THE OLD MISSIONS OF THE JESUITS.
To the eastward of Corrientes are the depopulated ruins, all that remain, of the once famed Missions of the Jesuits, the greater part of which were situated on the shores of the Paranã and Uruguay, where the courses of those rivers nearly meet.
When the order was expelled from South America in 1767, there were a hundred thousand inhabitants in the thirty towns in those parts under their control. In those situated east of the Paranã, not a thousand souls remained in 1825, according to an account I received from the officer who was in command there at that period, and they were I believe shortly afterwards swept off during the war with Brazil for the occupation of the Banda Oriental. The other towns beyond the Paranã, being within the jurisdiction of Paraguay, have fared little better under Dr. Francia.
This was that Imperium in imperio which once excited the astonishment of the world and the jealousy of princes: how little cause they had to be alarmed by it was best proved by the whole fabric falling to pieces on the removal of a few poor old priests: a more inoffensive community never existed.
It was an experiment on a vast scale, originated in the purest spirit of Christianity, to domesticate and render useful hordes of savages who would otherwise, like the rest of the aborigines, have been miserably exterminated in war or slavery by the conquerors of the land. Its remarkable success excited envy and jealousy, and caused a thousand idle tales to be circulated as to the political views of the Jesuits in founding such establishments, which unfortunately gained too easy credence in a credulous age, and contributed, there is no doubt, to hasten the downfall of their order.
Their real crime, if crime it was, was the possession of that moral power and influence which was the natural consequence of their surpassing knowledge and wisdom in the times in which they lived.
With respect to their Missions in South America, nothing could be more inconsistent than the allegations made against them:—whilst accused, on the one hand, of aiming at the establishment of a powerful and independent supremacy, they were, on the other, at the same time, reproached with having systematically kept the Indians in a state of infantine tutelage.
What would have been the consequences of the opposite system? How long would the Spanish rule in those countries have lasted had the Jesuits trained up a hundred thousand of the proper owners of the soil in any practical knowledge of the rights of man? How long would the Jesuits themselves have preserved their influence with them?
The Indians loved the Jesuits, and looked to them as to their fathers, and great were their lamentations when they were taken from them, and replaced by the unprincipled Franciscan friars sent to them by Bucareli, the Captain General of Buenos Ayres:—the following memorials, addressed to him from the Missions of San Luis and Martires, will serve to throw some light on the true feelings of the people with regard to their old and new pastors.
I have given a copy of one of the originals in Guarani in the Appendix, as a specimen of a language, which, of all the native tongues, was, perhaps, the most diffused in South America, and which, to this day, may be traced from the Paranã to the Amazons:—
No. I.
Translation of a Memorial addressed by the people of the Mission of San Luis to the Governor of Buenos Ayres, praying that the Jesuits may remain with them instead of the Friars sent to replace them.
(J. H. S.)
"God preserve your Excellency, say we, the Cabildo, and all the Caciques and Indians, men, women, and children, of San Luis, as your Excellency is our father. The Corregidor Santiago Pindo and Don Pantaleon Cayuari, in their love for us, have written to us for certain birds which they desire we will send them for the King:—we are very sorry not to have them to send, inasmuch as they live where God made them—in the forests,—and fly far away from us, so that we cannot catch them.
"Withal we are the vassals of God and of the King, and always desirous to fulfil the wishes of his ministers in what they desire of us. Have we not been three times as far as Colonia with our aid!—and do we not labour in order to pay tribute!—and now we pray to God that that best of birds—the Holy Ghost—may descend upon the King, and enlighten him, and may the Holy Angel preserve him!
"So, confiding in your Excellency, Señor Governor, our proper father, with all humility, and with tears, we beg that the Sons of St. Ignatius, the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, may continue to live with us and remain always amongst us. This we beg your Excellency to supplicate of the King for us for the love of God:—all this people,—men, women, and young persons, and especially the poor,—pray for the same with tears in their eyes.
"As for the friars and priests sent to replace them, we love them not. The Apostle St. Thomas, the minister of God, so taught our forefathers in these same parts,—for these friars and priests have no care for us. The Sons of San Ignatius, yes,—they, from the very first, took care of our forefathers, and taught them, and baptized them, and preserved them for God and the King:—but for these friars and priests, in no manner do we wish for them.
"The Fathers of the Society of Jesus know how to bear with our weaknesses, and we were happy under them for God's sake and the King's:—if your Excellency, good Señor Governor, will listen to our prayer, and grant our request, we will pay larger tribute in the yerba caa-mini.[54]
"We are not slaves, and we desire to say that the Spanish custom is not to our liking,—for every one to take care of himself, instead of assisting one another in their daily labours.[55] This is the plain truth which we say to your Excellency, that it may be attended to:—if it is not, this people, like the rest, will be lost. This to your Excellency, to the King, and to God,—we shall go to the Devil!—and at the hour of our death where will be our help?
"Our children, who are in the country and in the towns, when they return and find not the Sons of San Ignatius, will flee away to the deserts and to the forests to do evil. Already it would seem that the people of San Joaquim, San Estanislaus, San Ferdinand, and Tymbo, are lost,—we know it well, and we say so to your Excellency:—neither can the Cabildos ever restore these people for God and the King as they were.
"So, good Governor, grant us what we ask,—and may God help and keep you. This is what we say in the name of the people of San Luis, this 28th of February, 1768.
"Your humble servants and children." (Signed by the members of the municipality.)
No. II.
Complaint of the people of Martires of the conduct of the priests sent to them after the expulsion of the Jesuits.
(J. H. S.)
"To our most excellent Governor:—
"Blessed and praised be the holy sacrament! God our Lord grant you a long life and health on earth, and happiness hereafter in heaven. So we pray him,—we, the Corregidor, Cabildo, and Caciques of the people of the Holy Martyrs,—who, casting ourselves with all humility at your feet, give praises to God and to our King, and to you, Señor Governor, for having come by his command, as his deputy, amongst us.
"Holding you in the highest reverence, we make known to you that all this people are perfectly obedient to the orders of our Catholic King, trying to esteem and respect the spiritual pastors sent to us, in nothing failing in our duties towards them, with all due respect, as they are the ministers of God.
"But, although this is our behaviour, they are not satisfied with us:—for two or three days they were pleased with our humility, and no longer.
"It has happened that the Corregidor, wishing to execute the orders of the Governor, the Curate has said,—'This man wrongs you:—in what light do you look upon his authority compared with that of your priests? The King himself is only a superior governor, and shall be food for the worms, and nothing more:—I fear no one.' Saying so he ordered fifty stripes to be given to an Indian; and a poor woman he ordered to be tied to a post, and flogged. He goes about with a stick in his hand to beat us, and a few days past he punished an Indian with blows in the church itself, before all the people:—another he beat in the square, saying,—'If I kill him I shall do no great harm.'
"The Administrator alone sometimes protects us from these punishments, saying to him, with proper respect,—'Father, you have no business to interfere in temporal matters,'—and for this he is not well with him. This officer endeavours to observe the commands of God and of the King for the good of this people, and in nothing have we to complain of him. He helps us on all occasions, and much we stand in need of it, Señor Governor.
"But God and the King have appointed you for our comfort, and so we make known to you our difficulties. We are fearful lest the people should lose their obedience and respect for the King's orders, when they hear the priests call the mandates of the King, and of his Governor, words of no consequence:—and so for your guidance we tell you the truth, which God knows, and is testified to by all this people. Santos Martires, 16th April, 1768."
(Signed by the Cabildo, &c.)
Bucareli, on receipt of the first of these simple documents, sent it to Spain, with the ridiculous announcement that he considered it as the forerunner of a rising in favour of the Jesuits, and had, in consequence, ordered a chosen body of troops to proceed immediately from Paraguay and Corrientes to the neighbourhood of the Missions to be in readiness to put down the expected insurrection: thither too he proceeded himself to take the field in person against the rebels.
He found them not in arms but in tears:—the Jesuits, though he could not believe it, had brought up the Indians in obedience, and in the love of their King as well as of God,—and, having said their say, they resigned themselves submissively to the orders of their newly-appointed superiors,—giving thanks to the King for having sent a personage of such importance as Bucareli to take care of them. Bucareli met, in fact, with not the slightest opposition from the Indians, in substituting his own system of administration for that of the Jesuits, which he had been amongst the foremost to find fault with.
The efficacy of his own measures may be judged by their result:—he sent them civil governors, and appointed Franciscan friars for their spiritual pastors:—the misrule of the first, and the little respect inspired by the latter, compared with the uniformly exemplary lives of their predecessors, brought about in little more than a quarter of a century, the entire ruin and depopulation of these once happy and prosperous communities. The Indians, as they themselves predicted in their letter to him, when there was no longer sufficient wisdom in their governors to prevent it, were lost both to God and the King.
In saying this I do not pretend to dispute that the institutions of the Jesuits were not, in many points, defective, like all others of man's creation; they were, however, framed under very remarkable and novel circumstances, for which great allowances must be made in any comparison of them with the social systems of Europe; if we look at the good they did, rather than for the evil which they did not, we shall find that, in the course of about a century and a half, upwards of a million of Indians were made Christians by them, and taught to be happy and contented under the mild and peaceful rule of their enlightened and admirable pastors,—a blessed lot compared with the savage condition of the unreclaimed tribes around them.