1. THE ONCE-MIGHTY
PORAC RIVER
Ancient Porac was
in the vicinity of a seashore.
Three pre-historic settlements in Porac, one unearthed by
anthropologist H. Otley Beyer’s team in 1939 (Hacienda Ramona site), another by
archaeologist Robert Fox in 1959 (Balukbuk site), and the third by the National
Museum in 1999 (Upper Balukbuk site) raise the question of why the settlers
built relatively large communities high up on the foothills of the Zambales
Mountain Range. A theory says that the
ancient Porac River, which today is nothing but a shallow brook, was navigable
enough for large water vessels from Manila Bay, and that the subsequent
eruptions of Mount Pinatubo, years (not centuries) before the Spaniards arrived
in 1571, silted the river and either destroyed the communities or forced the
inhabitants to abandon them. Old folks in Lubao town, claim that in the 1960s,
they saw what looked like large wooden boards floating in the Porac-Gumain river.
The boards, between 12 and 16 feet long, were roughly cut and had holes in
them, which made the folks speculate that they must have been parts of a large
ancient boat washed down from upstream Porac River, which they believe to be
navigable in the distant past. (Joel Pabustan Mallari)
The conquistadores
found thriving Muslim communities here.
The earliest Spanish chronicles show that the first
settlements in Pampanga were situated along the major waterways. Miguel Loarca
listed these ancient settlements with their corresponding population figures,
thus revealing a comparison between Pampanga settlements and those in other
parts of the archipelago. In the list, Betis (Vitis) and Lubao had a population
of 3,500 people, the same number as that of Cebu. Calumpit (Calonpite)
outnumbered Macabebe by 400 people, but the latter Pampanga town had a bigger
population than Vigan (1,600 people), Malolos (800), Negros (700) and Ylocos
(500). Most if not all of these Pampanga communities thrived along or close to riverine
areas for two basic reasons: abundant resources and accessibility of transportation.
This is true for all the great cities and civilizations of the world (J. Mallari)
Skeletons turn up
during a flood.
Old civilizations all over the world—like Vikings,
Austronesians, and Ebypt--observed a variety of elaborate burial rituals, one
of which involved boats. Researchers of the Center for Kapampangan Studies,
together with Dr. Rodrigo Sicat, author of The Kapampangans, recently
interviewed old folks in Dr. Sicat’s hometown, Lubao, living near the
now-heavily silted Gumain River. According to them, during the great flood of
1972, an eroded section of the protective dike near the property of a Pablo de
la Peña in Brgy. Gumi turned up several boat-shaped coffins. They described the
finds as canoe-shaped kabaung, inside of which were the skeletal remains of
what appeared to be at least six-footers. Beside the skeletons, the
interviewees claimed, were indigenous and tradeware ceramics: blue-and-whites
and local earthen pots like kuran and banga. Each coffin measured between 12
and 18 feet long, carved out of the trunk of a bulaon tree (Vitex parviflora Juss.). (J. Mallari)
Did Spanish
galleons sail as far as the headwaters of the Pampanga River?
Pedro Arcilla wrote that as recently as the early 1900s,
large boats could still navigate the Pampanga River from Manila Bay all the way
to Cabanatuan City and other Nueva Ecija towns. In fact, a parish document in a
Nueva Ecija town mentions a casco (old folks there say it was a Chinese junk,
others say it was a Spanish galleon) that sank during a storm in the early
1800s in that upstream section of the Pampanga River that flowed through the
town of Factoria. An old resident of San Isidro town (present name of Factoria)
allegedly recovered a part of this sunken ship’s rudder which is now displayed
in his private museum, awaiting scientific verification. In times past, Factoria
once controlled the tobacco industry in the North and was once the capital of
Nueva Ecija. Indeed, this once-thriving town, formerly within the boundaries of
the Kapampangan Region, owed all of this to its proximity to the Pampanga
River. (J. P. Mallari)
This upstream town
served as haven to Kapampangan refugees.
In the Sasmuan Papers of the Luther Parker Collections (c.1900),
there is a claim that Factoria became the capital of Pampanga in 1762, when the
British invaded Manila and the country’s capital was moved to Bacolor. The
territory of Pampanga extended all the way to Nueva Vizcaya, and Nueva Ecija as
a province, was still non-existent. The provincial governor of Pampanga, a
Señor Biron, was residing in Factoria, when British soldiers invaded Sasmuan
through the town’s Manglares River. Biron
ordered all the residents in eastern Sasmuan to evacuate to Cabiao (then still part of
Pampanga). A group of women, led by Doña Magdalena Pineda protested against the
order, citing the inconvenience of moving to Cabiao. After the British left the
country in 1765, the Philippine capital was returned to Manila and apparently, Pampanga’s
capital was returned to Bacolor and thus ended Factoria’s brief shining moment in
history.
Bacolor was the provincial
capital only from 1755 to 1903
Bacolor started
functioning as capital of Pampanga in 1746 and officially became capital only in
1755. The town served as the provincial
seat of government until 1903, when the capital was moved to San Fernando. In
Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas, Gaspar de San Agustin, OSA wrote that the
provincial capital prior to Bacolor was
Mexico town, one of the oldest and most prosperous communities in Pampanga. The
province’s oldest surviving church structure is found in San Jose Matulid; the
town has a barangay named Parian which indicates the presence of a community of
Chinese merchants before; and a tributary to the Pampanga River links Mexico
directly to Manila Bay passing through the important towns of San Fernando,
Bacolor, Guagua, Sasmuan and Macabebe.
Angeles City lies
in the path of an old, forgotten river
When the city’s founder Don Angel Pantaleon de Miranda and wife Doña Rosalia de Jesus, came to Kuliat
to establish a new town, they chose the
area around the Sapang Balen creek. The creek may seem harmless but its present
tranquility belies a violent past. Historian Mariano Henson notes that on July
20, 1881, “A typhoon and a heavy downpour of rain caused the treacherous Taug salient,
which used to originate at the southwesternmost tip of barrio Pampang, to swell
up to a murky, clay-ey tone into the Sapang Balen Creek, causing the destruction
of the three bridges of 1850 and carrying away three houses from barrio San
Jose. It is said that before 1796, the Taug sometimes went a few hundred yards
behind the present church during protracted heavy rainfall.” A similar
devastation occurred in 1972 when Sapang Balen washed away dozens of houses in
San Jose, and again when Mount Pinatubo erupted on June 15, 1991, when the
creek overflowed into downtown Angeles. Sapang Balen is actually the ancient
path of Taug River; at some point in the distant past.
(C. Manese)
The mighty river
probably did not exist before the 1850s
Sacobia River, which became a byword during the lahar season
in the 1990s, is one of four major rivers emanating from the eastern slope of
Mount Pinatubo itself. Strangely,
however, Sacobia River does not appear in maps made during the entire colonial
period until mid-1800s. Cartographers could not have missed such a major river,
considering that even creeks in the vicinity of the Sacobia River are depicted.
Is it possible that Sacobia River did not exist before mid-1800s? There is a
theory that it may have been formed, probably due to a lake breakout on the
slopes of Mount Pinatubo, in the 1850s. Sometime in 1856, the town of San
Bartolome in southern Tarlac was completely swamped with floodwaters from
Parua, the river’s old name. Parua may have been the downstream name of Bamban River
(Sapang Mabanglu). 1856 may have been the year Sacobia River was formed; it
elbowed away from Mabalacat (in a spot called Maskup in sitio Bana) to merge
with the Bamban River before proceeding to Concepcion and draining into Rio
Chico. Another puzzle is the name “Sacobia.” Nobody knows what it means or to
whom it refers. It is not a Kapampangan term and there was no Spaniard or Filipino
who went by that name. (J.P.Mallari)
9. RUSSIA’S GRAND
DUKE CAME BY BOAT
The world’s rich
and famous traveled all the way to Apalit
DURING colonial times, elegant mansions of rich Kapampangan
families lined the Rio Grande, the most famous of which was that of Don Joaquin
Arnedo Cruz and Doña Maria Sioco Arnedo, in Sulipan, Apalit. “(Their) combined
fortunes…created a lifestyle of leisure and luxury unmatched elsewhere in the
archipelago,” writes Gene Gonzales in his book Cocina Sulipeña. The couple
frequently threw lavish parties for their guests who came from Manila via the
bay and Pampanga River .Among the guests Jose Rizal, Gen. Arthur McArthur, Gen. William
Howard Taft, and Prince Norodom I of Cambodia, who reportedly fell in love with
a local maiden, Pepita Roxas of the next town Calumpit, Bulacan. But the best-cherished
visit to Sulipan was that of Alexis Alexandrovich, Grand Duke of Russia and son
of the Czar himself. While in Pampanga, the Russian Duke hunted birds in the
surrounding marshes, and boar and deer in the mountains. In gratitude, he
gifted his gracious hosts with a whole set of monogrammed porcelain dinner set.
Why a small
tributary in an interior town is called Dalan Bapor
Guagua has always been a commercial hub, even as early as
pre-Hispanic times when it was a thriving community of Moros who traded with
Chinese merchants. The Pasak-Guagua River which connected with the Rio Grande, served
as the highway of cargo ships doing business in the town; a tributary to this
river is known as Dalan Bapor (literally, ship’s way), which today has been
reduced to just a shallow canal. Until World War II, however, it bustled with economic
activity because it led to the Guagua Cannery
located in what is now a Brgy. Sta. Filomena subdivision beside the Guagua National
College. Old folks living in the area recall that the cannery occupied the
entire land area of the subdivision; that “huge ships” transported tons of
canned goods like sardines and even local specialties like tabang talangka and
burung asan; that it offered retail canning services for affluent families who
wanted to send canned products abroad; that it was bombed by Japanese planes in
World War II; and that it finally closed in the 1960s following a series of
labor disputes. (J. Mallari)
Pampanga’s worst
calamity before Pinatubo
Next to the eruption of Pinatubo, the worst calamity to ever
hit the Kapampangan Region in recent memory was the flood of 1972, when the
entire Central Plain of Luzon was submerged under water. Heavy monsoon rains
lasting 40 days nonstop had been triggered by four tropical cyclones that made
a direct hit in the area during that year’s rainy season: Asiang, Konsing,
Toyang and Undang.The flood, which claimed 298 lives, was worst in the Central Plain
because this area is the natural catch basin of two major waterways, the
Pampanga River and the Agno River; moreover, the presence of the Candaba Swamp
(pinac), alugin (waterlogged) areas and baná (marshes), as well as the
phenomenon of subsidence, further makes the area susceptible to flooding. (C.
Manese)
SOURCES:
Singsing Magazine, Center for Kapampangan Studies, "River Myths and Mysteries". by Joel Pabustan-Mallari, Robby Tantingco, C. Manese.
