Native Sexual Practices

Concubinage, rape, and incest, were not regarded at all, unless committed by a timaua on the person of a woman chief.

It was a quite ordinary practice for a married man to have lived a long time in concubinage with the sister of his wife.

Even before having sex with his wife he could have had access for a long time to his mother-in-law, especially if the bride were very young, and until she were of sufficient age.

This was done in sight of all the relatives.

Single men are called bagontaos, [327] and girls of marriageable age, dalagas.

Both classes are people of little restraint, and from early childhood they have sex with one another, and mingle with facility and little secrecy, and without this being regarded among the natives as a cause for anger.

Neither do the parents, brothers, or relatives, show any anger, especially if there is any material interest in it, and but little is sufficient with each and all.

As long as these natives lived in their paganism, it was not known that they had fallen into the abominable sin against nature.

But after the Spaniards had entered their country, through communication with them—and still more, through that with the Sangleys, who have come from China, and are much given to that vice—it has been communicated to them somewhat, both to men and to women.

In this matter it has been necessary to take action.

The natives of the islands of Pintados, especially the women, are very vicious and sensual.

Their perverseness has discovered lascivious methods of communication between men and women; and there is one to which they are accustomed from their youth.

The men skilfully make a hole in their virile member near its head, and insert therein a serpent’s head, either of metal or ivory, and fasten it with a peg of the same material passed through the hole, so that it cannot become unfastened.

With this device, they have sex with their wives, and are unable to withdraw until a long time after copulation.

They are very fond of this and receive much pleasure from it, so that, although they shed a quantity of blood, and receive other harm, it is current among them.

These devices are called sagras, and there are very few of them, because since they have become Christians, strenuous efforts are being made to do away with these, and not consent to their use; and consequently the practice has been checked in great part. [328]

Herbalists and witches are common among these natives, but are not punished or prohibited among them, so long as they do not cause any special harm. But seldom could that be ascertained or known.

There were also men whose business was to ravish and take away virginity from young girls.

These girls were taken to such men, and the latter were paid for ravishing them, for the natives considered it a hindrance and impediment if the girls were virgins when they married.

In matters of religion, the natives proceeded more barbarously and with greater blindness than in all the rest.

For besides being pagans, without any knowledge of the true God, they neither strove to discover Him by way of reason, nor had any fixed belief.

The devil usually deceived them with a thousand errors and blindnesses. He appeared to them in various horrible and frightful forms, and as fierce animals, so that they feared him and trembled before him.

They generally worshiped him, and made images of him in the said forms.

These they kept in caves and private houses, where they offered them perfumes and odors, and food and fruit, calling them anitos. [329]

Others worshiped the sun and the moon, and made feasts and drunken revels at the conjunction of those bodies.

Some worshiped a yellow-colored bird that dwells in their woods, called batala.

They generally worship and adore the crocodiles when they see them, by kneeling down and clasping their hands, because of the harm that they receive from those reptiles.

They believe that by so doing the crocodiles will become appeased and leave them.

Their oaths, execrations, and promises are all as above mentioned, namely, “May buhayan eat thee, if thou dost not speak truth, or fulfil what thou hast promised,” and similar things.

There were no temples throughout those islands, nor houses generally used for the worship of idols. But each person possessed and made in his house his own anitos, [330] without any fixed rite or ceremony.

They had no priests or religious to attend to religious affairs, except certain old men and women called catalonas.

These were experienced witches and sorcerers, who kept the other people deceived.

The latter communicated to these sorcerers their desires and needs, and the catalonas told them innumerable extravagancies and lies.

The catalonas uttered prayers and performed other ceremonies to the idols for the sick; and they believed in omens and superstitions, with which the devil inspired them, whereby they declared whether the patient would recover or die.

Such were their cures and methods, and they used various kinds of divinations for all things.

All this was with so little aid, apparatus, or foundation. God had permitted this so that the preaching of the holy gospel should find those of that region better prepared for it, and so that those natives would confess the truth more easily, and it would be less difficult to withdraw them from their darkness, and the errors in which the devil kept them for so many years.

They never sacrificed human beings as is done in other kingdoms. They believed that there was a future life where those who had been brave and performed valiant feats would be rewarded; while those who had done evil would be punished.

But they did not know how or where this would be. [331]

They buried their dead in their own houses, and kept their bodies and bones for a long time in chests.

They venerated the skulls of the dead as if they were living and present.

Their funeral rites did not consist of pomp or assemblages, beyond those of their own house—where, after bewailing the dead, all was changed into feasting and drunken revelry among all the relatives and friends. [332]

A few years before the Spaniards subdued the island of Luzon, Muslim natives of Borneo began to go thither to trade, especially to the settlement of Manila and Tondo, the inhabitants of the one island intermarried with those of the other.

These Borneans were already introducing their religion among the natives of Luzon, and were giving them instructions, ceremonies, and the form of observing their religion, by means of certain gazizes [333] whom they brought with them.

Already a considerable number, and those the chiefest men, were commencing, although by piecemeal, to become Moros, and were being circumcised [334] and taking the names of Moros.

Had the Spaniards’ coming been delayed longer, that religion would have spread throughout the island, and even through the others, and it would have been difficult to extirpate it.

The mercy of God checked it in time; for, because of being in so early stages, it was uprooted from the islands, and they were freed from it, that is, in all that the Spaniards have pacified, and that are under the government of the Filipinas.

That religion has spread and extended very widely in the other islands outside of this government, so that now almost all of their natives are Mahometan Moros, and are ruled and instructed by their gaçizes and other morabitos; [335] these often come to preach to and teach them by way of the strait of Ma[la]ca and the Red Sea, through which they navigate to reach these islands.

The arrival of the Spaniards in these Filipinas Islands, since the year 1564, the pacification and conversion that has been made therein, their mode of governing, and the provisions of his Majesty during these years for their welfare, have caused innovations in many things, such as are usual to kingdoms and provinces that change their religion and sovereign. The foremost has been that, besides the name of Filipinas which all the islands took and received from the beginning of their conquest, they belong to a new kingdom and seigniory to which his Majesty, Filipo Second, our sovereign, gave the name of Nuevo Reyno de Castilla [“New Kingdom of Castilla”].

By his royal concession, he made the city of Manila capital of it, and gave to it as a special favor, among other things, a crowned coat-of-arms which was chosen and assigned by his royal person.

This is an escutcheon divided across. In the upper part is a castle on a red field, and in the lower a lion of gold, crowned and rampant, holding a naked sword in its right paw. One-half of the body is in the form of a dolphin upon the waters of the sea, to signify that the Spaniards crossed the sea with their arms to conquer this kingdom for the crown of Castilla. [336]