The Recollects (1626-1783)

The unrest brewing in the district of Caraga (Tandag) in the first decades of the 17th century, quickly spread to Davao Oriental. To the village chiefs of Baganga, mistrust towards the Spanish authorities was mounting. They volunteered to join forces with Gonzalo Portillo, the new commander of Tandag fort, to avenge the death of his predecessor even if the intention was to ambush Spanish soldiers. The plan, though, was discovered. As a result, most of the leaders were disarmed and imprisoned in Tandag; four were hanged. The rest were enslaved or banished.

In 1622, the Recollects took over the Tandag mission and established parishes there. Until August 1791, Cateel, Baganga, and Caraga were visitas of Bislig, but were given a priest to handle their spiritual needs. However, the lack of personnel for deployment to other missions forced the Order to cut down the number of dependencies, leaving only Cateel as the permanent station.

On February 16, 1636, the king of Spain issued a royal decree ‘ordering the pacification of Mindanao for the protection of the lives of his Christian vassal.’ A letter dated June 29, 1655 sent by the religious Provincial to the governor added Hinatuan as a dependency of Bislig and identified it as an encomienda, with two priests and 300 tributes.

By 1626, two years after the Recollects became a separate province of their congregation, six residencias were placed under their supervision. Cateel, Baganga, and Caraga remained dependencies of Bislig until 1671. Lack of priests, the remoteness of the missions from Manila, and the other deficiencies eventually stifled the spread of Recollect conversions in eastern Mindanao.

In 1671, with the installation of a new Provincial, a Recollect friar once assigned in the east coast of Mindanao attended the needs of visitas south of Bislig, namely Cateel and Caraga. In 1673, the outstations already had over 800 settlers under the parish priest of Bislig. The following year, it expanded after jungle dwellers resettled in littoral areas, increasing the tribute payers by 200. While there was good news in these figures, the intermittent threats of Moro raids and the assaults launched by discordant tribes continue to hound the Catholicization efforts in the region.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits from the country, the province of Caraga was placed again under the Recollects. The villages of Cateel, Baganga, and Caraga, along with Hinatuan, Surigao del Sur, were placed under the parish of Bislig. Collectively, these four communities had around 420 tributes by the middle of the 17th century, with a lone missionary attending to the population’s spiritual needs. By 1749, Cateel had 200 tributes, or 1,000 residents; Baganga had 110 tributes, or 450 inhabitants; and Caraga, 210 tributes or 750 dwellers.

Fifty years later, this time under the parish of Hinatuan, the villages of Bislig, Cateel, Baganga, and Caraga had 2,837 tributes and an official census of 2,835 people. Just as the settlements expanded, the need to assign a priest to supervise the permanent mission became an important demand, in much the same way that the protection of the settlers against any extraneous invasion became a principal concern in maintaining the reductions. In a letter dated May 5, 1757, Juan Hipolito Gonzalez, the alcalde mayor (governor) of Caraga, wrote the governor-general:

‘The datus of Caraga and Baganga came to see me in Cateel and offered that if a priest were assigned to their place and a garrison established there to defend them against the Moros, they would settle again in their old village of Caraga and help in the construction of a fortress or a bastion. Such fortress could be armed with the weapons of the fort of Tandag.’

The lack of clergy serving the scattered missions prompted the Provincial to write the king of Spain in 1776, requesting more priests for Caraga and other parishes. With fewer Spanish priests sent to the country, the intermediate chapter of the Order informed the governor-general in 1780 that the Recollects were officially abandoning the parishes due to lack of priests. By 1783, only two missionaries were left to handle the spiritual care of Caraga Province. (6) (Antonio V. Figueroa)