But it was not merely in such peaceful and blessed acts that the Jesuits were obliged to employ themselves. They were soon called upon to save the very colonies from their enemies. The French entered the country, and the native tribes smarting under the wrongs which the Portuguese had heaped plentifully on them, were only too glad to unite with them against their merciless oppressors. The Jesuits defended their own settlements, and then proceeded to give one of the most splendid examples in history of the power there is in Christian principle to suspersede wars, and to extort attention and protection even from men in the fiercest irritation and resentment of injuries. While the Portuguese were making war on the Tamoyos, and other martial tribes, Nobrega denounced their proceedings as heaping injustice upon injustice, for the natives would, he said, trust in the Portuguese if they saw any hope of fair treatment—any safety from the man-hunters. But when the Indians were triumphant, and had surrounded Espirito Santo, and threatened the very existence of the place, Nobrega and Anchieta set sail for that port, everybody looking upon them as madmen rushing upon certain destruction. A more fearful, and to all but that noble faith in truth and justice which is capable of working wonders, a more hopeless enterprise never was undertaken. As they entered the port, a host of war-canoes came out to meet them; but the moment they saw that they were Jesuits, the Indians knew that they came with peaceful intentions, and dropped their hostile attitude. Spite of all the exasperation of their wrongs, and the natural presumption of success, they carried the vessel without injury or insult into port, and listened with attention to the words of the fathers.
For two months these excellent men lived in the midst of those exasperated Indians, nay, one of them remained there alone for a considerable time, labouring to soothe their wrath, to convince them of better treatment, and dispose them to peace. The fiercer natives threatened them daily with death, and with being devoured, but the better spirits and their own blameless lives protected them. They built a little church, and thatched it with palm-leaves, where they preached and celebrated mass daily, and at length effected a peace, and the salvation of the colonies; for they found that a wide-spread coalition was forming amongst the Indian tribes to sweep their oppressors out of the land.
One would have thought that such instances as these of the wisdom and sound policy of virtue, would have been enough to persuade the Portuguese to adopt more righteous measures towards the natives; but avarice and cruelty are not easily eradicated—a famine broke out—they purchased the Indians for slaves with provisions! Nothing can equal the blindness of base minds. Whenever affairs went wrong with them, the Portuguese had recourse to the Jesuits, and the Jesuits by their influence with the Indians, achieved the most signal service for them. They marched against the French, and drove them out. They built towns; they protected the state from hostile tribes. A Jesuit, with his crucifix in his hand, was of more avail at the head of armies than the most able general; but these things once accomplished, all these services were forgotten—the slave-hunters were at work again, and the colonies fell again as rapidly into troubles and consequent decline. By the end of the century, from the discovery of Brazil, the Jesuits had collected all the natives along the coast as far as the Portuguese territories reached, into their aldeas, or villages, and were busy in the work of civilization. Nothing indeed would have been easier than for them to civilize the whole country, had it been possible to civilize the Portuguese first. But their conduct to the natives was but one continued practice of treachery and outrage. When they needed their aid to defend them from their enemies, out marched the natives under their Jesuit leaders, and fought for them; and the first act of the colonists, when the victory was won, was to seize on their benefactors and portion them out as slaves. The man-hunters broke into the villages and carried off numbers, having, in fact, depopulated the whole country besides. There is no species of kidnapping, no burnings of huts, no fomenting of wars between different tribes; no horror, in short, which has made the names of Christians so infamous for the last three hundred years in Africa that had not its parallel then in Brazil.
Besides, for more than a hundred years, Brazil was the constant scene of war and contention between the European powers terming themselves Christian. French, English, and Dutch, were in turn endeavouring to seize upon one part or other of it; and every description of rapine, bloodshed, and treachery which can disgrace nations pretending to any degree of civilization was going on before the eyes of the astonished natives. What notions of Christianity must the Indians have had, when these people called themselves Christians? They saw them assailing one another, fighting like madmen for what in reality belonged to none of them; burning towns, destroying sugar plantations; massacring all, native or colonist, that fell into their hands, or seizing them for slaves. They saw bishops contending with governors, priests contending with one another; they saw their beautiful country desolated from end to end (down to 1664), and every thing which is sacred to heaven or honourable or valuable to men, treated with contempt. —What was it possible for them to believe of Christianity, than that it was some devilish compact, which at once invested men with a terrible power, and with the will to wield it, for the accomplishment of the widest ruin and the profoundest misery?
Through all this, under all changes, whoever were masters, or whoever were contending—the Indians experienced but one lot, slavery and ruin. Laws indeed were repeatedly enacted in Portugal on their behalf—they were repeatedly declared free—but as everywhere else, they were laughed at by the colonists, or resisted with rebellious fury.
Amid this long career of violence, the only thing which the mind can repose on with any degree of pleasure, is the conduct of the Jesuits, the steady friends of justice and the Indians; and towards the latter part of this period there arrived in Maranham one of the most extraordinary men, which not only that remarkable order, but which the world has produced. This was Antonio Vieyra, a young Jesuit, who had left the favour of the king and court, and the most brilliant prospects, for the single purpose of devoting himself to the cause of the Indians. His boldness, his honesty of speech and purpose, his resolute resistance to the system of base oppression, operating through the whole mass of society around him—were perhaps equalled by his fellows; but the greatness of his talents, and the vehement splendour of his eloquence, have few equals in any age. Mr. Southey has given the substance of a sermon preached by him before the governor at St. Lewis, which so startled and moved the whole people, by the novel and fearful view in which he exhibited to them their treatment of the Indians, that with one accord they resolved to set them free.
It is worth while here to give a slight specimen or two of this extraordinary discourse. His text was, the offer of Satan:—“All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”—“Things,” said he, “are estimated at what they cost. What then did the world cost our Saviour, and what did a soul cost him? The world cost him a word—He spoke, and it was made. A soul cost Him his life, and his blood. But if the world cost only a word of God, and a soul cost the blood of God, a soul is worth more than all the world. This Christ thought, and this the devil confessed. Yet you know how cheaply we value our souls? you know at what rate we sell them? We wonder that Judas should have sold his Master and his soul for thirty pieces of silver; but how many are there who offer their own to the devil for less than fifteen! Christians! I am not now telling you that you ought not to sell your souls, for I know that you must sell them;—I only entreat that you will sell them by weight. Weigh well what a soul is worth, and what it cost, and then sell it and welcome! But in what scales is it to be weighed? You think I shall say, In those of St. Michael the archangel, in which souls are weighed. I do not require so much. Weigh them in the devil’s own balance, and I shall be satisfied! Take the devil’s balance in one hand, put the whole world in one scale and a soul in the other, and you will find that your soul weighs more than the world.—‘All this will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’... But at what a different price now does the devil purchase souls from that which he formerly offered for them? I mean in this country. The devil has not a fair in the world where they go cheaper! In the Gospel he offers all the kingdoms of the world to purchase a single soul;—he does not require so large a price to purchase all that are in Maranham. It is not necessary to offer worlds; it is not necessary to offer kingdoms, nor cities, nor towns, nor villages;—it is enough for the devil to point at a plantation, and a couple of Tapuyas, and down goes the man upon his knees to worship him! Oh what a market! A negro for a soul, and the soul the blacker of the two! The negro shall be your slave for the few days you have to live, and your soul shall be my slave through all eternity—as long as God is God! This is the bargain which the devil makes with you.”
Amazing as was the effect of this celebrated sermon, of course it did not last long. But Vieyra did not rest here. He hastened to Portugal, and stated the treatment of the Indians to the king. He obtained an order, that all the Indian settlements in the state of Maranham should be under the direction of the Jesuits; that Vieyra should direct all expeditions into the interior, and settle the reduced Indians where he pleased; and that all ransomed Indians should be slaves for five years and no longer, their labour in that time being an ample compensation for their original cost. Here was a sort of apprenticeship system more favourable than the modern British one, but destined to be just as little observed.