[206] In all, the missions amounted to thirty; and for their relative situations vide the curious [map], the original of which was published in the work of Padre Pedro Lozano, C. de J., ‘Descripcion chorographica del terreno, rios, arboles y animales de las dilatadissimas provincias del Gran Chaco, Gualanba’, etc. Cordoba, del Tucuman, en el Colegio de la Assumpcion, por Joseph Santos Balbas, 1733.
[207] A letter of a certain Jesuit (name lost, but dated 1715) says that there were at least two thousand canoes in constant use on the Paraná, and almost as many more on the Uruguay (Brabo, ‘Inventarios’, etc.).
[208] Corregidores, regidores, alcaldes, etc.
[209] It is not to be supposed, however, that the Indians were kept in ignorance. P. Cardiel (‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 222), quoting from the Cedula Real of 1743, says that ‘in every one of the towns there is a school established to teach reading and writing in Spanish, and that on that account a great number of Indians are to be met who write well.’ Cardiel adds, on the same page, ‘Dos de ellos estan copiando ahora esto que yo escribo, y de mejor letra que la mia.’
[210] Dean Funes (‘Ensayo Critico’, etc.) puts the income from commerce of the thirty towns at a hundred thousand dollars, and informs us that, after taxation (to the Crown) had been deducted from it, it was applied to the maintenance of the churches and other necessary expenses, and by the end of the year little of it remained.
[211] Don Martin de Barua, in his memorial to the King (1736), complaining of the Jesuits, puts the number of taxable Indians at forty thousand. The Commission appointed to examine into the charges in 1736, which reported in 1745 (a reasonable interval), affirmed that the taxable Indians only numbered 19,116. Each Indian paid an annual poll-tax of one dollar a year to the Crown. In addition to that, every town gave one hundred dollars a year. The salary of the priests was six hundred dollars a year (Azara, ‘Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale’).
[212] ‘Account of the Abipones’. London: John Murray, 1822.
[213] ‘Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale’. Paris: Denton, 1809.
[214] Perámas (‘De vita et moribus sex sacerdotum Paraguaycorum, Petrus Joanes Andrea’, lxxxiv.) states that it appeared, from papers left after their expulsion, that the income of the Jesuit College of Cordoba just paid the expenses of administration (‘era con escasa diferencia igual á los gastos’).
In the Archivo General of Buenos Ayres, legajo ‘Compañia de Jesús’, there is a document referred to by P. Hernandez in his introduction to the work of P. Cardiel (‘Declaracion de la Verdad’), which states that in the year of the expulsion the income of the thirty towns fell a little short of the expenses.