unable to be sure of the origin of that race,
unless it was a race of Jews.

389. I do not know whether those people who are found only in
the environs of Manila, and are called Criollos Morenos [i.e.,
creole blacks], can be put in this mestizo class. The former are
all oldtime Christians, docile, well inclined, and of sufficient
understanding. They serve the king in personal duties, and always
have their regiment of soldiers, with their master-of-camp, captains,
and other leaders; and in this way they are outside the reckoning as
Indians. It is difficult to assign their true origin to them. For
some make them the descendants of those blacks, of whom we shall
speak later, who were the primitive lords of these domains. But I do
not see how this can be so, for they do not resemble those Negrillos
either in their hair or in the members of their bodies, or in the
qualities of their minds, in which these creoles have the complete
advantage. And although it might be said that they have been bettered
in all ways with the lapse of time, and the change of location to
one more civilized and temperate, it is not credible that they would
not retain some of their old vices, as is the case with various other
races here, and as has been experienced in Nueva Espana. Some people
make them the descendants of those slaves who were formerly held here
by the petty rulers, brought by foreign traders in exchange for the
drugs that formed their commerce and with whose price they made a
good profit. Even yet they bring to our settlements a considerable
number--so many, that it is necessary for one of the auditors to be
judge of the slaves, and his duty costs him his time and patience. The
creoles refuse to confess this origin, and it does not seem to me
that they would be so well received and so well regarded if they
had so vile an origin. Some believe that they descend from the free
Malabars who come to these islands under pretext of trade. I incline
more to this view, paying heed to the physiognomies and intellect of
them all, for they are almost all alike in their clear dark color,
aquiline noses, animated eyes, lank hair, docile disposition, and
good manners, by which we may infer that those that there are now
are Malabar and Indian mestizos.

390. At the present time, all this archipelago, and especially these
islands of the Tagalogs, are full of another race of mestizos, who
were not found at the first discovery, whom we call Sangley me