But in the Chaco the Jesuits found conditions most different from those prevailing in their missions between the Uruguay and Paraná. Instead of open plains, vast swamps; instead of docile semi-Arcadians like the Guaranís, who almost worshipped them, fierce nomad horsemen, broken into a hundred little tribes, always at war, and caring little for religion of any sort or kind. Again, there seems in the Chaco to have been no means of amassing any kind of wealth, as all the territory was quite uncultivated and in a virgin state; but, still, the settlements had existed long enough for cattle to increase.[240] Lastly, the incursions of the barbarous tribes were a constant menace both to the Jesuits and their neophytes. Yet in their indefatigable way the Jesuits made considerable progress amongst the Chaco tribes, as both the curious ‘History of the Abipones’ by Father Dobrizhoffer and the inventories preserved by Brabo prove.[241]
Besides their seven establishments in the Gran Chaco, they had three establishments in the north of Paraguay in the great woods which fringe the central mountain range of the country, known as the Cordillera de M’baracayu. These missions, called San Joaquin del Taruma, San Estanislao, and Belen, were quite apart from all the other missions of the Guaranís, far distant from the Chaco, and removed by an enormous distance from those of the Order in the Moxos and amongst the Chiquitos, forming, as it were, an oasis in the recesses of the Tarumensian woods. These three reductions, founded respectively in 1747,[242] 1747, and 1760, were, as their dates indicate, the swansong of the Jesuits in Paraguay. Founded as they were far from the Spanish settlements, they were quite removed from the intrigues and interferences of the Spanish settlers, which were the curse of the other missions on the Paraná. The Tobatines Indians[243] were of a different class to the Guaranís, though possibly of the same stock originally. Not having come in contact until recent years with the Spaniards, and having had two fierce and prolonged wars with the nearest settlements, they had remained more in their primitive condition than any of the Indians with whom the Jesuits had come in contact in Paraguay. During the short period of Jesuit rule amongst them (1746-1767) things seem to have gone on in a half-Arcadian way. In San Joaquin, Dobrizhoffer, as he says himself, devoted eight years of unregretted labour to the Indians. Most certainly he was one of the Jesuits who understood the Indians best, and his descriptions of them and their life are among the most delightful which have been preserved. He tells of the romantic but fruitless search during eighteen months throughout the forests of the Taruma by Fathers Yegros, Escandon, Villagarcia, and Rodriguez, for the Itatines who had left the reduction of Nuestra Señora de Santa Fe, and had hidden in the woods.
Then, commenting upon the strangeness of all affairs sublunary, he relates that accident at length effected what labour could not do. In 1746 Father Sebastian de Yegros, after a search of forty days, came on the Indians—as it were, directed by Providence, or, as we now say, accident. He built a town for them, and, as Dobrizhoffer says, ‘assembled them in Christian polity.’ To the new-founded village cattle of every kind were sent, with clothes—useful, of course, to those who had never worn them—axes, and furniture, and lastly a few music masters,[244] without whose help those who build cities spend their toil in vain.
To the new town (in which the simple-hearted priest remained eight years), in 1753, came Don Carlos Morphi, an Irishman, and Governor of Paraguay; and, having stayed five days with Dobrizhoffer, departed, marvelling at the accuracy with which the new-made Christians (Cristianos nuevos) managed their double-basses, their flageolets, their violins, and, in general, all their instruments, whether of music or of war.
Modestly, but with prolixity, as befits a virtuous, God-fearing man, the simple Jesuit relates a special instance of the way in which he was enabled to work both for his own glory and for the profit of the Lord. Not far from San Estanislao was situate the forest of M’baevera, in which grew quantities of trees from which the yerba-maté (Paraguayan tea) was made. To reach it was a work of pain and trouble, for through the woods a track called a picada had to be cut; the rivers were deep, bridgeless, and had to have branches strewed along the track to give a footing to the struggling mules.[245]
An expedition having been sent under a certain Spaniard called Villalba to collect yerba, came suddenly upon a deserted Indian hut. As they had started quite unarmed, except with knives and axes to cut down the boughs, a panic seized them, and, instead of collecting any leaves,[246] they hurried back to San Estanislao. No sooner did Dobrizhoffer hear the news than he set out to find the Indians, with a few neophytes, upon his own account. Having travelled the ‘mournful solitudes’ for eighteen days, they came upon no sign of Indians, and returned footsore and hungry, ‘the improvement of our patience being our sole recompense.’
He himself walked all the way, and ‘often barefoot’, suffering ‘what neither I can describe nor yet my reader credit.’ The missionary calling has undergone considerable change since 1750. Hardships which the greater faith or stronger constitutions of the missionaries of the last century rendered endurable are now largely fallen out of fashion, and your missionary seldom walks barefoot, even in a wood, because to do so would give offence, and bring discredit on the society for which he works.
Though unsuccessful in his search that year, Dobrizhoffer, not daunted by his barefoot marching, set out again upon the Gospel trail next spring. After another journey of some twenty days, during the whole course of which it rained incessantly, he came on a community of seemingly quite happy sylvans, whom he proceeded to convert. In the first hut he met with there were eight doors, and in it dwelt some sixty Indians—a palm-built, grass-thatched phalanstery, with hammocks slung from the rude beams, in which ‘these heathen’ used to sleep. Each separate family had its own fire, on the hearth of which stood mugs and gourds and pots of rudely-fashioned earthenware. Naked and not ashamed ‘these savages’, and the men wore upon their heads high crowns of parrot feathers. For arms they carried bows and arrows, and the first man Dobrizhoffer saw was holding a dead pheasant in one hand, and in the other a short bow. In the woods around the phalanstery was an ‘amazing’ quantity of maize, of fruits of divers sorts, and of tobacco. From the hives which the wild bees make in hollow trees, they collected honey in large quantities, which served them (at least so Dobrizhoffer says) for meat and drink alike.
Their name for the god they worshipped was Tupá, but ‘of that God and his commandments they care to know but little.’ This sounds ambiguous, and would appear at first sight as if the confidence betwixt the creators and their God had been but slight. Perhaps the ambiguity may be set down to the translator[247] who turned the Latin in which the memoirs first were formed into the vulgar tongue.
A thing remarkable enough when one considers how prone mankind is to act differently was that, although the Itatines knew an evil spirit under the name of Aná, yet they paid little adoration to him, apparently content to know as little of him and his laws as they did of their God.