Bicol

Who holds it

Title

No overall chief: the datus (chiefs) and elders of the river-mouth and valley communities, each answering for their own people

Since

not pinned

Born

not known

Family

not known

Confidence

low

Nothing is written about the rulers or headmen of this country for 1200. The structure is read from geography and from ethnography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

What it holds

• The Bicol plain
• The Albay gulf landings
• The San Bernardino strait approach

Allies and rivals

Each village group deals with its neighbours by marriage, trade, feud and raid; nothing above them is shown.

How things stand that morning

Not described for 1200; the villages are presumed to be farming, fishing and selling what the rivers and forests give.

Wealth

Rice, abaca and fish (later ethnography); no figures.

Military

Not known; boats, spears, shields and blowpipes in the later record. No numbers.

Threats

• Feuds and raiding between villages
• Flood, drought or fire
• A change in the trade that comes by sea

Places of note

• Mayon: The cone.
• Legazpi: Gulf port (a later name).
• Naga: Bicol river town (a later name).

Where the sources disagree

• The ethnic names used here (Ibanag, Ilocano, Tagalog, Bisaya, Maranao and the rest) are later labels, most of them recorded by the Spanish from the 1560s on; the ethnic map of 1200 is not known. The word barangay (a community under a datu) is also of the Spanish record.

Evidence: Geography and later ethnography only; no text of the period describes this country.

On the map: A rough outline of the people's country; the real extent of any village group in 1200 is not known, and nothing here is a border.