Chapter 4

La Isla Hermosa

The Rise of the Spanish Colony in Northern Taiwan

The Spanish established a fortress in the Bay of Jilong (雞籠) in northern Taiwan in 1626, just two years after the Dutch established their colony in southern Taiwan. Shortly thereafter the Spanish built a fortress in Danshui (淡水), and by the mid-1630s they had brought much of northern Taiwan under their control. But the Spanish colony was beset with a fatal weakness. It did not serve its primary purpose: to check the advance of Spain's enemies—the Japanese and the Dutch—toward the Philippines and to protect Manila-bound Chinese junks from enemy attack. At the same time it brought in few revenues of its own, being dependent on relief missions from Manila. Spanish officials therefore began to see the colony as a waste of scarce resources.

Since the island was similar to the northern Philippines, which had been the seat of a thriving Spanish colony since 1571, one might expect the Spanish to have known how to make their Formosan colony prosper. Indeed, Spanish missionaries proposed ways of doing so. Unlike secular officials, they were devoted to Formosa, which they saw as a steppingstone toward the spiritual conquest of China and Japan, and they made converts among the island's aborigines. They advised Spanish officials to exploit the island's rich lands, suggesting that Taiwan could be made profitable by inviting Chinese colonists to farm and hunt and then taxing them. Spanish officials, however, did not follow their advice. Instead, in 1637, the governor-general of the Philippines withdrew half the Spanish forces from Formosa, leaving the colony vulnerable precisely when the Dutch colony was expanding.

Establishing a Spanish Colony

Known in Spanish documents as Isla Hermosa (Beautiful Island), Taiwan lay only 700 kilometers north of the island of Luzon, the heart of the Spanish colony of the Philippines.1 Documents from the latter part of the sixteenth century suggest that Spanish officials considered Formosa an integral part of the Philippine archipelago and a possession of the Crown of Castile. In 1586 the governor of Manila and a council of fifty Spanish inhabitants of Manila wrote to King Philip II to urge him to send forces to Formosa and other outlying parts of the Philippine Islands, since "they are deteriorating . . . daily, and it will be necessary for their own good and our security that we attempt to pacify them, which later will be difficult or impossible."2 Although the king replied that the pacification of Formosa and these other areas should be carried out soon, authorities in the Philippines found no compelling reason to establish a colony on Taiwan until 1596, when rumors arrived in Manila about a Japanese naval expedition against the island.3 This, many Spaniards feared, might be the first step of a Japanese conquest of the Philippines. "The Japanese," wrote one official to the king, "must not occupy and seize Hermosa before us, advancing step by step toward . . . these islands, greatly to our detriment, because this would cause no small amount of troubles and unrest here."4 The rumors were strengthened by news received from missionaries in Japan, who said that the Japanese were indeed secretly readying a fleet to attack Taiwan.5

In Manila, Spanish citizens urged the governor to take action. Their livelihood depended on trade with China and they feared that the Japanese might use Formosa as a base to pillage shipping between Manila and China. Others worried that Japan would use the island as a base to attack Manila itself.6 Few argued that Taiwan would be profitable. Most thought of it merely as a strategic bulwark: "Without [a Spanish base in Hermosa] what has been begun [in the Philippines] will be jeopardized . . . and, as a consequence, [so will] the benefits and fruits to the service of your Majesty and God."7 The governor-general of the Philippines decided against sending a colonizing mission and instead sent word to the Chinese viceroys of Guangzhou and Quanzhou to warn them about "the evil approach [mala vecindad] of the Japanese."8 As it turned out, the "evil approach" did not materialize until twenty years later, when Murayama Toan's expedition arrived in Taiwan, only to be turned back by Formosan aborigines.9 By that time, however, the Spanish were more worried about the Dutch.

The arrival of the Dutch in Far Eastern waters gave Spanish proponents of colonization a new argument. In 1618, the governor-general of the Philippines dispatched Bartolomé Martinez, a Dominican priest, to warn Chinese officials that the Dutch were attacking Chinese ships sailing to Manila. During his journey he twice sought refuge in southwestern Taiwan, and he came away from the experience feeling that Spain should add the island to its empire: "There is," he wrote, "no better . . . way to do away with the Dutch and all our other enemies than to place the silver of Manila at China's trading gate, which is the Isla Hermosa."10

In 1624, when the Dutch set up shop on the Bay of Tayouan, they also blockaded Manila, whose archbishop wrote to the king: "The enemy has become powerful enough to sever our ties with the people who came to this city. This year only one small boat has come to these islands . . . which has caused great distress to the citizens, for this year they have not acquired even a single piece of clothing with which to dress themselves."11 Spanish officials urged a response: "They [the Dutch] are carrying out their intention to cut off the trade and commerce of these islands, which is the best way to destroy them."12 The king received similar complaints from Portuguese officials in Macao. (After the union of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in 1580, the Spanish king was responsible for defending Portugal and its colonies.)13 And so in 1625 the Spanish governor-general of the Philippines, Fernando de Silva, decided to establish an outpost on Isla Hermosa. The Dominican father Martinez was, of course, delighted. He and five other Dominicans accompanied the expedition, which set forth on February 8, 1626.14

Because the Dutch were in southern Taiwan, the Spanish had to find a different port. In 1597, the cosmographer Hernando de los Rios Coronel had written a memorial claiming that the best site for a Formosan colony was Jilong: "With three-hundred men and a fortress placed there, all the powers of these parts would not be enough to dislodge them, for the entrance is narrow and easy to defend with artillery. The port is large, deep, and safe from winds."15 (He also made a map to prove his point.) Equally important, Jilong was already a port of call for Chinese traders. Chinese records show that after 1593 Chinese officials issued ten licenses each year to Chinese junks going to Taiwan. All of the licenses specified destinations in northern Taiwan: five for Jilong and five for Danshui, located some fifty kilometers west of Jilong.16 Since these licenses merely recognized preexisting smuggling, we can be sure that northern Taiwan had long been a destination for Chinese junks. By the 1610s and 1620s the Bay of Tayouan had become the foremost port in Taiwan, for it was where Chinese traders met Japanese traders, but northern Formosa remained important because it offered products, such as gold and sulfur, that were unavailable at the Bay of Tayouan. The gold was collected by aborigines of eastern Taiwan, where it washed down rivers from the steep mountains.17 Since there were no mines, the amount of gold collected was small. It made its way by trade to northern Taiwan, where it was exchanged for Chinese wares. In contrast, the amounts of sulfur were large, for there were important deposits near both Danshui and Jilong. The Chinese junks that sailed to northern Taiwan returned laden primarily with sulfur.

Perhaps because of the longstanding gold and sulfur trade, the aboriginal societies of northern Taiwan had features that were unusual in seventeenth-century Taiwan. We lack ethnographic details such as those the Dutch left for southwestern Taiwan, but we do have the writings of Jacinto Esquivel, a Dominican missionary who lived in Taiwan from 1631 to 1633.18 The societies he describes appear similar to those of the Siraya and their neighbors near the Bay of Tayouan: They were headhunters; their languages and cultures were tremendously diverse; they lived in villages between which there was constant rivalry; they hunted deer and traded deer products with Chinese merchants; and there is even evidence indicating that some may have practiced mandatory abortion, as did the Siraya.19

Nonetheless, three features distinguished the northern aborigines of Taiwan from those near the Bay of Tayouan. First, despite tremendous linguistic and cultural diversity, there appears to have been a lingua franca. As a Spanish missionary wrote, "all the villages also use one common general language, which is spoken throughout the island and is called Bacay."20 The language was not spoken throughout the island, as Dutch documents make clear. Nor was it as dominant as the above quote suggests, for an aboriginal translator told the Dutch in 1644 that "the people of the village of Kimauri understand the languages of the other eight villages, but those villages understand each other only partially."21 Yet it appears that Bacay was nonetheless a sort of trading language, a Formosan Swahili, and it clearly facilitated commerce, for northern trade routes were long and elaborate.22 Gold from the middle parts of the eastern coast found its way by trade a hundred kilometers northward, through several culture areas, and in spite of headhunting rivalries.

The existence of this extensive aboriginal trading system perhaps also explains the second unusual feature of northern Taiwanese aboriginal society: Esquivel and the other missionaries make little mention of Chinese merchants living in aboriginal villages, whereas Dutch sources mention many Chinese living in villages near Tayouan. We would expect the Spanish to mention Chinese in aboriginal villages if they were there, since missionaries in the Philippines nearly always pointed out the presence of Chinese in native villages. (Many felt that the stubbornly non-Christian Chinese prevented effective proselytization.) To be sure, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but we do have an intriguing quote from an aboriginal man in 1644, who indicates that Chinese were not welcome in certain interior villages.23 There, he said, the people preferred to trade with other Formosans.

And this brings us to the third and most important feature that distinguished northern from southern aboriginal Taiwan: the existence of an aboriginal culture-group that made its living entirely from trade and handicrafts. Near the Bay of Jilong were two peoples who shared a language and culture: the Taparri and Kimaurri. They were, so far as we know, the only Austronesian people on Taiwan who relied on neither agriculture nor hunting and gathering. Instead, they made their living through trade.24 To the Chinese they offered sulfur, deerhides, and gold in exchange for beads, ironwares, and textiles. These goods they exchanged, for gold and deerskins, with aborigines further inland. They also made many of their own trade items: salt, arrows, clothing, knives, and, surprisingly, iron farming implements (using iron imported from China). Since the surrounding peoples did not know how to make such things, the Taparri and Kimaurri were, in Esquivel's words, the "feet and hands" of the other aborigines.25 Indeed, they appear to have been on good terms with most of the surrounding groups, traveling from village to village with their handicrafts and trade goods. This trading role they had occupied "since ancient times [van ouden tijden aff]."26 "They are," wrote Esquivel, "much like the Chinese are for us: constantly bustling about and carrying everything from place to place" [todo lo trajinan]."27 Indeed, according to a later Chinese visitor, the Kimaurri were clever and knew how to add and subtract (知會計), so they could not be cheated.28 The Taparri-Kimaurri people were based in Jilong, a major port for Chinese-Taiwan trade.29 It was also the place that Spanish officials hoped to establish their colony.

In 1626, Governor-General De Silva's fleet sailed northward along the eastern coast of Formosa. First the Spaniards anchored in a bay they called Santiago, whose name still survives in the Chinese transliteration Sandiaojiao (三貂角). But they proceeded, as planned, to Jilong, landing on an island at the entrance to Jilong Bay. The Taparri-Kimaurri fled upon hearing Spanish guns, and Spanish soldiers promptly appropriated their village, which reportedly consisted of fifteen hundred houses built of fragrant wood.30 They took the villagers' rice stocks, keeping, according to one source, careful account of what they had taken, "since I know not what pretext they could have for showing hostility to the natives, since they had received no injury from them."31 Then the expedition's leaders conducted a ceremony of possession. First they said Mass, erected a cross, and raised the royal standard. Then the military leader of the expedition took into his hands some soil and branches of trees and said, "Long live the King, our Lord Philip IV!" Thus, "in the best form and manner that can be lawfully allowed," the expedition took possession of Formosa for the Crown of Castile.32 They built a fortress on the island and a redoubt on a hundred-meter-high hill, making the place "unassailable," according to a Dominican missionary who was there.33 The Bay of Jilong they renamed Santíssima Trinidad (Holy Trinity), and they called the fortress San Salvador. Since the bay was deep and its rocky bed quickly wore away anchor lines, they also attached rings to the cliffs of the island and the mainland to allow vessels to moor.34

Yet the new colony suffered. The Taparri and Kimaurri fled inland and refused to sell rice and other necessities to the Spanish. There was a small Chinese settlement on the mainland, where junks and sampans moored to trade, but junks from China were slow to arrive. Moreover, the Taparri and Kimaurri tried to prevent the Spanish from trading with other aborigines.35 Worst of all, a relief expedition from Manila was blown off course by a typhoon and never arrived. The new colonists were in dire straits, forced to eat "dogs and rats, also grubs and unknown herbs."36 Most became ill, and many died.37 Malnutrition was only one cause. The other was the drinking water, which may have contained high concentrations of sulfur. According to a Chinese helmsman who had visited several times, Jilong was very unhealthy: "No one can stay there for one, two, or three months without becoming sick and having his belly grow as thick as a barrel."38

Despite the noxious water, conditions in the Spanish colony gradually improved. A few junks brought rice from China, and some of the Taparri-Kimaurri returned and began exchanging food for porcelain and silver.39 Although the colonists lacked food and money, they did have powerful weapons, and, just as villages near the Bay of Tayouan had sought alliances with the Dutch, so some villages in northern Taiwan sought alliances with the Spanish. In late 1627, for "reasons of state, which are not wanting even among barbarians," a chief of a village in the Danshui area asked for help against an enemy.40 The Spanish dispatched twenty men to the region, hoping at least to find rice for the hungry garrison. The "chief of Danshui" feasted the soldiers but refused to provide rice to take back to Jilong. Moreover, he secretly made peace with his enemy and laid plans to betray his guests. He invited the Spanish on a hunting trip outside the village. When the party had made its way into the bush, he and a group of other warriors suddenly attacked the Spanish. The latter fought fiercely, killing the chief and several others, and then fled to Jilong, leaving eight of their fellows dead in the fields. When they arrived they were relieved to see a ship from Manila anchored in the bay. When Spanish officials heard about the attack, they were incensed and sent a punishment expedition. A Spanish galley rowed up the Danshui River, which was "beautiful and densely inhabited by the natives."41 The latter fled when they saw the Spanish vessel, which then landed and raided the abandoned rice sheds of the aborigines. The Spanish filled the entire galley with rice; indeed, "they could have filled fifty if they had had them, so great is the abundance in that country."42 Shortly thereafter the Spanish began building a wooden fortress in the Bay of Danshui. Again, the aborigines fled, abandoning the rich fields around the river's entrance.43

Around this time, in late 1627 or early 1628, a Chinese official from Fujian visited the new outpost. His mission was, it appears, to determine why the Spaniards were there. The Spanish commander, Antonio Carreño de Valdes, gave him gifts and said that the Spanish had come to help rid the seas of pirates. He hoped that the official would report favorably in China and thereby encourage more junks to sail to Jilong. But just as the official was about to depart, a group of aborigines cut the moorings of his ship, drew it to land, and pillaged it. Valdes sent a troop of soldiers, who captured some aboriginal leaders and held them hostage, demanding that the aborigines return to the official what they had taken. The aboriginal leaders obtained their freedom by returning the official's belongings and giving the Spaniards their sons as hostages who would be reared in the Spanish fortress. The Chinese official left, and was, according to Spanish sources, quite pleased with the treatment he had received among the Spaniards.44 The Spanish must have managed to ingratiate themselves to some degree with Chinese officials, because in the following years they were allowed to send a small delegation to Fuzhou. The delegation was well received. Although the Spanish did not receive official licenses for the China trade, unofficial trade to Formosa picked up. The Spanish encouraged it by excusing Chinese junks from tolls, taxes, and even inspections.45 Chinese junks began to arrive, filled with silk, clothing, rice, and wheat, and the fortunes of the new colony improved.46 Exports of sulfur to China could be quite lucrative. Indeed, in 1631, some 5,000 piculs of sulfur were taken by Chinese traders to China for use in gunpowder. Depending on the price of sulfur in China, this cargo might have been worth around 20,000 taels, a considerable sum.47 How much the Spanish made from the sulfur trade is, however, not clear. Inhabitants of the Chinese settlement near Jilong were doubtless involved in commerce with China, but we can garner few facts about them. Many were from Manila.48 There was a Chinese headman (gobernador) who also served as translator, but we do not know how he was chosen or what his duties were. There were likely close financial interactions between Chinese and Spanish, for one letter from a Spanish governor refers to "thousands of debts and crimes that I have had to deal with among the sangleys."49 Such glimpses, though, offer little detail about the character of Sino-Spanish interactions.

There was also some possibility of turning the colony into a center for Japanese trade. In 1632 three Japanese sampans arrived in northern Formosa. Their captains said they no longer wished to trade with the Dutch and would prefer to do business with the Spanish, so long as they were treated well. They loaded their boats with deerskins, and the infusion of Japanese silver brought prosperity and hope to the colony. As one missionary observed, if the Spanish could attract Japanese junks every year, they could perhaps establish northern Taiwan as a center for Sino-Japanese trade, bringing wealth and prestige to the colony and providing revenues for proselytization.50 Indeed, if Japanese trade had continued, Jilong might have turned into a thriving colony. The shogun's decree of 1635, however, removed this possibility, and Jilong became dependent once more on Chinese traders and supplies from Manila. In any case, thanks to Chinese trade and twice-yearly relief missions from Manila, the colony was firmly established by the early 1630s.51 As the governor-general of Manila memorialized to the king of Spain, "there is little to fear from Japan or the Dutch, for the post [on Formosa] is strong enough that it cannot be taken except by hunger."52 Indeed, he wrote of extending Spanish domination over the entire island.53

Spiritual Expansion

As Spanish military men built their fortresses, Catholic missionaries preached to the aborigines. As we have seen, the Dominican priest Bartolomé Martinez had urged the king of Spain and the rulers of Manila to take Formosa after his brief stay there in 1616. He used secular arguments in his memorials, focusing on questions of war and trade, but he and others in his order saw Formosa as a steppingstone to the conversion of China and Japan. Martinez, who was at that time provincial of the order's Philippine province (called the Province of the Santo Rosario), himself went along on the initial Formosa expedition, bringing five other Dominicans with him. That the provincial himself was present indicates how highly the order valued the colony. Yet most missionaries who went to Formosa hoped to proceed to China or Japan, the great prizes of Far Eastern missionary work.54 As one missionary wrote in 1632, "The spiritual goals . . . of [Isla Hermosa] do not end with the conversion of the natives but rather extend to the great land of China, its near neighbor. Just as when laying siege to a city and battering its walls one digs one's trenches closer and closer and thus slowly gains land, so in the spiritual conquest of that powerful and enchanted [encantado] land God is laying the siegeworks of evangelism, approaching bit by bit until the walls of resistance crash to the ground."55

The Dominicans planned to start a seminary in Taiwan for young Christians from China, Japan, Korea, and the Ryukyu Islands. With proper training in writing, reading, singing, Latin, and moral theology, young converts would become native clergy, missionaries in their homelands.56 It was a time when missionaries were persecuted, especially in Japan, and the Dominicans felt that native missionaries were "more capable of hiding themselves and remaining under cover."57 Taiwan was, they felt, an ideal place for such a school: "This island is so close to [China and Japan] that parents will give up their children easily, for they would have them almost in their homes and would be able to visit them from time to time, bringing along with them some merchandise to pay their way."58 As a first step the Dominicans founded a society for charitable works, the Cofradía de la Santa Misericordia. The Cofradía was, according to one missionary, "the only thing in these parts that protects us from the wrath of God, so that He does not unleash on us His justice for our sins, which are neither few nor small."59 If the seminary itself never left the planning stages, it was not for lack of ardor. One missionary fell ill and had febrile hallucinations about the seminary, crying out from his sickbed, "Here, through this wall, while the Japanese aren't looking, we'll take some children for the seminary. Quickly! Don't let them see!"60

Although China and Japan were the most prestigious destinations, Dominicans did not neglect Taiwan itself. Spanish missionary activity on the island, conducted almost entirely by the Dominicans, was remarkably intense given the colony's size. There were almost as many missionaries present on the initial Spanish expedition as there were in Dutch Taiwan in 1650, when the Dutch colony had reached the height of its power and prosperity. The Dominicans' first act was to found a "small and humble" church on the island of Jilong to minister to the Spanish. Soon thereafter they built a church in the Parián, or Chinese settlement, as well.61 They also made overtures to natives who had fled into the mountains. Here they had a stroke of luck. They found a Japanese Christian living among the aborigines, probably in a village called Caguiuanuan, in the Bay of Santiago (Sandiaojiao). He had once lived in Manila and had fond memories of the Dominicans.62 He had married a native woman. When he asked to have his two daughters baptized, the Spanish used the ceremony to strengthen ties with the aborigines. The military leader of the Spaniards became the children's godfather and ordered that the event be celebrated with artillery charges and musketry salutes.63The ceremony gave the missionaries an inroad into aboriginal life. The Taparri-Kimaurri had stayed hidden in the mountains since the arrival of the Spanish, who had chased them from their village and taken their food and houses. Through their Japanese friend, missionaries gave gifts and promised restitution in the amount of 4,000 pesos for damage caused by Spanish soldiers. Although only a small amount of the restitution was actually paid, hundreds of Taparri-Kimaurri came from the mountains to settle in two villages, one to the east and one to the west.

Others, however, remained concealed, venturing down occasionally to attack the Spanish and their allies and trading partners. Intercourse between the Spanish and the aborigines therefore remained strained. The Spanish commander required colonists who wished to visit Formosan villages to obtain special permission, which he granted only to armed groups.64 At first, no missionaries lived among the aborigines. In 1630, however, Dominican father Jacinto Esquivel arrived from Manila and asked to live in Taparri. The commander gave his assent and provided a few soldiers for his defense. Esquivel founded a church and began learning Bacay, the aborigines' lingua franca. At first the Tappari were suspicious, especially because Esquivel refused to marry. Yet they ended up accepting him for the same reasons the aborigines of southern Taiwan had invited Dutchmen to live in their villages: The presence of a missionary brought security. So long as a Spanish priest lived with them they were safe from Spanish military power.

Although the Dominicans were, like their Dutch Protestant counterparts, dependent on military authority, they seem to have had a more ambivalent attitude toward armed force.65 Their order had a long tradition of siding with indios against military authority.66 This role earned them respect from the aborigines. A leader of a village called Lichoco, upstream along the Danshui River (eastern branch), happened to see Esquivel intercede with the Spanish governor to obtain freedom for some prisoners from Taparri. On witnessing Esquivel's actions he reportedly said, "So this is a priest? Well, if the other headmen want one, I also want a priest for my village."67 Ironically, this may have heightened the perception of an association between missionaries and Spanish arms: The presence within a village of a priest and a church became a symbol that the village was under the protection of Spanish guns. Such protection was very useful, for one never knew when enemies might appear to "cut heads" [cortar cabessas]. Any attack had to be followed by a quick response, or one's village would be considered weak and become a target for other attacks. If one could not respond oneself, one sought allies.

So the people of Taparri accepted Esquivel. Indeed, whenever he planned to leave even temporarily, to visit, for example, the Spanish fortress, his hosts said that if he did not return to stay the night they would flee again into the mountains.68 Esquivel stayed long enough to firmly found his church and raise a large cross in front of the village. Then he turned to the closely related Kimaurri people, founding a church in Kimaurri and brokering a peace between the Kimaurri and the Taparri, who had been rivals.69 Despite his success, Esquivel had misgivings: "The Taparri and Kimaurri are more clever [resabiados] than the others [aborigines], but they are . . . not as good and simple."70 He decided to focus his efforts on a more promising region: the area around the Spanish fort at Danshui.

When the Spanish built their Danshui fort in 1628, most inhabitants of the area had fled to a group of eight or nine villages known as Senar. A missionary had followed and even arranged to found a church there, but he had died before construction began. Esquivel was determined to continue this work, but when he arrived in Senar he found the inhabitants wary. They decided to ask a bird oracle whether Esquivel should be allowed to build the church. Versions of this ceremony, in which how a question was answered was based on whether a particular bird sang its song, were common among many Formosan Austronesians.71 According to Dominican annals, Esquivel, for his part, "turned to God with fervent prayers, fasts, and mortifications [disciplinas]," asking that the devil be resisted and the bird's response be favorable.72 The bird arrived, "nearly landing in the hand, as is usual," and gave its answer: Yes.73 Esquivel began constructing his church.

When the church was complete, Esquivel and the other Dominicans held a procession. Although quite different from ceremonies the Dutch held in southern Taiwan, it was similarly intended to convey an impression of military power. The procession marched from Danshui to Senar, carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary for the new church. When it arrived, Spanish soldiers did a sword dance, lit fireworks, and held a feast. The inhabitants of Senar reciprocated with food and drink and then began dancing in a way "that is very disgraceful to our eyes. . . . Each time they turn round, in twos, they take a swallow of a very bad wine they have, and, sustained by this drink, continue dancing for six or eight hours, and even sometimes entire days, without stopping."74 In southwest Formosa, such dances were often preludes to headhunting expeditions, and indeed on this occasion the dancers grew bold and defiant, denigrating other villages and saying "that none was like theirs, which had Spaniards, priests, and a church, whereas the others did not."75 The Senarians, like the inhabitants of Tappari and Kimaurri, and like the aborigines of southern Taiwan, viewed the presence of the powerful newcomers as a mark of prestige and security.

Missionaries used their popularity to persuade the people of Senar to attend Mass. According to Dominican annals, villagers especially enjoyed hearing the fathers sing. So popular were the statue and its priests that when Esquivel said that the statue of the Virgin must be returned to Danshui, the Senarians objected. Esquivel insisted and arranged a procession back to the Spanish fortress. When the statue arrived in Danshui, however, and the Spanish captain learned how much the Senarians liked it, he dispatched men to take it back to Senar, much to the relief of the village's inhabitants. In the following months, Dominicans won the hearts of the village's leaders and appear to have gained many converts.76 Eventually they persuaded many Senarians to move back to the village they had abandoned after the Spanish arrived. The statue of the Virgin was moved from Senar to a new church in the old village, which missionaries called Rosario.77 After their success in Senar, the Dominicans extended their mission along the coast west of Danshui and up the Danshui River valley. Many villages were eager to house priests, since they symbolized the protection of a powerful ally.

But, as in southwestern Taiwan, missionaries had to be wary of intervillage rivalries. In many cases, they were not wary enough. In 1633, for example, the headman of Pantaos, a group of villages located west of Senar, told missionaries he was the son of a Spaniard who had come to Taiwan long ago. He said that his people wished to become Christians and he asked for missionaries to come live in Pantaos. The request was probably a strategic move. Pantaos was at war with Senar, and a priest would bring Spanish protection. A Dominican named Francisco Vaez accepted the challenge. He asked a few headmen of Senar to go with him, hoping thereby to make peace between the two peoples. But the headmen had other ideas: They did not want the missionary to help their enemies.

The day the party was to leave for Pantaos, Vaez awoke alone at dawn. He could find no trace of the headmen. When he went out to call them, they ambushed him with arrows. According to the hagiographic Dominican annals, Vaez turned to the main instigator, and, even as the arrows were flying at him, calmly said "Pila, I come to teach you the law of God, and you kill me?" His words had no effect: "Closing their ears like cruel and barbarous people, [they] continued to shoot arrows. The holy martyr fell to his knees, and . . . offered [Jesus] his soul, his body pierced and surrounded by so many arrows that the soldiers who brought his body to the fortress said that they were more than five hundred." The Senarians cut off his head and hands and went to the mountains to celebrate. According to Dominican annals, they did not enjoy their celebration long: "the earth quaked mightily . . . and the head of the saint . . . began crying copiously and sobbed so much that, filled with fear, they threw it into the river."78

After the incident, the inhabitants of Senar fled. Vaez's replacement, a Dominican named Luis Muro, met a similar fate. Muro persuaded Spanish military authorities to pardon the Senarians, but many remained hidden. In 1636, a relief ship from Manila was late the Spanish governor dispatched a party of soldiers to buy rice in the Danshui River valley. Muro went along as translator, but he hoped to use the opportunity to find the Senarians who remained in hiding and persuade them to return. At one point Muro learned that some Senarians were hiding nearby and decided to try to visit them. The Senarians fled when they saw him, and, when he could not find them, he made his way back to camp. But the Senarians trailed him and began preparing to attack, persuading inhabitants of neighboring villages to join in. Camouflaged with dirt and leaves, the aborigines sprang an ambush and killed more than twenty Spaniards. Muro was one of them. The Dominican annals describe Muro's death as having occurred in classic martyr fashion: He fell to his knees and addressed his attackers, "although it is not known what he said to them, nor did they listen to his words; rather, seeing him sitting there, like a . . . target for their arrows, they shot at him, their arrows falling like rain, and one pierced his heart, so that the saint fell dead on the ground."79 They cut off his head and hands and feet and went off to celebrate their victory.

Despite such setbacks, the missionaries made progress. The high point of their success coincided with the high point of Spanish military power: the brief rule of Governor Alonso García Romero (r. 1634–35). Romero took an active role, intervening militarily and judicially in aboriginal life. He established a pax hispanica in an area along the coast between the two fortresses and in much of the Danshui River valley. It was possible during his rule to walk alone safely from Danshui to Jilong, following an arm of the Danshui River. Missionaries extended their influence further than they had previously dared. "I alone," wrote the Dominican missionary Teodoro Quirós de la Madre de Dios, "baptized in eight days 320 people in the Danshui River, when they had smallpox in that year [the year García Romero governed], and in Santiago baptized 141 in five days. I went alone . . . into those villages, without any threat from our enemies, since fear of the governor kept them away."80

The governor also focused on the wild eastern coast of Taiwan. Although the waters along this coast are unpredictable and dangerous, relief ships from Manila braved them in order to avoid Dutch patrols. Sometimes they were forced to land to avoid storms. In 1632, a Spanish vessel on its way from Jilong to Manila landed on the Ilan (宜蘭) Bay, not far from a group of villages known as Cavalan. The villagers attacked, killing eighty people—Spaniards, Chinese, and Japanese.81 Although a small force of Spanish soldiers retaliated, burning seven villages and killing a dozen natives, aborigines from Cavalan were defiant. Sometimes they even attacked villages near the Spanish fortresses, coming during harvest time to "cut heads." García Romero therefore decided to mount a major expedition against Cavalan. We know few details, but it appears to have succeeded. It left the "Indians of Cavalan, who are the most numerous and most advanced and valiant," so diffident that Dominicans could venture alone to proselytize among them .82 A couple of years later, Spanish authority in the area was still strong, for Teodoro Quirós de la Madre de Dios claimed to have gone there alone and baptized 186 children in eight days.83

He was about to proceed further when he received a distressing letter from Jilong: The new governor-general of the Philippines had decided to withdraw Spanish forces from Taiwan. "After that," the missionary wrote later, "everything began falling apart."84

Notes: