[247] Traduttore traditore, as the proverb says.
[248] Charlevoix says, in his ‘Histoire de la Nouvelle France’, speaking of the Indians in general: ‘L’expérience a fait voir qu’il étoit plus à propos de les laisser dans leur simplicité et dans leur ignorance, que les sauvages peuvent être des bons Chrétiens sans rien prendre de notre politesse et de notre façon de vivre, ou du moins qu’il falloit laisser faire au tems pour les tirer de leur grossièreté, qui ne les empêche pas de vivre dans une grande innocence, d’avoir beaucoup de modestie, et de servir Dieu avec une piété et une ferveur, que les rendent très propres aux plus sublimes opérations de la grâce.’ Had more people thought with Charlevoix, and not been too anxious to draw savages incontrovertibly to our ‘politesse’ (sic) and ‘façon’, and left more to time (‘au tems’), how much misery might have been saved, and how many interesting peoples preserved! For, in spite of the domination of the Anglo-Saxon race, it might have been wise to leave other types, if only to remind us of our superiority.
[249] Hell not infrequently seems to have struck the Indians as a joke, for Charlevoix relates that when the first missionaries expatiated on its flames to the Chirignanós, they said, ‘If there is fire in hell, we could soon get enough water to put it out.’ This answer scandalized the good priest, who could not foresee that the flames of Tophet would be extinguished without the necessity of any other waters than those of indifference.
[250] ‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 74.
[251] Padre del Techo, in his ‘History of Paraguay’, says of the wood Indians that ‘they died like plants which, grown in the shade, will not bear the sun.’
[252] San Joaquin, San Estanislao, and Belen.
[254] ‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 15.
[255] As that of Philip V., from the palace of Buen Retiro, December 28, 1743, and his two letters to the Jesuits of Paraguay. Also the previous edict obtained by Montoya from Philip II., and by the various additions on the same head made from time to time to the code known as ‘The Laws of the Indies’.
[256] Since the discovery of America the Spaniards and the Portuguese had been in constant rivalry throughout the south-eastern portion. Their frontier, between what are now Brazil and Argentina, had never been defined. In 1494 King John II. of Castile concluded a treaty signed at Tordesillas with the King of Portugal, placing the dividing-line between the countries two hundred leagues more to the westward than that of the famous Bull of Pope Alexander VI. (May 4, 1493), which placed it at one hundred leagues west of Cape Verd, cutting the world in two from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole. From the signing of the treaty of Tordesillas trouble began in South America between the Powers, as by that treaty a portion of Brazil came into the power of Portugal.