Nor does the eminence of the Portuguese race as purveyors to the slave-market end at the dark continent. In India, it is true, their activity in this respect is restrained by the presence of a paramount power; but further east their national character has found ample scope for its development. In the nineteenth century a Christian country of Europe has shown an example to such nations as China and Japan by maintaining at Macao an emporium of coolies destined for Peru and elsewhere, and sent out under conditions differing from those of slavery in name alone, and the records of which traffic are a pendant to those of “the middle passage.” Finally, a branch of the Portuguese race has at this moment the unenviable distinction of possessing the only civilized country in which slavery is acknowledged by law.
To return to Brazil: the kings of Portugal had, it is true, been individually ever desirous of mitigating the conditions of slavery to which their Indian subjects in South America were subjected; but circumstances were ever too strong for them. The wealth of Brazil was only to be obtained by agricultural labour; and so long as Indians were to be captured or reared for the purpose, the cupidity of the colonists devoted their Indian fellow-subjects to this end. The native races, however, were not used to such hard labour as was imposed upon them, and they gradually sank and died away beneath it. They were then replaced by Africans, whose descendants are now the means of producing the sugar-wealth, coffee-wealth, and tobacco-wealth of Brazil. Various enactments were from time to time passed by the Government at Lisbon to restrain their colonial subjects in their dealings with the natives; but all were of no avail. In the first instance the colonists were permitted to enslave them without control; but a law was passed by King Sebastian, declaring that no Indians should be considered slaves, excepting such as should be taken in war made by command of the King or Governor, or such as were aggressive cannibals; but this regulation was invariably made to suit every individual occasion.
By a second law, it was provided that the Indians who worked for the Portuguese should not be regarded as slaves, but as free labourers. King Phillip II. decreed that none should be considered slaves excepting those taken in hostilities for which he should have issued orders. Philip III. forbade that any Indians should be made slaves; but the evil had gone too far for his edict to be attended with any good result, and he was induced to revoke it, and to permit the enslavement of Indians taken in war. In short, so general was the interest amongst all classes of the Portuguese in Brazil in encouraging slavery, that every well-meant edict and regulation of the Portuguese Crown was evaded. The same law provided that in each village of the “reduced” Indians there was to be a captain, who should hold office for three years. The Indians were to be settled in villages of about three hundred houses. Lands were to be allotted for their use and a church built in each village. These Indians were to be considered free, and were paid for their labour.
Joam IV. renewed the law of Philip III., and Sousa Pereira, going out as governor of Maranham, took with him orders emancipating all Indians then enslaved. These orders produced an insurrection, which was only quelled by a promise of the Governor that the law should not be enforced, pending an appeal to the King. The same occurrence took place likewise at Pará when the law was announced at that place. Such was the state of things in Northern Brazil at the date of Vieyra’s coming.
Much as the Jesuit Father had been shocked on his arrival at Maranham by the low religious and moral condition of that dependency, his convictions on the subject were much intensified as his opportunities of observation increased. Many of the colonists troubled themselves neither with mass nor with church throughout the year, and it was a common thing amongst them to die without confession. In the whole captaincy there were but two churches with resident priests; the one on the island, the other on the mainland. The Portuguese of Maranham and Pará were pursuing the same course towards the Indians which had resulted in their extermination along the sea-coast of the other captaincies. The law permitted that Indians taken in war should be made slaves, and likewise that such prisoners as were rescued by the Portuguese from other tribes, and who were thus saved from being eaten, should be devoted to slavery. These two regulations were made to cover the most iniquitous transactions. Every captain of a fort could at any time provoke his Indian neighbours into war; whilst Indian captives were habitually threatened or tortured into the confession that they had been rescued or purchased by the Portuguese from other Indians.
In the general system of oppression the Indians who had voluntarily submitted to the Portuguese bore their full share. Indeed they were perhaps, if possible, in a worse position than their brethren. The captain for the time being, holding his office merely for three years, looked upon them in the light of so many animals out of whom he was to extract as much benefit for himself as he could during that period. They were chiefly employed in raising and preparing tobacco; whilst their families were left to starve. Some Indians thought it better to quit this “free” condition and voluntarily to become domestic slaves. Others preferred to die.
It is not surprising that such a state of things should have worked up Vieyra’s indignation to the boiling point. He had soon an opportunity of venting his most righteous wrath from the pulpit. It was the season of Lent, and as his reputation for eloquence had preceded him, the church was, for once at least, filled to overflowing. In a discourse which has been preserved, he acted on the command given to the Prophet Isaiah, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgressions.” In a passage which might perhaps be addressed from the pulpit to the Brazilians of to-day, he observes, “But you will say to me this State cannot be supported without Indians. Who is to plant our mandioc? Must our wives do it? Must our children do it? If necessity and conscience require it, I reply, ‘Yes;’ for better it is to be supported by the sweat of one’s own brow than by another’s blood.” He had no difficulty in touching by his impassioned eloquence the consciences, if not the hearts, even of the hardened congregation whom he addressed; and on the same afternoon a meeting was held, in which it was agreed to go into the history of each individual Indian who was detained in a state of slavery, and to leave each case to be decided by the Senate. A deed expressing the consent of the people to this arrangement was immediately drawn up and signed by all the chief persons of the place.
Vieyra now undertook the task of instructing the Indians each Sunday; and after a time he made plans for a missionary expedition amongst the tribes. In this project, however, he had to encounter the selfishness of the governor, who could not spare from his own plantations the Indians whom Vieyra required to accompany him. Disappointed in this quarter he turned to another, only to meet with a like repulse. The results of his efforts convinced him that it was impossible to proceed with the conversion and civilization of the Indians, so long as the civil authorities should have any power over them. He accordingly wrote to the King his opinion that the governors and chief-captains should possess no authority over the Indians excepting in time of war, when a certain number should be allotted for military service; that the Indians should have an advocate in each captaincy, annually elected, and independent of the governor; that the natives should be governed by religioners; that at the beginning of each year lists should be made of the Indians in each captaincy, and likewise of the settlers, and that the former should then be divided amongst the latter by their own advocate and by the superior of the religious order; that no Indian should work for a settler for more than four months in a year, in terms of two months, their wages being deposited in advance. He added other excellent suggestions; but so urgent was the case that it was thought better that he should himself proceed to Europe vividly in order to plead in person.
On his homeward voyage Vieyra encountered a tempest near the Azores, from which he owed his deliverance to the crew of a Dutch privateer, who took him from his ship after its masts had been cut away. He and his companions, after having been plundered of all they possessed, were landed on the island of Graciosa. Vieyra’s credit, however, was sufficient to procure for himself and his forty companions the means of subsistence during two months, and likewise a passage to Lisbon, which he thus vividly describes:—
“The ship belonged to heretic owners, and the pilot and the sailors were heretics; we passengers were some religioners of different orders, and a great quantity of those musical islanders who come here to compose a choir of four voices with their nightingales and goldfinches, canary-birds and blackbirds. The weather was worse than ordinary, and the effects which I observed in it were truly admirable. We religioners were all employed in prayers and litanies, making vows to Heaven and exorcisms to the waves, throwing relics into the sea, and above all in acts of contrition, confessing many times, as if at the point of death. The sailors, like the heretics, when the hatches were lying at the feet of the masts, ate and drank more merrily than ever, and mocked at what they called our ceremonies. The little birds at the same time, at the sound which the wind made in the rigging, as if those cords had been the string of some musical instrument, exerted their strength in singing. God, help me! if labour and fear had not taken off all attention, who would not in this situation have admired effects so various and so opposite, the cause being the same? What, ... all in the same ship, all in the same storm, all in the same danger, and some singing, some mocking, some praying and lamenting?” It is interesting to see this great man, who in following his duty shrank neither from labour nor from any kind of danger, ingenuously confessing the effect which a storm at sea had upon him in common with other bad sailors.