In A.D. 1661, the Jesuits were expelled; in A.D. 1679 reinstated. The interval was a time of sorrow to the Indians; the restoration a time of joy. The establishment of missions now began.
A settlement or village, Aldea, was founded in some favourable situation, and the Indians of the neighbourhood induced to put themselves under the tutelage of the resident and directorial father. They were then taught to cultivate the soil or to weave—taught as children, and, when the temper was not that of the wilder and more independent tribes, this training answered. They were also instructed in the Christian creed, the medium being the Tupi language. Their own dialects were numerous—too numerous to make the cultivation of them in detail practicable; and in each aldea the variety of such dialects was considerable, each being spoken by but a few individuals. To learn a difficult language for the sake of so few, was an unnecessary expenditure of time for the Jesuits; whilst Portuguese was a difficult language for the Indians. The surer plan, then, of taking the most prevalent Indian tongue and making it into a kind of common medium, a lingua franca, was devised. This prevalent tongue was the Tupi, and the name it took was the Portuguese one of Lingoa Geral—general language. Until A.D. 1757, the Lingoa Geral was used in the law-courts of Gram Parà. This state of things lasted till A.D. 1759, when the Jesuits were expelled; from Parà and Maranham as many as 112.
In 1718, the number of aldeas was as follows:—
| Jesuits | 19 |
| Capuchins | 15 |
| Carmelites | 5 |
Officers called Directors took the places of the Jesuits. In many respects their orders were those of their predecessors. They were to teach and convert; but they were also to get some work out of the Indians in the way of public service, e. g., in the arsenals as pilots, as a kind of police in the case of Indian warfare and bush-ranging. And beside these points of difference, the Tupi, or Lingoa Geral, was to be replaced by the Portuguese. In the localities where the intercourse with the whites was important, judges were appointed to settle disputes. Kidnapping however continued, and things went ill with the Indians until the separation of Brazil from Portugal; and they have gone ill since. The Indians and the negroes form the lowest part of the not elevated population of Parà, the half-blood between them (the Indians) and the whites being called Cafusos. Both the Cafusos and the full-blooded Indians are free, but they are not flourishing. They drink and live lives of idleness. They live, in short, much as all the coloured races when the whites are in contact with them.
This prepares us for the necessity of seeking the Indian in his unmodified state on the feeders of the Amazons, rather than the main stream. Mr. Wallace has described those of the Uaupés—which falls into the Rio Negro from the west, and lie just under the equator.
He remarks upon the extent to which they are a truly unsophisticated population, and also upon the extent to which they differ from the Indians lower down, i.e., between Barra and Para, the junction of the Rio Negro and Amazons, and the mouth of that latter river. His description (founded on personal observation) is one of the best we have. I quote it freely:—“All the tribes of the Uaupés,” he writes, “construct their dwellings after one plan, which is peculiar to them. Their houses are the abode of numerous families, sometimes of a whole tribe. The plan is a parallelogram, with a semicircle at one end. The dimensions of one at Jauarité were one hundred and fifteen feet in length, by seventy-five broad, and about thirty high. This house would hold about a dozen families, consisting of near a hundred individuals. In times of feasts and dances, three or four hundred are accommodated in them. The roof is supported on fine cylindrical columns, formed of the trunks of trees, and beautifully straight and smooth. In the centre a clear opening is left, twenty feet wide, and on the sides are little partitions of palm-leaf thatch, dividing off rooms for the separate families: here are kept the private household utensils, weapons, and ornaments; while the rest of the space contains, on each side, the large ovens and gigantic pans for making caxirí, and, in the centre, a place for the children to play, and for their dances to take place. These houses are built with much labour and skill; the main supporters, beams, rafters, and other parts, are straight, well proportioned to the strength required, and bound together with split creepers, in a manner that a sailor would admire. The thatch is of the leaf of some one of the numerous palms so well adapted to the purpose, and is laid on with great compactness and regularity. The walls, which are very low, are formed also of palm thatch, but so thick and so well bound together, that neither arrow nor bullet will penetrate it. At the gable-end is a large doorway, about six feet wide and eight or ten high: the door is a large palm-mat, hung from the top, supported by a pole during the day, and let down at night. At the semicircular end is a smaller door, which is the private entrance of the Tushaúa, or chief, to whom this part of the house exclusively belongs. The lower part of the gable-end, on each side of the entrance, is covered with the thick bark of a tree unrolled, and standing vertically. Above this is a loose hanging of palm-leaves, between the fissures of which the smoke from the numerous fires within finds an exit. In some cases this gable-end is much ornamented with symmetrical figures painted in colours.
“The furniture consists principally of maqueiras, or hammocks, made of string, twisted from the fibres of the leaves of the Mauritia flexuosa: they are merely an open network of parallel threads, crossed by others at intervals of a foot; the loops at each end have a cord passed through them, by which they are hung up. The Uaupés make great quantities of string of this and other fibres, twisting it on their breasts or thighs, with great rapidity.
“They have always in their houses a large supply of earthen pots, pans, pitchers, and cooking utensils, of various sizes, which they make of clay from the river and brooks, mixed with the ashes of the caripé bark, and baked in a temporary furnace. They have also great quantities of small saucer-shaped baskets, called ‘Balaios,’ which are much esteemed down the river, and are the subject of a considerable trade.
“Two tribes in the lower part of the river, the Tariános and Tucános, make a curious little stool, cut out of a solid block of wood, and neatly painted and varnished; these, which take many days to finish, are sold for about a pennyworth of fish-hooks.