Introduction
On 25 August 1702, several Italon chiefs arrived in coastal Manila.Footnote 1 They had travelled all the way from the town of Lublub, about two hundred kilometres away in the interior of the island of Luzon. They first stopped by the Augustinian convent in Tondo, where friars from nearby provinces had congregated in preparation for the feast of Saint Augustine in three days’ time. Together with the other members of his order, the Augustinian provincial warmly welcomed the potential new converts and gave them money. Throngs of people from the surrounding neighbourhood flocked to see the unusual visitors, of whom they had previously only heard. Part of the attraction was the travellers’ clothing, or lack thereof. The visitors were “all naked according to mountain custom, with their indecent loincloth.”Footnote 2 A few were armed with lance and shield, others with bow and arrow.Footnote 3 The chiefs wore a type of hat made of palm leaves. In preparation for their entry to Manila proper, the provincial had clothes made for them, so they would be more presentable.
The next day, the provincial accompanied his guests to the city to meet two of the most important Spanish officials in the land, the governor-general of the Philippines, Domingo Zabálburu, and the archbishop of Manila, Diego Camacho y Ávila.Footnote 4 The governor-general embraced them and, following the Spanish monarchy's typical spiel to attract indigenous allies, promised to defend them from their enemies. The Italon chiefs kissed the hand of the archbishop, who in turn gave them gifts. The meeting with the governor-general and the archbishop was clearly performative. The Augustinians brought the independent chiefs from the hinterland to submit to the Spanish monarch and Catholic Church as vassals and converts. Even though the Italons had not yet converted at this time, the encounter prefigured what lay in store for them in the near future if they submitted, which was membership and protection in the Spanish Catholic community.
Although being hugged by the governor-general and kissing the hand of the archbishop might seem like the climax of the whole journey, the trip was far from over. The Italon chiefs stayed for another six days in Manila.Footnote 5 The Augustinians housed them in their convent in Tondo, which was a short distance away from the city proper. From there, the Italons could easily visit the city, soak in the atmosphere, marvel at the churches, participate in the celebrations during the feast of Saint Augustine, and make purchases at the markets. Before finally going back home, they spent part of the money they had received on unspecified valuable goods.
On the return journey to Lublub, the Italon chiefs carried a letter from the Augustinian provincial ordering the various convents along the way to welcome the bearers of the letter, house them, and lavish them with gifts.Footnote 6 When they arrived home, they became the spokespersons for the kindness and generosity of the Spaniards. In the words of Alejandro Cacho, who would become a long-time Augustinian missionary and chronicler of the area, “They did not know how to explain what they had seen in Manila. They could not stop talking about the warm reception and care that they had received, and the affection and good treatment that they had experienced throughout the whole trip.”Footnote 7
This story of the Italon chiefs’ journey to Manila is usually not part of the narrative of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, because it goes against preconceived notions of colonisation as a Spanish-led process that moved from the coast to the interior of the various islands.Footnote 8 The case of the Italons shows that a corresponding movement from the interior to the coast also took place and belies a simple unilinear motion in colonialism. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish monarchy began its conquest of the Philippine archipelago, and by the eighteenth century Spanish rule extended mostly to the coastal and lowland areas, with several indigenous communities maintaining their independence in the mountainous interior. In the classic narrative of conquest, a divide separates the Christianized and Hispanized lowland indio settlements, on the one hand, and the independent tribes of the mountainous interiors and the Muslim Moros in the south, on the other hand. Scholarly studies on colonial encounters tend to emphasise the contrast between Spanish and indigenous, Christian and animist, and lowland and upland, and thereby ignore the indigenous trips to Manila that blur these perceived boundaries and complicate the historical narrative.Footnote 9 However, the Italons, Ituys, Moros, and Igorots we meet in this article—typically portrayed as bastions of resistance to Spanish rule in their hideouts—actually travelled to Manila and moved about, and thus offer a more dynamic and less segmented picture of the colonial experience. Although antagonisms and violence did exist, there were plenty of instances of cooperation and accommodation that led to the foundation of Christian missions and the conversion of several indigenous communities. While mobility has been an important theme in recent scholarship, long-distance maritime mobilities have tended to dominate the discussion.Footnote 10 Such an approach has highlighted the mobility of figures such as colonisers and merchants to the detriment of the inhabitants of inland communities, who are unintentionally portrayed as trapped in an apparent state of stasis. In reality, however, everybody moved, and colonial encounters with independent indigenous people occurred everywhere, from secluded Lublub to cosmopolitan Manila.
Instead of viewing colonial interactions as a one-sided, unidirectional story of Spanish penetration and conquest of the island's interior, this article attempts to frame them within the lens of reciprocal mobilities.Footnote 11 Rather than anchor the different historical actors in their home base, it tracks their movements as they travelled on the island of Luzon.Footnote 12 Spanish missionaries and officials were not the only ones who exercised agency and took the initiative; indigenous people did so too. The Italon chiefs asked the Augustinians to bring them to Manila before they would even consider converting to Christianity. In the same way that missionaries travelled to the interior uplands, indigenous actors made corresponding visits to lowland coastal areas and even to Manila. Although the focus of this article is on eighteenth-century mobilities, the previous centuries witnessed similar trips and interactions.Footnote 13 From the late sixteenth century, when Spanish conquistadors first arrived and explored Luzon, Spanish sources recorded occasional incidents of independent indigenous peoples travelling to Manila. Nevertheless, whether due to the availability of more historical documentation or an actual increase in contacts, or both, the eighteenth century saw more mission settlements and more visits from potential converts from the interior of Luzon than ever before. The residents of indigenous communities were not an immobile fixture of the inland landscape, nor was their mobility limited to retreats to their mountain refuge. They exercised a wide range of choice throughout the years, including aligning themselves with Spaniards and converting to Christianity, which entailed both welcoming and visiting acquaintances and friends. Furthermore, mutual visits were an integral part of how both indigenes and Spaniards built their relationships with one another. This study will not only showcase the mobility of inland indigenous actors, but also demonstrate how colonial encounters were embedded in reciprocal mobilities. In fact, coincidences and overlaps between Spanish and indigenous mobilities blurred clear-cut distinctions between the two and facilitated the creation and consolidation of ties.
Reciprocal mobilities impacted the formation of bonds between guests and hosts across multiple sites. Different trips highlight various aspects of mobility on the island: the Italons’ and Ituys’ voyages to Manila in 1702 introduce a basic pattern of cross-cultural mobility; the sultan of Sulu's visits in 1749 and 1750 and the Igorot chiefs’ in 1754 demonstrate the tensions and politics involved in mobility; and the Aetas’ and Ilongots’ local travels suggest a possible indigenous basis for reciprocal mobilities. In certain indigenous communities, reciprocal visits created and solidified kinship ties; in others, households had the obligation to welcome and feed travellers, which was eventually reciprocated and thus facilitated the flow of people in the countryside. Spanish explorations of the interior of Luzon and their invitations to native chiefs to visit Manila found fertile ground in indigenous traditions of mutual visits around kinship ties, everyday travelling, and alliance formation.
A focus on non-Christian indigenous travellers still relies on the chronicles and letters of Spanish missionaries—specifically Augustinians, Dominicans, and Franciscans—because they were the ones at the forefront of interactions with the unsubjugated natives. Inevitably these sources are products of the concerns and internal working of the religious orders and Spanish bureaucracy, but their different forms nevertheless give us varying access to the interactions and mobilities of indios and Spaniards. The accounts of the Italons’ and Ituys’ travels to Manila come from largely unpublished religious chronicles. Francisco Antolín's late-eighteenth-century chronicle is still unpublished today, and Alejandro Cacho's chronicles, most probably written by the 1740s, only got published years later in the early twentieth century. Left mostly in manuscript form, these chronicles did not undergo the editorial interventions of the publishing process. More importantly, besides being chroniclers for their respective religious orders, Antolín and Cacho were long-standing missionaries on Luzon, so their writing benefitted from their personal experience and knowledge of the local communities. For instance, Cacho spent four decades in the Ituy mission during the first half of the eighteenth century. In contrast, the published accounts of the sultan of Sulu's and the Igorot chiefs’ travels more prominently exhibit the grandiosity and spectacle of the events. Intended for a wider public audience, they display a triumphant tone, extolling the religious success in converting the sultan of Sulu and the six Igorot chiefs. While Juan de Arechederra, concurrently bishop of Nueva Segovia in northern Luzon and interim governor-general of the Philippines, commissioned the account of the sultan of Sulu's sojourn in Manila, the Augustinian provincial Manuel Carrillo wrote the corresponding account of the Igorot chiefs’ journeys to Manila and Agoo. Arechederra and Carrillo were directly involved in the negotiations with and the mobilities of the sultan and the chiefs, respectively. In fact, Carrillo was himself on a couple of pastoral visits to Ilocos as the events unfolded. Despite the obvious self-aggrandisement in these published sources, unpublished accounts of analogous events still confirm the same modus operandi, indicating that the heightened ceremony was more than mere rhetorical flourish but rather an important part of the ritual. Moreover, the troubles and tensions surrounding the sultan's and Igorot chiefs’ visits are easily verifiable, which would temper any naive and benign interpretation of these events. Finally, the letters of Franciscan missionaries in Baler, such as Bernardo de Santa Rosa and Jose de San Pascual, describe a more local form of reciprocal mobility among Aetas and Ilongots in the hinterland. They are the best sources I have found that elucidate an indigenous explanation for reciprocal mobilities. As part of the routine correspondence and record-keeping of the religious order, these letters were not meant for public consumption and served as updates and guides for their fellow Franciscans. Unfortunately, barring exceptions like the sultan of Sulu, all these sources generally do not divulge detailed information on the individual identities of the various indigenous visitors. Nevertheless, indigenous travellers left their imprint on the colonial sources, which allow us to follow them in their journeys and reconstruct their reciprocal mobilities with Spaniards.
Multisited Encounters and Audiences
The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a more systematic use of travels and visits in the Philippines. While Spanish colonial movements have been the topic of several studies,Footnote 14 the corresponding indigenous mobility has not attracted the same attention. Even though we lack indigenous sources, Spanish missionaries and officials documented the visits of indigenous guests because they were special occasions and fit into Spanish conceptions of royal ceremony. Despite the one-sided nature of the sources, we can nevertheless follow the movements of the indigenous actors and catch a glimpse of the impact of their visits across time and space. Even though Spanish accounts had a tendency to present the visits to Manila as benign affairs, an undercurrent of tension and conflict was almost always in the background. The visits were often meant to counter the reticence of potential converts amid widespread stories and cases of Spanish abuse. Missionaries and indigenes continuously resorted to visits to overcome conflicts and misunderstandings.
The Italons’ visit to Manila was a special event, but it was far from unique. A few weeks earlier, the Ituys and the Dominicans had engaged in a similar activity.Footnote 15 The Ituys lived in the same general vicinity as the Italons and likewise hesitated about converting to Christianity. The Dominican missionaries brought them to their convent in Manila, where high-ranking officials of the order gave them clothes, plates, bowls, jars, and cattle. The fondness, affection, and gifts the Ituys received dispelled their misgivings and predisposed their kin groups to convert. A few months after the journey, the parents of one of the Ituy travellers to Manila eventually agreed to be baptised.Footnote 16
Coordinated by different religious orders, the separate visits of the Ituys and Italons exhibited a similar pattern: a hesitancy to conversion, a request to visit Manila, public ceremonies in the capital, and a greater openness to conversion in their home communities. In the case of the Italons, their old chiefs had asked to visit Manila before getting baptised because so-called bad Christians in the area were spreading rumours that Spaniards only wanted to convert them to exact tribute and take away their liberty.Footnote 17 They were also copying what the similarly hesitant Ituys had done a few weeks earlier. For the missionaries, the Italon chiefs singing the praises of the Spaniards after returning from Manila was the precise antidote they needed to counteract the rumours circulating about their untoward intentions. For the Italons, the trip was a bargaining chip in the negotiations over conversion and confirmed with their own eyes and ears the grandness of the Spaniards. Although only a select few actually went Manila and received the royal treatment, the visit had wider repercussions as positive stories of the trip spread in Lublub and the surrounding areas.
Accounts of the visits to Manila followed a distinct rhetorical pattern that could raise suspicions about their authenticity.Footnote 18 The native willingness to cooperate with Spaniards throughout the whole process might seem a little too convenient. It fit in too nicely with Spanish aims of trying to justify colonial rule and Christian conversion by incorporating native participation and acquiescence. Did Spanish priests and officials largely manufacture these stories of indigenous consent only to legitimise their colonial rule?Footnote 19 Undeniably, the narratives reflected contemporary European political practices. Part of European courtly ritual involved provincial magnates visiting and paying homage to the monarch, and Spanish and other European powers replicated this practice in their colonies by bringing indigenous chiefs to capital cities to seal and celebrate their alliances.Footnote 20 The grandiosity of these festivities was vital to the exercise of political power and the exchange of gifts integral to early modern diplomacy.Footnote 21 When the Italon chiefs kissed the hand of the archbishop, they were taking part in the elaborate Spanish court ceremony known as besamanos.Footnote 22
A common denominator in all these royal rituals was the act of submission. It was the Italons and Ituys who visited the ritual centre in Manila, and not the Spaniards who came to them. They kissed the hand of the archbishop as a sign of subservience. Initially “naked” in their loincloth, they eventually donned Spanish clothes as a sign of their civilisation under Spanish rule.Footnote 23 The cornerstone of the whole trip was their conversion, which was the symbol par excellence of submission to the Christian God and the Spanish monarch.
Although these ceremonies were rituals of submission, they were much more than that. The sources most likely hid, or at the very least simplified, the complexity of the situation, especially when indigenous movements are taken into account.Footnote 24 While historical accounts did highlight native participation to legitimise colonial rule, they nevertheless echoed the voices of the various participants, including those of the Italons and Ituys, no matter how muted they were.Footnote 25 As we will see, travels and visits were an integral part of how islanders built and maintained ties with friends and relatives living in faraway places. The exchange of prestige goods was a standard practice among allied indigenous polities.Footnote 26 Due to their scarcity in a particular area, prestige goods were symbols of status and power, and were exchanged between individuals and polities as they negotiated and confirmed their relative standing. As it was the duty of the paramount power to distribute prestige goods to allies and please them, it was not a relationship of utter subjugation. When the various Spanish friars offered gifts that they knew their hinterland visitors valued, they adopted a policy of attraction not that different from how indigenous chiefs distributed prestige goods to gain and maintain a following. When the Italon chiefs used the money from the Augustinians to buy the goods that they wanted as they roamed the markets of Manila, that was a clear manifestation of their agency in the exchange.Footnote 27 If anything, the trip to Manila was only one side of the equation. Gift-giving was usually reciprocal and created a web of relationships.Footnote 28 Although the accounts are silent on how the hinterland chiefs materially reciprocated Spanish generosity, it is likely that they did. Prior to and after their trips to Manila, Italons and Ituys welcomed the visits and eventual residence of Spanish missionaries in their communities. Their voyage to Manila was not an isolated event but rather part of a web of previous and succeeding travels.
While a lack of trust and suspicions of Spanish abuse motivated the Italons’ and Ituys’ trip, other visits to Manila, like the sultan of Sulu's in 1749 and the Igorot chiefs’ in 1754, occurred under more dire and tense circumstances. The sultan of Sulu, Azim ud-Din, arrived in Manila in 1749 more as a political refugee than as a quick visitor like the Italons and Ituys.Footnote 29 He had aligned himself with the Spaniards and shown willingness to convert to Christianity, but experienced strong local opposition in his realm and had to flee for his life. Nonetheless, upon his entry (or escape) to Manila all the surrounding troubles were set aside and the Spaniards exalted his status as sultan, from the courtesy given his entourage to the lavish urban decorations to the military honours.Footnote 30 The celebrations intensified as he wound his way through the city. During his stay, notable figures visited him, and he visited them in return. While Azim ud-Din was in Binondo to watch a play, the governor-general used the opportunity to introduce him to the local chiefs and astound him with the district's organisation. The constant public festivities were designed to predispose the sultan to conversion, and they were successful. In 1750, for his baptism, he travelled to the provinces of Pampanga and Pangasinan north of Manila, where local dignitaries honoured him with ceremonies befitting his rank.Footnote 31 After his baptism in the town of Paniqui, his godfather provided him with a pile of money to give away as he travelled across Pangasinan. His return entrance to Manila was heralded by even more elaborate and numerous festivities.
The visit of Igorot chiefs to Manila in 1754 also opened with an air of conflict. In 1753, while visiting the provinces of Ilocos and Pangasinan, the Augustinian provincial Manuel Carrillo received news that the Igorots no longer went to lowland Christian towns because the Spanish provincial governor of Pangasinan had prohibited trade with non-Christians and threatened the Igorots with a military expedition.Footnote 32 During Carrillo's second pastoral visit in 1754, several Igorot chiefs met with him, declared their desire to become Christian, and asked him for help in addressing their grievances against the provincial governor.Footnote 33 Instead of merely presenting the Igorots’ case to the governor-general in Manila, Carrillo proposed that the Igorot chiefs present their demands in person. In Manila, the governor-general met them and granted their demands, which included the suspension of the planned military expedition and the lifting of the ban on non-Christian trade. He also asked the six Igorots to be baptised before they went home, since they had already expressed the desire to do so.Footnote 34 Their godfathers were the most distinguished citizens of Manila, who dressed them in the Spanish style. Besides the governor-general and the Augustinian vicar provincial, priests and residents from all over Manila packed the Augustinian convent in Tondo to witness the baptism.
The Igorot chiefs’ arrival in the town of Agoo in Pangasinan on their way home created a similar spectacle.Footnote 35 Many upland animists happened to be in town on a visit, and the Augustinians took advantage of the situation and made the entrance of the six chiefs as awe-inspiring as possible: “The six [Igorot chiefs] entered on horseback, accompanied by the officials of Agoo, dressed in the Spanish style, with their appropriate cane of office based on their title and rank, with which the governor [general] had favoured and honoured them.”Footnote 36 The Igorot chiefs were treated like royalty upon their entrance. Their mode of transportation, clothing, and accessories all manifested the kind of treatment they had received in Manila. It was all a well-choreographed spectacle to convince the animists in town of the grandeur and generosity of the Spaniards. The message was loud and clear: aligning with the Spaniards had its benefits. The performance worked and left its audience astounded: “All those pagans were amazed upon seeing them [the six Igorot chiefs] so well dressed and even more upon hearing about the greatness of Manila. For people who have not seen anything besides their shacks, it was shocking and incredible.”Footnote 37 The Augustinian provincial—a personal witness to the event and one of its masterminds—remembered the utter disbelief of somebody in the crowd who could not fathom that Manila was better than their own town.Footnote 38 These trips were “planned and calculated maneuvers”Footnote 39 to amaze hinterland communities and gain their trust.
Rituals and ceremonies were vital in the exercise of political power and the formation of alliances.Footnote 40 They could diffuse a tense situation that could have easily turned into war. In the absence of a complex bureaucratic machinery, personal pleas carried their weight in negotiations. Spanish officials ensured a nonstop succession of honours and festivities to gain the sultan of Sulu's support in their war effort in the southern Philippines. These activities spread his renown not only in Mindanao and Manila but also in Pampanga and Pangasinan. The six Igorot chiefs’ journey to Manila broke the impasse with the provincial governor and commerce resumed between the uplands and the lowlands. Upland animists came back to colonial towns like Agoo to visit, trade, and convert. While the principal objective of the trip to Manila was to personally present an urgent plea to the governor-general, the spectacle of it all was just as important. Word spread quickly in the hinterland about how kind and generous the Spaniards were to the six Igorot chiefs.
The peregrinations of the sultan of Sulu and the Igorot chiefs incorporated a series of ceremonies that took place in several locations. Although Manila played an important role in the building of bonds, the movement to other sites such as Paniqui and Agoo was just as significant in honouring the status of the itinerant guests. Besides the urban entries and processions, journeys across the countryside were occasions for elevating the travellers’ prestige and forging alliances as towns en route welcomed them and the visitors demonstrated their beneficence by gracing crowds with their presence and showering gifts along the way. Mobility and multisited ceremonies were the rule, despite any seeming Manila-centric bias in the Spanish historical sources.
Carrillo's account described in detail the entrance of the Igorot chiefs not only in Manila, but also in Agoo. In the visit to Manila, despite the attention and kisses lavished on the Igorot chiefs, the governor-general still occupied a pivotal position in the ceremonies. In the entry to Agoo, the Igorot chiefs held a clearly prominent position. The details of their entry mirrored the standard practice in Spanish royal and viceregal entries, which established or renewed the intimate link between the monarch and the city.Footnote 41 However, the returning Igorots took the place of the king or viceroy in the procession. In Manila, the chiefs had arrived under a cloud of conflict over the provincial governor's ban against the mountaineers trading in Pangasinan and threat of a military campaign. It was only fitting that their grand entrance evoked Spanish royal entries where the king and the city renegotiated their relationship. Following Spanish practice, the officials of Agoo welcomed the Igorot chiefs on the outskirts of town and escorted them into town with much pomp and circumstance, indicating that town officials respected the governor-general's final decision that overturned the provincial governor's earlier actions. Besides respecting their ties with the royal government, Agoo officials renewed their strained relationship with the Igorots by welcoming the returning chiefs. As city officials in Spain and the Americas were wont to do when entertaining a visiting king or viceroy,Footnote 42 officials in Agoo supplied horses to the Igorot chiefs so that their guests could enter town as if they were royalty. In Spanish tradition, horses had symbolised royalty and chivalry since medieval times.Footnote 43 In Pangasinan, they received the same reverence, as demonstrated by an old provincial ordinance that decreed that only esteemed vicars could ride them.Footnote 44 The Igorots’ spectacular entrance was as good an indication as any that past differences had now been put aside. Even those who did not make the trip lived the experience vicariously as they witnessed their chiefs arrive in royal trappings to regale them with stories from a distant land.
Besides the tales and ceremonies, Christian godparenthood and religious pilgrimages united indigenous chiefs and Spanish Manileños in kinship and spiritual bonds. The obligatory religious ties in baptismal godparenthood between long-standing Christians and the newly baptised provided an opportunity for both sides to build relations and alliances with each other through conversion. They allowed participants to incorporate nonbiological affines into their kin group. In Southeast Asia, pilgrimages to sacred sites reinforced the inner spiritual power of pilgrims.Footnote 45 To travel was to be brave and acquire knowledge of new people and places.Footnote 46 Since Manila was the ritual centre of Spanish power in the archipelago, hinterland travellers to the capital most likely interpreted their trip as a pilgrimage to a sacred site. Arriving in Agoo on horseback, dressed in Spanish clothes and holding their canes of office, perhaps the six Igorot chiefs physically exuded the spiritual transformation they had undergone during their journey for everyone to see. Travelling widened people's landscape, incorporated allies into their network, strengthened their spiritual prowess, and created a common history that conquered vast distances.
The visits to Manila were usually long, drawn-out processes. Prior to the journey, both missionaries and potential converts had to come to an agreement over the arrangements, and intermediaries between the different parties played a crucial role in the process. The journey to Manila took several days. Even though the main objective of the trip was eventual conversion, the visitors usually stayed in the city for several weeks. Their homecoming was as curated as the reception in Manila. The relative frequency of the visits and the smooth narration of events in the sources, however, should not eclipse the fact that considerable obstacles and long distances had to be overcome. The religious orders, hinterland inhabitants, and Spanish monarchy actively participated in carrying out the visits, and they all put in a massive amount of time and effort to get past their differences. Still, the widespread infamy of Spanish abuses created unfavourable working conditions for missionaries. In one case, a Franciscan missionary claimed that Ilongots were so afraid of leaving their mountains that it would be impossible to bring them to Manila to be baptised without the missionaries themselves accompanying them.Footnote 47 Ironically, breaking the impasse required the Ilongots to increase the depth of contact by taking a giant leap of faith and visiting Manila. As a well-choreographed routine, the visit to Manila usually turned out well as it narrowed down the existing differences between the parties.
What made the dramatic trips to Manila more manageable and imaginable in the long run was the precedence of other trips. A wide variety of pre-existing visits made the grandiose trips to Manila possible. Missionaries and even provincials visiting the hinterland nudged the channels of communication and encouraged potential converts to make the journey to the capital. Upland animists regularly went to lowland colonial towns. Smaller, less glamorous excursions to remote interior towns initiated the first steps to conversion and generated reciprocal visits. The trips to Manila happened in a web of movements, blockages, jolts, and hesitations. They acquired a certain pattern and rhythm through the years. Other types of mobility provided the backdrop for the visits to Manila. On the Spanish side, from the late seventeenth century the Spanish monarchy and the different religious orders encouraged parish priests to visit and preach to animists in their vicinity. On the indigenous side, commerce and kinship comprised the stream of travels and visits to both colonial and noncolonial towns.
Entangled Mobilities and Identities
Although material motivations were important in the formation of bonds through visits and festivities, they cannot fully explain the transformation involved in multisited encounters. Concrete political motives underlay certain visits, from the sultan of Sulu wanting Spanish military support to fight his rivals to the Igorot chiefs requesting the suspension of a local trade embargo against non-Christians. Since indigenous communities were afraid of the tribute obligation that came with Christian conversion, gifts of clothes, money, plates, knives, and cattle helped them change their minds. The Dominican missionary Francisco de la Maza, in fact, suspected that gifts of coveted goods were the real motivation for religious conversion.Footnote 48 He surmised that chiefs who received a significant portion of the free goods sold them for profit among animist neighbours. It was no coincidence that the intermediaries who moved between Christian and animist towns and brokered the entrance of missionaries were sometimes merchants.
Mobility sealed economic and political alliances that smoothed trading and guaranteed protection from rivals, but material explanations for the popularity of the visits and exchanges have limitations. For instance, although the payment of tribute dissuaded animists from aligning with Spaniards, in reality the religious orders usually managed to get tribute exemptions for their new converts. Gifts obtained during the travels and meetings might have high monetary value in the hinterland where they were scare commodities, but they were not the sole driving force behind all the native efforts to form a partnership with Spaniards. To reduce the reciprocal mobilities and encounters to a question of mere material benefits is to completely disregard the pageantry and ceremony that the historical actors themselves so valued. The gifts were not just shiny trinkets that distracted natives, or a source of income that whetted converts’ appetite and greed. Nor were the grand entrances and fancy dresses only the superficial trappings for deep-seated motivations. An outright dismissal of so-called frivolous ceremonies and a wholesale acceptance of material explanations would only repeat colonial stereotypes or anachronistically impose a more contemporary secular world view. This was an era when Spaniards treated the king's portrait with the same reverence as the monarch himself and fought bitterly over precedence in processions, and when natives went to great lengths to obtain prestige goods from faraway places and travelled as a form of sacred pilgrimage.Footnote 49 There was a certain power in rituals, ceremonies, and movements. More than symbolic, the mobile encounters were performative and transformative.
It is easy to dismiss the relative success of the trips to Manila as the naiveté of native chiefs or the manipulative nature of Spanish colonisers; however, the journey altered the travellers themselves. While Spanish chronicles emphasised the religious change in the native converts, an incident during the Ituys’ visit to Manila in 1702 shows a different type of transformation taking place: “They [Ituys] complained a lot about a charlatan, who treated them badly by calling them Ituys, when they were already half-Spanish, having hugged the king.”Footnote 50 The king who hugged them was most likely the Spanish governor-general. The journey to Manila was more than the physical displacement from one site to another, the eight days of trek, or even the first steps towards an alliance. It was a transformation of identity from Ituy to half-Spanish. The very act of visiting and hugging the governor-general made the Ituys affine to the Spaniards, so much so that in their eyes they turned into Spanish mestizos. Visits were vital in the building of intimate bonds between people, and the trip to Manila brought Ituys and Spaniards closer together in more ways than one. While the anecdote of Ituys becoming half-Spaniards might be taken as a snide comment or flippant joke on the part of the religious chronicler on how so-called naked savages from the hinterland suddenly had delusions of grandeur as they wore Spanish clothes and hugged Spanish officials, it nevertheless made sense in the indigenous world view, where gestures of affection were common among kin.Footnote 51 Seemingly artificial trappings like clothes, canes, and embraces manifested social prestige and ties, and transformed identities.
The hinterland chiefs wearing Spanish clothes is sometimes seen merely as a sign of their progression from barbarity to civilisation, but it was much more than that: the new attire was a manifestation of their new alliance and consequent identity. Spanish accounts typically considered the donning of Spanish clothes as a symbol of religious unity,Footnote 52 thus it made sense to dress animist chiefs in new garments on their way to conversion to reflect their internal change. In Southeast Asia, however, wearing garments from prestigious foreign centres was a source of status.Footnote 53 While King Narai of Ayutthaya dressed in the Persian fashion, a seventeenth-century Jambi crown prince found Javanese clothes to be most appealing.Footnote 54 Italons and Igorots wearing Spanish clothes was not the Philippine version of Adam and Eve realising they were naked, nor was it their perfunctory attempt to conform to Spanish conventions. Spanish missionaries dressed their hinterland visitors in Spanish clothes partly to hide the latter's embarrassing nakedness, but their guests viewed the situation in a completely different way. Indigenous allies elevated their status by associating with powerful Spaniards and wearing their clothes. Typically in loincloth, travelling natives who donned Spanish clothes brought a sense of accomplishment to their mission. Crowds in Manila and Agoo appreciated the spectacle of native chiefs entering the town in full Spanish regalia. Even hinterland residents who had never been to Manila before were receptive to outside influences. The chiefs were modern and cosmopolitan in their own way as their identity shifted based on the people they hugged and the clothes they wore.Footnote 55 The wearing of Spanish clothes was not so much a sign of submission as of transformation into honoured allies and kin or, in other words, half-Spaniards.
Reciprocal mobility was crucial in the establishment and consolidation of ties among indigenous communities. Visits created and sustained kinship ties among people living in different towns.Footnote 56 In the mid-eighteenth century, the Franciscan missionary Bernardo de Santa Rosa described how both Aeta communities and Christian towns used the same strategy to build friendship and kinship with one another. Respect and affection stemmed from fictive kinship and reciprocal greetings and invitations:
[Aetas] spend a lot on maguinoo, and we have entered by this means. They become relatives of the people of the town, and call them siblings. They tell their friend, “You have to visit our mother, our father, etc.” The indios tell them the same thing, “When are you coming to town? How is our mother, sister, etc.?” To those who are still young like the children of their friends, they call them their children, etc. They do all of this because of the conceit they have of becoming relatives of the people of the town.Footnote 57
The concept of maguinoo underpinned the building of relationships between animist Aetas and Christian indios. Although maguinoo typically referred to nobility or a high social status, in this particular context the term expressed the reciprocity among friends and family. When Aetas visited Christian towns, they invited their indio friends to visit their Aeta relatives. Indios reciprocated the gesture when they saw their Aeta friends and invited them to do the same. Friendship and kinship were one and the same thing. Everyone belonged to one big extended family. Therefore, it only made sense to inquire about the welfare of and regularly visit relatives who lived in different settlements. Familial ties and visits bridged the gap between animist Aetas and Christian indios. Everyday visits might not have had the same glamour and panache as the reciprocal trips between Manila and, say, Lublub, but they operated under the same basic principle. Visits blurred the line of distinction between Aetas and indios in the same way they turned Ituys into half-Spaniards. Kinship was not only given at birth or acquired through marriage but also constructed through everyday practices such as visits and greetings.Footnote 58
What facilitated—and at the same time obstructed—travels and visits on the island was precisely the fluid, unpredictable character of kinship ties. When ties existed, mobility was much easier; when they did not, communities isolated themselves from each other. The small dispersed communities in the hinterland were generally kin groups,Footnote 59 and their relationship with their neighbours would determine how easy it was to travel across the terrain. If two communities were rival kin groups, then travel between the two sites would be dangerous. Conversely, kinship provided access and security. Expanded kin groups meant more people cooperating with each other and visiting each other, as in the case of the animist Aetas and Christian indios. Friends and relatives were the channels that enabled missionaries to enter animist towns and explore the surrounding areas. Visits, feasts, and conversion melded into one another to create intercommunity bonds and facilitate overland mobility.
The Ilongot settlements on the mountains of Baler epitomised the mutual obligation involved in mobility. Reciprocal hospitality among Ilongots made travelling across considerable distances feasible. It was most likely practised by communities with kinship ties to one another, or at the very least not hostile to each other. In 1757, the Franciscan missionary Jose de San Pascual described this mountain custom in the following manner:
They are people who do not know how to refuse respite to a pilgrim. They give food to all those who enter their house at meal time. That is why they travel from town to town with little provision and without fear of lacking anything, because the owner of the house has to give them their ration. He will not ask them to go away.Footnote 60
Each community and house was an effective rest stop for travellers. Hospitality was a requirement. It made the logistics of travelling much easier with no need to worry about where to find the next meal or overburden oneself with heavy supplies over rough terrain. Even San Pascual had to follow the practice, despite his reluctance to do so because the mission was still in its infancy and did not have enough provisions to share.Footnote 61 Every day he had guests join his aides at meal time. In one instance, he had two visitors from another town stay with them for two weeks straight, eating and drinking to their hearts’ content. San Pascual did not particularly like that these people were sponging off of them, but he could not bring himself to tell them to go away. Although a Spaniard, San Pascual acted like a true Ilongot who could not turn away his uninvited guests. He understood that there was a flip side to accommodating travellers. They would treat him with the same hospitality in the future:
When I visit hamlets, I already know that they need to give me what they have, which is rice, sweet potatoes, and vegetables. They are simply returning the favour. They do the same with their countrymen. What a person eats today in my house, he will repay me tomorrow in his house.Footnote 62
Feeding visitors might be a daily burden, but when San Pascual was not a host, he became a traveller and guest himself who benefitted from the mutual hospitality. Reciprocity made mutual visits almost inevitable in peoples’ interactions with each other. Besides the practical benefits of reciprocity, the custom essentially forced people to be welcoming of others. It created a domino effect of opening doors to visitors and travellers. In San Pascual's generic description, hosts and guests did not necessarily have any close ties with one another. He, for one, did not particularly appreciate the two guests who stayed for two weeks. However, such accommodation could be the seed of a deeper future relationship because it nurtured a tendency towards further contact. Eating in someone's house created a debt of gratitude that had to be repaid in the future. If extravagant communal feasting marked the big trips to Manila and Agoo, simple shared meals of sweet potatoes and vegetables distinguished everyday mobility in the hinterland.
Conclusion
Interconnections and symmetry pervaded the visits of Spanish priests and indigenous chiefs. Spaniards sponsored the visit of hinterland chiefs to Manila. In return, missionaries relied on their former guests to welcome and host them in upland communities. A reciprocal give-and-take characterised the building of relations in the hinterland, and visiting each other's homes engendered a certain level of trust. Preliminary visits and exchanges preceded the formal welcome to priests in various indigenous communities. A guest's arrival entailed a certain level of expectation because the quality of the reception was a pivotal point in building relationships. Whether in Manila, Paniqui, or Lublub, massive celebrations, shows of affection, pageantry with costumes and horses, and fantastic feasts punctuated the visits. While Manila residents were curious about the foreign visitors and flocked to see them, upland inhabitants were amazed by the grand entrance of indigenous chiefs in Agoo and their fabulous stories. Mutual encounters in multiple sites conquered considerable physical and social distance.
The overlap of mobility practices among Spanish and indigenous inhabitants on Luzon ensured that perceived boundaries between the different groups were constantly blurred and crossed. Spanish missionaries and officials were not the only active mobile agents on the island as they conquered the island's interior and converted its inhabitants. Indigenous people moved too. They visited their relatives in nearby villages and potential allies in distant towns. Encounters were not isolated events at specific sites, but rather a series of visits and festivities that took place in several places across the land. The physical act of moving from one place to another was a crucial part of the process because it involved visiting kinspeoples’ homes and eventually reciprocating the welcome. On the practical side, visits literally brought people who were far apart closer together, and shared meals and gift exchanges solidified their relationship. The reciprocity of the visits and journeys manifested the two-way nature of the exchange. Beyond the mere logistics of getting to know strangers and meeting distant relatives, reciprocal mobilities transformed the travellers themselves. Besides becoming close friends and allies, the travellers’ and hosts’ identities melded into one another as Ituys became half-Spanish and Spanish missionaries acted like gracious Ilongot hosts. In many ways, conventional scholarly terms like colonialism, vassalage, or alliance formation fail to capture the intimate bonds created in mutual visits. However, the pomp and circumstance did not automatically translate into long-lasting ties, as indigenous converts from the borderlands regularly apostatised throughout the eighteenth century. With constant setbacks and obstacles to overcome, the interaction between Spaniards and indios was not a unilinear narrative towards greater cooperation. What I present in this article are instances where reciprocal mobilities aligned with each other to the mutual benefit of some parties. Kinship ties and ethnic identities on Luzon were as fluid as mobilities across its landscape.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Jorge Flores, Stéphane Van Damme, the anonymous reviewer, and the editors of the journal for their feedback and comments. I carried out the research for this article at the European University Institute and the revisions at Ateneo de Manila University.
