<div class="image-550">
<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-13/sumuroy-sm.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Sumuroy" />
</div>

<p>
<b><i>
(Page 1 and 2)
</i></b>
</p>
<p>
<b><i>There was an Indian named Sumoroy</i></b> in the village of Palapag (a municipality in the present day province of Northern Samar), who was regarded as one of the best, although he was one of the very worst, and was as evil as his father-who, accredited with the same hypocrisy, was a babaylan and priest of the devil, and made the other Indians apostatize. He was greatly addicted to drunkenness, and he had so promoted it [in others] that all the village was contaminated with this vice, as well as that of lust - vices so closely allied to idolatry, of which truth there are many examples in Holy Writ. The inhabitants of Palapag were corrupted by those evil habits at the time when Governor Don Diego Fajardo - with the intention of relieving the near-by provinces of Tagalos and Pampanga from the burden of working, at the harbor of Cavite, in the building of galleons and vessels necessary for the conservation and defense of these islands - had ordered the alcaldes of Leite and other provinces to send men thence to Cavite for that employment.  That was a difficult undertaking, because of the distance of more than one hundred leguas, and the troubles and wrongs to the said Indians that would result from their leaving their homes for so long a time. The father ministers went to the alcaldes, and the latter to Manila, to represent those troubles and wrongs; but the only thing that they obtained was a more stringent order to execute the mandate without more reply. Consequently they could do nothing else than obey the orders of the superior government, although they feared what very soon occurred. But what good end could so mistaken and pernicious a decision have ? 
</p>
<p>
 As soon as the inhabitants of Palapag saw that the alcaldes-mayor were beginning to collect men to send them to the harbor of Cavite, they began to go oftener to the meetings in the house of Sumoroy and his father, and to begin (when heated with wine, the ordinary counselor of the Indians) to organize their insurrection. They quickly appointed leaders, of whom the chief was <i style="color:black;">Don Juan Ponce</i>, a very influential man and a bad Christian, but married to a wife from a chief's family in the village of Catubig; she was very different from him in her morals, for she was very virtuous.  The second leader was one <i style="color:black;">Don Pedro Caamug</i>, and the third the above-named Sumoroy. Then they discussed the murder of the father minister, Miguel Ponce of the Society of Jesus, an Aragonese, at the suggestion of that malignant sorcerer and priest of the devil, the father of Sumoroy, who charged that undertaking upon his son. 
</p>



A detailed account of the Sumuroy rebellion as told by a Spaniard