Dutch captain Olivier van Noort visited Guam in 1600. His experience with the local Chamorros was nearly identical to Magellan’s and Legazpi’s. Islanders aboard many canoes met van Noort far out at sea and competed with one another to trade. The Dutch captain reported that the Chamorros noisily shouted “hierro,” or “iron,” making clear what they wanted most.
Nonetheless, the trading at Umatac Bay would prove enduring. By the seventeenth century, this small bay would become the primary way station for Spanish fleets journeying across the Pacific. The water was deep enough for the galleons to anchor safely, and the surrounding hills protected them from the wind and storms. As the Umatac River flowed into the bay, fresh water was easy to obtain, as Legazpi’s men found out after jumping ashore. The ships moved closer to the bottom of the bay to facilitate the uploading of water casks, “but the Indians suddenly started throwing rocks with their slings in such quantities that they hurt some of our people, and we had to use our harquebuses [a shoulder-supported matchlock gun] to drive them away.” Remarkably, many paraos had continued to trade with the Spanish ships even while under attack. Over the next three days, the tenuous Spanish-Chamorro peace nearly came undone. On Thursday, the soldiers were still filling up water barrels at the Umatac River when some islanders offered help to carry them. “Everyone was together and in perfect peace and friendship,” the commander recounted, “until one Indian wrested a harquebus from one of the soldiers and ran away; and the others fled too and turned to pelting those who were taking the water.” Hours later they returned, saying that they wished to remain friends with the Spanish.14
On Friday, four days after having arrived, Commander Legazpi finally went ashore to take possession of Guam in the name of the Spanish crown. He walked around the beach, “cutting tree branches with his sword, pulling some grass, making stone monuments, and carving crosses into some of the coconut trees.” The Augustinian friars said Mass. It is impossible to know what the islanders made of such strange proceedings, although more than eighty presented themselves to the Spanish commander, “and in return he gave them beads, and they were at times at peace and at times at war.”15
For a brief moment, the expeditionaries considered forming a settlement in Guam. The largest island in Micronesia right on the ocean highway of winds and currents would have been ideal for moving across the Pacific, though less so for trade with Asia. Commander Legazpi gave up on the idea, however, partly because his instructions were very explicit about establishing the base in the Philippines, but also perhaps on account of the islanders’ volatility. A final tragic incident made this clear. As the Spanish were filling up the last casks of water before their departure, a cabin boy named Ochoa de Arratia fell asleep on the island after the soldiers had returned to the ships for the night. No one noticed Arratia’s absence until a great uproar erupted from the beach. A group of Chamorros had seized the cabin boy from the Basque Country, tied him spread-eagled, and used him as target practice, firing spears at him. By the time the Spanish soldiers came back, Ochoa de Arratia had sustained “more than thirty piercing wounds that had passed entirely through his body, and they also had stuck a sharp stick through his mouth that came out through the back of his head.”16
8
The Far Side of the World
While Legazpi’s ships spent a week in Guam, the San Lucas forged ahead all the way to the Philippines. After what must have seemed like an eternity of seventy days of navigation, on January 29, 1565, Captain Don Alonso de Arellano, pilot Lope Martín, and the twenty-strong crew of the smallest ship in the fleet were the first to lay eyes on the archipelago. In the early afternoon, the men of the San Lucas began catching glimpses of Mindanao, the southernmost of the Philippine islands. By the time they had come close to the shore, the sun was barely above the horizon, and a sudden shift in the wind started pushing the vessel relentlessly toward the coast—what mariners call a lee shore. Almost in darkness, the crew attempted to lower the rowboat to tow the San Lucas out toward deeper waters. Yet the wind became so strong that during the maneuver the boat smashed against the ship, breaking parts of both. In spite of their best efforts, the crew members could not prevent the San Lucas from running aground. Completely exhausted, they gave up by 2:00 a.m. A carpenter started nailing together a plank to transfer the food and other valuables from the ship to the rowboat in order to move everything ashore. But the wind shifted direction again, now blowing from land to sea, and according to Don Alonso, “the air had a sweet smell that greatly encouraged us.” This breeze gained quickly in strength until it became powerful enough to free the San Lucas. 1
The next day the vessel coasted for some time until it came to rest in a protected cove. It had covered about nine thousand miles since leaving the coast of Mexico. In all likelihood, the voyagers had reached the Davao Gulf. From the deck of the San Lucas, all that was visible was dense foliage, an impenetrable curtain of greenery. The forest floor appeared dark and covered by decaying leaves and puddles of water. The humidity and heat were impossible to ignore. Mindanao is a vast tropical expanse of 36,700 square miles—the second-largest island among the more than seven thousand making up the Philippines—with high mountains, majestic waterfalls, swamps complete with crocodiles, pythons, kalaw birds (a type of hornbill), and monkeys. In the sixteenth century, Mindanao harbored a variety of localized kin-based groups known as barangay. Some of these communities had converted to Islam in the previous century and begun to coalesce into larger sultanates. The arrival of the Spanish set the stage for a showdown between Muslims and Christians that would rage for centuries, even after the United States took over in 1898. Yet on that first day in the Davao Gulf, the voyagers did not see anyone. They spent the time quietly filling up seven or eight casks of water before going back to the San Lucas for the night.2
The following morning, the crew woke up to human calls coming from the top of a nearby hill, “and we replied even though we could not see the people,” said the ship’s captain, “because they were hidden by the forest.” There were three callers. Lope Martín and four sailors got into the rowboat, went ashore, and signaled to the people in the hills to come down for a parley. They did. Unlike the Micronesian islanders, who went about almost naked, these three men wore clothes made of cotton, carried wooden shields that Don Alonso referred to as “tablachinas,” or “Chinese boards,” and had daggers dangling from their belts. The three men curtly asked the Spanish to stay at that cove and then left. In the afternoon, they came back reinforced by about thirty or forty warriors as well as a headman. On seeing this contingent gathering at the beach across from the ship, the Spanish captain, the pilot, and a few others got into the rowboat, but before they had even reached the shore, “the headman waded into the sea, took some water in one hand, and made the sign of the cross.” Evidently he had dealt with Christians before.3
When the two groups finally came together, the Spaniards embraced the islanders, a ritual of friendship requiring close—potentially fatal—proximity. Mediterranean peoples have been hugging for millennia, as is clear from biblical stories and medieval paintings. But other cultures around the world have been suspicious of the practice. The people of Mindanao tolerated the embraces but immediately responded with a ritual of their own. “To seal the peace, the principal man took a dagger from his belt,” Don Alonso wrote, “and he made signs that he wanted to cut himself in the stomach or the arm to draw blood, as is the custom among these natives.” A common peace ceremony throughout the Philippines, it called for one leader to shed blood into a cup and offer it to the other one to drink (either straight or mixed with water or liquor) and then for a reciprocal bloodletting of the other leader. But before the headman from Mindanao was able to cut his body, Don Alonso took the dagger from his hand and signaled that they were friends without having to drink each other’s blood.4
In spite of this shortcutting of the ritual, the people of Mindanao appeared satisfied. They passed around bamboo canes filled with a brown liquor, “like
the color of cinnamon.” To show that it was not poisoned, Vibán (as the leader was called, according to the Spanish sources) took a big gulp, “and we also drank this wine many times, it was sweet and burned with a taste of ginger.” Cinnamon and ginger are common today, but for sixteenth-century Europeans who had never seen the bark of the cinnamon tree or chewed on a stubby ginger root, the drink was like a foretaste of paradise and profit. The hosts “were delighted to see that we drank from their wine without disgust,” the San Lucas captain reported, “and they also gave us sugarcanes and boiled yams, and we gave them of what we had, and presented their leader with a piece of iron that he held in great esteem.” It was getting dark after all the drinking and gift-giving, so the islanders left, “very happy for having negotiated a peace with us, and we were even more contented because we had found a people of such good understanding and secure anchoring with wood and fresh water where we could wait for the rest of the fleet.”5
The men of the San Lucas spent all of February 1565 at that cove, making repairs to the vessel. Yet the warm relationship they had initially enjoyed with the islanders cooled off markedly. One reason may have been the limited goods for trade that they had. In exchange for what few nails they could spare, the men of the San Lucas got oranges and lemons (excellent against scurvy), bananas “of three different kinds,” sugarcanes “as thick as an arm,” dogs “like foxes” (for protein), chickens “like those of Castile,” and so on. They even obtained ginger “that is green and big when just dug out of the ground” and cinnamon “with which these natives clean their teeth.” But as the Europeans ran out of trade goods, their presence became a nuisance. During that month, they went from honored visitors, to guests who had outstayed their welcome, to intruders. Vibán stopped talking to the visitors, and an attack from land became a distinct possibility.6
In the meantime, the men of the San Lucas began quarreling among themselves, a feature of many early voyages of exploration. Columbus, Magellan, and many other captains across the Atlantic and the Pacific had endured a variety of mutinies and plots. This penchant for insurrection on the part of many early crews may have been a learned behavior, passed from one to the next, as well as a survival strategy. When following orders seemed wrongheaded or suicidal, it was only natural to revert to a small group of like-minded individuals. The men of the San Lucas were no exception. They disagreed over how to proceed. Was it wise to spend an entire month in a godforsaken cove making repairs? Wouldn’t it be better to try locating the rest of the fleet? Yet other expeditionaries wanted to go to the Spice Islands, where greater riches could be found, or where they could always consider surrendering to the Portuguese as previous Spanish expeditions had done. These alternatives produced deep divisions that threatened the peace among men facing great uncertainty and forced to live in unbearably close proximity.
A major rift opened between the maestre (similar to a boatswain) Juan “the Greek” on the one hand and Don Alonso and Lope Martín on the other. The captain and the pilot had ordered the Greek boatswain to take some men ashore to chop down trees and make lumber for repairing the San Lucas. Yet the assigned men became defiant. “They had not come to China to cut down trees but to load up on gold,” they said, and Juan the Greek resolutely sided with them. To act on their wishes, the disgruntled men waited for a few days until Don Alonso and Lope Martín went ashore themselves. During their absence, they opened a box where Martín kept his nautical charts—highly confidential and usually kept under lock and key—and reportedly “studied the charts for some time to figure out the whereabouts of the Malucos [Spice Islands] because that is where they intended to go.” Trouble was brewing.7
In the strict hierarchy of a sailing vessel, a maestre was third in command after the captain and pilot. Nonetheless, someone like Juan the Greek was well positioned for a mutiny because he transmitted the orders from the higher-ups to the mariners and cabin boys. A maestre was often a father figure to the sailors or, conversely, a taskmaster who assigned jobs and punishments. A challenge from such a well-positioned officer was always dangerous, especially aboard the San Lucas, where the captain was an aloof nobleman. Don Alonso had been appointed at the last minute on account of his exalted lineage rather than any relevant experience, as everyone knew. Indeed, this may have been his first ocean passage, so his ability to make sound decisions was questionable at best. By default, Lope Martín had assumed responsibility for the safety and navigation of the San Lucas, and thus had to contain the insurrection of Juan the Greek and his men. Like all veteran mariners, Lope Martín must have seen a fair share of plots and counter-plots during his lifetime. In fact, he excelled at them. An upwardly mobile mulatto in a world of white officers, he had to be exceptionally discerning and nimble, knowing when to stay discreetly in the background, how to form alliances, and when to pounce mercilessly. An insubordinate Greek boatswain and a few sailors were indeed no match for Lope Martín.8
At first the pilot only gathered information and passed some of it to Don Alonso, impressing on the captain the fact that the mutineers constituted “an even greater threat than the Indians.” The San Lucas leadership could have ordered the execution of Juan the Greek and his co-conspirators. This, however, would have required a violent clash and the decimation of an already minimal crew. Instead, the savvy pilot worked on the maestre. No one knows what Martín told Juan, but the Greek man began wavering after some time. Fearful that they were being betrayed and would be left on their own to take the fall, the remaining plotters turned desperate.9
Four of them escaped in the rowboat in the middle of the night, taking some harquebuses and the only flint stone aboard the San Lucas. The rowboat itself was a great loss, the only means to get from the ship to the shore and back, but the flint stone was even more important, not just for cooking but because “without fire the Indians would gain the upper hand over us at any time they wanted,” as Don Alonso recalled. Tracking down the four escapees thus became the expeditionaries’ overriding concern. One evening, the men of the San Lucas spotted a campfire in the distance. The four runaways were boldly moving inland toward the closest settlement, willing to take their chances with Vibán and his people. Lope Martín offered to lead Don Alonso and three sailors on foot to catch them by surprise. For hours the posse moved quietly through extremely thick vegetation, skirted a cliff, and crossed numerous streams in pitch darkness, losing sight of the campfire for long stretches. At last the pursuers were close enough to see one of the mutineers keeping guard, moving from one side of the encampment to the other, and adding wood to the fire while the other three slept. Without being noticed, “the pilot approached the encampment and came so close to the man keeping guard that only one tree separated them,” the captain recalled, “and he lit his harquebus and shot the guard in the chest with twenty-seven pellets.” At that instant, the captain and mariners fell on the sleeping mutineers. Everything was over in a minute. Fortunately, the man who had been shot sustained only minor injuries. All four were tied up and marched to the ship. As they were to be hanged, Don Alonso ordered pulleys and ropes to be set up on one side of the San Lucas. With nooses already around their necks, Lope Martín finally intervened. He told Don Alonso “that it would be impossible to leave that port without these four men, because the crew was insufficient and many were ill.” It was almost certainly a lie to save their lives. Yet Lope Martín emerged from this episode with gratitude from the rebels, an intact crew, and even more influence than before over the captain.10
Having temporarily sorted out their internal problems, the men of the San Lucas decided to leave the Davao Gulf. They erected crosses in the cove where they had stayed for a month, “and underneath one of them placed a jar with letters, so the armada would know what had happened to us and where we were going next.” On Sunday, March 4, 1565, they pulled up anchor and continued rounding the immense island of Mindanao. During this passage, two events would have lasting consequences. First, at an unspecified site, the voyagers found a good place to wa
sh their clothes. An officer and two cabin boys were dispatched ashore with everyone’s dirty garments. The two servants had just started washing when they spotted several islanders closing in on them and thus had to run for their lives, abandoning a mountain of clothes that the voyagers would miss sorely when the weather turned extremely cold later in their adventure.11
The second consequential event was an encounter with a Filipino longboat that pulled up right alongside the San Lucas. “The Indians aboard spoke many Spanish words,” Don Alonso recalled, “and they asked us if we had come from Malacca [the Portuguese base in Malaysia] or were going to the Malucos [Spice Islands].” The rowers rattled off words like “capitán” (capitão) and “señores” (senhores) to show that they had dealt with Portuguese merchants before, “but when we told them that we had come from the east [i.e., across the Pacific], they were shocked because we had come from so very far away.” The voyagers were able to barter for porcelains, blankets, “painted textiles” (possibly silk), and some powdered gold that they would carry back to the Americas as incontrovertible proof that they had been to Asia.12
Almost casually, the Filipinos mentioned that they had seen three other European vessels. Although they could have been referring to a previous expedition, in reality the San Lucas had come tantalizingly close to the rest of the fleet. As they sailed slowly through the heart of the archipelago within sight of thousands of islands, a reunion of all four vessels became a distinct possibility. A friar named Gaspar de San Agustín, writing more than a century after the fact, affirmed that from the crow’s nest of the San Lucas, some crew members caught glimpses of the other ships but refused to join them. A close examination of all the vessels’ trajectories shows that this could not have been possible, as we shall see.13
Conquering the Pacific Page 13