Note 21 — Letters from Father Mateo Gisbert to the Reverend Fathers and Brothers of Veruela

... Now considering Mindanao under its social and political aspect, its population is divided into Christians, heathens, and Moros, all of whom proceed in general from the Malay, Indonesian races,21 and the indigenous or Negrito race, and from crosses of the same races among themselves and with other superior races, especially the Chinese and Spaniards. The Christians are divided into old and new. The old Christians number about 186,000, and occupy in the ethnographical map accompanying our letters, the place represented by color no. 1. Their customs smell of the greater or less familiarity that they have or have had with the heathens from whose races they proceed. Without the powerful and efficacious influence of religion one would note in them a marked tendency to idleness, drunkenness, gambling, and lust. On the other side they are naturally hospitable, docile, and generous. They are pious in the performance of their religion. In their family and married life considerable morality is observed when there exist no rocks of scandal in the villages. I have observed in certain parish books which register more than two hundred baptisms per year, that two or three years pass without the notice of a single natural child.22 They are given to the cultivation of rice, abacá, sugar-cane, coffee, tobacco, bananas, lumbias, cocoa-palms, and other fruit trees, and to that of tubers such as sweet potatoes, gabe, and arorú, which are an article of prime necessity for them in times of famine. They extract mastic and other resins, as for example piao and guísog, and refine the oil of cocoanuts, biao, and balao, but do not extract castor or peanut oil as they are ignorant of their use.23 Wax and honey are very abundant. From the latter, and from sugar-cane, nipa, cocoanuts, rice and cabo negro they prepare their drinks, and their vinegars from the last named and from camagon.24 They also get salt from sea-water by means of rapid evaporation.25 In general, the men are farmers, but among them there are carpenters, smiths, metal workers, masons, tailors, and even some who devote themselves to the making of weapons. The women weave the filaments of piña, tindog,26 abacá, cotton, and silk. They embroider and sew most delicately and tastefully. In certain seasons of the year, many Indians of the coasts, travel and fish especially for sea-turtles, whether they have any shell or not.27