Note 1 — Chapter I

259. There are certain wild Indians in the mountains of Butuán, located in the province of Carágha, called Manóbos.1 They have kinky hair, oblique eyes, a treacherous disposition, brutish customs, and live by the hunt. They have no king to govern them nor houses to shelter them; their clothing covers only the shame of their bodies; and they sleep where night overtakes them. Finally, they are infidels, and belie in everything, by the way in which they live, that small portion that nature gives them as rational beings. Among so great a rabble, but one village is known where some people are seen far from human intercourse. They are a race much inclined to war, which they are almost always waging against the Indians of the seacoast. There lived Dabáo,2 who had become as it were a petty king, without other right than that of his great strength, or other jurisdiction than that of his great cunning. His wickedness was much bruited about, and he made use of subtle deceits by which he committed almost innumerable murders. He was often pursued by Spanish soldiers, but he knew quite well how to elude them by his cunning. For on one occasion, in order to avoid the danger, he went to the house of an evangelical minister saying that he wished baptism, and that the minister should defend him, as it would be the motive for many conversions; but he only made use of that trick to save his life. Father Fray Agustin de Santa Maria—a very affable religious, and one who labored hard to attract the infidels—was prior of the convent of Santa Clara de Monte Falco of Lináo, a place forty leguas up-stream from Butuán. He visited Dabáo, and won him over so well by presents and gifts to intercourse with the Spaniards, that he spent nearly all the day in the convent and entrusted father Fray Agustin with the education of one of his sons—being quite eager in that in order to work out the treachery that he had planned.