The Caraga Mission

1. Muslim missionary and a Holy Well. Bap Rayawan Maidan, a Muslim Maranao
trader, tooth filer, gold tooth cap installer, peripatetic dentist, jeweler, married a Palmera woman in Caraga and lived in the barrio of Santiago. He told me that Islam came to Caraga when Sharif Kabungsuan (after 1475) landed in the Pacific coast at the foot of a limestone rock promontory at the mouth of the Caraga River. The proof of Kabungsuans visit is the existence of a spring of clear drinking water flowing from a rock at the foot of the Caracol Road before it climbs to the fort poblacion of Caraga. He and his Sama Laut retainers were driven there by a storm. They were hungry and thirsty. Upon reaching land, Sharif Kabungsuan jumped from his boat to the land. He kneeled and bowed down, thanking Allah for saving them from the terrible storm. As he prayed, fresh clear water gushed from the very spot where his feet first hit the rocky shore. It was a gift of Allah for the tired and thirsty sea farers. It seems that from time immemorial until 1970, when (thanks for funds from the Maryknoll Fathers) running water was piped into Caraga poblacion, the spring at the Caracol was the only source of drinking water for the settlement. Water sprung from the foot print of a Holy Man. It is a Holy Well. The Caragueos are drinkers of Holy Water. And, Bap Rayawan Maidan explained that anybody who attempts to fence off and own the sacred well brought sickness and bad luck to himself and family. The importance of the Holy Well is never celebrated, perhaps to hide the Muslim past of Caraga. 2. The spring is still there today at the foot of the Caracol. It served as the most important soured of drinking water for the Kalagan settlement and, later, for the Spanish fort town of Caraga for several decades. The well is for everybodys use. And Caraga, according to Bap Rayawan, was one of the places where Kabungsuan spent the Amihan season. He planted aglay, dawa, ubi and wakag.

3. Bap Rayawan explained that the Muslims of Sulu and Lanao consider the Caragan or
Kalagan as their separated brothers. That was the name used by Rajah Sharif Kabungsuan (one of the first Muslim trader-missionaries) for all hospitable people in southern Mindanao with whom he had contacts or among whom he and him men, when lost in a storm, had begot children. Look for your separated brothers, Kabungsuan admonished his children and converts. Wherever Kabungsuan and his men landed, they left children, pregnant women and converts.

4. Caraga as a Muslim Village. Bap Rayawan told another legend that present town
of Caraga on top of the rock in Davao Oriental started as non-Muslim Kalagan settlement located down below the hill at the mouth of the Caraga River. The Kalagan people, including the Muslim Kalagans, Caragueos, the Mangallagans, or the Mandayas got their ethnic or tribal name from the Caraga River. Before it was occupied by the Spaniards, Caraga was a non-Muslim Kalagan settlement used by Muslim Magindanao raiders as their R&R (rest-and-recreation) station on their return trip after raiding Christian villages in the Visayan Islands and Luzon. This was a convenient way to avoid the Spanish guns waiting for them at Fort Pilar in Zamboanga. They would stay there during the months of the Amihan (Northwest Monsoon winds of December, January and February), time enough to marry and impregnate local girls and convert local chieftains to their Muslim faith. Many non-Muslim Kalagans at that time were themselves sea raiders and joined the Magindanaws looting and pillaging Christianized settlements in the Visayan. This practice continued until military authorities in Zamboanga decided that a Spanish gun mounted on top of the tall cliffs of Caraga could sink the home bound

vintas of the Moro raiders. According to my informant, Bapa Rayawan Maidan, his people talked about how a Spanish troop raided the Islamized village called Kut (Fort) at the mouth of the Caraga River, and established their own fort on top of a promontory on the present site of the municipio and church grounds of Caraga.

5. Bap Rayawan related that the Spaniards and their Filipino soldiers knew that it was
dangerous to enter the mouth of the river by boat and attack the Muslim village at the bank of the river openly. The pilot must first observe and count the waves, before making a swift dash up streams at the safe moment. A fool hardy entry into the estuary could be disastrous. Wrong waves could drive the boat into a sand bar, strong river currents could swamped its exposed side with rushing waters, and giant killer waves would break its outriggers and capsize it. The strong currents of the Caraga River and the tide waters of the Caraga Bay offered adequate defense against sea born invaders. For a long period of time, ever since its foundation, this small Kalagan fort proudly stood unconquered on this narrow piece of flat land located at the foot of a hill where a deceitful river meets a conniving sea. The invading Spaniards and their local (Surigaonon) recruits knew this. Instead of attempting a frontal attack against, they landed their boats at sunset several kilometers north of the Muslin village and hid them in Agallon. After a hasty meal and covered by a growing darkness, they spread themselves out and walked southward through thickly wooded lands, careful not to be detected by scouts stationed at random at some distance outside the target village. Using night bird calls, they succeeded to make a rendezvous and spent the night in silence. At dawn, they swoop down with shouts and rifle shots at the unprepared village, and caught it by surprise.

6. Raided and occupied by the Spaniards. The defenders of the village were led by
a strong fighter named Kumara. He rallied his men, while his younger brother prepared the boats got as many women and children aboard. The boats left immediately as strong hands rowed furiously away from the turmoil raging in their village. Other women jumped into the water, swam across the river, and run southward along the beach to a safe place they called Kut Pagsawgon, near Nanayngan. Bapa Rayawan was told by his grandfather that Kumara and his men fought furiously and valiantly, but the native spears and kakana could not match the Spanish rifles and the pinuti of Bisayan soldiers. It was a successful day for the Spaniards; they could now establish their own fort and mount big guns on top of the hill to guard the eastern sea lanes. Kumara was the name of the Muslim Kalagan chief who died defending his settlement from the invaders. Nobody could tell exactly what happened to Kumara; some say he was slain, others believe he escaped and recovered from his wounds in a Kalagan village of Lupon, inside the Davao Gulf. His brother, succeeded to evacuate women and children to Kut Pagsawgon, near Nanayngan. Later, he brought his wards across the bay to a place of many springs, called Tubod, where he was captured and forcedly baptized. He was given the Spanish-Jewish name of Manuel. Tubod became Santiago (St. James, the Apostle) in honor of a patron saint of Compostela, [whose devotion had inspired the Spaniards to at last unite and drive their Muslim overlords down to Morocco away from the Iberian Peninsula after eight hundred years of dominance]. He was made a Christian chief to settle his people in Tubod (a place with springs), across the Caraga Bay. He escaped later southward with his own people and was overtaken by the Spanish troop on the banks of the Kasawman River. He and his men were again baptized and made to settle in a reduccin, now called Zarragoza. The Islamized Kalagans continued to escape from the Spaniards; the reducciones of Tarragona and Jovellar were organized for them. But they did not stay long in confinement; they escaped and organized a protected enclave in Lucatan and Tagabakid, where the Spaniards could not come near them. Today, the Kumara and the Manuel are common family names of many Kalagan families in Lupon and Banaybanay and other Kalagan settlements within the Davao Gulf.

7. Kalagan Christians (Kamayo), Muslim Kalagan and Mandaya Mangallagan.

Not all original Kalagans at the mouth of the Caraga River were willing to join relatives, who had accepted Magindanaw in-laws and become Islamized Kalagan. They saw Islam as a dominant foreign religion that forbids religious beliefs and practices of their ancestors. They abhorred any changes in their culture and way of life. Instead of living along the sea coasts, where they could often meet their Islamized Kalagan relatives. The non-Muslim Kalagans gradually migrated upstreams, not only upstreams of the Caraga River, but also up streams of all the rivers and streams the Kalagan peoples have occupied up and down the Pacific coast up until Tandag in Surigao del Sur in the north and down to Punta San Agustin and the rivers inside the Davao Gulf in the south and in the west. That is how vast the Kalagan territory was. They started as dwellers of mouthof-the river settlements; they expanded and moved upstreams being riverine people and for the purpose of evading contacts with Muslim Magindanaws and Muslim Kalagan relatives. They became known as the Kalagan people who went and live in the daya (upstreams), Mangallagan na taga daya, Mandaya. They used the same strategy to escape from being Christianized by Spaniards and settlers from the Visayas. From Tandag to Punta Agustin in Sigaboy Peninsula, people who refused to be Christianized were Mandaya. Those who were baptized and accepted the folk religiosity (i.e. not really orthodox Christianity but a hodge-podge version of Mexican and European understanding of Christianity) believed and practiced by the Visayan settlers and the alipores (retinue) of the priests were called Kamayo and Davaweo-Visayan. The Mandaya people lived the safety of vast rainforest at the head waters of the Pacific Cordillera of Mindanao. This safe Mandaya country is called the Dugpasanan sang mga Mandaya.

8. A long delay in the Christianization of Caraga. The encomenderos, who

financed the missionary activities found working in Butuan and Surigao del Norte more profitable because of the availability of gold in Butuan and the gold mining activities in these northeastern Mindanao areas. The pillaging and slave raiding activities of the Muslim Kalagan and the Magindanao were good alibis for slowing down missionary and colonial expansion activities in the Tandag and Kamayo towns north of Davao region, where the village of Caraga was situated. To give the impression to the King of Spain that something is being done in Caraga, the Spanish authorities in the Philippines extended the boundaries of Caraga in 1581 from Alubihid, in Misamis Oriental, to Punta San Agustin (named after the patron saint of the Augustinian Order) in Sigaboy Peninsula, Davao Oriental. Anyway, it was enough for the King of Spain to know that something is being done for Caraga because Tandag and the Kamayo towns were, indeed, already populated with Christianized Kalagans.

9. In 1784 the Spanish Mission in Eastern Mindanao was in a standstill. Only

two missionary Recoleto priests left for the spiritual care of the whole of Caraga Province, the whole east coast of Mindanao. There was a general empasse and even a standstill of 20 years for the colonial efforts at occupation of Eastern Mindanao. . . . this was especially true for the two southernmost villages (rather former villages) of Baganga and Cateel, the region closest to Moro-held territory . . . most of the residents of the deep south stayed away from the coast, preferring a miserable but relatively safe existence in the forest to living in close proximity to the Moro-dominated shores south of Bislig. In the long and ever worsening conflict between Spanish interests and Moro resistance, they had so often been caught in the middle, where they found themlselves at the receiving end of the ire of both, that they had become deaf to Spanish orders compelling them to live in controlled coastal settlements. Once the desertion had become almost general, Spanish clumsiness in dealing with those remontados was often no great help for enticing the latter to settle (again) along the shore. The Mandayas complained that there was insufficient Spanish military presence in the area to assure protection against persistent Moro claims and threats. . .

10. In 1797, Mandaya Requested for a Garrison in the village of Caraga. How
complete the abandonment down south actually was, appears not only from the fact that Caraga and Baganga do not appear anymore in the statistics of 1797, but also from a letter by the Recoleto parish of Cantilan (1796) wherein he uses the expression repoblar los antiguos pueblos de Caraga y Baganga. Obviously referring to Spanish attempts, this re-peopling was considered very important by the colonial government. An abandoned stretch of coast amounted to an open invitation to the Moro datus around cape San Agustin to take it. In one of the documents at hand mention is made of a Royal Order of 8 May 1790. I have been able to find the text of that Cedula, but its contents can be guessed from the context wherein it is mentioned, and which speaks about the resettlement by attraction and Christianization, of former coastal inhabitants and other into a few organized littoral villages. Those indeed steps were taken and feelers put out to such effect, may appear from a letter of [alcalde of Surigao, capital of the province of Caraga] Riveras successor to governor-general de Aguila: [ . . . ] The datus of Caraga and Baganga came to see me in Cateel and offered that, if a priest were assigned to their place, and a garrison established there to defend them against the Moros, they would settle again in their old village of Caraga and help in the construction of a fortress or a bastion. Such a fortress could be armed with the weapons of the fort of Tandag [ . . . ]. Surigao, capital of the province of Caraga, 5 May 1797, Juan Hipolito Gonzales, Alcalde M.

11. Small pox saved Caraga from Muslim invasion. After this, a fuerticito (small fort)
with two canons was erected in Caraga manned by tercios (volunteers and militiamen). The legend says that Caraga was saved from a Muslim raid by a miracle. The men were away. No one was left to man the guns. The people thought of holding q procession, singing hymns on top of their voices and carrying on their shoulders the statue of their titular(or patron saint), el Salvador del Mundo, Lord Jesus, Savior of the World. They were surprised when all of a sudden the Muslims turned their vintas away. The Caragueos could not believe the Moros would be scared by a handful of fort defenders, mostly women. When they returned to the church, they saw their patron covered with pock marks and soars, telltale signs of small pox infection. So, that was reason the Muslims sailed away. Scared of deadly small pox infection. This means that long before the Jesuits arrived, there already was a Recoleto visita (chapel) in Caraga and its titular was el Seor Jesus, Salvador del Mundo. Even until my stay in Caraga in 1968, the statue still had pock marks from small pox infection.

12. In 1873 First Visit to Caraga Mission by the Jesuits. In Caraga Antigua, Fr. Peter
Schreurs, MSC writes, In the same year 1873 [Jesuit] superior Father (Martin) Luengo received a large delegation from Bislig and Caraga which had come to explain the need for a priest in the southernmost region of east the east coast. In 1873 (and again in 1875) Luengo made extensive made an extensive reconnaissance trip through the new Jesuit territory of Mindanao. He first went to Surigao along the east coast to Tandag, Bislig (where he installed Father Parache as parish priest), Cateel, Caraga, Manay, Sigaboy, Davao and back again. He skipped Cantilan, which would have been a logical stopping place but was still Recoleto territory; his own report about his experiences in the Recoleto parish of Tandag is slightly altered in Pastells condensation of that report. From Luengos personal travelogue of the journey down to Davao he emerges as an ebullient observer with a deep interest in what he saw. From Tandag down to Caraga he found the parishes without any priest. Fray Pedro Sanchez, the last Recoleto parish priest of Bislig, whom we met earlier writing his testament, had died a lonely death in Cateel one year before Luengos visit. Twelve years before that, a similar fate had befallen the penultimate Recoleto residing in Vergara, as Davao was then named. Tandag is a very small village located near the seashore. It has a wide river with good water. It also has beautiful agricultural lands suited for all kinds of cultivation. The people are more civilized than those of other villages. One sees also more white faces, no doubt a result of its past history. In his Geography of the Philippines our learned Father Murillo [Pedro Murillo y Velarde] speaking about Mindanao, mentions Tandag as a village of some importance. Once there was a fort here (or a baluarte, as they say here). It was strong enough for that time when the Moros did not yet have artillery pieces. In this fort, of which the ruined ramparts can still be seen, a Spanish garrison had been station for many years. It was predominantly composed of Mexicans under the command of an officer who was called castellano or fort commander. When that stronghold was being built, it was

intended to be just big enough to shelter the people of the village in case of Moro attack, and the walls were quite strong. However, what had not been taken into account was that the spot was dominated by a hill. From where on certain occasion the Moros sprayed them with cannon balls. Tradition had it that the wife of the commander, I order not to fall into the hands of the Moros, put fire into the powder magazine with the result that not only the fort but also the few people who were still alive, were blown up. The tradition about the fort related here, is rather at variance with the Recollect documents, as we have seen earlier; the latter were contemporary on the spot reports. The reality of the forts end has even more dramatic. At Luengos arrival Bislig had been without a priest for more than a year. Father Parache, the new pastor, found only a dilapidated church and convent; the latter had in addition been totally ransacked. The old church of Bislig was located about three hundred meters back of the present site; a cemetery was an annex to it. Luengo was very much struck by the way people received him and his companion everywhere. His explanation: This happens in all he places where we come for the first time: a Jesuit is considered as something extraordinary. Be that as it may have been, it is a fact that in the past just like now people who had been without a priest for a long time, have always shown happiness when one arrived, Jesuit or not. One can, however, understand his feeling when this Spanish Jesuit added: While in Europe they looked upon us as monsters, here, by the mercy of God, people have a far better opinion of us.

13. In the sane year of 1873 the Old San Salvador Parish of Caraga passed to
charges of the Jesuit Fathers. Five missionaries, headed by Fr. Bove, S.J. travelled to different visitas of Caraga (which included Manay area) to take care of old Christians and to convert new ones. They were assisted by Paulalen (sic) Ajos, an old resident who claimed to be a Bisayan even is his surname indicated that he was a member of the Ajos family of Surigao. Caraga was located on a plateau on the top of a hill about thirty meters high and next to the shore. The usual method of reaching the plateau was to climb a primitive ladder of about eighty rungs from the level of the beach. Pastells mentions that afterwards (presumably when he was parish priest or shortly thereafter) an approach road to the top was built under the supervision of Brother Zumeta and captain Leon Balante. [Note: A winding road exits today, fondly called the Caracol, spiral like the volute edible sea shell]. About the village of Caraga Luengo wrote: It is the real capital of this corner of Mindanao; it is a place with a history that lives by memories and still cherishes aspirations in the middle of all its miseries [. . .] It is not even a shadow anymore of what it once was. What happened to this place is the same as befell some noble families who had come to dire times but who, although they dont even possess a quarter anymore, dont stop thinking about their descent, and expect by all means that people acknowledge them as superior beings. Luengo entrusted also the following musings about Caraga to paper:

This Christian village exists already two hundred years. It sounds unbelievable that now in the famous capital of Caraga, where once a government post was established like in Iligan, with a garrison of Spaniards and Mexicans, from whom some of its present-day white faces originate. From here departed those fighting troops who gave the Moros such a hard time, in spite of all the latters might. The Caragueos of those days were famous for their courage; they not only went to sea for defense of religion and the Spanish banner, but also accompanied their governor up to the rivers and over the mountains, carrying at one time their barotos on their shoulders till they reached the great lake of Mindanao, an undertaking that sounds unbelievable nowadays. But in those times the people were different, like the ideas that guided them. Regardless of what has been said in some newspaper articles that have little sympathy for the work of the religious Order, in those days in Mindanao was far better known than at present. This deterioration has undoubtedly resulted from our revolutions and politics. In those days Caraga was the center of the mission of the Recollect Fathers, who more than once shed their blood for these regions. In our days, all that has disappeared, because from the time when it became necessary to close the fortification in order to come to the succour of Manila, which was being threatened by the notorious Chinese corsair (Coxinga) in the days of governor Sabiniano Manrique de Lara [1653-1663], those Christians fled from the danger of the Moros and went hiding in the mountains, so that the latter occupied the territory. Only the name of Caraga remained, until the Recoletos, with much patience and perseverance, were able to settle again some people there in the beginning of this century. In this way the new village of Caraga was founded; it carries the title of mission and is a sub-station of Bislig. [. . .] It church, which does not deserve that name anymore because it is only a dilapidated shack, has as titular the Salvador del Mundo.

14. Schreurs Comment on Luengo speech. Without wishing to be pedantic about it,
I [Peter Schreurs, MSC] may, nevertheless, be allowed to say that Father Luengo clearly did not have his history books with him on that trip. A correction of some glaringly mistaken statements is in order, and should be done because oral or written local history has more than once presented a local past that never really existed. This resulted from ceaselessly repeated statements of latter-day writers or speakers that were all too readily accepted passed on as authoritative. We mentioned already the question of Butuan and the famous First Mass tradition . . . to which of late has been added the first Kingdom of Butuan. Luengo is clearly imputing parts of the history of the district of Caraga and its former capital Tandag to that of the village of Caraga. And, indeed, more than once writers and oral tradition have insinuated that the district got its name from the village of Caraga. Very probably it was the other way around, or the name was just applied on both the village and the district simultaneously. Moreover, as we mentioned already, in not a few old records Caraga refers to the present area of Cantilan, whose Calagan, Calegan, Calagd[a]n occur in some later reports as referring to the coastal village of Caraga. The latter has no documented history of the kind of greatness which Luengo fathers upon it. The district of Caraga has, and the impression is that de facto it was the greatness of the Mandaya race that accounts for it. [Note: A study of 16th and 17th century Spanish and Portuguese maps seems to suggest that European cartographers sometimes confused our Caraga with the island of Sarangani, spelled (depending on the nationality and /or pronunciation of the mapmaker) as Carangani or Sarangani or even Caramgam].

Furthermore: the village of Caraga never had fortification of importance suggested by Luengo, certainly not of the importance of Iligan. It only had (on and off) a limited kind of military outpost pathetically cowering at the southern limit of eastern Mindanao, the Ultima Thule before Moroland. The Caraga fort at times so named in old records, was clearly the fort of Tandag. The story of Caragans carrying their barotos through the jungle to the lake of Mindanao is here (by Luengo) told as if it had started from the village of Caraga; in fact it started from Butuan in the days of el Padre Capitan and Governor Francisco de Atienza. Among the native troops in question were indeed some Caragans, but these were clearly soldiers of the fort of Tandag. And finally, the center of the mission of the Recollect Fathers on the eastcoast was Tandag not Caraga. Luengo was far more right when, worrying about the extension of the new Jesuit territory and the working conditions awaiting the new missionaries there, he asks: Where is the man of iron who would not become exhausted after traveling for days or weeks in a baroto over such long distances, with so much deprivation and danger? On the other hand, would ones heart not be moved at the thought of so many pagan and finally, Mandayas? According to my data which do not pretend to be exact there are at least ten thousand of them living between Butuan and Caraga, including, of course, those who do not know about our government and who have no contact with the Christian settlements. Who would not cry out: The harvest is great but there are not enough laborers? Those are words that had rung already many years before through all then Recoleto missionary reports. It could globally be said that at the arrival of the new missionaries the population of the east coast between Caraga and Tandag consisted (aside from a number of Christian Visayan immigrants from everywhere in the eastern half of Mindanao) of Mandayas who were at least nominally Christian. Only slightly more inland, away from the coast, the majority were still pagan.

15. In 1874 Caraga was established as a Jesuit Mission Parish. Assigned were Fr.
Pablo Pastells, S.J. and Fr. Juan Terricabas, S.J. They organized the visitas of Cateel, Quinablangan, Dapnan, Baganga, Santiago, Manay in the sea coast; Batiano in Baganga, San Pedro in Caraga, Manresa in Manay, San Pedro in the highlands of Caraga. It took ten years labor before a stone Church could be built on an impregnable rock in Caraga.

16. Christianization through Reduccin. Fr. Pablo Pastells, S.J. and his fellow Jesuits
used the reduccin as a method in teaching catechism and in organizing the parish into small Christian community units. How reduccin works was explained to me by a lay man, an old sacristan, Ompo Talog Palmera. Using a team of convento boys and a small contingent of the Spanish troop assigned to him for this purpose, the parish priest would invite a number of Mandaya families from the same area to be his guests in his ballay na bato (stone house) in the poblacion of Caraga. They had good lodging and were well fed; but they could not leave the premises. Instead of plain conversation, the guests were given several weeks of close door religious instructions and Jesuit style spiritual and devotional exercises. This religious training was more rigid than the three days Cursillo de Cristianidad of Bishop Hervas of the 1960s; but the catecumenate lessons must have followed similar pattern as the Cursillo, going through the Salvation History from Creation to the Last Judgement, the Creed and the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments and the Commandments of the Church. Christian prayers were memorized and prayed from time to time every day. There is evidence that the training included a literacy program that trained talented individuals to read and lead the novenas and conduct the

responso (rituals for the dead). The priests had to learn to speak not only Cebuano Visayan but also Mandaya. The Spanish missionaries, upon arrival to their missions in the East Coast, would find soon enough that the Cebuano Visayan, that they had painstaking learned during their training day, could not be fully understood by these mountain folks. Involved in this reduccin project were the convento boys, consisting of the sacristan, cantores, escribientes, bell ringers, fiscal, catechist, farm assistants, cook and houseboys who were recruited by these missionaries from elsewhere in the Philippines, to help them in their mission work. These foreign missionaries often had to rely on their convento boys, to help translate and refine their sermons and lectures and to explain it further the locally understood Mandaya-Bisayan dialect. One of the negative effects of using these convento boys were their role in the diffusion of Luzonian and Bisayan superstitious beliefs on the antinganting, kulam, multo, aswang, the kapre, the dwende, the sigbin and encantos into the Mandaya folklore and religiosity. They may had been responsible for imputing evil powers and spells on Mandaya bodily ornaments, necklaces, embroideries, cloth weaving, decorations, oral literature of all genres, and arts. On the last day of the catecumenate, barbers come to give the men the Visayan hair cut. The women were made to discard their beautiful Mandaya costume and to dress Bisayan womens clothes. They had to comb their hair the Bisayan way and to use Bisayan words as much as possible. While orthodox Christian beliefs are taught by the priests, his alipores were sharing elements of their own folk religiosity to the Mandaya converts. The ritual of baptism administered on Easter Sunday was the ceremony to finalize the act of transforming the Mandaya into a Christian Visayan. He is now liberated from the indignity of being classified among infieles (unbelievers), under the spell of the evil ones. Its like St. Pauls debate against those who were preaching that the Gentiles must first become a Jew before they can become Christians. A Mandaya cant be a Christian without fist becoming a Bisayan. You cant be a Filipino without first renouncing your being a Mandaya. Its bad luck to be a Mandaya; to be a Mandaya is evil. The Mandaya had to do everything to gain recognition and improve his status and dignity; even at the expense of losing his patrimony, his Ancestral Domain. Another unmentioned evil effect of the reduccin method in Caraga took place after baptism, when the ne w Christians were led to the site where they were to organize a barrio (village), designed as closely as possible to pattern of the Spanish pueblo. The settlement is centered on a plaza. On the most elevated side of the Plaza, the new Christians would build their capilla. Facing the capilla is the tribunal, or the office and meeting hall of the tribal council. Residential lots and farm lands are assigned to each of family. Everything is fine with this arrangement. This is what is wrong is with the system the convento boys assigned to themselves the ownership of pieces of lands in every 19th century barrio of Caraga. The Dominguez, Alvar, Pichon, Burgos, Palma Gil, etc. have farm lands in all the old barrios of Caraga (which then included Manay). Perhaps, the priests and the new Christians did not notice it; but opportunism is the name of the game. Or am I making a mountain of a mole? I find the reduccin a powerful tool in influencing the world view change among the Mandaya people, a paradigm shift. The lectures and seminars made them change their way of seeing themselves in relation to the creator, to world/environment in which they live, to their neighbors, and even to themselves. In the past, until the coming of the dags (to these white and brown dags, they realized that there must be a more comfortable, enjoyable, dignified way of living. Their traditional way of life started to appear as undesirable, a foreigners, people brought to shores by the waves) they believed the life they had was what it should be; and they were happy about it. With their exposure prison they must escape from. They no longer se the value of belonging to a tribe with a large track of tropical jungle and marshlands forest to fish from, to hunt

and gather food, to make a paw (clearing) to plant cereals and root crops. They learned to hate the pangayaw (intermittent village raids) to obtain loot and to capture slaves. They decided to cut themselves from their past, to be free from what their lecturers must have called pagkalu-og (timidity, ungainliness, primitivism and ignorance). When I lived with the Mandaya in the 1960s, they believed that Bisayanization through baptism and the practice of Christianity (in the manner most folk Christians do) was the door to freedom. This may be one of the reasons why they did not care so much when the dags occupied their hunting grounds and transformed them into farms for food crops and plantations for cash crops. They wanted to be friend the dags to teach them how not to be Mandaya anymore. They could not understand why I was asking them to be proud of their Mandaya ancestry; that they can become good Christians and still retain their being Mandaya. The religious education provided them through the reduccin further reinforced their own conviction that everything Mandaya is to be despised and discarded. Magabisaya da ako, kay Padle (Father, Ive decided to become a Bisayan)!

17. Devotion for the Sacrament of the Sick. I also found out that the people of the
East Coast appreciated very much when their priests care for the dying members of the community to hear their confession, to give Holy Communion, to anoint them with the Santa Lana (Sacrament of Extreme Unction) and to prepare them to meet their Lord and Savior at the moment of their death. They would not mind if their Jesuit priests were strict disciplinarians, provided they made themselves available to prepare their parishioners to die a Christian death. It was a loving service the Jesuits gave that endeared them to their parishioners.

18. Role of Unbaptized Mandaya in the Construction of the Church in 1885

Construction of the present Caraga mission church was in full swing. Mandaya leaders (even if not yet baptized) were also involved, like Ompo Maballanban (Butay and Sangab), Ompo Pasado Masunag (Panullayan & Pantuyan) and Ompo Tikilid (Bull & Lubganon) donated the building materials, especially the hard wood posts. It really is a Mandaya church. Nestor Masinaring said, I heard Ompo Alimbon say that he donated the crooked ballatinaw (dark brown kamagong) posts in the Caraga Church. Other Mandaya donors were Ompo Pasado Masunag and the Ompo of Vising Muya na si Tikilid Mariano. According to Casilum Banugan, a Mandaya of Sangab, Si Maballanban, lomon ni Tanding, taga Butay. Yagkamang ya-an ng limang klase na kahoy, amot na-an para harigi ng Simbahan dato sang Caraga: Naga, Amullawon, Anislag, Ballatinaw aw Ballayong. Ya-an yang yagtanum ng sikalig adto sang Agallon. Pangullo si Maballanban pagtrabaho sand Simbahan. Gi-kapitan si Maballanban; si Talindasan ihimo na Alguacil (police). Si Tanding, bana ni Palina; si Indisay, anak nilan, in ni Casilum.

19. Deaths of Missionaries, seeds of the mission. People of Caraga still remember a
certain Fr. Roselle, S.J. who died when the present Church of Caraga was constructed. Ompo Talg recounted that one of the holes being dug or chiseled into the Caraga rock was not large enough to fit the giant hardwood posts. Everyone was scared to go down the hole and light the dynamite. You must get out of the hole before the explosion. Fr. Roselle, S.J. volunteered. He was not completely out of the hole before the dynamite exploded. He was injured, but out of modesty he did not want anybody, not even Seor Santos, the maestro del campo, to treat the wounds in his loins. According to Ompo Talg, Fr. Roselle, S.J., he died of gangrene, the first priest to be burried in Caraga. [When I was in Caraga, one of the old horses was named Rosello. Was the poor beast named after the brave but inhibited priest?] The Jesuits labored in Caraga and in the Contra Costa Mission of Davao until 1940 just

before World War II, when Canadian Prtres des Missiones trangres (Priests of the Foreign Missions, P.M.E.) took over the job for them. A Jesuit brother and a priest were killed in Manurigao by undisciplined followers of the rebel Prudencio Garcia officer from Baganga during the Phlippine Revolution. Even those early years, one of their priests, Fr. Deschardins, P.M.E. did not return during one mission trip to Santiago. When the Maryknoll Fathers took over from the P.M.E., the first Maryknoller parish priest died in 1962.

20. 1951 Dormitory for Mandaya students. Mandaya children when they come to
Caraga poblacion in the 1950s suffered from being ridiculed, discriminated and despised. A school was opened for them in Bowa, but I was transferred later to Caraga poblacion to accommodate a larger number of students from other Mandaya settlements. To encourage them to attend classes in Caraga, Fr. Cousol, P.M.E., a French Canadian missionary, with the help of the R.V.M. nuns established the dormitory to accommodate Mandaya school children. At that time, only Salvador Maglintang and Manlumuntad Agustin Matucol, Mandaya abaca planters from Katigud, were wealthy enough to purchase residential lots and build a house for their children in Caraga poblacion.
Prepared by Emmanuel S. Nabayra on August 23, 2011 from field notes. Department of Social Sciences, University of the Philippines Mindanao, Tugbok District, Mintal, Davao City, Philippines. Mobile phone number 09993729395.E-mailAddress: emmanuelnabayra@yahoo.com