Exchange gifts

According to Yoyoy Villame, the Philippines was discovered by Magellan on March 16, 1521. After “sailing day and night across the big ocean … they saw a small Limasawa island.” He is wrong on both points. The islands “discovered” Ferdinand Magellan. The fleet landed in Suluan. At dawn on March 16, Magellan sighted the island of Zamal on the eastern coast of Samar, but for safety ordered to sail on to land on Suluan which was uninhabited. Here they set up tents, and while resting recalled the nightmare that was the Pacific crossing, when supplies ran low to critical level prompting sailors to fight over and eat rats, while others boiled their leather gear for food. After dinner on March 18, 1521, a boat with nine men approached. Magellan ordered everyone to keep quiet and Antonio Pigafetta recorded that:

“The most ornately dressed of them went toward the captain-general, showing that he was very happy at our coming. And five of the most ornately dressed remained with us, while the others who stayed at the boat went to fetch some others who were fishing, and then they all came together. The captain-general seeing that these were reasonable people, ordered food to be set before them, and gave them red caps, mirrors, combs, bells, ivory, bocasine [linen woven to resemble silk], and other things.

“And when those people saw the captain’s fair dealings, they gave him: fish, a jar of palm wine, which they call uraca in their language, figs more than a foot long, and other smaller ones of better flavor, and two coconuts. And then they had nothing more to give him, and they made signs with their hands that in four days they would bring us rice, coconuts, and other sundry food.”

The above is a translation from the original French manuscript by Raleigh Ashlin Skelton. There is another translation from the Italian manuscript by James Alexander Robertson that is basically the same. The palm wine mentioned above is tuba, “uraca” was probably a mistranscription of “arak” or “alak.” The footlong “figs” are actually bananas, perhaps of the lakatan, señorita, or even saba types. It could not have been the dessert variety we know as latundan because this was introduced centuries later, from India, by the French missionary Claude François Letondal.

Ever since I first read Pigafetta four decades ago, I remain fascinated by the first encounter, a pity that none of the nine men who traded and conversed with Magellan in words and sign language left a written record. I find the European articles of trade that Magellan brought for barter laughable. Caps, mirrors, and combs may rightfully be traded for food, but later in the voyage, these might have changed hands for gold ornaments and other curios. By today’s standards, Magellan’s goods were an unfair exchange but that is the nature of barter. Value is relative. What Magellan wanted to source from Asia and ship back to Europe were spices: cloves, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, etc. These are almost worthless today, lying in small bottles in our kitchen cupboards, but in 16th century Europe these were ground and weighed with doors and windows closed lest a draft blow the powder away. Imagine ground pepper as valuable as cocaine.

Magellan died in Mactan and only one of his five ships made it back to Spain in September 1522. This ship, aptly named Victoria, carried 18 of the original 237 men. One would consider the Magellan expedition a failure except for the first circumnavigation of the world. Would you believe that the loss of four ships, the captain, and over 200 men turned up a profit? Victoria carried back 26 tons of cloves worth twice the investment for the expedition.

I don’t know what the accounting would be for the 1565 Legazpi expedition, but the finding of the image of the Santo Niño, believed to be the very same one presented to the wife of Humabon by Magellan on her baptism in 1521, trumps everything in the eyes of the faithful. Miguel López de Legazpi reported that spices could be had from Mindanao, but he needed supplies to establish a trading outpost in Cebu, and also articles for trade.

Legazpi’s wish list for barter included: “Two bolts of Valencian scarlet cloth, with odds and ends, seven bolts of Toledo scarlet cloth, six cases of headdresses, a great quantity of beads [in] blue, green, and yellow; ten breadths of each sort, two pieces of crimson velvet, three dozen colored hats, one case of large gilded coins for the coast of China, two bales and two boxes of linens, two quintals Muzavetas [whatever that is], four pounds of fine coral of all sorts [wasn’t there a lot available in the Philippines?], three quintals of glass, (one blue), one thousand bundles of glass beads—green and yellow, five hundred dozen hawks’ bells, coins and small bars of fine silver for trade in China …”

The list is trivial and dated today but shows that value was physical, something you can hold in your hand. Today, physical cash is sidelined by credit and debit cards, e-wallets, and cryptocurrencies. Money, for some, is now virtual, online, just an idea.

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