POVEDANO MAP OF NEGROS

"Geographical map describing the voyage which he the illustrious encomendero

This is a tracing of the Povedano map as it appeared in the November 21, 1913 edition
of Renacimiento Filipino (Filipino Renaissance). The original parchment was supposedly
discovered by Jose E. Marco who donated it to the Philippine Library and Museum in 1914.
It was destroyed in the Second World War but a photographic copy survives in the
Robertson Collection in the Manuscript Department of the William R. Perkins Library at Duke
University, Durham, N.C., U.S.A. Click on the map for a larger image.

Origin of the Map

The map was said to have been discovered when the walls of the prison in Himamaylan,
Negros were torn down in 1833. The map was rolled up inside a metal tube contained in a
lead box hidden in one of the walls. An inventory of the contents of that box was written on
the back of the map and dated March 23, 1833 but the Robertson photographs don't show it
and it was note mentioned in Robertson's initial description. The inventory stated that, “All
items were left with Don M.V. Morquecho" and it was indeed signed by Manuel Valdivieso y
Morquecho and two witnesses. However, according to the archives in Madrid and Seville,
Don M.V. Morquecho was still in Cadiz, Spain as late as 1847 petitioning Queen Isabella II.
He was asking her not to send him to the Philippines at all. He did become governor of
Negros but not until 1849.

Through a series of thefts the map ended up in 1898 in the hands of a former servant of
Governor Valdivieso who supposedly sold it to José E. Marco sometime after November 18,
1913 only three days before this tracing was published in Renacimiento Filipino.

Leagues Equal to Kilometres

The most glaring anomaly of the map is its scale labelled with the unknown
measurement Leuea Linea.  According to this scale the Island of Negros is about
243 leueas from north to south. If the term leuea is simply a misspelling of the Spanish
word legua or league, this measurement is far from the contemporary figures which
estimated the length of Negros to be only 45 leagues. (A Spanish league in the 16th century
was approximately 4.18 kilometres.) The figure of 243 leueas is suspiciously close to the
actual modern length of 222 kilometres. Suspicious because there was no such measure as
a kilometre in 1572. The kilometre was invented by the government of France in 1799. 

The illustration below shows a comparison of Povedano's scale to the modern kilometre and
the Spanish league of the 16th century.
This mistaken use of the league measure is common to many of the José Marco hoaxes. The
manuscripts attributed to José María Pavón mentioned that there was ancient fortress at
Marayo (now Pontevedra) which was about twenty leagues to the north of Himamaylan.
Those towns just happen to be 20 kilometres apart. And in a 1970 article in Philippine
Studies 18 entitled The authenticity of the writings attributed to Father Jose Burgos, Fr.
John Schumacher investigated other Marco frauds which also mentioned leagues that
equalled kilometres.

Churches

The map shows three crosses at the approximate locations of the towns of Himamaylan,
Pontevedra and Bacolod. Presumably these crosses represent churches but as of 1572 the
were no churches on the island of Negros. In fact there were only ten priests in the entire
Philippines at that time and none of them were on the island of Negros.

Kalantiaw's Fortress

Kalantiaw was said to have built a fort at Gagalangin, Negros according to the
article Civilización Prehispana by Manuel Artigas, an associate of José E. Marco, in the July
1913 issue of Renacimiento Filipino. The Povedano map was published later that year in the
November issue of that same journal. Three forts are displayed on the map but Gagalangin
is not shown. Thus when the Pavón manuscripts were donated to the Philippine Library in
the following year, the location of Kalantiaw's fortress was changed to Calingling in order to
match the map.

Juan Camunhing Rigay

Juan Camunhing Rigay is the name written at the bottom left of the 1572 map. It is similar
to two informants that were mentioned by José Pavón in 1838, Domingo Rigay and
Canunhing. Both the map and the Pavón manuscripts were supposedly discovered by José
Marco.

16th Century Parchment

The original map was drawn on leather parchment unlike all other documents of the Spanish
period, which were written on paper. Also, it is unlikely that an image could survive on a
parchment document that had been folded, rolled inside a tube, left in a limestone wall of a
building in the tropics for possibly more than 250 years, kept in unknown conditions
between 1833 and 1914 and then finally be successfully unrolled and traced.

POVEDANO CALENDAR

This is a drawing of a supposedly ancient Filipino calendar which was "discovered" with
other documents by Jose E. Marco and was acquired by the Philippine Library and Museum
in 1914. It was included in a parchment manuscript dated 1572 and bearing the title  La Isla
de Negros y las Costumbres de los Visayos y Negritos  or "The Island of Negros and the
Customs of the Visayans and Negritos" by Diego Lope Povedano.  It was destroyed in the
Second World War but a complete photographic copy survives in the Robertson Collection in
the Manuscript Department of the William R. Perkins Library at Duke University, Durham,
N.C., U.S.A.
Anomalies

Even though Povedano wrote that he had copied the calendar “with great exactness and it is
thus", the script here is difficult to read because the characters are poorly drawn, crowded
together and oddly abbreviated. Notice that there are no kudlíts, the small diacritical marks
that should appear above or below the baybayin letters. No NGa character can be seen
either. They are missing because the words have been spelled alphabetically not syllabically.
That is to say, the writing is a letter for letter transcription of words spelled using Spanish
conventions.

This reveals the author's complete ignorance of the very basics of Filipino writing in the
1500's. Also, the Povedano documents are the only ones of the Spanish period that were
were written on leather parchment. Paper was the medium of choice by that time.

The calendar shows a twelve month year in the wheel and seven day week above it. This is
highly unlikely. Early Spanish accounts say that ancient Filipinos had completely different
ways for marking the passage of time. Povedano also listed the names of the months in his
manuscript but in two cases these names don’t match what is written on the calendar in
baybayin script. Yet, all the names on this calendar are listed correctly  266 years later in
Fr. Pavón’s Leyendas of 1838-39. Furthermore, when Pavón described this calendar he
happened to write this about the month of November:

They [the ancient Filipinos] called it a bad month, for it brought air laden with putrefied
microbes of evil fevers.

From where did it come?

When the Philippine Library & Museum acquired the manuscript containing this calendar
from Marco in 1914, he said that it had the same provenance as Povedano’s 1572 map of
Negros (which was also a fake). That map was said to have been discovered in a lead box
when the walls of the prison in Himamaylan, Negros were torn down in 1833. However, an
inventory of the contents of that box, written at that time, did not mention this calendar nor
the manuscript which contained it. Nor was it explained where the map had been between
1572 and whenever it was placed in the prison wall.

The inventory of 1833 stated that, “All items were left with Don M.V. Morquecho" and it was
indeed signed by Manuel Valdivieso y Morquecho and two witnesses. However, according to
the archives in Madrid and Seville, Don M.V. Morquecho was still in Cadiz, Spain as late as
1847 petitioning Queen Isabella II. He was asking her not to send him to the Philippines at
all. He did become governor of Negros but not until 1849. Through a series of thefts the
map, and presumably this calendar, ended up in 1898 in the hands of a former servant of
Governor Valdivieso who supposedly sold it to José E. Marco in late 1913.

Later in life, Marco had a completely different story for the origin of this Povedano
manuscript. In 1954 he said that he had got it from the same old cook (see "Kalantiaw the
Hoax") who had stolen the books of Father Pavón  from the convent of Himamaylan,
Negros in 1899. The old cook was supposedly given the manuscript by the family of Father
Ramón Andrés who was given the manuscript by Povedano himself. Throughout his life José
Marco tried to explain the source of his many "discoveries" with several conflicting
variations of this same story.