The servants of the Church enjoyed, on two memorable occasions, the opportunity of exhibiting their capacity for government in striking contrast to that of the civil rulers whom the mother country supplied.
Bordering on the province of Guatemala was a tract of forest and mountain, inhabited by an Indian nation of exceptional fierceness. Thrice the Spaniards had attempted the subjugation of this people, and thrice they were driven back. They hesitated to renew an invasion which had brought only defeat and loss, and the brave savages continued to enjoy a precarious independence. 1537 A.D. Las Casas made offer to the Governor that he would place this territory under the King of Spain, on condition that it should not be given over to any Spaniard, and that, indeed, no Spaniard, excepting the Governor himself, should for the space of five years be suffered to enter it. The offer was accepted, and the brave monk, confident in the power of truth and kindness, made himself ready to fulfil his contract.
Having devoted several days to prayer and fasting, Las Casas and his companions proceeded to draw up a statement of the great doctrines of the Christian religion. They told of the creation of the world, of the fall of man, of his expulsion from the pleasant garden in which he had been placed. Then they told of his restoration, of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of judgment to come. They closed with emphatic denunciation of idols and of human sacrifices. The work was in verse, and in the language of the people for whom it was destined. The fathers next obtained the co-operation of four native merchants who were accustomed for commercial reasons to visit the country of the warlike savages. These friendly traders were taught first to repeat the verses and then to sing them to the accompaniment of Indian instruments.
The merchants were received by the chief into his own house; and they requited his hospitality and gained his favour by offering to him certain gifts of scissors, knives, looking-glasses, and similar matters with which the thoughtful fathers had provided them. When they had finished a day of trading, they borrowed musical instruments and proceeded to sing their message to the crowds by whom they were surrounded. They commanded the immediate and rapt attention of the savages, who hailed them as the ambassadors of new gods. Every day of the next seven the song was repeated by desire of the chief, and every repetition seemed to deepen the effect produced. Then the merchants told of the good fathers by whom they were sent—of their dress, of their manner of life, of their love for the Indians, of their indifference to that gold which other Spaniards worshipped. An embassy was despatched to entreat a visit from some of the fathers. The request was immediately granted; but knowing the fickleness of the savage mind, the prudent monks would not as yet risk the loss of more than one of their number. Father Luis went back with the ambassador. A church was instantly built: the chief in a short time avowed his conversion to the new faith, and was loyally followed by his people. The change was enduring, and the arrangements made by Las Casas for the protection of the Indians being enforced by the King, were in large measure effective. 1630 A.D. A century afterwards the town of Rabinal, which the monks founded, was described by a Spaniard who visited it as in a most flourishing condition, with a population of eight hundred Indian families, who were in the enjoyment of “all that heart can wish for pleasure and life of man.”
A century after the conquest, the Jesuits had made their way into the vast interior region of Paraguay. They came as religious teachers, but they were empowered to trade with the natives, that they might, by their commercial gains, defray the cost of their missionary operations. In both provinces of their enterprise they found themselves frustrated by the excesses of their countrymen. The savages traded reluctantly with men so unscrupulous as the commercial Spaniards; they refused to accept a new faith on the suggestion of men so avaricious and so dissolute as the ecclesiastical Spaniards. The Jesuits, whose sagacity and skill in the management of affairs were then unequalled, obtained from the King the exclusion of all strangers from the land of Paraguay; they in return for this privilege becoming bound to pay to his majesty a yearly tax of one dollar for every baptized Indian who lived under their dominion. Thus protected, the missionaries proceeded to instruct the savages and form them into communities. Their lives were irreproachably pure; the sincerity of their kindness was assured by their manifest self-denial; the wisdom of the measures which they introduced was quickly approved by the increasing welfare of the population. In a very few years the Jesuits had gained the confidence of the Indians, over whom they henceforth exercised control absolute and unlimited.
They drew together into little settlements a number, fifty or thereby, of wandering families, to whom they imparted the art of agriculture. The children were taught to read, to write, to sing. In each settlement a judge, chosen by the inhabitants, maintained public order and administered justice. The savages received willingly the faith which the good fathers commended to their adoption. They were lenient to the superstitions of their subjects, and the reception of the new faith was hastened by its readiness to exist in harmonious combination with many of the observances of the old. In time the sway of the Jesuits extended over a population of one million five hundred thousand persons, all of whom had received Christian baptism; and they could place sixty thousand excellent soldiers in the field.
The fathers regulated all the concerns of their subjects. All possessions were held in common. Every morning, after hearing mass, the people went out to labour according to the instructions of the fathers. The gathered crops were stored for the general good, and were distributed according to the necessities of each family. No intoxicants were permitted. A strict discipline was enforced by stripes administered in the public market-place, and received without murmuring by the submissive natives. When strangers made their unwelcome way into the country, the missionaries stood between their converts and the apprehended pollution. The stranger was hospitably entertained and politely escorted from one station to another till he reached the frontier, no opportunity of intercourse with the natives having been afforded.
1640 to 1770 A.D. The government of the Jesuits was in a high degree beneficial to the Paraguans. The soil was cultivated sufficiently to yield an ample maintenance for all. Education was widely extended; churches were numerous and richly adorned; the people were peaceable, contented, cheerful. In every condition which makes human life desirable, the Jesuit settlements, during a period of considerably over a century, stand out in striking and beautiful contrast to all the other colonial possessions of Spain.
But while the Jesuits of Paraguay were thus nobly occupied in raising the fallen condition of the savages over whom they ruled, their brethren in Europe had incurred the hatred of mankind by the wicked and dangerous intrigues in which they delighted to engage. 1767 A.D. The Church of Rome herself cast them out. They were expelled from Spain. The Order was dissolved by the Pope. The fall of this unscrupulous organization was in most countries a relief from constant irritation and danger; in Paraguay it was disastrous. 1773 A.D. The country accepted new and incapable rulers, and was parcelled out into new provinces. It speedily fell from the eminence to which the fathers had raised it, and sunk into the anarchy and misery by which its neighbours were characterized.