"Not infrequently," said a reliable witness, "I have seen the Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by hunting down the natives with blood hounds, for mere sport, or in order to train their dogs to the game. The most unbounded scope was given to licentiousness. The young maiden was torn remorselessly from the arms of her family to gratify the passion of her brutal conqueror. The sacred houses of the Virgins of the Sun were broken open and violated, and the cavalier swelled his harem with a troop of Indian girls, making it seem that the crescent would have been a more fitting emblem for his banner than the immaculate cross."
With the inexorable conqueror came the more inexorable priest. "Attendance at Roman Catholic worship was made compulsory. Men and women with small children were compelled to journey as much as thirty-six miles to attend mass. Absentees were punished, therefore the Indian feared to disobey." [Footnote: Neely, "Spanish America.">[
As is well known, the ancient inhabitants worshipped the sun and the moon. The Spanish priest, in order to gain proselytes with greater facility, did not forbid this worship, but placed the crucifix between the two. Where the Inca suns and moons were of solid gold and silver, they were soon replaced by painted wooden ones. The crucifix, with sun and moon images on each side, is common all over Bolivia to-day.
Now, four hundred years later, see the Indian under priestly rule. The following is taken from an official report of the Governor of Chimborazo: "The religious festivals that the Indians celebrate—not of their own will, but by the inexorable will of the priest—are, through the manner in which they are kept, worse than those described to us of the times of Paganism, and of monstrous consequences to morality and the national welfare … they may be reckoned as a barbarous mixture of idolatry and superstition, sustained by infamous avarice. The Indian who is chosen to make a feast either has to use up in it his little savings, leaving his family submerged in misery, or he has to rob in order to invest the products of his crime in paying the fees to the priest and for church ceremonies. These are simply brutal orgies that last many days, with a numerous attendance, and in which all manner of crimes and vices have free license."
"For the idols of the aborigines were substituted the images of the Virgin Mary and the Roman saints. The Indians gave up their old idols, but they went on with their image-worship. Image-worship is idolatry, whether in India, Africa, or anywhere else, and the worship of Roman images is essentially idolatry as much as the worship of any other kind of images. Romanism substituted for one set of idols another set. So the Indians who were idolaters continued to be idolaters, only the new idols had other names and, possibly, were a little better-looking." [Footnote: Neely, "South America.">[
What has Romanism done for the Indians of Bolivia in its four hundred years of rule? Compare the people of that peaceful, law-keeping dynasty which the Spaniards found with the Bolivian Indian of to-day! Now the traveller can report: "The Indians are killing the whites wherever they find them, and practising great cruelties, having bored holes in the heads of their victims and sucked the brains out while they were yet alive. Sixteen whites are said to have been killed in this way! These same Indians are those who have been Christianized by the Roman priests for the past three centuries, but such cruelties as they have been practising show that as yet not a ray of Christ's love has entered their darkened minds." How can the priest teach what he is himself ignorant of?
Where the Indian has been civilized, as well as Romanized, Mr. Milne, of the American Bible Society, could write:
"Since the Spanish conquest the progress of the Indians has been in the line of deterioration and moral degradation. They are oppressed by the Romish clergy, who can never drain contributions enough out of them, and who make the children render service to pay for masses for deceased parents and relatives. Tears came to our eyes as Mr. Penzotti and I watched them practising their heathen rites in the streets of La Paz, the chief city of Bolivia. They differ from the other Indians in that they are domesticated, but they know no more of the Gospel than they did under the rule of the Incas."
What is to be the future of these natives? Shall they disappear from the stage of the world's history like so many other aborigines, victims of civilization, or will a hand yet be stretched out to help them? Civilization, after all, is not entirely made up of greed and lust, but in it there is righteousness and truth. May the day soon dawn when some of the latter may be extended to them ere they take the long, dark trail after their fathers, and have hurled the last malediction at their cursed white oppressors!
"We suffer yet a little space
Until we pass away,
The relics of an ancient race
That ne'er has had its day."