🔥 THE SMOKING QUILL | June 1, 2025

Lequios Was the Philippines — Then the Jesuits Moved It

“In case I have people and ships enough, I intend to send men to discover the islands of Lequios on this side of Japan...”
— Captain Francisco de Sande, 1575
(The Philippine Islands, Vol. III, p. 250)

✍️ The Trail Begins Here: Lequios in the 1500s

Before the Jesuits rewrote the maps, and before missionaries rerouted history to fit colonial dogma, Lequios was not Ryukyu. It was Luzon — plainly visible in the 1502 Cantino Map, the Royal Spanish charts of 1526–1529, and again in 1539. These maps present a consistent and obvious record.

In the original Spanish exploration documents of the 1500s — now fully indexed — Lequios is repeatedly situated within the Philippine sphere:

• “On this side of Japan”

• Near or just beyond Luzon

• Adjacent to Batanes, Babuyan, and other northern isles

• Still unexplored, uncolonized, and rich

These are not the traits of Ryukyu. They are the geographic fingerprints of Northern Luzon and its satellite archipelagos.

🧠 Let’s Think Clearly:

Spanish captains did not possess spaceships to bypass Babuyan, Batanes, and Taiwan unnoticed to suddenly “discover” poor, distant Ryukyu and relabel it the Land of Gold.
They were actively conquering Northwestern Luzon when they learned of the islands to the north — the real Lequios.

Yes, Jesuits later changed this — and even one defensive blogger unwillingly admits it in his rant. But no serious strategist conquers Northern Luzon, then leaps over multiple unknown islands to pursue resource-poor Ryukyu and declares it their prize.

It’s not history. It’s not scholarship. It’s fictional cartography — rewritten under Jesuit control.

📜 1. Artieda’s “Relation of the Western Islands Called Filipinas” (1575)

“In case I have people and ships enough, I intend to send men to discover the islands of Lequios [Liu-Kiu] on this side of Japan.”
— The Philippine Islands, Vol. III, p. 250

Key Detail:
“On this side of Japan” means southwest of Japan — placing Lequios near the Philippines, not northeast in Ryukyu.

Important Note:
The bracketed “[Liu-Kiu]” is a later editorial insertion, not original to Artieda. This is retroactive cartographic fraud — the first trap laid by colonial editors.

📜 2. Trade Reports on Xipon (South Japan) and Lequios (c. 1570s)

From The Philippine Islands, Vol. III, pp. 182–183:

“Farther north than the aforesaid islands are others, the nearest to Luzon being called Xipon [Japan]...
A little to the east between these islands and China are the islands of Lequios.”

Key Insight:

• Xipon refers to South Japan or Ryukyu. This places Lequios EAST OF SOUTH JAPAN and between Luzon and China in a Northward progression (that is what it says). When you head to China from Luzon North, you do not pass through Ryukyu.
  

• Lequios lies east of South Japan, between China and Luzon

• The direction matches Batanes, Babuyan, and Luzon — not Ryukyu

Conclusion: Lequios = Northern Philippines, not Ryukyu.

No one sails northwest to get from Luzon to China — and certainly not through Ryukyu. This is nonsense geography, only “true” to those who never bother to look at a map.

📜 3. Juan Pacheco Maldonado’s Letter to Philip II

From The Philippine Islands, Vol. III:

“...to subjugate, settle, and explore both the said island of Luzon, and those regions nearest China: the Japans, the Lequios, and the island of Escauchu.”

Why This Matters:

• Lequios is listed with Luzon and Japan — not as part of Japan. They still had not completed Luzon at that point and to claim they ignored the rest of it in not a historical position.

• It lies within Spain’s Philippine expansion arc

• This was unexplored Philippine territory, not a known outpost like Ryukyu

• And if Spain hadn't even finished Luzon, why would they chase a poor island 1,000 km away?

• This isn’t exploration. It’s Jesuit-era revisionism retrofitted to earlier logs. The Jesuits moved Lequios and Zipangu.

The real Lequios was within Spain’s Philippine expansion arc — not in Japanese hands.

🧭 Then Came the Rewriting: The Jesuit Colonial Trail of Tears

By the early 1600s, we see a narrative shift — not based on new discoveries, but on colonial repurposing of names.

As missionaries struggled to reach Japan:

• Ryukyu became a waypoint, it never was.

• Jesuit journals began using “Lequios” for Ryukyu — not because of fact, but out of convenience.

• The rich, sovereign, seafaring Lequios of Tomé Pires’ 1515 account — clearly the Lucoes of Luzon — were now erased and replaced.

By the early 1600s, the shift is clear. A name migration had begun:

The Jesuits arrived in Manila in 1581 already having gained cartographic control, declared the Philippines a Jesuit province by 1605, and were expelled in 1767 — during which time, maps began restoring Lequios to the Philippines. Once they returned in 1859, the suppression resumed and the true narrative was completely erased. That's not history.

👁️ So... Who Changed the Maps?

The Jesuits did.

They changed:

• What Lequios meant (forgetting the many resources do not even exist in Ryukyu)

• Where it was located (maps placed in the Philippines from the first mentions in 1502, 1512, 1516, 1519, 1526-29, 1539, and so on... [See below]

• And who it belonged to

They added brackets like “[Liu-Kiu]”, omitted previous placements, and rewrote the identity of an entire land — the true Land of Gold.

💥 Final Word:

Lequios was the Philippines.

The only thing Ryukyu inherited was a stolen name, artificially imposed by missionaries who needed a stepping-stone to Japan and rewrote history to fit their logistics. We covered Ryukyuan and Japanese scholars who agree Ryukyu was never Lequios.

This is the start of the Jesuit Colonial Trail of Tears — when maps were manipulated, cultures overwritten, and the Philippines was erased from its own ancient legacy.

They did this using a land that was never gold-rich, never sovereign, and never central to the maritime world. If it were not so evil, it would be laughable.

That ends now.