Chapter 10
The Junk from Borneo
Bohol
At Bohol in March 1565 the Spaniards captured a trading junk from Borneo after a hard fight. Its pilot explained why the islanders fled from them: Portuguese raiders from the Moluccas, calling themselves Castilians, had recently killed or carried off hundreds of people on Bohol.
March 1565
From Bohol Legazpi sends the *San Juan* on to Butuan, with a Malay interpreter, to make peace there and find out about the trade in cinnamon and gold. Then a lookout reports a large sail.
Mateo del Saz goes after it in a small boat. It is a trading junk from Borneo, and it “would not listen to peace.” The fight is hard. The men of the junk, Muslim traders the Spaniards call Moros, “fought most valiantly, and were determined to die.” They kill one Spanish soldier with a lance through the throat and wound twenty more before they surrender.
Legazpi gives them their freedom, and they thank him. He wants something from them more than plunder: knowledge.
March 1565
The junk’s pilot is “a most experienced man,” who knows not only these islands but the Moluccas, Borneo, Malacca, Java, India and China. He tells Legazpi what the islands buy and sell: iron and tin from Borneo, porcelain and copper bells from China, benzoin and painted cloth, iron pans and pots from India.
The Spaniards show the Moros the fleet’s cargo, all the cloth and linen brought from Mexico. They should take it to Borneo, or Siam, or Malacca, the Moros say. In these islands, one Spaniard admitted, “although we wandered about these islands for ten years, we could not dispose of so many silks, cloths, and linens.”
And the pilot tells them something new. Two junks from Luzon are trading at Butuan right now, for gold, wax and slaves. Luzon is a big island, “farther north than Borney.” It is the first this fleet has heard of it.
March 1565
Then the pilot explains why nobody will speak to them.
About two years before, Portuguese from the Moluccas came through these islands with eight large praus and many warriors of Maluco. Everywhere they went they asked for peace and friendship, “saying that they were Castilians, and vassals of the king of Castilla.” When the people trusted them, they attacked, robbed, and carried them off. Here on Bohol, Legazpi was told, more than a thousand people were killed or captured. His officers wrote home that five hundred were killed and six hundred taken to the Moluccas as slaves.
Legazpi tries to explain that the Portuguese are a different nation, with a different king. It does no good. The people say that the Spaniards look the same, “wear the same kind of clothing, and carry the same weapons.”