Their general characteristics seem to have been much the same as those of other Indians of America. For instance, they kept their hair and teeth to an extreme old age, their sight was keen, they seldom looked you in the face whilst speaking, and their disposition was cold and reserved. The tone of their voices was low, so low that, as Azara says: ‘La voz nunca es gruesa ni sonora, y hablan siempre muy bajo, sin gritar aun para quejarse si los matan; de manera que, si camina uno diez pasos delante, no le llama el que le necesita, sino que va á alcanzarle.’ This I have myself observed when travelling with Indians, even on horseback.
There was one characteristic of the Guaranís in which they differed greatly from most of the Indian tribes in their vicinity, as the Indians of the Chaco and the Pampas, for all historians alike agree that they were most unwarlike. It is from this characteristic that the Jesuits were able to make such a complete conquest of them, for, notwithstanding all their efforts, they never really succeeded in permanently establishing themselves amongst any of the tribes in the Chaco or upon the Pampas.
The name Guaraní is variously derived. Pedro de Angelis, in his ‘Coleccion de Obras y Documentos’, derives it from gua, paint, and ni, sign of the plural, making the signification of the word ‘painted ones’ or ‘painted men’. Demersay, in his ‘Histoire du Paraguay’,[25] thinks it probable that the word is an alteration of the word guaranai, i.e., numerous. Barco de la Centenera[26] (‘Argentina’, book i., canto i.) says the word means ‘hornet’, and was applied on account of their savageness. Be that as it may, it is certain that the Guaranís did not at the time of the conquest, and do not now, apply the word to themselves, except when talking Spanish or to a foreigner. The word abá, Indian or man, is how they speak of their people, and to the language they apply the word Abanêe.
In the same way the word ‘Paraguay’ is variously derived from a corruption of the word ‘Payaguá’ (the name of an Indian tribe), and y, the Guaraní word for water, meaning river of the Payaguas. Others, again, derive it from a Guaraní word meaning ‘crown’, and y, water, and make it the crowned river, either from the palm-trees which crown its banks or the feather crowns which the Indians wore at the first conquest. Others, again, derive it from a bird called paraquá (Ortolida paraqua). Again, Angelis, in his work ‘Serie de los Señores Gobernadores del Paraguay’ (lib. ii., p. 187), derives it from Paraguá, the name of a celebrated Indian chief at the time of the conquest. What is certain is that y is the Guaraní for water, and this is something in a derivation. Y is perhaps as hard to pronounce as the Gaelic luogh, a calf, the nasal gh in Arabic, or the Kaffir clicks, having both a guttural and a nasal aspiration.[27] It is rarely attempted with success by foreigners, even when long resident in the country. Though Paraguay was so completely the country of the Jesuits in after-times, they were not the first religious Order to go there. Almost in every instance the ecclesiastics who accompanied the first conquerors of America were Franciscans. The Jesuits are said to have sent two priests to Bahia in Brazil ten years after their Order was founded, but both in Brazil and Paraguay the Franciscans were before them in point of time.
San Francisco Solano, the first ecclesiastic who rose to much note as a missionary, and who made his celebrated journey through the Chaco in 1588-89 from Peru to Paraguay, was a Franciscan.[28] Thus, the Franciscans had the honour of having the first American saint in their ranks. It is noteworthy, though, that he was recalled from Paraguay by his superiors, who seem to have had no very exalted opinion of him.
Charlevoix remarks (‘History of Paraguay’) ‘that it seems as if Providence, in granting him miraculous powers, had forgotten the other necessary steps to make them effective.’ That he really had these powers seems strange, but San Francisco Solano narrates of himself that, in passing through the Chaco, he learned the languages of several of the tribes, and ‘preached to them in their own tongues of the birth, death, and transfiguration of Christ, the mysteries of the Trinity, Transubstantiation, and Atonement; that he explained to them the symbols of the Church, the Papal succession from St. Peter downwards, and that he catechized the Indians by thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands, and that they came in tears and penitence to acknowledge their belief.’
Of course, to-day it is difficult to controvert these statements, even if inclined to do so; but the languages spoken by the Chaco Indians are amongst the most difficult to learn of any spoken by the human race, so much so that Father Dobrizhoffer, in his ‘History of the Abipones’, says ‘that the sounds produced by the Indians of the Chaco resembled nothing human, so do they sneeze, and stutter, and cough.’ In such a language the Athanasian Creed itself would be puzzling to a neophyte.
He also says that several of the Jesuits who had laboured for years amongst the Indians could never master their dialects, and when they preached the Indians received their words with shouts of laughter. This the good priest attributed to the presence of a ‘mocking devil’ who possessed them. It may be that the mocking devil was but a sense of humour, the possession of which, even amongst good Christians, has been known to give offence.
But be this as it may, San Francisco de Solano remained two years at Asuncion, though whilst he lived there his powers of speech (according to the Jesuits) seem to have been diminished, and he held no communication with the Indians in their own languages. It may be that, like St. Paul, he preferred to speak, when not with Indians, five words with his understanding rather than ten thousand in an unknown tongue.
At the time of the first conquest Paraguay was almost entirely peopled by the Guaraní race.[29] It does not appear that their number was ever very great, perhaps not exceeding a million in the whole country. From the writings of Montoya, Guevara, Lozano, and the other missionaries of the time, it is certain that they had attained to no very high degree of civilization, though they were certainly more advanced than their neighbours in the Gran Chaco. It is most probable that they had not a single stone-built town, or even a house, or that such a thing existed south of New Granada, to the eastward of the Andes, for we may take the description in Schmidel’s ‘History of the Casa del Gran Moxo’[30] either as a mistake or as a story which he had heard from some Peruvian Indian of the palaces of the Incas. At any rate, no remains of stone-built houses, still less of palaces, are known to have been found in Brazil or Paraguay.