Ask anybody alive today in Davao Oriental and chances are no one knows anything about the old town of Linas.
Founded in mid-18th century, roughly in the 1750s, Linas was established by migrant Christian settlers from Cantilan, Surigao del Sur, and Bislig City, on the southeastern coast of Davao Gulf, in an inlet that’s peripheral to the isthmus of Cape San Agustin.
In his July 16, 1891, letter from Sigaboy to the Mission Superior, Fr. Juan B. Llopart, S.J. described the location of the civil town:
“Linas is on a promontory of white corral sheer above the shoreline, inaccessible from the sea and to a great extent from the interior because it is on a narrow rock, very well defended therefore against the Moros, at the time certainly feared, and lords of the entire Davao Gulf. But it is not without a normal stretch of flatland for planting.”
Given its location, the town was isolated and was not known to other Christian settlements due to the distance that separated them. Its population was a mix of Christians, mostly from the founders, and of unbaptized native women who had married the migrants.
Later, though, the settlement’s existence reached the attention of the missionaries. A Recollect priest, whose congregation had original jurisdiction of the area, attended to spiritual needs of its inhabitants. But to get there, the padre had to travel a great distance through unwelcoming Punsan and San Agustin points and surmount the risks of encountering the Moros.
According to tradition, the Recollect priest built a church in town and dedicated it to Saint Francis Xavier, who was wrongly claimed to have reached Cape San Agustin while on his way to make conversions in Japan via the unpredictable Pacific Ocean.
Eventually, the settlement became a pueblo, and like any township organized by the missionaries, it was assigned a gobernadorcillo or mayor, and there were justices of the peace. Because of imminent Moro threat, the colonial government provided the town with firearms, including a 12-inch cannon they could use in defending the territory from attempts to subdue it.
After Don Jose Oyanguren, later governor of the region, defeated Datu Bago, the Moro chieftain of the gulf, and conquered Davao, new developments took over. The Spanish conquistador, after finding the condition in town had returned to normalcy, decided to relocate the people of Linas closer to Davao where they “might be better situated, better supervised, and better aided.”
Majority of the settlers, after finding wisdom in the governor’s intention, supported the transfer to a place near Sigaboy Island, from which the town of Sigaboy got its name. Fr. Llopart described the new town, now renamed to Governor Generoso, in detail:
“Sigaboy is the oldest town of the Davao Gulf, if one considers the foundation date, not its transfer from Linas to the site it now occupies… It is at the foot of a high hill showing, from its form and the surrounding extensive plain, it once had been an island. It counts 280 souls, almost all old Christians forming 70 families. They are administered by its magistrates, chief deputy, second deputy, justice of the peace, and police officers.
“They have a small convento or hut for its missionary who lodges there the few times his continued mission trips allow him. A coadjutor brother, the companion of the missionary in this mission, is always there to guard the house and the church and [to] help the priest any way he can. The church, of light materials, are quite run-down, but it is being rebuilt and enlarged with better materials. The town has its hall, fort and schools with substitute teachers…”
Those who found the resettlement unattractive returned to the peninsula of San Agustin, which comprised the areas of “Balete in Mayo Bay, around Punta Magum and Cape San Agustin, up to Kuabu in Davao Gulf.”
The transfer of Linas meant the abandonment of the old town’s location. Only a handful of unbaptized tribesmen remained in the area. Later, the converts to Catholicism opened a new settlement in another location “at the foot of the hill on a narrow plain alongside Pundagitan River.”
The new Linas town (as opposed to the one near Sigaboy Island), with thirty families or one-hundred fifty souls as residents, adopted as the name of the village the river near it. Like the old Linas, it had its own deputy, magistrates, and wardens. The missionaries used the place as visita or mission station.
Fr. Llopart recalled that in 1889, two natural calamities hit the town: a severe drought and an overwhelming famine, which forced the population to wander in search for food.
After surviving the ordeals and regularity returned to the town, the local population decided to rebuild the church, a village hall and numerous houses. But these were all wiped out with the coming of the westerlies (winds from the west toward the east) in May 1891.
The turbulent winds, as a result, forced the settlers to seek shelter under fallen roofs, holes, and even caves. Some took refuge in the mountains, and the displacement forced residents to move from place to another, with no fixed residence, until the weather disturbances were gone.
Today, the town remains a rural community despite the presence of concrete roads, modern abodes, and multi-story buildings that dot its geographic landscape.
