So, after a considerable time, all was in readiness for a new start, and luckily provisions from the reductions on the Paraná arrived. So they embarked again, and on the journey a raft in which a woman and two children were sitting upset, to Montoya’s agony, as he knew that ‘in that river there are fish that the people call culebras,[100] which have been seen to swallow men entire, and throw them out again with all their bones broken as if it had been done with stones.’ He says: ‘I confess I suffered infinitely, and, turning my eyes to heaven, I blamed my sins as having been the cause of so much misery, and said, “O Lord, is it possible that for this Thou hast brought these people out of their country, that my eyes should endure the spectacle of so much misery, and my heart break at so much suffering, and then to let them die devoured by savage fish!”’ As the good man was praying, the Indian woman’s head appeared above the water, and Montoya himself, aided by Indians, drew her and the children in safety to the land. But his trials were not at an end, for many of the hastily constructed rafts and canoes sank before his eyes, and the mortality of Indians was great. Eventually they found a temporary refuge in the Reduction of the Nativity upon the Acaray, and at Santa Maria la Mayor upon the Iguazú. Then famine raged, and the arrival of so many people increased the scarcity, so that six hundred of the new arrivals died in one reduction, and five hundred in the next. At last the scarcity became so great that the poor Indians had to roam about the forests to gather fruit, and many of them died in the recesses of the woods.
Seeing no hopes of saving the remainder, Montoya led them further on to the banks of a little river called the Jubaburrús,[101] and there he once again founded two reductions, which he named Loreto and San Ignacio, after the two the Mamelucos had destroyed. He bought ten thousand head of cattle out of the money the King allowed to the Jesuits of Guayrá, and from the sale of some few objects saved from the general destruction of the towns, and settled down his Indians, who in Guayrá had been all agriculturists, to a pastoral life. Thus did he bring successfully nearly twelve thousand people a distance of about five hundred miles through desert country, and down a river broken in all its course by rapids, landing them far from their enemies in a safe haven at the last. Most commonly the world forgets or never knows its greatest men, while its lard-headed fools, who in their lives perhaps have been the toys of fortune, sleep in their honoured graves, their memory living in the page of history, preserved like grapes in aspic by writers suet-headed as themselves. But though this Hegira was the most stirring episode of Montoya’s life, he yet had work to do, and in the province of diplomacy rendered as great, or even greater, services to the Indians, whom he loved better than himself, as in the memorable journey when he led them down the Paraná.
Chapter III
Spain and Portugal in South America—Enmity between Brazilians and Argentines—Expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay—Struggles with the natives—Father Mendoza killed—Death of Father Montoya
In the province of Guayrá the Spaniards who had looked with disfavour on the Jesuits, and had enslaved the Indians when they were able, were in sore straits. The Mamelucos, finding no more Indians to enslave, fell on the two towns of Villa Rica and Ciudad Real, destroyed them utterly, and forced the inhabitants to flee for refuge into Paraguay. Thus Guayrá went the way of Matto Grosso and several other provinces of Spain, and became Portuguese. Strangely enough, most of these losses happened when Spain and Portugal were joined under one crown. At home the Spaniards and the Portuguese, however much they detested one another, were forced to keep the peace. In America they were always at war, which ended invariably to the detriment of Spain.[102] The strife begun by the Papal Bull of 1493, in which Pope Alexander VI. divided the territories discovered and to be discovered between Portugal and Spain, went on, till bit by bit Spain was stripped of the provinces of Matto Grosso, Rio Grande, and Guayrá, and found herself drawn into the numerous disputes about the Colonia del Sacramento, which cost so much blood to both contending Powers. Perhaps the most curious and interesting incident of the long struggle was the Three Years’ War, which began in 1750, after the marriage of Ferdinand VI. of Spain with Doña Barbara of Portugal. By the treaty entered into at this marriage, seven of the most flourishing of the missions situated on the left bank of the Uruguay were ceded to Portugal in exchange for La Colonia del Sacramento on the river Plate. The towns resisted change of sovereignty, as Portugal to them was typified by the Paulistas, their most inveterate enemies. The Marquis de Valdelirios in his curious despatches touches much upon this war, but perhaps the best account is to be found in the curious memoir of the Irish Jesuit Father, Tadeo Hennis,[103] who was the backbone of the resisting Guaranís.
The ancient enmity of the two nations has been continued in their descendants, the Brazilians and the Argentines and Uruguayans, and little by little Brazil is absorbing all the northern portion of the Republic of Uruguay. After the retreat under Montoya down the Paraná, the Jesuit missions, especially in Paraguay and what is now the province of Corrientes, for some time enjoyed a period of peace and of repose, and the strange policy of the Jesuits was developed, and township after township arose amongst the Guaranís (1630-31). But there was still no rest for Ruiz Montoya, who was of those who rest but in the grave. In 1632, at the instance of the Governor and magistrates of the township of Jerez, Montoya sent Fathers Jean Rançonier and Mansilla to the north of Paraguay to found a mission amongst the Itatines, a forest-dwelling tribe. Their territory was marshy and the climate bad, and woods of indiarubber-trees covered all the land. Fathers del Techo and Charlevoix both speak of the ‘rebounding balls’ with which they played, which, thrown upon the ground, start up again as if they were filled with air. This is, perhaps, one of the first times that indiarubber is mentioned, though in some places Jean de Léry[104] seems to indicate he was acquainted with its use.
The Jesuits found that to make progress was not easy with these Indians, who willingly enough listened to their preaching, but refused to alter their social habits, to which the Jesuits ascribe the fact that even then their numbers were diminishing. Like most of the Indians of America, they were polygamists, which custom in their race operates differently to polygamy amongst the negroes: for whereas they seem to increase and thrive, the Indians even at the conquest often tended to become extinct. When a headman amongst the Itatines died, a number of his followers jumped down precipices to accompany him upon his journey to a better world. This custom and polygamy gave much trouble to the Jesuits, but their most admirable patience and knowledge of mankind helped them to overcome them by degrees. All was about to flourish in the mission, when one Acosta, a Brazilian priest, appeared. Perhaps he was in league with the Paulistas, or perhaps was jealous of the Jesuits, for he tried hard to lead a number of the Indians to San Paulo to show them (as he said) how they should follow the true law of God.[105]
The Itatines, either suspecting that Acosta’s true law was false, or tired of his preaching, rose and killed him; but the effect was bad, and there grew up amongst those infidels a coldness even towards the Jesuits themselves. Had it not been for two miraculous events which happened opportunely, as such things should happen if they are to be turned to good account, much harm might have been done. A chief, having cursed a priest, was seized at once with a malignant ulcer in the throat, which shortly killed him. The Itatines did not apparently think anything of the influence of the unhealthy climate in which they lived, and set the occurrence down to the act of God.
But more was still to come. Another chief having so far forgotten himself as to jeer at a priest, a thunderbolt fell so close to him that he was knocked senseless, and lay as dead. These two events confirmed the Jesuits’ power, and things began to flourish in their four new missions. But the Great Power, so careful of the individual effort of His priests, seems to have been most unaccountably remiss of their success considered as a whole. In the same year (1632) the Mamelucos appeared and ruined all the four missions, so that the efforts of the Jesuits and the miracles were lost.
In 1633 the first skirmish took place between the Bishop of Paraguay and the Jesuits. This skirmish little by little grew into a war, kept up for more than a hundred years, and ended finally in the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay. The Governor, Don Luis de Cespedes, having called upon the Indians of the Jesuit missions for personal service, a proceeding quite against both the King’s orders and the Papal Bulls, the Bishop thought the moment opportune to press for tithes. This, too, was equally forbidden both by a Bull and by an order of the Council of the Indies. Padre Romero went to Asuncion and displayed his Bulls and his orders of the Council, and the Governor withdrew his claims. The Bishop, after some opposition, withdrew likewise, and the Provincial of the Order arrived at Asuncion, bringing with him an order from the King signifying that the Indians of the reductions were to be left entirely to the Jesuits. So for the present the Jesuits scored a victory, though in the future it was to cost them dear. But the Governor of Paraguay having returned apparently to his design of exacting personal service from the Indians of the missions, the Provincial checkmated him with a royal order from Philip IV. The order was addressed to the Viceroy of Peru, the fourth Count of Chinchon. The missive, dated at Madrid in 1633, condemned in the strongest terms all personal service (that is, forced labour) amongst the Indians, not only of the Jesuit missions, but of Peru and Mexico. With a touching confidence in his own powers, and absolute right Divine, the well-meaning King added to his orders a paragraph commanding all to be done as he had ordered within six months. Strange to find Philip IV., whom Velasquez has immortalized and shown us as he sat upon his horse ineffable, so far away from the Museo del Prado, where alone he ever seems really to have lived. But foolish Governors and Bishops were not the Jesuits’ worst enemies in Paraguay. In 1634 the Provincial, Father Boroa, was shipwrecked in a voyage up the Uruguay, and only saved by the devotion of his neophytes.