The first reduction was begun in 1609, in the province of Guayará, approximately the present Brazilian territory of Paraná. In 1610 another was inaugurated on the Rio Paranapanema; in 1611 the Reduction of San Ignacio-miní, and, between that year and 1630, eleven others with a total population of about 10,000 Indians. The savages flocked to them from all quarters, for these reservations afforded the only protection from the organized bands of man-hunters who scoured the country — the Mamelukes, as they were called because of their relentless ferocity. They were also described as "Paulistas," probably because they generally foregathered in the district of lower Brazil, known as St. Paul. These wretches, half-breeds or the offscourings of every race, made light of royal decrees or the angry fulminations of helpless governors, and when they could find no victims in the forests, did not hesitate to attack the Reductions themselves. These raids began in 1618. In 1630 alone, according to Huonder (in the Catholic Encyclopedia) no less than 30,000 Indians were either murdered or carried off into slavery in what is now the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.
This led to the great exodus. Father Simon Maceta abandoned the northern or Guayará mission altogether, and taking the survivors of the massacres, along with the Indians who were every day hurrying in from the forests, led them to the stations on the Paraná and Uruguay. It was a difficult journey, and only 12,000 reached their destination, but they served to reinforce the population already there, and in 1648 the Governor of Buenos Aires reported that in nineteen Reductions there was a population of 30,548; by 1677 it had risen to 58,118. He found also that they had determined to live no longer as sheep, waiting to be devoured by the first human wolves that might descend on them, but were fully armed and disciplined by their Jesuit preceptors. Indeed, in 1640 ten years after the Guaraní massacre, they could put a well-trained army in the field, not only against the Mamelukes, but against the Portuguese, who, from time to time, attempted an invasion of Spanish territory from Brazil. This military formation was not only permitted but encouraged by the king. He repeatedly sent the Indians muskets and ammunition, and later they built an armory themselves, and made their own powder. They had their regular drills and sham battles, with both infantry and cavalry, which did splendid service year after year in repelling invasions and suppressing rebellions. Nor did they ever cost the crown a penny for such services. Loyalty to the king was inculcated, and Philip V declared in a famous decree that he had no more faithful subjects than the Indians of Paraguay.
The Indians of the Reductions were taught all the trades, and became carpenters, joiners, painters, sculptors, masons, goldsmiths, tailors, weavers, dyers, bakers, butchers, tanners etc., and their artistic ability is still seen in the ruins of the missions. They were also cultivators and herdsmen, and some of the stations could count as many as 30,000 sheep and 100,000 head of cattle. They built fine roads leading to the other Reductions, and, on the great waterways of the Paraná alone, as many as 2000 boats were employed transporting the merchandise of the various centres. They were, above all, taught their religion, and their morals were so pure that the Bishop of Buenos Aires wrote to the king that he thought no mortal sin was ever committed in the Reductions. The churches occupied the central place in the villages, and their ruins show what architectural works these men of the forest were capable of accomplishing. The streets were laid out in parallel lines, and the principal ones were paved. In course of time the primitive huts were replaced by solid stone houses with tiled roofs, and were so constructed that connecting verandas enabled the people to walk from house to house, under shelter, from one end to the other of the settlement.
The Reductions extended as far as Bolivia on one side, and to northern Patagonia on the other, and from the Atlantic to the Andes. Altogether there were about a hundred of them, and as their formation required the subduing and transforming of the wildest type of savage into a civilized man, it is not surprising that in effecting this stupendous result as many as twenty-nine Jesuits suffered death by martyrdom.
In 1598 the Jesuits Medrano and Figuero were in Nueva Granada or what is now called The United States of Colombia. They also buried themselves in the forests, after having done their best to reform the morals of the colonists at Bogotá. Not that they had abandoned the city; on the contrary, they established a college there in 1604, and others later in Pamplona, Mérida and Honda. At first the natives fled from them in terror, but little by little, the presents which these strange white men pressed on them won their confidence, and helped to persuade them to settle in Reductions. Three of the Fathers lost their lives in that work, devoured by cougars or stung by venomous serpents. Unfortunately, the bishop was persuaded that the Indian settlements were merely mercantile establishments gotten up by the Jesuits for money-making, and all the fruit of many years of dangers and hardships was taken out of their hands and given to others.
There was no one, however, to covet the place of Peter Claver, who was devoting himself to the care of the filthy, diseased, and brutalized negroes who were being literally dumped by tens of thousands in Cartagena, to be sold into slavery to the colonists. He had come out from Spain in 1610, after the old lay-brother, Alfonso Rodriguez, had led him to the heights of sanctity and determined his vocation in the New World. His work was revolting, but Claver loved it, and as soon as a vessel arrived he was on hand with his interpreters. They hurried down into the fetid holds with food, clothing and cordials, which had been begged from the people in the town. It did not worry Claver that the poor wretches were sick with small pox or malignant fevers; he would carry them out on his back, nurse them into health, and even bury them with his own hands when they died. The unfortunate blacks had never seen anything like that before, and they eagerly listened to all he had to say about God, and made no difficulty about being baptized, striving as well as they could to shape their lives along the lines of conduct he traced out for them.
He was on his feet night and day, going from bed to bed in the rude hospitals, with supplies of fruit and wine for the sick. He even brought bands of music to play for them, and showed them pictures of holy scenes in the life of Christ to help their dull intellects to grasp the meaning of his words. No wonder that often when he was among the lepers, who were his especial pets, people saw a bright light shine round him. His biographers tell us that he did not find these ordinary sufferings enough for him, and though he wore a hair-shirt and an iron cross with sharp points all day long, he was scourging himself to blood at night and praying for hours for his negroes. He died on September 8, 1654, and is now ranked among the saints, like his old master, Brother Alfonso.
To the long line of islands, alternately French and English, which form, as it were, the eastern wall of the Caribbean Sea, and are known as the Lesser Antilles, the French Jesuits were sent in 1638. They are respectively Trinidad, Grenada, Saint-Vincent, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and near the northern extremity of the line, one that is of peculiarly pathetic interest, Saint Christopher, or, as it is sometimes popularly called, Saint Kitts. When the French expedition under d'Esnambuc landed at Saint Kitts in 1625, they found the English already in possession, but like sensible men, instead of cutting each other's throats, the two nationalities divided the island between them and settled down quietly, each one attending to its own affairs. In 1635 the French annexed Guadeloupe and Martinique, and, later still, Saint-Croix, Saint-Martin and a few others.
The population of these islands consisted of white settlers and their negro and Indian slaves. They were cared for spiritually by two Dominicans, one of whom, Tertre, has written a history of the islands. But these priests had no intercourse with the savages, whose languages they did not understand, and hence to fill the gap, three Jesuits, one of them a lay-brother, were sent to Martinique, arriving there on Good Friday, 1638. They began in the usual way, namely by martyrdom. Two of them were promptly killed by the savages. Others hurried to carry on their work but many succumbed to the climate, and others to the hardships inseparable from that kind of apostolate. An interesting arrival, though as late as 1674, was that of Father Joseph-Antoine Poncet, one of the apostles of Canada, who is remembered for having brought the great Ursuline, Marie de l'Incarnation, to Quebec, and also for having been tortured by New York Mohawks at the very place where Isaac Jogues had suffered martyrdom a few years before. Poncet was old when he went to Martinique and he died there the following year. The names of de la Barre, Martinière, de Tracy and Iberville, all of them familiar to students of Canadian history, occur in the chronicles of the Antilles.
For people of Irish blood these islands, especially Saint Kitts and Montserrat, are of a thrilling interest. On both of them were found numbers of exiled Irish Catholics held as slaves. As early as 1632 Father White on his way to Maryland saw them at Saint Kitts. He tells us in his "Narrative" that he "stopped there ten days, being invited to do so in a friendly way by the English Governor and two Catholic captains. The Governor of the French colony on the same island treated me with the most marked kindness." He does not inform us whether or not he did any ministerial work with them but in all likelihood he did. He is equally reticent about Montserrat, and contents himself with saying that "it is inhabited by Irishmen who were expelled from Virginia, on account of their Catholic Faith." He remained at Saint Kitts only a day, and on this point his "Relation" is very disappointing. In 1638 the Bishop of Tuam sent out a priest to the island, but he died soon after. He was probably a secular priest, for in the following year the bishop was authorized by Propaganda to send out some religious. But there is no information available about what was done until 1652, when an Irish Jesuit was secured for them. In the "Documents inédits" of Carayon he is called Destriches, which may have been Stritch, but there is no mention of either name in any of the menologies; Hughes, in his "History of the Society of Jesus in North America" (I, 470), calls him Christopher Bathe. He was not, however, the first choice. A Father Henry Malajon had been proposed, but the General did not allow him to go. A Welshman named Buckley was then suggested, but though his application was ratified he never left Europe. Next a Father Maloney offered himself, but was kept in Belgium; finally, however, Father Christopher Bathe or Stritch arrived.