Note 13 — Moro Pirates and their Raids in the Seventeenth Century

The king of Joló, on the contrary, had for many years maintained peace and friendly relations with the Spaniards, much to the resentment of his chiefs and captains, who derived much more profit from hostile raids than from trade and peace; therefore by means of their confidential agents they spread the report that the king of Joló was talking of sending an armed fleet of twenty joangas to plunder these islands. The principal author of this was a Joloan named Linao, who was on intimate terms with the Spaniards, and a Guimbano named Palía. But the king of Joló was very far from thinking of such changes, and it would have been better for us if we had not so readily believed it. At this information Don Fernando de Bobadilla despatched his armada against Joló, under General Don Pedro de Viruega; but when he reached that island he found that the story that they had spread abroad against the king was false, and Don Pedro, having talked with him, went back to Zamboanga well satisfied of his peaceable attitude. But it was not long before the former rumors against the king of Joló were again current; the author of them was Linao, who desired a rupture [with the Spaniards], so that he with other pirates might go out on raids against these islands—in which enterprise he was more interested than in the peace of his king. This plan he carried out in company with two others, Libot and Sacahati, who went cruising with several vessels and did much damage in the islands of Pintados and Masbate, until they reached the Limbones;13 from that place they chased the corregidor of Mariveles, and captured the provincial of our discalced Augustinian religious and those who were accompanying him, on his return from visiting the Christian villages of Bolinao—although these persons escaped by jumping ashore. But there was one who could not do this, father Fray Antonio de las Misas (also a discalced Augustinian), who was coming from Cuyo and Calamianes to visit those convents. This religious might with good reason be regarded as a martyr; for with his blood only were the hands of the renegade Linao stained, as he spared the lives of all the rest in his greed for ransom. Although the pirates knew that the ransom of this religious promised them more profit [than that of an ordinary captive], their hatred to the faith prevailed over their greed, which in these barbarians is great. This opinion is confirmed by the cruelty with which they treated an image of Our Lady of the People, which this religious was wearing, on which they used their crises with furious rage. This religious was an old man, and greatly esteemed for his virtue; and in the order he had held positions of honor—prior of the convent at Manila, vicar-provincial of Cebú, and other posts in Caraga. He had a brother, a lay member of the Society of Jesus in these islands, who also suffered the same kind of death at the hands of the barbarous pirates called Camucones—a nation as cruel as cowardly, two qualities which always go together.