Early days of the missions—New settlements founded—Relations of Jesuits with Indians and Spanish colonists—Destruction of missions by the Mamelucos—Father Maceta—Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya—His work and influence—Retreat of the Jesuits down the Paraná
It does not seem doubtful but that the work done by Fathers Ortega and Filds[53] had borne some fruit. Perhaps not quite after the fashion that the Jesuits believed; but when Maceta and Cataldino arrived at Guayrá and founded the Reduction of Loreto, their success at first was of a nature that almost justified the epithet ‘miraculous’, an epithet which indeed all men apply to any enterprise of theirs which meets success. Almost from the first inception of the missions, the Jesuits found themselves in the strange position of, though being hated by the Spanish settlers, yet recurred to as mediators when any of the wild tribes proved too powerful for the Spanish arms. Thus, far from cities, far from even such elementary civilization as Paraguay should show, almost upon the edge of the great cataract of the Paraná, the Jesuits founded their first reduction; to which the Indians flocked in such numbers that a second was soon necessary, to which they gave the name of San Ignacio, in memory of the founder of their rule.
For the first few years all went well with the Jesuits. The Indians, happy to escape the persecutions of the Spaniards on the one hand, and the incursions of the Paulistas[54] on the other, flocked to the reductions, mission after mission was soon formed, and the wild Indians gathered up into townships and taught the arts of peace. But though the Guaranís at first entered into the Jesuit reductions as a refuge against their persecutors, the Portuguese and Spaniards, soon, as was only natural to men accustomed to a wild forest life, they found the Jesuit discipline too irksome, and often fled back to the woods. Then the poor priest, left without his flock, had to take up the trail of the flying neophytes, follow them to the recesses of the forests, and persuade them to come back.
As a means to secure the confidence of the Indians, the Jesuits found themselves obliged to communicate as rarely as possible with the Spanish settlements. Thus, from the first the policy of isolation, which was one of the chief charges brought against the Order in later years, was of necessity begun.[55] Voltaire, no lover of religious Orders, says of the Jesuits:[56] ‘When in 1768 the missions of Paraguay left the hands of the Jesuits, they had arrived at perhaps the highest degree of civilization to which it is possible to conduct a young people, and certainly at a far superior state than that which existed in the rest of the new hemisphere. The laws were respected there, morals were pure, a happy brotherhood united every heart, all the useful arts were in a flourishing state, and even some of the more agreeable sciences; plenty was universal.’
It is, however, to be remembered that Voltaire wrote as a philosopher, and not as an economist, and that his statement most probably would be traversed by those who see advancement rather in material improvement than in moral happiness, for without doubt, in Lima and in Mexico upon the whole, society must have made amongst the Spanish and Spanish-descended citizens greater advances than in the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay. In some respects their almost inaccessible situation close to the cataract of the Paraná was favourable to the early Jesuits, and in quick succession the villages of Loreto, San Francisco Xavier, San José, San Ignacio, San Pedro, and others of less importance, were founded, containing in all about forty thousand souls.[57]
So in the Jesuit reductions of the province of Guayrá was first begun the system of treating the Indians kindly, and standing between them and the Spanish settlers, which made the Company of Jesus so hated afterwards in Paraguay. Little by little their influence grew, so that when, in 1614, Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya arrived, he found that there were already one hundred and nineteen Jesuits in Guayrá and in Paraguay. Of all the Jesuits who, during the long period of their labours, appeared in Paraguay, he was the most remarkable; one of the most learned men of the age in which he lived, he yet united in himself the qualities of a man of action to those of scholar and of missionary. Without his presence most likely not a tenth part of the Indians would have escaped after the destruction of the missions of Guayrá in 1630 and 1631 at the hands of the half-civilized hordes known as Paulistas or Mamalucos, who from the city of San Paulo carried fire and sword amongst the Guaranís.
It is easy to understand that the Spanish colonists, who had looked on all the Indians as slaves, were rendered furious by the advent of the Jesuits, who treated them as men.
To-day the European colonist in Africa labours less to enslave than to exterminate the natives; but if a body of clergy of any sect having the abnegation and disregard of consequences of the Jesuits of old should arise, fancy the fury that would be evoked if they insisted that it were as truly murder to slay a black man as it is to kill a man whose skin is white. Most fortunately, our clergy of to-day, especially those of the various churches militant in Uganda, think otherwise, and hold that Christ was the first inventor of the ‘colour-line’.
At the first settlement of South America great semi-feudal fiefs called encomiendas were granted to the conquerors. One of the conditions of their tenure was that the encomenderos (the owners of the fiefs) ‘should see to the religious education of the Indians’. Much the same kind of thing as to enjoin kindness and Christian forbearance upon the directors of a modern Chartered Company. But, in addition to the encomiendas, two other systems were in vogue called yanaconas and mitayos, which were in fact designed to reduce the Indians to the condition of mere slaves.
Herrera[58] says that the ‘yanaconas were men destined from birth to perpetual slavery and captivity, and in their clothing, treatment, and the conditions of their toil, were differently treated from free men.’