Once the ships dropped anchor, Magellan dispatched his illegitimate son, Cristóvão Rebêlo, “as ambassador to the King of Cebu,” along with the slave Enrique to serve as an interpreter. Arriving on land, Rebêlo and Enrique “found a vast crowd of people together with the king, all of whom had been frightened by the mortars.” To reassure the distraught inhabitants, Enrique explained that it was the fleet’s custom to discharge their weapons “when entering such places, as a sign of peace and friendship.” His words had their intended effect, and soon the local chieftain was asking what he could do for them.
Enrique stepped forward again and announced that his captain owed allegiance to the “greatest king and prince in the world, and that he was going to discover the Moluccas.” His captain had decided to pass this way “because of the good report which he had of him from the king of Limasawa and to buy food.” Impressed, the king welcomed the visitors, but he advised, “It was their custom for all ships that entered their ports to pay tribute.” Only four days before, a junk from Siam “laden with gold and slaves” had called on the island and paid its tribute. To back up his story, the king produced an Arab merchant from Siam who had remained behind. The merchant explained that it was necessary to pay tribute to the local rulers in exchange for safe passage, and he urged Magellan to follow his example.
Magellan scorned the Arabs’ live-and-let-live approach to the islanders and refused to pay anyone. He saw the local populace as prey, as helpers, and as heathen, not as equals, and he intended to claim their territory for Spain and their souls for the Church. Negotiations between Magellan and the king of Cebu broke down when Magellan—through Enrique—insisted that his in all the world, and the Armada de Molucca would never pay tribute to a lesser ruler. He ended by declaring, “If the king wished peace he would have peace, but if war instead, [then he would have] war.”
At this point, the merchant from Siam uttered a few words that Pigafetta took to mean, “Have good care, O king, what you do, for these men are of those who have conquered Calicut, Malacca, and all India the Greater. If you give them good reception and treat them well, it will be well for you, but if you treat them ill, so much the worse it will be for you.” Enrique seconded the merchant’s advice; if the king refused to yield, the Captain General “would send so many men that they would destroy him.”
The king shrewdly replied that he would confer with his chieftains and return the next day. As a sign of his peaceful intentions, he offered the landing party “refreshments of many dishes, all made from meat and contained in porcelain platters, besides many jars of wine” and sent them happily stumbling back to their waiting ships, where they told Magellan (and the ever-present Pigafetta) the details of the exchange. Despite his belligerent words, Magellan possessed one diplomatic asset, the king of Limasawa, who had come along on this leg of the journey, and was pleased to “speak to the king of the great courtesy of our Captain General.”
The local king’s soothing words had the desired effect, and on Monday morning, the armada’s notary, accompanied by Enrique, held a formal meeting with the king of Cebu—“Rajah,” or King Humabon, in Pigafetta’s transcription. This time, Humabon offered to pay tribute to the most powerful king in the world, rather than demanding it for himself. The impasse was broken. Magellan acknowledged Humabon’s generous offer and announced he would “trade with him and no others.” Prompted by the king of Limasawa, the Cebuan ruler offered to become blood brothers with Magellan; the Captain General had only to send “a drop of his blood from his right arm, and he would do the same as a sign of the most sincere friendship.” Almost despite himself, Magellan had found a home in Cebu.
The next day, Tuesday, Magellan had more good news: The Limasawan king announced that Humabon was preparing a great feast to send to the ships “and that after dinner he would send two of his nephews with other notable men to make peace with him.” After gratefully receiving the food, Magellan decided to make another show of force and trotted out an armor-clad seaman, whose demonstration of European-style combat predictably alarmed the Cebuan emissary, “who seemed more intelligent than the others.” Once again, Magellan turned the situation to his advantage: “The Captain General told him not to be frightened, for our arms were soft toward our friends and harsh toward our enemies; and as handkerchiefs wipe off sweat so did our arms overthrow and destroy all our adversaries and the enemies of our faith.” The lesson had its intended effect.
Once Magellan had alternately impressed and intimidated the , relations between the two proceeded like a tale in a storybook. The king’s nephew came aboard Trinidad, accompanied by a retinue of eight chieftains, to swear loyalty. Holding court, Magellan played the part of a magnanimous potentate with gusto: “The Captain General was seated in a red velvet chair, the principal men of the ships on leather chairs, and the others on mats upon the floor. The Captain General asked them through an interpreter . . . whether that prince . . . had the authority to make peace. . . . The Captain General said many things concerning peace, and that he prayed to God to confirm it in heaven. They said they had never heard such words, but that they took great pleasure in hearing them. The Captain General, seeing that they listened and answered willingly, began to advance arguments to induce them to accept the faith.”
Rising from his special chair, Magellan abruptly changed the subject, wanting to know who would succeed the king after his death. “They replied that the king had no son, but many daughters, and that this prince who was his nephew had as wife the king’s eldest daughter, and for love of her he was called prince. And they said moreover that, when the father and the mother were old, no more account was taken of them, but the children commanded them.” This state of affairs struck Magellan as contradictory to the Commandments, and he proceeded to explain some basic tenets of the Bible. “God made the sky, the earth, the sea, and everything else and that He had commanded us to honor our fathers and mothers, and that whoever did otherwise was condemned to eternal fire; that we are all descended from Adam and Eve, our first parents; that we have an immortal spirit.” His oratory must have been highly persuasive because “all joyfully entreated the Captain General to leave them two men, or least one, to instruct them in the faith.” Magellan explained that he could not leave anyone behind with them, but if they wished, the armada’s priest, Father Valderrama, would gladly baptize the Cebuans, and when they returned, they would bring priests and friars to instruct them. Pigafetta reported that the chieftains, Magellan, and the onlookers all became so excited by the prospect that everyone “wept with great joy.” What significance the highly emotional baptismal rite held for the Filipinos can only be guessed, but it meant something very specific to Magellan. Baptism, a word derived from the Greek baptismos, meant immersion and carried with it the idea of cleansing the soul of sin and rebirth into the Christian faith.
Before he began in earnest, Magellan cautioned the Cebuans not to convert to Christianity simply to win his favor, and promised not to “cause any displeasure to those who wished to live according to their own law.” But, he said, the Christians would get preferential treatment. “All cried out with one voice that they were not becoming Christians through fear or to please us,” Pigafetta recorded, “but of their own free will.” Magellan was so encouraged by this response that he promised to leave behind a suit of armor—just one—in gratitude.
He also raised the highly sensitive subject of sex between his men and the Cebuan women. “We could not have intercourse with their women without committing a very great sin, since they were pagans; and he assured them that if they became Christians, the devil would no longer appear to them, except in the last moment at their death.” Magellan implied that it was a lesser sin to become intimate with Cebuan women who had been baptized, and the crew, as ravenous for sex as they were for food, immediately took advantage of the loophole. But there is no suggestion that he became intimate with any of the Cebuan women; he found fulfillment of a more spiritual nature. “The Captain embraced them weeping, and clasping one o
f the prince’s hands and one of the king’s between his own, said to them that he would give them perpetual peace with the king of Spain.”
After mutual assurances and reassurances had been exchanged, it was time for another feast. Once again, Magellan was the fortunate recipient of island hospitality in the form of “rice, swine, goats, and fowls,” all given with profuse apologies for their inadequacy.
The Cebuan women performed an elaborate consecration before slaughtering the hogs. The ceremony began with the sound of gongs, after which the celebrants appeared with three serving dishes, two holding rice cakes and roast fish wrapped in leaves, the other a coarse fabric made from palm trees. The women then spread the cloth on the ground, whereupon two elderly women, each holding a bamboo trumpet, wrapped themselves in it. “One of them puts a kerchief with two horns on her forehead, and takes another kerchief in her hands, and dancing and blowing on her trumpet, she thereby calls out to the sun. She with the kerchief takes the other standard, and lets the kerchief drop, and both blowing on their trumpets for a long time, dance about the bound hog.” The dancing and music continued for quite some time, until one of the old women, after taking ritual sips of wine with her artificial horn, sprinkled the residue on the hog. “She is given a lance, and while dancing and clasping a lighted torch in her mouth, thrusts the instrument four or five times through the heart of the hog, with sudden and quick strokes.” After the slaughter, the women unwrapped themselves, and, with other women they selected—no men allowed—devoured the contents of the three dishes. “No one but old women consecrate the flesh of the hog, and they do not eat it unless it is killed this way.”
In return for this elaborately consecrated food, Magellan conferred a bolt of white linen, a red cap, strings of glass beads, and a gilded glass cup on the prince. (“Those glasses are greatly appreciated in those districts,” Pigafetta commented.) There was more; Magellan asked Pigafetta to give Humabon a “yellow and violet silk robe, made in Turkish style, a fine red cap, some strings of glass beads, all in a silver dish, and two gilt drinking cups.” By the time the feast ended, the Cebuans regarded Magellan as something more than a man; he was a powerful and beneficent god. The adulation rubbed off on the volatile Captain General, who increasingly believed himself to be divinely inspired, his expedition a manifestation of God’s will. It was a dangerous delusion.
When Magellan finally left Trinidad to make his triumphal entry into Cebu, the occasion proved every bit as majestic as he could have wished. A delegation from the ships, including an excited Pigafetta, landed on Cebu to greet Humabon, dressed in regal splendor to greet his guests: “When we reached the city we found the king in his palace surrounded by many people. He was seated on a palm mat on the ground, with only a cotton cloth before his private parts, and scarf embroidered with the needle about his head, and necklace of great value hanging from his neck, and two large gold earrings fastened in his ears set round with precious gems. He was fat and short, and tattooed with fire in various designs. From another mat on the ground he was eating turtle eggs, which were in two porcelain dishes, and he had four jars full of palm wine in front of him covered with sweet-smelling herbs and arranged with four small reeds in each jar by means of which he drank. Having duly made reverence to him, the interpreter [Enrique] told the king that his master thanked him very warmly for his present, and that he sent this present not in return for his present but for the intrinsic love which he bore him. We dressed him in the robe, placed the cap on his head, and gave him the other things; then kissing the beads and putting them on his head, I presented them to him. He, doing the same, accepted them. Then the king had us eat some of those eggs and drink through those slender reeds. . . .T he king wished to have us stay to supper with him, but we told him that we could not stay.”
Impressive as they were, these exchanges were a mere prelude. The excitement began when the prince escorted Pigafetta and several others to his raised hut. They climbed ladders and within found “four young girls were playing—one, on a drum like ours, but resting on the ground; the second was striking two suspended gongs alternately with a stick wrapped somewhat thickly at the end with a palm cloth; the third, one large gong in the same manner; and the fourth two small gongs held in her hand, by striking one against the other, which gave forth a sweet sound. They played so harmoniously that one would believe that they possessed good musical sense.”
The Europeans noticed more than musical ability; the girls were bare-breasted and extremely alluring. “Those girls were very beautiful and almost as white as our girls and as large. They were naked except for palm cloth hanging from the waist and reaching to the knees. Some were quite naked and had large holes in their ears with a small round piece of wood in the hole. . . . They have long black hair, and wear a short cloth about the head, and are always barefoot. The prince had three quite naked girls dance for us.” Reluctant to contradict Magellan’s prohibition against intercourse with native women until they converted to Christianity, Pigafetta refrains from describing the frolicking and lovemaking with the female musicians, but he leaves no doubt about the evening’s outcome.
All around them similar celebrations of European-Cebuan amity involving ordinary villagers and sailors were taking place that night. The one question is whether Magellan participated as well, but, given his restraint and self-denial throughout the voyage, it is unlikely that he yielded to the temptations of the flesh, even on this occasion.
When they returned to the ships that night, the four emissaries were greeted with sobering news: Two shipmates lay near death. The next morning, April 10, Martín Barreta, a passenger, succumbed to the lingering effects of the scurvy he had suffered during the ninetyeight days of the Pacific crossing. Hours later, Juan de Areche, a sailor, breathed his last.
In the morning, Pigafetta and Enrique returned to the island to make arrangements for Christian burials for both men, which meant consecrating a cemetery on Cebu, complete with a cross. The king, as accommodating as ever, said he wished to worship the cross as soon as it was erected. Magellan turned the occasion into a religious lesson for the islanders’ benefit. “The deceased was buried in the square with as much pomp as possible, in order to furnish a good example. Then we consecrated the place and in the evening buried another man.”
Pigafetta spent enough time on Cebu to become familiar with local burial customs, and was impressed by their sophistication and parallels to European practices. He found that women took the leading role in the rites, which started simply and then grew in power. “The deceased is placed in the middle of the house in a box. Ropes are placed about the box in the manner of a palisade, to which many branches of trees are attached. In the middle of each branch hangs a cotton cloth like a curtained canopy. The most principal women sit under those hangings, and are all covered with white cotton cloth, each one by a girl who fans her with a palm-leaf fan. The other women sit about the room sadly. Then there is one woman who cuts off the hair of the deceased very slowly with a knife. Another who was the principal wife of the deceased lies down upon him and places her mouth, her hands, and her feet upon those of the deceased. When the former is cutting off the hair, the latter weeps; and when the former has finished the cutting, the latter sings.” After five or six days of mourning, “They bury the body in the same box which is shut in a log by means of wooden nails and covered and enclosed by wooden logs.”
Afew days later, Pigafetta confided to his diary that he, along with other men of the fleet, had been intimate with the women of Cebu. That was not surprising in itself; far more extraordinary were the bizarre sexual customs practiced by both sexes, especially palang , or genital stretching.
“The males, large and small, have their penis pierced from one side to the other near the head, with a gold or tin bolt as large as a goose quill,” Pigafetta observed, scarcely believing his eyes. “In both ends of the same bolt, some have what resembles a spur, with points upon the ends; others are like the head of a cart nail. I very often asked many,
both old and young, to see their penis, because I could not credit it.” Fascinated by the devices, Pigafetta studied them closely. “In the middle of the bolt is a hole, through which they urinate. The bolt and spurs always hold firm.”
Pigafetta naturally wondered how the women of the island tolerated palang during sexual intercourse. Surely the bolts injured or hurt them. Not at all, the Cebuan men told him. “Their women wish it so, and said that if they did otherwise, they would not have communication with them.” And they proceeded to explain precisely how palang , in their experience, actually enhanced sexual gratification for both men and women. In the process, Pigafetta received a graphic lesson in the art of love, Cebuan style. “When the men wish to have communication with their women, the latter themselves take the penis not in the regular way and commence very gently to introduce it [into the vagina], with the spur on top first, and then the other part. When it is inside, it takes its regular position; and thus the penis always stays inside until it gets soft, for otherwise they could not pull it out.”
Palang was not confined to men. Women also used it, starting in infancy. “All of the women from six years and upward have their vaginas gradually opened because of the men’s penises,” he learned. Having sexual intercourse with palang prolonged the act; the bolts and spurs discouraged sudden movements; and it was believed to intensify the pleasurable sensations experienced by both sexes. One of the most difficult things for the Europeans to understand was that palang was intended to enhance female pleasure by stimulating a variety of sensations in the vagina. Intercourse using palang lasted as long as a day, or even more, as the two lovers remained locked in an embrace of passion.
Pigafetta’s clinical description contained enough detail to suggest that he observed the islanders having intercourse, and he came away both excited and dismayed by what he saw. “Those people make use of that device because they are of a weak nature,” he decided, equating weakness with pleasure-loving. He went on to explain that “they have as many wives as they wish, but one of them is the principal wife.” Both the practice of palang , with its emphasis on increasing pleasure, and polygamy, which Pigafetta associated with it, ran counter to Catholic teachings. For all these reasons, Pigafetta found palang disconcerting and, to prove his point, he insisted, “All the women loved us very much more than their own men,” presumably because the unadorned Europeans lacked the cumbersome accessories.
Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe Page 27