaining master of the fort and its arms, which were muskets with rests, arquebuses, campilans, etc. The relatives and the men and maid-servants of Corralat, with many of his people, who were taken prisoners on that day, said that the night before he had put under his feet a monstrance containing the blessed sacrament, which he had stolen, saying to all that there was nothing to fear, for he had the God of the Christians already under his feet; and that, considering the great strength of his fortified hills and stockades, and the large quantity of provisions that they had, they would be quite safe, unless it rained men from heaven. But when, the next morning, they brought him word that our men were attacking from the rear, he said to his wife: “The Spaniards have chosen a bad place for me” (reflecting that, as I have said, he had no defense for guarding the rear of the hill); “however, be of good courage, and wait here for me, for I am going to do to these what I did yesterday to the others.” He went, and his wife, seeing that we were coming in, urged her women to fling themselves down with her, so as not to be captured. They, being more sensible, refused to do this,17 and so they became our slaves; while the poor queen, with a child which she was holding in her arms, flung herself down and remained hanging from a tree. This was a cause of regret to us all, on account of the kind disposition which she possessed, according to the report given us by the father rector of Dapitan, who knew her to be very friendly to our Christian captives—sending them food secretly (especially to the religious), and reproaching her husband when he maltreated and abused them. After the queen had flung herself down, Corralat, with a bullet-wound in one arm, came in search of her; and, seeing her already dead, he fled by one of those declivities, without being recognized, to some hamlets four leguas from the hill, where they say he is now recovering.