Note 99 — Chapter VII

“That they need beatings and the rattan,” says Delgado (p. 312), “as examples prove, is a fact, and they confess it; but they resemble all other nations in this particular.... But it must be employed with prudence and moderation, as the discipline is employed by our fathers in our own lands, regarding them as sons and small children, and not as slaves or as our enemies. For God has brought us to their lands, in order to watch over them, and maintains us here for love of them. We must note that the Indians are not so bad as they seem to us.... It must also be observed that there are many Spaniards, and even ministers, who are melancholy and crabbed, and so ill-conditioned and moody, that everything wounds them, and they are contented with nothing. All the actions of the Indians displease them, and they even believe that the Indians do them purposely to make them impatient and to jest with them. From such ill-conditioned people the Indians suffer much, and tolerate and endure much, because of their respect for them. Consequently what the reverend father says below, namely ‘that it costs them more to be Christians than one would believe’ is a fact and true.”

“The Spaniards cry out and are in despair at seeing the continual and great acts of rudeness of the Filipinos, some of which are done maliciously, with the sole object of making us angry, when they contract hate for us. At times after they have wearied and disgusted the Spaniards grievously, and have caused the latter to give them a buffet, this is a cause for great sport among them, and they celebrate it in the kitchen amid great guffaws, as I have heard many times. Especially is it so if those who are made angry are women. But the Spaniards persist in not being convinced of this fact, nor will they ever learn how to treat this people. The old men of the country say that the Spaniard is fire and the Filipino snow, and that the snow consumes the fire.” (Mas, pp. 97, 98.)