A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767

by R. B. Cunninghame Graham

Chapter IX

The Spanish and Portuguese attempt to force new laws on the Indians—The Indians revolt against them—The hopeless struggle goes on for eight years—Ruin of the missions

The missions in the Chaco and the Taruma, all founded between 1700 and 1760, the last (Belen) but seven years before the expulsion of the Jesuits from America, go far towards disproving the allegations of some writers,[253] that the apostolic energy of the first foundations had decayed, and that the Jesuits were merely living on the good name of the first founders in the beginning of the past century. But let the zeal of any class of men be what it may, if they oppose themselves to slavery and at the same time are reported to have lands in which is gold, and resolutely exclude adventurers from them, their doom is sealed. Both crimes were set down to the Jesuits. Writing in 1784, or twenty years after the expulsion of his order, Dobrizhoffer refers to the Indians of the reductions as ‘being in subjection[254] only to the Catholic King and the royal Governors, not in dreaded slavery amongst private Spaniards as the other Indians;’ and Montoya, Lozano, and Del Techo, writing in earlier times, all confirm the statement, which is also doubly confirmed by the various royal edicts on the subject.[255] The reports of gold-mines, too, had never ceased, although they had been repeatedly disproved, and those, together with the stand for freedom for the Indians, led to the events which finally brought about the expulsion of the Order from the territories where they had worked so long.

In 1740, Gomez de Andrade, Governor for the King of Portugal in Rio de Janeiro, being one of those who was convinced that the reason why the Jesuits guarded their territories so religiously was that they had mines, bethought him of a plan. His plan, like most of those conceived on the fantastic reasons which are called ‘of State’, took no account of sentiment, and therefore, as mankind are and will ever be a thousand times more influenced by sentiment than by hard reasoning, was from the first bound of itself to fail.

The colony of Sacramento upon the river Plate had for a hundred years been the source of conflict between the Spaniards and the Portuguese.[256] Situated as it was almost in front of Buenos Ayres, it served as a depot for smugglers; and, moreover, being fortified, menaced the navigation both of the Paraná and Paraguay. Slavers from England, Holland, and the German ports crowded the harbour. Arms of all kinds were stored there, and were distributed to all adventurers who meditated assaults against the crown of Spain. Twice or three times it had been taken and restored, the Indians of the missions always rendering most efficient help. At the time of which I write (1740) it had passed again by treaty under the dominion of the Portuguese, but still remained a standing menace to the Spaniards. Gomez Andrade advised the court of Lisbon to exchange it against the seven reductions[257] of the Uruguay, and thus at once to secure a country rich in gold and to adjust the frontier at the river Uruguay. Nothing appears so simple to a statesman as to exchange one piece of territory for another. A parchment signed after some international negotiations, and the whole thing is done. If, though, as happened in this case, one of the territories contains a population such as that which inhabited the seven towns upon the Uruguay, and which has conquered the country in which it lives from virgin forest, and defended it against all comers, it sometimes happens that the unreasonable inhabitants, by clinging to their homes, defeat the statesmen’s plans. Yet statesmen, once embarked in any plan, do not stick at such trifles as the affection of a people for its home, but quietly pursue their path, knowing that that which is conceived by ministers of State must in the end be beneficial to mankind. Without this patriotic abnegation of their feelings, no statesmen would be worthy of the name. Indifference to the feelings of others is perhaps the greatest proof a public man can give of his attachment to the State. After negotiations, lasting many years, in 1750 a treaty was signed between Portugal and Spain agreeing that the former should give up the Colonia del Sacramento to the Spaniards in exchange for the seven Jesuit towns upon the Uruguay, and that both nations should furnish a commission to fix the frontiers of the two nations on the Uruguay.[258] On February 15, 1750, the Spanish court sent to the Jesuits of the seven towns to prepare their Indians to leave their homes and march into the forests, and there found new towns.

At that date François Retz was General of the Jesuits, and on him devolved the duty of communicating the orders of the courts of Spain and Portugal to the Jesuits in the missions of the Uruguay. Father Bernard Neyderdorffer was the man on whom the Provincial of Paraguay (Father Barreda) imposed the task of communicating to the Indians the wishes of the two courts. Though he had lived already thirty-five years in the missions, and knew the Indians well, and was respected by them as a father, he seems at first to have shrunk from such a task. When the news was brought to the towns upon the Uruguay, none of the Indians at first would credit it. The caciques (chiefs) of the seven towns declared that they would rather die than leave their native place. Nothing was heard but lamentations and expressions of hatred of the Portuguese, mingled with denunciations of the Jesuits themselves, who the poor Indians not unnaturally believed were in league with Spain to sell them to the Portuguese. But in a little the clamours turned to action, and, not content with refusing to obey the edict of the two courts, the Indians broke into revolt. Two most important narratives of this revolt exist, one by Father Cardiel and one by Father Ennis, both of whom were witnesses of the events. After considerable negotiations, which lasted till 1753,[259] the united troops of Portugal and Spain advanced into the mission territory to arrange the occupation of the ceded towns. The commissioners of the two nations were, for Spain, the Marques de Valdelirios, and for Portugal General Gomez Freyre de Andrade, and both of them appear to have come to America already prejudiced against the Jesuits. On March 24, 1753, Andrade wrote to Valdelirios, almost before he could have heard anything definite about the mission territory, to which they both were strangers, telling him that opposition was to be expected, and that the Jesuits were urging the Indians to revolt.[260] The opposition that the two commissioners so confidently hoped to find,[261] and which contemporary writers have set forth in its true colours as but the revolt of ignorant Indians rendered desperate by being arbitrarily dispossessed of lands which they themselves had settled and held for almost a hundred years, was fraught with serious consequences, not only to the Jesuits in Paraguay, but to the Order throughout the world at large. For years their enemies had said the Jesuits were endeavouring to set up in the missions a State quite independent of the Spanish crown. By their own conduct the Jesuits to some extent had given colour to the report, for by excluding (in the interest of the Indians) all Spaniards from the mission territories, it looked as if they were at work at something which they wished to keep a secret, as no one at that time deemed it a serious plea to enter into any line of conduct for the good of Indians, whom in general the Spanish settlers looked upon as beasts. That it was the best policy they could have possibly pursued under the circumstances is proved abundantly by the code of instructions laid down by Don Francisco Bucareli, the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres, under whose auspices the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1760 was carried out. In that code occurs the following article:[262] ‘You will not allow any strangers, of whatever estate, quality, or condition they may be, to reside in the town (that is, of the missions), even if they be artisans,[263] and much less that they deal or take contracts in them either for themselves or for others, and you shall take especial care that the Laws of the Indies be executed, and specially those which are contained in Article 27 of Book IX.;[264] and also if any Portuguese deserters or other persons of whatever conditions should come to the towns, you will instantly conduct them to this city, taking every precaution to prevent their escape.’

Still, though their policy was pursued, it did not stop the opponents of the Jesuits from denouncing that very policy, both at the cession of the seven towns and at the expulsion of the Order from America. The commissioners, after innumerable delays, having found themselves in 1753 at Santa Tecla, a village near the Uruguay, it becomes necessary to cast a glance at what the Jesuits themselves were doing, and how they tried to do their duty as they saw it both to their Sovereign, their Order, and the Indians over whom they ruled. It seems as if, whilst the superiors of the Order recognised at once the futility of striving against Portugal and Spain, some of the inferior members secretly set on the Indians to armed resistance to the impolitic decree. The council of the province (Paraguay)[265] assembled at the Jesuit college in Cordoba, composed of Fathers Masala, Horos, Caballero, Lopez, and Lozano, sent a memorial[266] both to the Viceroy of Peru and to the High Court of Charcas. In the memorial they first set forth their loyalty, and then exposed the deceit to which the ministers of Spain and Portugal had been subjected by their advisers in America. They pointed out most justly that the treaty was damaging to both the countries concerned,[267] and that in regard to the Indians of the seven towns peculiarly unjust. Both at Charcas and at Lima their memorial (though diffuse) was favourably received, and a copy remitted to the King and Council at Madrid. Ibañez, in his ‘Republica Jesuitica’, qualifies the action of the Jesuits in this matter as a ‘great crime’. Dean Funes only sees duplicity of language, but seems to excuse it in the circumstances in which the Jesuits were placed. Certainly, after efforts extending over almost two hundred years, it was hard on them to see seven of their most flourishing missions arbitrarily broken up, the Indians driven from their homes, and their territory occupied by those very Portuguese who for a hundred years had been their persecutors. There was much to say in extenuation, even for ‘duplicity of language’, when one remembers that the Jesuits alone (no matter how mistaken their views of treatment may seem to modern eyes) stood out against the assumption that the Indians were a mere flock of sheep, who might be driven from their homes on any pretext, or at the exigencies of ministers at courts who lived ten thousand miles away, and were completely ignorant of the local circumstances. Whether the memorial influenced the court of Spain is hard to say; but it is certain that when, in 1752, the Marques de Valdelirios arrived in Buenos Ayres, with him came as a commissioner to fix the boundary between the two nations of the Uruguay Father Luis de Altamirano, accompanied by his secretary, Rafael de Cordoba, both members of the Order, and that the Marquis took up his lodging in the college of the Jesuits. There papers and memorials rained on him: one came from the Bishop of Tucuman, and one from Don Jaime de San Just, the Governor of Paraguay, with many others from people of inferior note, all in the interest of the Company. It appears as if Valdelirios thought that these memorials were inspired, for his first action was to publish to the priests of the seven towns the wishes of his government as to evacuation by the Indians of the territory. This he did through the prefect of the missions, who seems to have acted in good faith in his endeavours to carry out the wishes of the Spanish court. Just at that moment Barreda, the Provincial of Paraguay, arrived in Buenos Ayres, and Valdelirios asked him his opinion as to the measures best calculated to insure the treaty being quietly carried out. Barreda, though all his interests were against the execution of the treaty, seems to have acted in good faith. He gave the sensible advice that, as the treaty had been made entirely without taking into consideration the difficulties of carrying it out, it could not be held a crime to ask the King for some delay.[268] He advised consulting three ex-Governors of Paraguay, who happened to be in Buenos Ayres,[269] and, lastly, that all hurry, or anything likely to excite the Indians, should be avoided; for it was possible that they, relying on their numbers and local knowledge, might be able to give much trouble even to the joint forces of both crowns. He laid before Valdelirios the condition of the reductions, telling him that they were fertile and well cultivated,[270] and that this of itself would incline the Indians against migrating from their lands. Lastly, he said it was the opinion of the most experienced of the priests that the Indians would yield neither to arguments nor reason, for the hatred of the Portuguese had put them quite beside themselves with fury at the idea of giving up their lands. Valdelirios must have found himself not in too comfortable a state. Lodged as he was in the college of the Jesuits, he must have felt that most of the advice which was so freely tendered him was biassed, and to relieve his mind he called a council, at which the Provincial Barreda, Juan Escadon, his secretary, Altamirano, and Rafael de Cordoba appeared. The council recommended prudence, and, as the majority were Jesuits, pushed their prudence even beyond Lowland Scotch or north of Ireland limits, for they proposed to institute a commission which, after three years’ investigation, should report at Buenos Ayres on what it had found out. Commissions, royal or otherwise, have always been a trump-card in the hands of governments, since peddling democracy, with show of noses and the like, came in and put an end to those good old methods which are as dear to-day to rulers’ hearts as they have ever been since the beginning of the world, and will be whilst election, battle, fitness, talents, wealth, unfitness, or any other cause, gives power into the hands of anyone to rule.

Valdelirios, who was not a fool, saw their design, and instantly despatched Altamirano (1752) to Castillos to meet Freire de Andrade and the Portuguese, and set about drawing the new frontier line at once. Altamirano, though a Jesuit, appears (at first at any rate) to have been anxious that the treaty should be carried out. In 1752 (September 22) he wrote[271] from the reduction of San Borja to P. Mathias Stroner,[272] ordering all the Jesuits to assist in carrying out the evacuation of the seven towns. By his advice Freire de Andrade and Valdelirios met at Castillos, and, after having laid off some twenty leagues of boundary line, returned respectively to the Colonia and to Buenos Ayres.

But in the missions things were in a state bordering on revolution. When the letter from the prefect of the missions reached San Miguel, the Indians assembled outside the church,[273] and having learned the situation of the lands to which they were to move, their fury knew no bounds. They all refused to stir, saying they had inherited their lands from their forefathers and by the grace of God.[274] Their example was at once followed by three more of the towns, and virtually a state of absolute defiance to the orders of the Spanish crown ensued.

Just at this moment Altamirano, the commissary, arrived, and found the state of things most serious.[275] The commissary Altamirano set to work at once to place before the Jesuits of the seven towns the danger they exposed themselves to if they refused to help him to carry out the orders of the crown. Almost immediately on his arrival he wrote[276] to Don José de Caruajal y Lancastre to send more troops, and to the various priests[277] to destroy their powder, and cease to manufacture any more.[278] It is most likely that, if Altamirano had no secret understanding with his brother Jesuits, his letters must have considerably amazed them, and certainly they gave offence to the Indians, who declared he could not be a Jesuit at all. Six hundred Indians, under a chief called Sepe Tyaragu, marched upon Santo Thomé, where Altamirano had taken up his residence, with the avowed purpose of discussing whether he was a Jesuit or not, and, if the latter supposition proved correct, of throwing him into the river Uruguay;[279] but Altamirano did not wait their coming, and returned precipitately to Buenos Ayres. The commission which had set out to mark the limits between the countries,[280] buried in the woods, or marching along the river, was absolutely unaware of what was going on amongst the Indians till they arrived in Santa Tecla on February 26, 1753. The first notice that they had of it was when they found themselves surrounded by a strong force of Indians. One of the commissaries, Don Juan de Echevarria, is known to have left a curious account of the proceedings, from which Dean Funes, Ibañez, and most of the writers on the subject must have copied.[281]