Note 19 — The Conquest of Mindanao

Six whole days were spent in distributing, or burning and destroying, everything in Mindanao; and thus on the twenty-fifth of March, the day of the blessed Annunciation, we started on the return trip to Samboanga. But the governor would not set sail before returning thanks at that very place to His Divine Majesty for so great a victory. He therefore arranged a solemn procession with the blessed sacrament, from the mosque to the fort—himself at the head, carrying the image of the holy Christ and of St. Francis Xavier, patron of the expedition, and wearing the white robe of his order, in which he had received communion. The soldiers with their muskets, and the artillery at the fort, gave eight royal salutes with ball—which aside from doing honor to the procession, served to clear the two little hills of the ambuscade, which, without our knowledge, the Moros had laid to prevent our embarkation. We found this out by means of the large number of dead bodies which Captain Juan Nicolas discovered a little while after, when, returning from the Bugayen River, he wished to see the place where we had attacked Corralat. When the procession was over, we set fire to the mosque and the fort; and the troops commenced to embark in good order, in the small champans of the fleet. Then Sargento-mayor Palomino was sent with five caracoas and a hundred Spaniards, with Father Melchor de Vera, who knew the language very well, to search for Moncay, king of Bagaien [i.e., Buhayen]19 and the real lord of the island of Mindanao; this Corralat, though his relative, was but the tyrant. Bagaien is twelve leguas from the fort of Mindanao. [Palomino went] to make a treaty of peace with him whereby he should become a tributary and vassal to his Majesty. While we were setting sail, one of our Indian captives appeared on the shore. The falua brought him off to our champan, and he told us how he had fled from the enemy’s grain-fields where they had kept him during those days; and that, passing through one of the ravines of the hill, he had found a vast number of dead Moros.20