In 1602 Acquaviva, seeing the necessity of common action, called all the scattered Jesuits of Paraguay and the river Plate to a conference at Salta to deliberate as to their future policy.[50] In 1605 Father Diego Torres was named Provincial of the Jesuits of Paraguay and Chile, thus proving both the paucity of Jesuits in South America at the time, and the little idea the General in Rome had of the immensity of the countries he was dealing with.
Torres arrived in Lima with fifteen priests, and almost at the same time some others arrived at Buenos Ayres; both parties proceeded to Paraguay. Already the Jesuits found themselves a prey to calumny.
Both in Tucuman and Paraguay they were expected to lend themselves to the enslavement of the Indians. In Chile Father Valdivia was expelled from Santiago, and took refuge at Tucuman. There he found the condition of affairs so intolerable that he went to Madrid to solicit the protection of the King, Philip III., for his Indian subjects.
In 1608 Philip issued his royal letters patent to the Society of Jesus for the conversion of the Indians in the province of Guayrá.
The Bishop and the Governor, Arias de Saavedra (himself a Paraguayan by birth), offered no objection, and the scheme of colonization was agreed upon at once.
Thus the Jesuits obtained their first official status in America.
Fathers Simon Maceta and José Cataldino (both Italians) left Asuncion on October 10, 1609, and arrived in February, 1610, on the banks of the river Paranapané.[51]
There they met the Indians amongst whom Fields and Ortega had begun to labour, and there they founded the Reduction[52] of Loreto, the first permanent establishment instituted by the Jesuits amongst the Guaranís. Thus, in the woods of Paraguay, upon a tributary of the Paraná but little known even to-day, did the Society of Jesus lay the first foundation of their famous missions. But little more than fifty years from the foundation of their Order, thus had they penetrated to what was then, and is perchance to-day, after their missions all are ruined, one of the remotest corners of the world.
There they built up the system with which their name is linked for ever—the system which for two hundred years was able to hold together wandering Indian tribes, restless as Arabs, suspicious above every other race of men—and which to-day has disappeared, leaving nothing of a like nature in all the world.