16 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 



and padres as against homicides, who, the ones with baptism, as many natives already- 

 said, and the others with arms, came to take the lives of themselves and their chil- 

 dren. Padre Solano, calling together the soldiers of the post, declared to them that 

 though arms used in their proper time and season were the defense of that Chris- 

 tianity, yet wielded intempestively they would be its destruction, since they would 

 not only irritate with reason the Indians, but would become unworthy of the favor 

 of the Lord, without which what could twenty or thirty men do against thirty thou- 

 sand? For thus far only the barbarians' dread of firearms had protected the mission, 

 and if this were lost the multitude could not be withstood. That they would lose 

 this dread with their constant use, even at the price of injuries to themselves, and if 

 they once rushed upon the arms they might seize them, and with these in their pos- 

 session our defense would be converted into our injury. He charged the soldiers 

 very particularly that in the southern part of the island, where the only villages 

 were in which the missions were unhampered, they should abstain from all hostility, 

 so as not to hinder the only harvest which at that season could be gleaned, and not 

 to make enemies of those whom they now held as friends. The soldiers approved 

 the discourse and promised to confine themselves within the limits of justice and 

 prudence.^ 



It is not the province of these notes to give a detailed account of the 

 uprisings of the natives and the methods taken by the various gov- 

 ernors and military commanders to quell them. The yearly reports 

 of the missionaries tell of the flight of the natives from island to 

 island, pursued by their conquerors, whose arquebuses and arrows 

 the} 7 resisted with their simple slings and spears as best they could, 

 and of their reconcentration on the island of Guam, where they were 

 stricken by an epidemic which almost exterminated them. 



Moreover [says one of these writers], b this diminution was caused greatly by the 

 repugnance with which they bore a foreign yoke — lovers ever of all the latitude 

 which their primitive freedom permitted them — and this burden weighed so heavily 

 upon their haughtiness, laziness, and barbarity that some even sacrificed their lives 

 in despair; and some women either purposely sterilized themselves or cast into the 

 waters their new-born infants, believing them happy to die thus early, saved from 

 the toils of a life gloomy, painful, and miserable. In all the dominions of Spain 

 there is no nation more free from burdens, since they pay no tribute to the King — a 

 common custom in all. nations — nor do they give to the church the fees which are 

 given throughout Christendom; but, as they see not what the rest suffer, they judge 

 that subjection is the worst misery of the world. 



ENGLISH PIRATES. 



Two years after the publication of Padre Garcia's account of the 

 island, on March 15, 16S5, the English pirates, Eaton and Cowley, 

 anchored at Guam. Thev found the governor, Don Damian Esplana, 

 in a state of uneasiness owing to the hostile attitude of the natives, 

 who, under a chief named Yura, had risen against the Spaniards less 

 than a year before, had wounded the governor and killed several mis- 

 sionaries and a number of soldiers. Cowlej^ describes in his narrative 



« Garcia, Vida y Martyrio de Sanvitores, p. 447. 



bMurillo Velarde, Historia, Libro IV, 1749; Fray Juan de la Concepcion, Hist. 

 Gen., Tomo VII, p. 348, 1788-92. 



