Note 23 — Chapter VII

721. At the same time another father, who had a residence in the village of Linào, notably advanced our Christian religion in places thitherto occupied by infidelity. The mountains of that territory are inhabited by a nation of Indians, heathens for the greater part called Manòbos23—a word signifying in that language, as if we should say here, “robust and very numerous people.” When those Indians are not at war with the Spaniards, they are tractable, docile, and quite reasonable. They have the very good peculiarities of being separated not a little from the brutish life of the other mountain people thereabout; for they have regular villages, where they live in human sociability in a very well ordered civilization. Although the above qualities, as has been seen, are very apropos for receiving the faith, notwithstanding that fact, although some of them are always reduced, they are very few when one considers the untiring solicitude with which our missionaries unceasingly endeavor to procure it. The reasons for so deplorable an effect are the same as we have mentioned in regard to the conversion of the Tagabalòyes Indians. But during the provincialate of our father Fray Joseph de la Trinidad, either because those obstacles ceased, or because divine grace wished to extend its triumphs, the results were wonderful. A very great number of those Manòbos were admitted into the Church—how many is not specified by the relations which we have been able to investigate, but we only see that they were many; for it is asserted that while the district of Butuàn, to which Linào belonged, consisted before that time of about three thousand reduced souls, its Christianity increased then by about one-third, the believers thus being increased for God and the vassals for the king.