The island was first visited by foreigners with the arrival of Chinese and perhaps Arabic tradesmen. In 1225, the Chinese merchant Chau Ju Kuo described the population of Mazaua as friendly and congenial to trade-relations. On March 28, 1521, the Mazaua's raia Siaiu (as named by Antonio Pigafetta, diarist of Magellan's expedition, and Kolambu, King of Butuan) was visited by Magellan and his fleet of three ships, passing through en route to the Spice Islands. The two leaders maintained very amicable relations, becoming casicasi or blood-brothers on Good Friday, 29 March 1521, second day of Magellan's stay at Mazaua.
According to wayward and superficial history, Limasawa and not Mazaua is where the first ever Mass in the Philippines was celebrated. Thus, Limasawa is famously referred to as "site of the First mass in the Philippines."
Primary and secondary sources point to Mazaua, not Limasawa and not Butuan, as the port where an Easter Sunday mass was held on March 31, 1521. The description of present-day Limasawa does not fit the geologic, geographic, geomorphologic, archaeologic, histriographic categories of Mazaua as described and explained in the eyewitness chronicles of Antonio Pigafetta, Ginés de Mafra, Francisco Albo, The Genoese Pilot, Martín de Ayamonte, as well as the secondhand accounts of Antonio de Brito, Andrés de San Martín, Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, and Maximilianus Transylvanus. Up to this time, there is still debate on where Mazaua is. See First mass in the Philippines. Even so, no serious scholar today still thinks Limasawa is the port Mazaua.
The Limasawa story was written by a Jesuit missionary, Fr. Francisco Combés, S.J., who had not read a single primary account. His 3-paragraph story of the Mazaua episode does not refer to any kind of mass having been held anywhere in the Visayas or Mindanao. His Limasawa also is not the port where Magellan and his fleet anchored from March 28 to April 4, 1521.
