This probably explains why early Leyteños had their system of handwriting. Juan Delgado, speaking about the Visayans in general said:" Almost all the people in the Visayan islands knew how to write in their own character, which they traced on a big piece of bamboo from top to bottom; and they write their lines beginning from left to right. They also write on leaves of banana plants and other trees, with such neatness and polish, using for a pen a knife, large or small, known as "sipol" among the Visayans..."

Morga in his Sucesos wrote: "The natives throughout these islands can write excellently with certain characters almost like the Greek or the Arabic. These characters are fifteen in all. Three were vowels, which are used as our five. The consonants number 12, and each and all of them combine with certain dots or commas; and signify whatever one wishes to write, as fluently and as is easily done with our Spanish alphabets. Almost all the natives , both men and women, write in this language."

Chirino in 1604 said:"They have adopted the Spaniards' way of writing, by writing from left to right, horizontally, while before, they wrote from left to right from bottom upwards."

However, manuscripts were known to have been written by ancient Filipinos about a 100 hundreds before Magellan. Leyte was in Chirino's mind when he stated, after he had spent some weeks around the settlements in Carigara, Abuyog and Dulag, that there were books and book-educated Filipinos at the time of the Spanish conquest. Missionary zeal, Chirino noted, marked these as works of the devil and therefore had to be destroyed.

Their writings were not however voluminous. Citing Chirino, Fr. Colin wrote: "We cannot find that these people had in the past anything written about their religion, government and ancient history. All we know on these subjects is taken from their traditions related from parents to children and kept viva voce in songs they learned by heart, and which they kept repeating at the oars while shipping, or during their festivities, funerals and daily occupations when they come together.. In these songs and tales they narrated their fabulous genealogies and inane deeds of their gods."

Writing in defense of the early missionaries, Bazaco said :"In the 17th century a great number of pamphlets and paper manuscripts in the old system of writing were in circulation; and in all parochial schools (Manila excepted) primary instruction, including religion and music, was being taught in the filipino dialects, with empahsis on the primitive alphabet.

"Together with the primitive alphabet, the religious educators taught the Latin way of writing, and, as advanced students noticed the simplicity of the latter, they soon adopted it. Once adopted, the natives had little difficulty in writing and pronouncing correctly certain Spanish words that were necessarily introduced into the Filipino vocabulary." This happened in the first quarter of the 18th century.

As for arithmetic, Fr. Juan Delgado related that natives used units of measure. For capacity maeasures they had such terms as kaban, gantang, talop. For measures of length they had dupa (fathom in English), dangao (distance between the tip of the thumb and middle finger when extended), barangit (distance between the tip of the thumb and the forefinger when extended) and the dapal (width of the palm when fingers are pressed together).

Counting up to thousands was also known among the pre-Spanish Leytenos, said Delgado. One hundred was usa ka gatos, a thousand usa ka yukut, ten thousand usa ka malara and one hundred thousand usa ka muraburaan.

Drinking habits. If life seemed to be a simple matter of surviving in a hostile world and luxury was unheard of, the native Leyteño cultivated his own excesses where it delighted him most: in drinking. In a way, it gave him the release from tensions and pent-up dreams tangled up in his psyche.

The early missionary Chirino noted that drinks were served on the table irregardless of the occasion. He wrote: "The time of feasting in which they ate and drank execessively, though there was more of drinking in it than eating..as we have said, in cases of sickness or death or of mourning. On all such occasions, the door was closed to no one who might like to drink with them - for so they name and call it to drink, not to eat."

During feasts and during sacrifices, they placed a plate on one side of the table, "from which according to religious usage whoever might be so inclined could pick on a morsel or else avoid doing so in deference to the anito."

One's social standing did not seem evident in the seating arrangement. Chirino continued:" They eat sitting down on the floor and the tables are small and low, either rounded or square, without tablecloths or napkins, but with the plates set down upon the tabletop itself. They eat in groups of as many as can be accomodated around the small table and with guests, all drinking. The viands are laid down all together in several dishes, and so they do not shrink from putting their hands everyone into the same dish or from drinking out of the same vessel. They eat little, drink repeatedly and spend a great amount of time." A custom which is familiar to most Leyteños.

Once sated and intoxicated, they removed the tables and cleared the room and if the occasion was not one of mourning, they sang, played musical instruments and danced, spending thus days and nights with a great deal of noise and shouting until they collapsed from sheer exhaustion and drowsiness.

But Chirino observed:"Yet, we never see them so wild and violent in their drunkeness as to commit improprieties. Instead, they preserve very well their ordinary behavior and act, though drunk, with the same courtesy and circumspection as before; they are merely more gay and voluble and full of wit. It is proverbial among us that not one of them, leaving a feast thoroughly drunk in the middle of the night, has failed to find his way home. And if they then happen to be bringing or selling something, not only do they not act incoherently but in weighing gold or silver for payment...they do so with such steadiness that their hand does not shake nor do they err in weighing."

Nothing was said of women drinking, but from present customs of rural women, it is probable women had their own tables, too, and their own times of intoxication.

Other festive occasions involving entire communities had their own traditional rites, some of which are still practiced today. During the season of the dapdap (when firetrees bloomed), the anibong (merry-making) begins, lasting for a forthnight, and would reach a climax of songs and dances.

There men and women would alternate in belting out extemporaneous songs (siray), expressing with lofty symbolism their way of life. Then they would dance the balitaw and the tinikling to the lilting music of the kudyapi (a four-stringed native guitar), the plaintive notes of the guimbal, subing and the santuray (bamboo flutes), the rhythmic beats of the agong and the gurimbay (native drums of various sizes). Such rites would take place during full moon.

Religious beliefs. There are no writings on religious beliefs of the early native Leyteños, but whatever beliefs they had were orally handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter. They believed in many gods, with each god having a function or role in their lives.

There was one god for the household, another for the farm, a third for the sea, rivers and lakes and a host of other gods whom the Bisayans called diwatas. Added to the rank of the diwatas were their dead ancestors called "humalagares".

The natives acknowledged one supreme God they called Bathala. In Limasawa, Pigafetta observed:" The captain general also asked whether they were moors or heathens, or what their belief was. They replied that they worshipped nothing, but that they raised their clasped hands and their faces to the sky; and that they called their god Abba." Beliefs were embodied in their songs at home, in the fields and in the sea to the cadence of the plying oars. Among their most treasured possessions were antiquated idols of diwatas sculptured from wood, stone, gold and ivory. These they called larawan - the most-prized and sentimental heirloom of their ancestors.

Chirino observed that there were little houses constructed for holding the pagan sacrifices. Provided with not more than a scanty roof and a little flooring, they were erected strategically at the entrance of the village. These were not considered temples or houses of worship though.

Religious beliefs of whatever form did not prove to be a hindrance to the evangelization that was to take place with the coming of the Jesuits in Leyte. Indeed, in many cases pagan forms of worship even served as vehicles for Catholic rites, just as other cultural forms (songs and language, in particular) blended well with the religion from the west. In no time, natives were singing native songs expressing Catholic doctrines and beliefs.*