They were, indeed, received at first with unbounded joy. Those from Peru, says Southey, came from Potosi; and were received at Salta with incredible joy as though they had been angels from heaven. For although the Spaniards were corrupted by plenty of slaves and women whom they had at command, they, nevertheless, regretted the want of that outward religion, the observance of which was so easily made compatible with every kind of vice. At Santiago de Estero, which was then the capital and episcopal city, triumphal arches were erected; the way was strewn with flowers; the governor, with the soldiers and chief inhabitants went out to meet them, and solemn thanksgiving was celebrated, at which the bishop chanted the Te Deum. At Corduba, they met with five brethren of their order who had arrived from Brazil: Leonardo Armenio, the superior, an Italian; Juan Salernio; Thomas Filds, a Scotchman; Estevam de Grao, and Manoel de Ortiga, both Portuguese. The Jesuits found, wherever the Spaniards had penetrated, the Indians groaning under their oppressions and licentiousness, ready to burst out, and take summary vengeance at the first opportunity; and they were on all sides surrounded by tribes of others in a state of hostile irritation, regarding the Spaniards as the most perfidious as well as powerful enemies, from whom nothing was to be hoped, and against whom every advantage was to be seized. Yet amongst these fierce tribes, the Jesuits boldly advanced, trusting to that principle which ought always to have been acted upon by those calling themselves Christians, that where no evil is intended evil will seldom be received. It is wonderful how successful this system was in their hands. With his breviary in his hand, and a cross of six feet high, which served him for a staff, the Jesuit missionary set out to penetrate into some new region. He was accompanied by a few converted Indians who might act as guides and interpreters. They took with them a stock of maize as provision in the wilderness, where the bows of the Indians did not supply them with game; for they carefully avoided carrying fire-arms, lest they should excite alarm or suspicion. They thus encountered all the difficulties of a wild country; climbing mountains, and cutting their way through pathless woods with axes; and at night, if they reached no human habitation, they made fires to keep off the wild beasts, and reposed beneath the forest trees. When they arrived amongst the tribes they sought, they explained through their interpreters, that they came thus and threw themselves into their power, to prove to them that they were their friends; to teach them the arts, and to endow them with the advantages of the Europeans. In some cases they had to suffer for the villanies of their countrymen—the natives being too much exasperated by their wrongs to be able to conceive that some fresh experiment of evil towards them was not concealed under this peaceful shew. But, in the far greater number of cases, their success was marvellous. They speedily inspired the Indians with confidence in their good intentions towards them; for the natives of every country yet discovered, have been found as quick in recognizing their friends as they have been in resenting the injuries of their enemies. The following anecdote given by Charlevoix, is peculiarly indicative of their manner of proceeding.—Father Monroy, with a lay-brother Jesuit, called Juan de Toledo, had at length reached the Omaguacas, whose cacique Piltipicon had once been baptized, but, owing to the treatment of the Spaniards, had renounced their religion, and pursued them with every possible evil; massacred their priests; burnt their churches; and ravaged their settlements. Father Monroy was told that certain and instant death would be the consequence of his appearing before Piltipicon; but armed with all that confidence which Jesus Christ has so much recommended to the preachers of his gospel, he entered the house of the terrible cacique, and thus addressed him: “The good which I desire you, has made me despise the terrors of almost certain death; but you cannot expect much honour in taking away the life of a naked man. If, contrary to my expectation, you will consent to listen to me, all the advantage of our conversation will be yours; whereas, if I die by your hands, an immortal crown in heaven will be my reward.” Piltipicon was so amazed, or rather softened by the missionary’s boldness, that he immediately offered him some of the beer brewed from maize, which the Omaguacas use; and not only granted his request to proceed further up his country, but furnished him with provisions for the journey. The end of it was, that Piltipicon made peace with the Spaniards, and ultimately embraced Christianity, with all his people.
The Jesuits, once admitted by the Indians, soon convinced them that they could have no end in view but their good; and the resistance which they made to the attempts of the Spaniards to enslave them, gave them such a fame amongst all the surrounding nations as was most favourable to the progress of their plans. When they had acquired an influence over a tribe, they soon prevailed upon them to come into their settlements, which they called Reductions, and where they gradually accustomed them to the order and comforts of civilized life. These Reductions were principally situated in Guayra, on the Parana, and in the tract of country between the Parana and the Uruguay, the great river which, descending from the mountains of Rio Grande, runs southward parallel with the Parana, and debouches in the Plata. In process of time they had established thirty of these Reductions in La Plata and Paraguay, thirteen of them being in the diocese of the Assumpcion, besides those amongst the Chiquitos and other nations. In the centre of every mission was the Reduction, and in the centre of the Reduction was a square, which the church faced, and likewise the arsenal, in which all the arms and ammunition were laid up. In this square the Indians were exercised every week, for there were in every town two companies of militia, the officers of which had handsome uniforms laced with gold and silver, which, however, they only wore on those occasions, or when they took the field. At each corner of the square was a cross, and in the centre an image of the Virgin. They had a large house on the right-hand of the church for the Jesuits, and near it the public workshops. On the left-hand of the church was the public burial-ground and the widows’ house. Every necessary trade was taught, and the boys were taken to the public workshops and instructed in such trades as they chose. To every family was given a house, and a piece of ground sufficient to supply it with all necessaries. Oxen were supplied from the common stock for cultivating it, and while this family was capable of doing the necessary work, this land never was taken away. Besides this private property, there were two larger portions, called Tupamba, or God’s Possession, to which all the community contributed the necessary labour, and raised provisions for the aged, sick, widows, and orphans, and income for the public service, and the payment of the national tribute. The boys were employed in weeding, keeping the roads in order, and various other offices. They went to work with the music of flutes and in procession. The girls were employed in gathering cotton, and driving birds from the fields. Every one had his or her proper avocation, and officers were appointed to superintend every different department, and to see that all was going on well in shops and in fields. They had, however, their days and hours of relaxation. They were taught singing, music, and dancing, under certain regulations. On holidays, the men played at various games, shot at marks, played with balls of elastic gum, or went out hunting and fishing. Every kind of art that was innocent or ornamental was practised. They cast bells, and carved and gilded with great elegance. The women, beside their other domestic duties, made pottery, and spun and wove cotton for garments. The Jesuits exported large quantities of the Caa, or Paraguay tea, and introduced valuable improvements in the mode of its preparation.
Such were some of the regulations which the Jesuits had established in these settlements; and notwithstanding the regular system of employment kept up, the natives flocked into them in such numbers, that it required all the ingenuity of the fathers to accommodate them all. The largest of their Reductions contained as many as eight thousand inhabitants; the smallest fifteen hundred; the average was about three thousand. To preserve that purity of morals which was inculcated, it was found necessary to obtain a royal mandate, that no Spaniard should enter these Reductions except when going to the bishop or superior. “And one thing,” says Charlevoix, “greatly to their honour, was universally allowed by all the Europeans settled in South America: the converted Indians inhabiting them, no longer exhibited traces of their former proneness to vengeance, cruelty, and the grosser vices. They were no longer, in any respect, the same men they formerly were. The most cordial love and affection for each other, and charity for all men, delighted all who visited them, the infidels especially, whom their behaviour served to inspire with the most favourable opinion of the Christian religion.” “It is,” he adds, “no ways surprising that God should work such wonders in such pure souls; nor that those very Indians, to whom some learned doctors would not allow reason enough to be received into the bosom of the church, should be at this day one of its greatest ornaments, and perhaps the most precious portion of the flock of Christ.”
There is nothing more wonderful in all the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, than that this beautiful scene of innocence and happiness should have been suffered to be broken in upon by the wolves of avarice and violence, and all dispersed as a morning dream. But the Jesuits, by their advocacy and civilization of these poor people, had raised up against them three hostile powers,—the Spaniards—the man-hunters of Santo Paulo—and political demagogues. The Spaniards soon hated them for standing between them and their victims. They hated them for presuming to tell them that they had no right to enslave, to debauch, to exterminate them. They hated them because they would not suffer them to be given up to them as property—mere live stock—beasts of labour, in their Encomiendas. They regarded them as robbing them of just so much property, and as setting a bad example to the other Indians who were already enslaved, or were yet to be so. They hated them because their refusing them entrance into their Reductions was a standing and perpetual reproof of the licentiousness of their lives. They foresaw that if this system became universal, the very pillars of their indolent and debased existence would be thrown down: “for,” says Charlevoix, “the Spaniards here think it beneath them to exercise any manual employment. Those even who are but just landed from Spain, put every stitch they have brought with them upon their backs, and set up for gentlemen, above serving in any menial capacity.”
Whoever, therefore, sought to seize upon any unauthorized power in the colony, began to flatter these lazy people, by representing the Jesuits as their greatest enemies, who were seeking to undermine their fortunes, and deprive them of the services of the Indians. Such men were, Cardenas the bishop of Assumpcion, and Antequera;—Cardenas, entering irregularly into his office in 1640, and Antequera who was sent as judge to Assumpcion in 1721, more than eighty years afterwards, and who seized on the government itself. Both attacked the Jesuits as the surest means of winning the popular favour. They knew the jealousy with which their civilization of the Indians was regarded, and they had only to thunder accusations in the public ears calculated to foment that jealousy, in order to secure the favour of the people. Accordingly, these ambitious, intriguing, and turbulent persons, made not only South America, but Europe itself ring with alarms of the Jesuits. They contended that they were ruining the growing fortunes of the Spanish states,—that they were aiming at an independent power, and were training the Indians for the purpose of effecting it. They talked loudly of wealthy mines, which the Jesuits worked while they kept their location strictly secret. These mines could never be found. They represented that they dwelt in wealthy cities, adorned with the most magnificent churches and palaces, and lived in a condition the most sensual with the Indians. These calumnies, only too well relished by the lazy and rapacious Spaniards, did not fail of their effect—the Jesuits were attacked in their Reductions, harassed in a variety of modes, and eventually driven out of the country; where circumstances connected with the less worthy members of their order in Europe, added their fatal influence to the odium already existing here. But of that anon.
During their existence in this country, the greatest curse and scourge of their Reductions were the Paulistas, or Man-hunters, of Santo Paulo in Brazil. These people were a colony of Mamelucoes, or descendants of Portuguese and Indians; and a more dreadful set of men are not upon record. Their great business was to hunt for mines, and for Indians. For this purpose they ranged through the interior, sometimes in large troops, armed and capable of reducing a strong town, at others, they were scattered into smaller parties prowling through the woods, and pouncing on all that fell into their clutches. They were fierce, savage, and merciless. They seemed to take a wild delight in the destruction of human settlements, and in the blaze of human abodes. They maintained themselves in the wilds by hunting, fishing, the plunder of the natives; and when that failed, they could subsist on the pine-nuts, and the flour prepared from the carob, or locust-tree, termed by them war-meal.
Their abominable practices had been vehemently denounced by the Jesuits of Santo Paulo, and in consequence they became bitter enemies of the order. One of their favourite stratagems, was to appear in small parties, led by commanders in the habits of Jesuits, in those places which they knew the Jesuits frequented in the hopes of making proselytes. The first thing they did there, was to erect crosses. They next made little presents to the Indians they met; distributed remedies amongst the sick; and as they were masters of the Guarani language, exhorted them to embrace the Christian religion, of which they explained to them in a few words, the principal articles. When they had, by these arts, assembled a great number of them, they proposed to them to remove to some more convenient spot, where they assured them they should want for nothing. Most of these poor creatures permitted themselves to be thus led by these wolves in sheep’s clothing, till the traitors, dropping the mask, began to tie them, cutting the throats of those who endeavoured to escape, and carried the rest into slavery. Some, however, escaped from time to time, and alarmed the whole country. This scheme served two purposes; it for a time procured them great numbers of Indians, and it cast an odium on the Jesuits, to whom it was attributed, which long operated against them. But it was not long that these base miscreants were contented with this mischief. It struck them, that the Reductions of the Jesuits in Guayra, a province adjoining their own, might be made an easy prey; and would furnish them with a rich booty of human flesh at a little cost of labour. They accordingly soon fell upon them, and the relation of the miseries and desolation inflicted on these peaceful and flourishing settlements, as given by Charlevoix, is heart-rending. Nine hundred Mamelucoes, accompanied by two thousand Indians, under one of their most famous commanders Anthony Rasposo, broke into Guayra, and beset the reduction of St. Anthony, which was under the care of Father Mola. They put to the sword all the Indians that attempted to resist; butchered, even at the foot of the altar, such as fled there for refuge; loaded the principal men with chains, and plundered the church. Some of them having entered the missionary’s house, in hopes of a rich booty, finding nothing but a threadbare soutane and a few tattered shirts, told the Indians they must be very foolish to take for masters, strangers who came into their country because they had not wherewith to live in their own; that they would be much happier in Brazil, where they would want for nothing, and would not be obliged to maintain their pastors.
These were, no doubt, fine speeches to be made to people loaded with chains, and whose relatives and countrymen had been but that instant butchered before their eyes. Father Mola in vain threw himself at the commander’s feet; represented to him the innocence and simplicity of these poor Indians; conjured him by all that was most sacred, to set bounds to the fury of the soldiers; and at last, threatened them with the indignation of heaven: but these savages answered him, that it was enough to be baptized again to be admitted into heaven, and that they would make their way into it though God himself should oppose their entrance.[11] They carried away into slavery two thousand five hundred Indians.
Some of the prisoners escaped, and returned to join Father Mola and such of their brethren as had fled to the woods. The father, they found amid the ruins of his Reduction sunk in the deepest sorrow. However, he roused himself and persuaded them to retire with him to the Reduction of the Incarnation. The Reductions of St. Michael and of Jesus-Maria, were speedily treated in the same manner; and they set out for Santo Paulo, driving their victims before them as so many cattle. Nine months the march continued. The merciless wretches urged them forward till numbers fell by the way, worn out with fatigue and famine. The first who gave way were sick women and aged persons; who begged in vain that their husbands, wives, or children, might remain with them in their dying hours. All that could be forced on by goading and blows, were, and when they fell, they were left to perish by the wild beasts. Two Jesuit fathers, Mansilla and Maceta, however, followed their unhappy people, imploring more gentleness towards the failing, and comforting the dying. When Father Maceta first beheld his people chained like galley slaves, he could not contain himself. He ran up to embrace them, in spite of the cocked muskets, with which he was threatened, and volleys of blows poured upon him at every step. Seeing in the throng the cazique Guiravara and his wife chained together, he ran up to the cazique, who before his conversion had used Father Maceta very cruelly, and kissing his chain, told him that he was overjoyed to be able to shew him that he entertained no resentment of his ill usage, and would risk his life to procure his liberty. He procured both their freedom, and that of several other Indians, on promise of a ransom. Thus these noble men followed their captive people through the whole dreadful journey, administering every comfort and hope of final liberation in their power; and their services and sympathy, we may well imagine, were sufficiently needed, for out of the whole number of captives collected in Guayra, fifteen hundred only arrived in life at Santo Paulo.
But the journey of the fathers did not end here. They could get no redress; and therefore hastened to Rio Janeiro; and succeeding no better there, went on to the Bay of All-Saints, to Don Diego Lewis Oliveyra, governor and captain-general of the kingdom. The governor ordered an officer to repair with them to Santo Paulo; but it was too late, the prisoners were distributed far and wide, and the commissary could not or dared not attempt to recall them. News also of fresh enterprises meditated against the Paraguay Reductions, by these hideous man-hunters, made the fathers hasten away to put their brethren upon their guard.