The Victory of Lapulapu

The Kapre in the Island of Humunu

News from the fishermen spread like fire among the inhabitants in the island of Zuluan about three strange boats, larger than balanghai, which anchored at the island of Humunu. These strange watercrafts were manned by kapre – tall hairy people which according to stories inhabit a nearby island. The kapre had been there for days and the fishermen were scared to drop by. Nine Katutubo dared to paddle to Humunu to investigate.  They saw tall white men whose habits and clothing were heard of only in myths. These strangers were not kapre, only exhausted and hungry men nursing their sick. These strangers must have come from a faraway land.

The Katutubo, overjoyed by the strangers’ presence, entertained the visitors as best as they could. Just like unusual local events, people began to flock. The fishermen gave fresh fishes, bananas, palm wine, and coconuts. And yes, out of hospitality, the Katutubo promised to bring in their priced products – rice and wine.

By midday, three days later, the Katutubo visited the strangers again. They were joined by Schione, their aging chief. They brought with them coconuts (lubi), pomelo (acsua), wine (tuba nio nipa) and chicken (monoch). These were purchased by the strangers with colorful toys.

Both sides communicated in signs and the Katutubo were more than willing to answer questions they almost did not understand. Talks ranged from local names of body parts, ornaments, implements, fruits and animals to names and location of places. The Katutubo were amazed by how their local words were transcribed into symbols by on Antonio Pigafetta, the most inquisitive of all of the strangers. Chianche (cloves), mana (cinnamon), manissa (pepper), luia (ginger), balaoan (gold) and other sample products brought by the strangers were identified and recorded. The strangers also asked where these goods grow. The surrounding islands were pointed and named – Cenalo (Sigalo), Huinanghar (Hinunangan), Ibusson (Hibusson) and Abarien (Cabalian).[1]    

The strangers then proceeded to Mazzava, an island north of a bigger island, Butuan. The ruler of Butuan (Rajah Culambu) and the ruler of Mazzava (Rajah Siaui) realized that their visitors were in dire need to buy food and other basic needs to replenish his fleet’s resources. Looking through the merchandise brought by them, the rulers noticed that these are expensive-looking objects rarely brought by other Asian traders. They, thus, recommended that the foreigners trade at Zubu, a richer port. However, they intended to initially supply the fleet with rice, fish and other food provisions. Later, the ruler of Mazzava even volunteered to personally lead them to Cebu.[2]

At Cebu

It was an ordinary day in Cebu during the reign of Rajah Humabon when loud explosions were heard at the bay. The citizens scampered for their safety but the brave grabbed their weapons and rushed to the shore. They saw large ships, larger than that of their Asian trading partners. They were later informed that these ships belong to the great king of Spain and the explosions were European salutes of peace.

The ruling rajah, Humabon, informed the foreigners that all who dropped anchor at Zubu port need to pay taxes. However, the foreigners refused claiming that their king, the King of Spain, do not recognize any sovereign. Rebuffed, the rajah opted to enter into a treaty of friendship and contented himself with gifts.

Then a week of mass baptism to a foreign faith called Christianity followed. The local officials asked for preachers to stay and teach them the rudiments of the new religion. But due to the lack of manpower, Magellan promised to send priests in another time. The natives curiously lined up for a ritual they barely understood. They were also given strange names. Rajah Humabon was named Don Carlos and his wife, Juana.

In a span of eight days, most of the inhabitants of Zubu had been baptized. The new “Christians” were made to promise to be loyal to the king of Spain, to the Christian religion and to the king of Zubu. As an expression, they were required to pay taxes to Magellan and to destroy the images of their Gods, which they venerated for centuries. The rajahs of the villages of Cingapola, Mandani, Lalan, Lalutan and Lubucin paid the required tributes.[3] Zula, one of the rajahs of the island of Mactan, sent goats in tribute. The foreigners even burned a village for resisting.[4]

The Victory of Lapulapu

Rajah Zula, through his son, reported that the other rajah of Mactan, Lapulapu, prevented him from fulfilling his promises. He then requested for assistance from the foreigners to subdue Lapulapu. Having pillaged other villages, Magellan decided to personally put Lapulapu to his knees.

Rajah Lapulapu was prepared for war. He was a fine man in the art of warfare and had been known as the most powerful chief in the region. He assembled and commanded a troop of about one thousand five hundred brave warriors armed with bamboo spears and blades. The shallow waters surrounding the island of Mactan also worked to his advantage.

On the other hand, the intruders and their leader, Magellan, were determined to burn Lapulapu’s village and coconut grove. At midnight, April 27, 1521, their fleet sailed to Mactan. They arrived there few hours before dawn. Rajah Humabun and his men on board more than twenty balangays also went to Mactan to watch the fight.[5]

A Muslim trader, acting as an intermediary, approached Lapulapu and informed him that those ships demand his submission to the King of Zubu and obedience to the king of Spain. “How can I hold in the high regard a man I have been commanding for the long time?” He retorted. War commenced.

The shallow waters prevented large ships from approaching the beach.[6]  Thus, from their ships, the intruders blasted off their canons but these rarely hit the shores. They were like thunders roaring from the seas. When the last of the canons were blasted off, forty nine fully-geared intruders leaped into the waters and waded to the shore. Some of them rushed to the lands and set to fire more than twenty houses in the village of Bulaia.[7]

In the midst of loud shouts, the native warriors furiously attacked the intruders from all sides effectively enveloping them. The sight of their burning houses made them even more furious. Poisoned arrows rained from all directions, one of them pierced through Magellan’s leg. From then on, the natives knew that the intruders’ arrogance was no match to their boldness and tactical preparedness. The intruders scampered back to their departing ships leaving their leader and six or eight soldiers to fight by themselves.

Bamboo spears rained on the remaining intruders. The native warriors hurled their spears against retreating enemies, picking up the previously hurled ones and throwing them again.[8] They throw a spear on Magellan’s face which he evaded but another one hit his arm. One of the natives thrust a blade on his left leg. He fell down, his face to the water.

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[1] Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, Lord Stanley of Alderly (trans.), New York: Burt Frankin, 1874, pp. 73-75.

[2] Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, Lord Stanley of Alderly (trans.), New York: Burt Frankin, 1874.

[3] Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, Lord Stanley of Alderly (trans.), New York: Burt Frankin, 1874, p.105.

[4] Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, Lord Stanley of Alderly (trans.), New York: Burt Frankin, 1874, p. 94.

[5] Fernão Oliveira, The Voyage of Fernão de Magalhães to Claim the Moluccas for the King of Castile, Manila: National Historical Institute, 2002.

[6] Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, Lord Stanley of Alderly (trans.), New York: Burt Frankin, 1874, p. 100.

[7] Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, Lord Stanley of Alderly (trans.), New York: Burt Frankin, 1874, p. 101.

[8] Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, Lord Stanley of Alderly (trans.), New York: Burt Frankin, 1874, p. 101.

Formation of the Philippine Islands

The Earth’s Lithospheric Plates

The nature of the Earth is unique and has no close likeness. It may be compared to a very hot ball of molten materials which gradually become cold. In time, the outer portion of this ball cooled and hardened like a shell. It is called the crust. The crust, however, is not an entirely a solid covering. It is cracked into several big blocks called plates. A single plate can be as large as a continent and can move independently from other surrounding plates. Around the Earth, there are seven (7) major plates and over a dozen intermediate-sized and smaller plates.[1] For the study of the formation of the Philippine islands, the most important of the major plates are: the Eurasian plate and the Indo-Australian plate. While the most important of the intermediate-sized plates is the Philippine Sea plate.

The Eurasian plate is the bedrock of what encompasses the continents of Asia and Europe. It is very stable plate which includes the submerged margins of the continents of Asia and Europe. These are called continental shelves. The extreme southeastern portion of the Eurasian plate, which is a part of Southeast Asia, is a continental shelf. The region is called the Sunda Shelf. The highland sections of this shelf emerged as islands. These islands, which include the Philippine islands of Palawan, Mindoro and Romblon, geologically belong to the Eurasian plate. The Sunda Shelf and its islands is known as the Sundaland block of the Eurasian plate.

The Indo-Australian plate is found south of the Eurasian and the Philippine Sea plates. It is generally oceanic, being submerged by Indian and Pacific Oceans, but it holds two gigantic land masses – the island continent of Australia and Indian subcontinent. Recent researches, however, show that these two land masses are moving independently of each other, thus, may actually be parts of separate plates.[2]

The Philippine Sea plate is found east of the Eurasian plate. It is the bedrock of the major islands of the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Marianas. 

Formation of Island Arcs

Below these plates is the mantle, a very hot section of the Earth where rocks are at the point of or is actually melting. These hot and molten rocks stream steadily making the plates above it move about. The plates move or rotate almost unnoticeably and at times collide against each other.[3] Upon collision, the heavier plate slide beneath the lighter plate and is dipped against the hot mantle of the earth. This event is called subduction.

The subducting plate carries with it some crust sediments down into the subduction zones. The heat of the mantle melts the edges of the down-turned plate and the sediments it carried. The molten plate is called magma.

The magma, being light, is pushed up against the crust. As it tries to escape to the surface, it sometimes creates violent explosions. As it progressed, belt of volcanoes were formed on above the dominant plate. When the subduction occurred underwater, like when an oceanic plate descends beneath another oceanic plate, the belt of volcanoes formed results in island arcs. The Philippines is an assembly of several island arcs.

The Philippine Island Arc System

The territory of the Philippines is composed of many island arcs formed by several incidents of subduction. The island arcs are collectively called Philippines island arc system. Each major Philippine island had a complex natural history.

With the exception of Palawan, Mindoro and Romblon, most of the Philippine islands are considered to have been parts of island arcs formed at the southern edge of the Philippine Sea plate millions of years ago.[4] As part of the Philippine Sea plate, the islands moved northward as the plate rotated clockwise. These roving islands, known as the Philippine Mobile Belt, eventually collided with the Sundaland. The collision resulted, among others, in a series of subductions around Philippine archipelago.

On the western border, are the subductions along trenches of Manila, Negros, Sulu and Celebes where the plates of the South China Sea, Sulu Sea and Celebes Sea are subducting beneath the Philippine Sea plate. These eastward subductions resulted in the emergence of the island arcs of Luzon, Negros, Sulu-Zamboanga and Cotabato.[5]

On the eastern frontier, are the subductions along East Luzon trough and Philippine trench. These westward subductions resulted in the formations of the eastern island arcs of Northern Sierra Madre, Southern Sierra Madre-Polillo-Catanduanes and the East Philippine arc.[6] In time, some of these arcs merged together forming big islands like Luzon and Mindanao.

The Luzon arc is a complex belt of volcanoes extending from the Coastal Range of southeastern Taiwan through the volcanic islands north of Luzon, the Luzon Central Cordillera, and the Western Luzon arc, ending at Marinduque Island. The arc has been active since the Oligocene period to the present.

The Negros arc consists of two overlapping arcs of different ages. The combined arc system extends 400 km and includes eastern Panay. The arc system is terminated against the Philippine fault in the north and abuts the Sulu-Zamboanga arc to the south. Cretaceous basement includes marine sedimentary rocks and pillow basalts, exposed in southeast Negros and serpentinized ultramafic rocks in northeastern Masbate. In the older western arc, Eocene to Oligocene andesitic to dacitic volcanic and clastic rocks host a Miocene dacitic diatreme complex at Bulawan in southwest Negros and middle Miocene dioritic intrusions in northeast Masbate. In the younger eastern arc, middle Miocene to Pliocene andesite flow breccias, volcaniclastic rocks and conglomerates are overlain by late Pliocene andesitic volcanic rocks and Quaternary andesite to basalt stratovolcanoes. The two arcs are the product of subduction beneath Negros but the polarity of the older arc is not clear; it has been interpreted to be situated above a west-or east-dipping subduction zone.

The younger arc is probably the product of east-dipping subduction at the Negros trench, which currently appears to be inactive or almost so and associated with a slab that extends to a depth of about 100 km.

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[1]Tarbuck, Edward J. and Frederick K. Lutgens, Concepts and Principles in Physical Geology of the Earth, 8^th ed., (Singapore: Pearson Education South Asia Pte Ltd, 2005), 56.

[2]Strahler, Alan and Arthur Strahler, Introducing Physical Geography, 4^th ed., (USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006), 440.

[3]Christopherson, Robert W. Geosystems: An Introduction to Physical Geography, 5th ed., (New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2003), 328.

[4] Robert Hall, Reconstructing Cenozoic SE Asia

[5]Yumul, Jr., Graciano P., Carla B. Dimalanta, Victor B. Maglambayan and Edanjarlo J. Marquez, Tectonic Setting of a Composite Terrane: A Review of the Philippine Island Arc System, 12 Geosciences Journal 1, (March 2008), 7 − 17.

[6]Yumul, Jr., Graciano P., Carla B. Dimalanta, Victor B. Maglambayan and Edanjarlo J. Marquez, Tectonic Setting of a Composite Terrane: A Review of the Philippine Island Arc System, 12 Geosciences Journal 1, (March 2008), 7 − 17.