[18] The great Las Casas, who made seven voyages from America to Spain—the last at the age of seventy-two—to protect the Indians, had a strong opinion about ‘conquerors’ and ‘conquests’. In the dedication of his great treatise on the wrongs of the Indians, he says: ‘Que no permita (Felipe II.) las atrocidades que los tiranos inventaron, y que prosiguen haciendo con titulo de “conquistas”. Los que se jactan de ser “conquistadores” a que descienden de ellos son muchomas orgullosos arrogantes y vanos que los otros Españoles.’ Strange that even to-day the same atrocidades of tiranos are going on in Africa. No doubt the descendants of these ‘conquerors’ will be as arrogant, proud, and vain as the descendants of the conquistadores of whom Las Casas writes.
[19] Mendoza left (‘Azara Apuntamientos para la Historia Natural de los Quadrupedes del Paraguay’, etc.) five mares and seven horses in the year 1535. In 1580 Don Juan de Garay, at the second founding of the city, already found troops of wild horses. The cattle increased to a marvellous extent, and by the end of the century were wild in Patagonia. Sarmiento (‘Civilisation et Barbarisme’) says that early in this century they were often killed by travellers, who tethered their horses to the carcasses to prevent them from straying at night.
[20] Hulderico Schmidel, ‘Historia del Descubrimiento de el Rio de la Plata y Paraguay’.
[21] Perhaps the two most important works upon the language are the ‘Tesoro de la Lengua Guarani’, by Ruiz de Montoya, Madrid, 1639 (it is dedicated to the ‘Soberana Virgen’); and the ‘Catecismo de la Lengua Guarani’, by Diego Diaz de la Guerra, Madrid, Año de 1630. He also wrote a ‘Bocabulario y Arte de la Lengua Guarani’.
[22] P. Guevara, in his ‘Historia del Paraguay’, relates a curious story which he said was current amongst the Indians. Two brothers, Tupi and Guaraní, lived with their families upon the sea-coast of Brazil. In those days the world was quite unpopulated but by themselves. They quarrelled about a parrot, and Tupi with his family went north, and populated all Brazil; whilst Guaraní went west, and was the ancestor of all the Indians of the race of Guaranís.
[23] Azara, in his ‘Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay’, has a similar passage: ‘Recibe bien todo Indio silvestre, al estrangero que viene de paz.’
[24] ‘Por lo comun reparten pedazos de este cuerpo, del qual pedazo cozido en mucha agua hacen unas gachas (fritters) y es fiesta muy celebre para ellos que hacen con muchas cerimonias.’
[25] ‘Histoire du Paraguay et des Établissements des Jésuites’, L. Alfred Demersay, Paris, 1864.
[26] ‘La Argentina’, a long poem or rhyming chronicle contained in the collection of ‘Historiadores Primitivos de Indias’, of Gonzales Barcia, Madrid, 1749.
[27] Lozano, in his ‘Historia del Paraguay’, compares it to Greek, but in my opinion fails to establish his case; but, then, so few people know both Greek and Guaraní.