A Vanished Arcadia
Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay
1607 to 1767
By R. B. Cunninghame Graham
Author of "Mogreb-El-Acksa", etc.
With a Map [not included]
I DEDICATE
THIS SHORT ACCOUNT OF
A VANISHED ARCADIA
TO THE AUTHOR OF
`SANTA TERESA, HER LIFE AND TIMES',
BEING CERTAIN THAT
THE LIFE OF ALL SAINTS IS TO THEM AND US AN ARCADIA;
UNKNOWN TO THEM AND TO US VANISHED WITH THEIR LIVES,
YET STILL REMEMBERED, FITFULLY AS ARE THE JESUITS
IN PARAGUAY, BY A FEW FAITHFUL,
WHEN THE ANGELUS WAKES RECOLLECTION IN THE INDIANS' HEARTS.
BUT, THEN, THE ANGELUS (EVEN OF MEMORY)
IS TO THE MOST PART OF MANKIND ONLY
A JANGLING OF AN ANTIQUATED BELL.
Preface
`Historicus nascitur, non fit.' I am painfully aware that neither
my calling nor election in this matter are the least sure. Certain it is
that in youth, when alone the historian or the horseman may be formed,
I did little to fit myself for writing history. Wandering about
the countries of which now I treat, I had almost as little object
in my travels as a Gaucho of the outside `camps'. I never took a note
on any subject under heaven, nor kept a diary, by means of which,
my youth departed and the countries I once knew so well transmogrified,
I could, sitting beside the fire, read and enjoy the sadness of revisiting,
in my mind's eye, scenes that I now remember indistinctly as in a dream.
I take it that he who keeps a journal of his doings, setting down day by day
all that he does, with dates and names of places, their longitude and latitude
duly recorded, makes for himself a meal of bitter-sweet;
and that your truest dulcamara is to read with glasses the faded notes
jotted down hurriedly in rain, in sun, in wind, in camps,
by flooded rivers, and in the long and listless hours of heat --
in fact, to see again your life, as it were, acted for you
in some camera obscura, with the chief actor changed. But diaries,
unless they be mere records of bare facts, must of necessity,
as in their nature they are autobiographical, be false guides;
so that, perhaps, I in my carelessness was not quite so unwise
as I have often thought myself. Although I made no notes of anything,
caring most chiefly for the condition of my horse, yet when I think on them,
pampa and cordillera, virgin forest, the `passes' of the rivers,
approached by sandy paths, bordered by flowering and sweet-smelling trees,
and most of all the deserted Jesuit Missions, half buried
by the vigorous vegetation, and peopled but by a few white-clad Indians,
rise up so clearly that, without the smallest faculty for dealing with that
which I have undertaken, I am forced to write. Flowers, scents,
the herds of horses, the ostriches, and the whole charm of that New World
which those who saw it even a quarter of a century ago saw
little altered from the remotest times, have remained clear and sharp,
and will remain so with me to the end. So to the readers
(if I chance to have them) of this short attempt to give
some faint idea of the great Christian Commonwealth of the Jesuit Missions
between the Parana and Uruguay, I now address myself.
He who attacks a subject quite fallen out of date, and still not old enough
to give a man authority to speak upon it without the fear of contradiction,
runs grave risk.
Gentle, indulgent reader, if so be that you exist in these
the days of universal knowledge and self-sufficient criticism,
I do not ask for your indulgence for the many errors which no doubt
have slipped into this work. These, if you care to take the trouble,
you can verify, and hold me up to shame. What I do crave
is that you will approach the subject with an open mind. Your Jesuit is,
as we know, the most tremendous wild-fowl that the world has known.
`La guardia nera' of the Pope, the order which has wrought
so much destruction, the inventors of `Ciencia media',*
cradle from which has issued forth Molina, Suarez, and all those villains who,
in the days in which the doctrine was unfashionable, decried mere faith,
and took their stand on works -- who in this land of preconceived opinion
can spare it a good word? But, notwithstanding, even a Jansenist, if such
be left, must yet admit the claim of Francis Xavier as a true, humble saint,
and if the sour-faced sectary of Port Royale should refuse, all men of letters
must perforce revere the writer of the hymn.
--
* The doctrine of the `Ciencia Media' occurs in the celebrated
`Concordia gratiae et liberi arbitrii', by Luis de Molina (1588).
The concilium de Auxiliis was held to determine whether or not
`concordia' was possible between freewill and grace. As the Jesuits
stuck by Molina and his doctrines in despite of councils and of popes,
the common saying arose in Spain: `Pasteles en la pasteleria
y ciencia media en la Compan~ia.'
--
But into the whole question of the Jesuits I cannot enter,
as it entails command of far more foot and half-foot words
than I can muster up. Still, in America, and most of all in Paraguay,
I hope to show the Order did much good, and worked amongst the Indians
like apostles, receiving an apostle's true reward of calumny,
of stripes, of blows, and journeying hungry, athirst, on foot,
in perils oft, from the great cataract of the Parana
to the recesses of the Tarumensian woods. Little enough I personally care
for the political aspect of their commonwealth, or how it acted
on the Spanish settlements; of whether or not it turned out profitable
to the Court of Spain, or if the crimes and charges of ambition
laid to the Jesuits' account were false or true. My only interest
in the matter is how the Jesuits' rule acted upon the Indians themselves,
and if it made them happy -- more happy or less happy
than those Indians who were directly ruled from Spain, or through
the Spanish Governors of the viceroyalties. For theories of advancement,
and as to whether certain arbitrary ideas of the rights of man,
evolved in general by those who in their persons and their lives
are the negation of all rights, I give a fico -- yes, your fig of Spain --
caring as little as did ancient Pistol for `palabras',
and holding that the best right that a man can have is to be happy
after the way that pleases him the most. And that the Jesuits
rendered the Indians happy is certain, though to those men who fudge
a theory of mankind, thinking that everyone is forged upon their anvil,
or run out of their own mould, after the fashion of a tallow dip
(a theory which, indeed, the sameness of mankind renders at times
not quite untenable), it seems absurd because the progress of the world
has gone on other lines -- lines which prolonged indefinitely
would never meet those which the Jesuits drew. All that I know
is I myself, in the deserted missions, five-and-twenty years ago
often have met old men who spoke regretfully of Jesuit times,
who cherished all the customs left by the company, and though they spoke
at secondhand, repeating but the stories they had heard in youth,
kept the illusion that the missions in the Jesuits' time had been a paradise.
Into the matter of the Jesuits' motives I do not propose to enter,
holding that the origin of motives is too deeply seated
to be worth inquiry until one has more information about the human mind
than even modern `scientists' seem able to impart. Yet it is certain
the Jesuits in Paraguay had faith fit to remove all mountains,
as the brief stories of their lives, so often ending with a rude field-cross
by the corner of some forest, and the inscription `hic occissus est'
survive to show. Some men -- such is the complexity of human nature --
have undergone trials and persecutions for base motives,
and it is open for anyone to say the Jesuits, as they were Jesuits,
could do nothing good. Still, I believe that Father Ruiz Montoya --
whose story I have told, how falteringly, and with how little justice
to his greatness, none knows better than myself -- was a good man --
that is, a man without ulterior motives, and actuated but
by his love to the poor Indians with whom he passed his life.
To-day, when no one can see good in anything or anybody
outside the somewhat beefy pale of the Anglo-Saxon race, I do not hope
that such a mere dabbler in the great mystery of history as I am myself
will for an instant change one preconceived opinion; for I am well aware
that speeches based on facts are impotent in popular assemblies
to change a single vote.
It is an article of Anglo-Saxon faith that all the Spanish colonies
were mal-administered, and all the Spanish conquerors
bloodthirsty butchers, whose sole delight was blood. This, too,
from the members of a race who . . .; but `In the multitude of the greyhounds
is the undoing of the hare.' Therefore, I ask those who imagine
that all Spaniards at the conquest of America were ruffians,
to consider the career of Alvar Nunez, who also struts through
his brief chapter in the pages of my most imperfect book.
Still, I admit men of the stamp of Alvar Nunez are most rare,
and were still rarer in the sixteenth century; and to find many
of the Ruiz Montoya brand, Diogenes would have needed a lantern
fitted with electric light. In the great controversy which engaged
the pens of many of the best writers of the world last century,
after the Jesuits were expelled from Spain and her colonial possessions
(then almost half the world), it will be found that amongst all the mud
so freely flung about, the insults given and received, hardly anyone
but a few ex-Jesuits had any harm to say of the doings of the Order
during its long rule in Paraguay. None of the Jesuits were ever tried;
no crimes were charged against them; even the reasons for their expulsion
were never given to the world at large. Certain it is
that but a few years after their final exit from the missions
between the Uruguay and Parana all was confusion. In twenty years
most of the missions were deserted, and before thirty years had passed
no vestige of their old prosperity remained.
The semi-communism which the Jesuits had introduced was swept away,
and the keen light of free and vivifying competition (which beats so fiercely
upon the bagman's paradise of the economists) reigned in its stead.
The revenues declined,* all was corruption, and, as the Governor,
Don Juan Jose Vertiz, writes to the Viceroy,** the secular priests
sent by the Government were brawlers, drunkards, and strikers,
carrying arms beneath their cloaks; that robbery was rife;
and that the Indians daily deserted and returned by hundreds to the woods.
--
* Dean Funes, `Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay', etc.,
Buenos Aires, 1816.
** Idem. The letter is dated 1771 and the Jesuits were expelled in 1767.
As the writer of the letter was on the spot in an official position,
and nominated by the very Viceroy who had been the expeller of the Jesuits,
his testimony would seem to be as valuable as that of the ablest theorist
on government, Catholic or Protestant, who ever wrote.
--
All the reports of riches amassed in Paraguay by the Jesuits,
after the expulsion of their order proved to be untrue;
nothing of any consequence was found in any of the towns,
although the Jesuits had had no warning of their expulsion,
and had no time for preparation or for concealment of their gold.
Although they stood to the Indians almost in the light of gods,
and had control of an armed force larger by far than any
which the temporal power could have disposed of, they did not resist,
but silently departed from the rich territories which their care and industry
had formed.
Rightly or wrongly, but according to their lights, they strove to teach
the Indian population all the best part of the European progress of the times
in which they lived, shielding them sedulously from all contact
with commercialism, and standing between them and the Spanish settlers,
who would have treated them as slaves. These were their crimes.
For their ambitions, who shall search the human heart,
or say what their superiors in Europe may, or perhaps may not,
have had in view? When all is said and done, and now their work is over,
and all they worked for lost (as happens usually with the efforts
of disinterested men), what crime so terrible can men commit as to stand up
for near upon two centuries against that slavery which disgraced
every American possession of the Spanish* crown? Nothing is bad enough
for those who dare to speak the truth, and those who put their theories
into practice are a disgrace to progressive and adequately taxed communities.
Nearly two hundred years they strove, and now their territories,
once so populous and so well cultivated, remain, if not a desert,
yet delivered up to that fierce-growing, subtropical American plant life
which seems as if it fights with man for the possession of the land
in which it grows. For a brief period those Guaranis gathered together
in the missions, ruled over by their priests, treated like grown-up children,
yet with a kindness which attached them to their rulers,
enjoyed a half-Arcadian, half-monastic life, reaching to just so much
of what the world calls civilization as they could profit by and use
with pleasure to themselves. A commonwealth where money was unknown
to the majority of the citizens, a curious experiment by self-devoted men,
a sort of dropping down a diving-bell in the flood of progress
to keep alive a population which would otherwise soon have been suffocated
in its muddy waves, was doomed to failure by the very nature of mankind.
Foredoomed to failure, it has disappeared, leaving nothing of a like nature
now upon the earth. The Indians, too, have vanished, gone to that limbo
which no doubt is fitted for them. Gentle, indulgent reader,
if you read this book, doubt not an instant that everything that happens
happens for the best; doubt not, for in so doing you would doubt
of all you see -- our life, our progress, and your own infallibility,
which at all hazards must be kept inviolate. Therefore in my imperfect sketch
I have not dwelt entirely on the strict concatenation
(after the Bradshaw fashion) of the hard facts of the history of the Jesuits.
I have not set down too many dates, for the setting down of dates
in much profusion is, after all, an ad captandum appeal
to the suffrages of those soft-headed creatures who are styled serious men.
--
* This, of course, applies to the possessions of all European States
in America equally with Spain.
--
Wandering along the by-paths of the forests which fringe the mission towns,
and set them, so to speak, in the hard tropical enamel of green foliage,
on which time has no lien, and but the arts of all-destroying man
are able to deface, I may have chanced upon some petty detail which may serve
to pass an hour away.
A treatise of a forgotten subject by a labourer unskilled, and who, moreover,
by his very task challenges competition with those who have written
on the theme, with better knowledge, and perhaps less sympathy;
a pother about some few discredited and unremembered priests;
details about half-savages, who `quoi! ne portaient pas
des haults de chausses'; the recollections of long silent rides
through forest paths, ablaze with flowers, and across which the tropic birds
darted like atoms cut adrift from the apocalypse; a hotch-potch, salmagundi,
olla podrida, or sea-pie of sweet and bitter, with perhaps the bitter
ruling most, as is the way when we unpack our reminiscences --
yes, gentle and indulgent reader, that's the humour of it.
R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
Gartmore,
March 30, 1900.
Contents
Chapter I
Early history -- State of the country -- Indian races -- Characteristics of
the different tribes -- Dobrizhoffer's book -- Various expeditions --
Sebastian Cabot -- Don Pedro de Mendoza -- Alvar Nunez --
His expedition and its results -- Other leaders and preachers --
Founding of the first mission of the Society of Jesus
Chapter II
Early days of the missions -- New settlements founded --
Relations of Jesuits with Indians and Spanish colonists --
Destruction of missions by the Mamelucos -- Father Maceta --
Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya -- His work and influence --
Retreat of the Jesuits down the Parana
Chapter III
Spain and Portugal in South America -- Enmity between
Brazilians and Argentines -- Expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay --
Struggles with the natives -- Father Mendoza killed --
Death of Father Montoya
Chapter IV
Don Bernardino de Cardenas, Bishop of Paraguay -- His labours
as apostolic missionary -- His ambitions and cunning --
Pretensions to saintliness -- His attempts to acquire supreme power --
Quarrels between Cardenas and Don Gregorio, the temporal Governor
Chapter V
Renewal of the feud between the Bishop and Don Gregorio --
Wholesale excommunications in Asuncion -- Cardenas in 1644
formulates his celebrated charges against the Jesuits --
The Governor, after long negotiations and much display of force,
ultimately succeeds in driving out the Bishop -- For three years
Cardenas is in desperate straits -- In 1648 Don Gregorio
is suddenly dismissed, Cardenas elects himself Governor,
and for a short time becomes supreme in Asuncion -- The Jesuits
are forced to leave the town and to flee to Corrientes -- A new Governor
is appointed in Asuncion -- He defeats Cardenas on the field of battle --
The latter is deprived of his power, and dies soon after as Bishop of La Paz
Chapter VI
Description of the mission territory and towns founded by the Jesuits --
Their endeavours to attract the Indians -- Religious feasts and processions
-- Agricultural and commercial organizations
Chapter VII
Causes of the Jesuits' unpopularity -- Description of the lives and habits
of the priests -- Testimony in favour of the missions --
Their opposition to slavery -- Their system of administration
Chapter VIII
Don Jose de Antequera -- Appoints himself Governor of Asuncion --
Unsettled state of affairs in the town -- He is commanded
to relinquish his illegal power -- He refuses, and resorts to arms --
After some success he is defeated and condemned to be executed -- He is shot
on his way to the scaffold -- Renewed hatred against the Jesuits --
Their labours among the Indians of the Chaco
Chapter IX
The Spanish and Portuguese attempt to force new laws on the Indians --
The Indians revolt against them -- The hopeless struggle goes on
for eight years -- Ruin of the missions
Chapter X
Position of the Jesuits in 1761 -- Decree for their expulsion
sent from Spain -- Bucareli sent to suppress the colleges and drive out
the Jesuits -- They submit without resistance -- After two hundred years
they are expelled from Paraguay -- The country under the new rule --
The system of government practically unchanged
Chapter XI
Conclusion
A Vanished Arcadia
Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay
1607 to 1767
Chapter I
Early history -- State of the country -- Indian races -- Characteristics of
the different tribes -- Dobrizhoffer's book -- Various expeditions --
Sebastian Cabot -- Don Pedro de Mendoza -- Alvar Nunez --
His expedition and its results -- Other leaders and preachers --
Founding of the first mission of the Society of Jesus
With the exception of the French Revolution, perhaps no event
caused so much general controversy at the end of the eighteenth century
as the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and Portugal
and their colonial possessions. As no definite charges were ever brought,
at least in Spain, against the members of the Company of Jesus
(King Charles III. having kept the reasons `ocultas y reservadas'
and the proofs `privilegiados'), curiosity is to some extent not satisfied
as to the real reason of their expulsion from the Spanish possessions
in America.
It is almost impossible to understand nowadays the feelings
which possessed the average man in regard to the Jesuits
from the middle of the last century till a relatively short time ago.
All the really great work done by the Society of Jesus
seemed to have been forgotten, and every vulgar fable
which it was possible to invent to their prejudice found ready acceptance
upon every side. Nothing was too absurd to be believed.
From the calumnies of the Jansenists to the follies of Eugene Sue
the mass of accusation, invective, and innuendo kept on increasing
in intensity. Indiscriminate abuse and unreasoning hatred,
mixed with fear, seem to have possessed all minds. Even Pascal
confesses (in a postscript to the ninth Provincial Letter) that
`after having written my letter I read the works of Fathers Barry and Binet.'
If such a man as Pascal could be so grossly unfair as to write a criticism
on works which he had not read, what can be expected from
the non-judicial and uncritical public which takes all upon trust?
From Japan to the interior of Bolivia there is scarcely a country
in which the Jesuits have not laboured assiduously, and in which
they have not shed their blood freely without hope of reward,
yet it would require much time and a lengthy catalogue to enumerate
the list of satirical and calumnious works which have appeared against them
in almost every language in Europe. Of these, perhaps the most celebrated
is the well-known `Monarquia de los Solipsos',* by Padre Melchior Inshoffer,
an ex-Jesuit, who describes the company in the worst possible terms.
It is interesting chiefly on account of the portraits of well-known
people of the time (1615 to 1648), as Pope Clement VIII., Francisco Suarez,
Claudio Aquaviva, and others, veiled under easily distinguishable pseudonyms.
The object of the writer, as the title indicates, is to show that the Jesuits
endeavoured to turn all to their own profit. In this, if it was the case,
they do not seem to have been greatly different from every other associated
body of men, whether lay or clerical. The celebrated Spanish proverb,
`Jesuita y se ahorca, cuenta le hace', meaning, Even if a Jesuit is hung
he gets some good out of it, may just as well be applied
to members of other learned professions as to the Jesuits.
--
* Madrid, 1770.
--
The world has rarely persecuted any body of men conspicuous by its poverty,
or if it has done so has rarely persecuted them for long.
The Inquisition of Spain, violent against the wealthy Jews
and comfortable Moriscos, took little notice of the Gipsies;
but, then, `Pobre como cuerpo de Gitano' was and is a common saying in Spain.
As in the case of the Templars, persecution only began against the Jesuits
when it became worth while to persecute them. Ignatius Loyola,
Francisco Xavier, and Diego Lainez, as long as they
confined themselves to preaching and to teaching, were safe enough.
Even the annals of theological strife, bloodthirsty and discreditable
to humanity as they are, contain few examples of persecutors
such as Calvin or Torquemada, to whom, ruthless as they were
in their savage and narrow malignity and zeal for what they thought the truth,
no suspicion of venal motives is attributed.
Of the Jesuits' intrigues, adventures, rise and fall in Europe,
much may be said in attack or in extenuation; but it is not
the intention of the present work to deal with this aspect of the question.
It was in Spanish America, and especially in Paraguay and Bolivia,
where the policy of the Company in regard to savage nations
was most fully developed, as it was only the Jesuits who ever succeeded
in reclaiming any large number of the nomad or semi-nomad tribes
of those countries.
Many excellent works in French, and the celebrated `Christianismo Felice
nel Paraguay' of the Abbate Muratori in Italian, certainly exist.
But neither Father Charlevoix, the French historian of the missions,
nor Muratori was ever in Paraguay, and both their books contain
the faults and mistakes of men, however excellent and well intentioned,
writing of countries of which they were personally ignorant.
Both give a good account of the customs and regimen of the missions,
but both seem to have believed too readily fabulous accounts
of the flora and fauna of Paraguay.* The fact of having listened too readily
to a fable about an unknown animal in no way detracts from
the general veracity of an author of the beginning of the eighteenth century,
for in all other respects except natural history Charlevoix keeps
within the bounds of probability, though of course as a Jesuit
he holds a brief for the doings of the Company in Paraguay.
Muratori is more rarely led into extravagances, but is concerned in the main
with the religious side of the Jesuits, as the title of his book indicates.
Many other French writers, as Raynal, Montesquieu, and Voltaire,
have treated of Paraguay under Jesuit rule, but their writings are founded
on hearsay evidence. A German, Father Dobrizhoffer, stands alone.*
His delightful `History of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay',
is perhaps the most charming book dealing with the subject.
A simple and easy style, a keen habit of observation,
long acquaintance with the country, a zeal for the conversion of the infidel,
not only to Christianity, but to a more comfortable mode of life,
to which he adds a faith sufficient to move the Cordillera of the Andes,
but at the same time restricted by a common-sense and veracity
not always observable in religious writers, render Dobrizhoffer
a personal friend after the perusal of his writings.
--
* Dobrizhoffer's book was written in Latin, and printed in Vienna in 1784
under the title of `Historia de Abiponibus', etc. A German translation
by Professor Keil was published at Pesth in the same year.
The English translation is of the year 1822.
--
English is singularly barren in regard to the Jesuits in Paraguay.
Father Falconer, an English Jesuit, has left a curious and interesting book
(printed at Hereford in 1774), but he treats exclusively of what is now
the province of Buenos Ayres, the Falkland Islands, and of Patagonia.
As an Englishman and a Jesuit (a somewhat rare combination
in the eighteenth century), and as one who doubtless knew
many of the Paraguayan priests, his testimony would have been most important,
especially as he was a man of great information, much education,
an intrepid traveller, and, moreover, only entered the Company of Jesus
at a comparatively advanced age.
It is in Spanish, or in Latin by Spanish authors, that the greater portion
of the contemporary histories and accounts are to be found.*
Literatures, like other things, have their times of fashion.
At one time a knowledge of Spanish was as requisite as
some tincture of French is at present, and almost as universal.
Men from Germany, England, and Holland who met in a foreign country
communicated in that language. In the early portion of the century
Ticknor, Prescott, and Washington Irving rendered Spanish literature
fashionable to some degree.
--
* It is to be remembered that the Spanish colonists were as a rule
antagonistic to the Jesuits, and that, therefore, Spanish writers
do not of necessity hold a brief for the Jesuits in Paraguay.
Moreover, the names of Esmid (Smith), Fildo (Fields), Dobrizhoffer,
Cataldini and Tomas Bruno (Brown, who is mentioned as being
`natural de Yorca'), Filge, Limp, Pifereti, Enis, and Asperger,
the quaint medical writer on the virtues of plants found
in the mission territory, show how many foreign Jesuits were actually
to be found in the reductions of Paraguay. For more information
on this matter see the `Coleccion de Documentos relativos a/ la Expulsion
de los Jesuitas de la Republica Argentina y Paraguay',
published and collected by Francisco Javier Brabo, Madrid, 1872.
--
Later the historical researches of Sir William Stirling Maxwell
drew some attention to it. To-day hardly any literature of Europe
is so little studied in England. Still leaving apart
the purely literary treasures of the language, it is in Spanish,
and almost alone in Spanish, that the early history of America is to be found.
After the struggle for independence which finished about 1825,
some interest was excited in the Spanish-American countries,
stimulated by the writings of Humboldt; but when it became apparent
that on the whole those countries could never be occupied
by Northern Europeans, interest in them died out except for purposes connected
with the Stock Exchange. Yet there is a charm which attaches to them
which attaches to no other countries in the world. It was there
that one of the greatest dramas, and certainly the greatest adventure
in which the human race has engaged, took place. What Africa has been
for the last twenty years, Spanish America was three hundred years ago,
the difference being that, whereas modern adventure in Africa
goes on under full observation, and deals in the main with absolutely
uncivilized peoples, the conquest of South America was invested
with all the charm of novelty, and brought the conquerors into contact with
at least two peoples almost as advanced in most of the arts of civilization
as they were themselves.
When first Sebastian Cabot and Solis ascended the Parana,
they found that the Guaranis of Paraguay had extended
in no instance to the western shore of either of those rivers.
The western banks were inhabited then, as now, by the wandering Indians
of the still not entirely explored territory of the Gran Chaco.
Chaco* is a Quichua Indian word meaning `hunting' or `hunting-ground',
and it is said that after the conquest of Peru the Indian tribes
which had been recently subjugated by the Incas took refuge
in this huge domain of forest and of swamp.
--
* The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in his `Commentarios Reales' (en Madrid 1723,
en la oficina Real y a/ costa de Nicholas Rodriguez Franco,
Impressor de libros, se hallaran en su casa en la calle
de el Poc,o y en Palacio), derives the word from
the Quichua `Chacu/' = a surrounding. If he is right, it would then be
equivalent to the Gaelic `tinchel'. Taylor, the Water-poet,
has left a curious description of one of these tinchels.
It was at a tinchel that the rising under the Earl of Mar in the '15
was concocted.
--
Be that as it may, the Chaco Indians of to-day, comprising the remnants
of the Lulis, Tobas, Lenguas, Mocobios, and others, are almost as savage
as when first we hear of them in the pages of Alvar Nunez
and Hulderico Schmidel. These tribes the Jesuits on many occasions
attempted to civilize, but almost entirely without success, as the long record
of the martyrdom of Jesuit missionaries in the Chaco proves,
as well as the gradual abandonment of their missions there,
towards the second half of the eighteenth century.
Certain it is that at various places in the Chaco, in the quaint old maps
the Jesuits have left us, one reads `Mission de Santa Cruz de los Vilelas',
`Mission de la Concepcion de los Frontones', and others; but much
more frequently their maps are studded with crosses, and some such legend
as `Hic occisi sunt PP. Antonius Salinus et Petrus Ortiz Zarate'.*
It was only when the Jesuits encountered the more peaceful Guaranis
that they met with real success.
--
* See the curious map contained in the now rare work of P. Pedro Lozano,
entitled, `Descripcion Chorographica . . . del Gran Chaco, Gualamba', etc.
Also in the interesting collection of old maps published in 1872 at Madrid
by Francisco Javier Brabo.
--
What was the nature of their success, how durable it was,
what were the reasons which caused the expulsion of the order from America,
and especially from Paraguay, and what has been the result upon
the remainder of the Indians, it is my object to endeavour to explain.
A long residence in the river Plate, together with two visits to Paraguay,
in one of which I saw almost all the remnants of the Paraguayan missions
and a few of those situated in the province of Corrientes,
and in the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul, have given me
some personal acquaintance with the subject.*
--
* It is, of course, to be taken into consideration that my two journeys
in Paraguay were made after the great war which terminated in 1870,
after lasting four years; but the writings of Demersay
(`Histoire du Paraguay et des E/tablissements des Je/suites',
Paris, 1862), those of Brabo, and of Azara, show the deserted state
of the district of Misiones in the period from 1767,
the date of the expulsion of the Jesuits, to the middle of
the nineteenth century.
--
The actual condition of the rich district of Misiones (Paraguay)
at the time I visited it, shortly after the conclusion of the great war
between Paraguay and Brazil in 1870, does not enable me
to speak with authority on the condition of communities,
the guiding spirits of which were expelled as far back as the year 1767.
The actual buildings of the missions, the churches in a dismantled state,
have indeed survived; in many instances the tall date-palms
the Jesuits planted still wave over them. Generally the college was occupied
by the Indian Alcalde, who came out to meet the visitor on a horse
if he possessed one, with as much silver about the bridle and stirrups
as he could afford, clothed in white, with a cloak of red baize,
a large `jipi-japa' hat, and silver spurs buckled on his naked feet.
If he had never left the mission, he talked with wonder and respect
of the times of the Jesuits, and at the `oracion' knelt down
to pray wherever the sound of the angelus might catch him.
His children before bedtime knelt all in a row to ask his blessing.
If he had been to Asuncion, he probably remarked that the people
under those accursed priests were naught but animals and slaves,
and launched into some disquisition he had heard in the solitary cafe
which Asuncion then boasted. In the latter case, after much
of the rights of man and the duties of hospitality, he generally presented you
with a heavy bill for Indian corn and `pindo'* which your horse had eaten.
In the former, usually he bade you go with God, and, if you spoke of payment,
said: `Well, send me a book of Hours when you get to Asuncion.'
--
* `Cocos Australis'.
--
Of Indians, hardly any were left to judge of, for in the villages in which,
according to the reports furnished to Bucareli, the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres
at the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits, the population numbered
in the thirty towns of the missions one hundred and twenty thousand,*
a population of at most twenty thousand was to be found.
On every side the powerful vegetation had covered up the fields.
On ruined church and chapel, and on broken tower, the lianas climbed
as if on trees, creeping up the belfries, and throwing
great masses of scarlet and purple flowers out of the apertures
where once were hung the bells. In the thick jungles a few half-wild cattle
still were to be found. The vast `estancias', where once
the Jesuits branded two and three thousand calves a year,
and from whence thousands of mules went forth to Chile and Bolivia,
were all neglected. Horses were scarce and poor, crops few and indifferent,
and the plantations made by the Jesuits of the tree (`Ilex Paraguayensis')
from which is made the `yerba mate', were all destroyed.
--
* See the reports of the Marques de Valdelirios and others
in the publications of Francisco Javier Brabo, Madrid, 1872,
and in the `Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay,
Buenos-Ayres y Tucuman', por Dr. Don Gregorio Funes, Buenos Ayres, 1816.
--
In the vast forests, stretching to the Salto de Guayra,
a few scattered tribes, known as Caaguas, roamed through the thickets,
or encamped upon the streams. In the thirty towns,
once full of life and stir, in every one of which there was a church,
finer, as an old Spanish writer says, than any in Buenos Ayres,
there was naught but desolation and despair. The Indians either
had returned into the woods, been killed in the ceaseless revolutionary wars,
or had been absorbed into the Gaucho populations of Corrientes, Rio Grande,
Entre Rios, and of Santa Fe.
It may be that all Indian races are destined to disappear
if they come into contact with Europeans; certainly, experience would seem
to confirm the supposition. The policy of the Jesuits, however,
was based on isolation of their missions, and how this might have worked
is matter at least for speculation. It was on account of the isolation
which they practised that it was possible for the extravagant calumnies
which were circulated as to their rule and riches to gain belief.
It was on account of isolation that the first conflicts arose
betwixt them and the authorities, both clerical and lay. That the Jesuits
were more highly esteemed than the other religious orders in Spanish America
in the seventeenth century, the saying current in those days,
`Los demas van a/ un~a, los Jesuitas a/ una' -- i.e., The others get
all they can, but the Jesuits have one aim (the conversion of the Indians) --
seems to show.
It is not my purpose to deal with the probable reasons
which induced their expulsion in Europe. Suffice it to say that,
whatever crimes or misdemeanours they were guilty of,
they were never called on to answer before any tribunals,
and that in many instances they were treated, especially in Portugal,
with great cruelty and injustice.
The burning, at the age of eighty, of the unfortunate Malagrida in Lisbon
under the auspices of Pombal, for a book which it seems improbable
he could have written in prison at so great an age, and which, moreover,
was never brought into court, only supposed extracts from it being read,
may serve as an example. In order clearly to understand
the position of the Jesuits in America, and especially
in Paraguay and Bolivia, it is necessary to glance briefly
at the history of the first conquest of the river Plate.
The discovery of America opened up to Europe, and especially to Spain,
opportunities for expansion of national territory and individual advancement
which no epoch, either before or since, has equalled.
From a cluster of small States, struggling for existence
against a powerful enemy on their own soil, in a few years
Spain became the greatest empire of the world. The result was that
a spirit of adventure and a desire to grow rich speedily possessed
all classes. In addition to this, every Spaniard in America
during the first few years of the conquest seemed to consider himself,
to some extent, not only as a conqueror, but also as a missionary.
Now, missionaries and conquerors are men, on the whole, more imbued with
their own importance and sanctity, and less disposed to consider consequences,
than almost any other classes of mankind. The conjunction of the two in one
disposed the `conquistadores' of America to imagine that,
no matter how cruel or outrageous their treatment of the Indians was,
they atoned for all by the introduction of what they considered
the blessing of the knowledge of the true faith. It will be
seen at once that, if one can determine with accuracy
which of the many `faiths' preached about the world is actually
the true faith, a man who is in possession of it is acting properly
in endeavouring to diffuse it. The meanest soldier in the various armies
which left Spain to conquer America seems to have had no doubt
about the matter.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who, as he himself relates,
came to America at the age of eighteen, and therefore could have had
little previous opportunity of studying theology, and who, moreover,
was unfitted to do so by the want of knowledge of Latin, to which
he himself confesses, yet at the end of his history of the conquest of Mexico,
one of the most interesting books ever written, has the following passage:
`But it is to be noted that, after God, it was we, the real conquerors,
who discovered them [the Indians] and conquered them; and from the first
we took away their idols, and taught them our holy doctrine,
and to us is due the reward and credit of it all, before any other people,
even though they be churchmen: for when the beginning is good,
the middle and ending is good, which the curious [i.e., attentive] reader
may see in the Christian polity and justice which we showed them in New Spain.
`And I will leave the matter, and tell the other benefits which, after God,
by our agency, came to the natives of New Spain.'*
--
* Bernal Diaz, `Historia de la Conquista de la Nueva Espan~a',
vol. iv., cap. 207, Madrid, 1796.
--
One would imagine, on reading the above extract, Bernal Diaz had never
killed an Indian in his life, and that he had sacrificed his prospects
in coming to Mexico solely to introduce `a Christian polity and justice'
amongst the inhabitants. Yet he was no hypocrite, but a stout
sagacious soldier, even kindly, according to his lights,
and with a love of animals uncommon in a Spaniard, for he has preserved
the names and qualities of all the horses and mares which came over
in the fleet from the Havana with Cortes.* The phrase, `despues de Dios'
(after God) occurs repeatedly in the writings of almost all
the `conquistadores' of America. Having, after God, conquered America,
the first action of the conquerors was to set about making their fortunes.
In those countries which produced gold and silver, as Mexico and Peru,
they worked the mines by the labour of the Indians,
the cruelties and hardships being so great that, in a letter of Philip II. to
the Come de Chinchon, the Viceroy of Peru, dated Madrid, April 30, 1639,
written fifty years after the discovery, he says: `These Indians flee,
become ill, and die, and have begun to diminish greatly in number,
and they will be finished soon unless an efficient remedy
is provided shortly.'
--
* Especially noting down the appearance and qualities of `el caballo Motilla',
the horse of Gonzalo de Sandoval. Thus does he minutely describe Motilla,
`the best horse in Castille or the Indies'. `El mejor caballo,
y de mejor carrera, revuelto a/ una mano y a\ otra que decian
que no se habia visto mejor en Castilla, ni en esa tierra
era castan~o acastan~ado, y una estrella en la frente,
y un pie izquierdo calzado, que se decia el caballo Motilla;
e/ quando hay ahora diferencia sobre buenos caballos,
suclen decir es en bondad tan bueno como Motilla.'
--
In Paraguay there were no mines, but there were other methods
of extracting money from the Indians. At the first conquest
Paraguay was not the little country bounded on the west by the Paraguay,
on the south by the Parana, on the north by the Aquidaban,
and on the east by Sierra of Mbaracavu, as it is at present.
On the contrary, it embraced almost all that immense territory
known to-day as the Argentine Confederation, some of the Republic of Uruguay,
and a great portion of Brazil, embracing much of the provinces of Misiones,
Rio Grande do Sul, Parana, and Matto Grosso, as well as Paraguay itself.
How the little country, twelve hundred miles from the sea,
came to give its name to such an enormous territory, and to have
the seat of government at Asuncion, demands some explanation.
Peru and Chile were discovered and occupied some time before
the eastern side of South America. Their riches naturally drew
great attention to them; but the voyage, first to Cartagena de Indias,
and then across the isthmus, and the re-embarkation again on the Pacific,
were both costly and arduous. It had been the ambition of all explorers
to discover some river which would lead from the Atlantic
to the mines of Peru and what is now Bolivia, then known as Alta Peru.
Of course, this might have been achieved by ascending the Amazon,
especially after the adventurous descent of it by Orellana,
of which Fray Gaspar de Carbajal has left so curious a description;
but, whether on account of the distance or for some other reason,
it never seems to have been attempted.
In 1526 Sebastian Cabot left Spain with three small vessels and a caravel
for the object of reaching the Moluccas or Spice Islands.
It was his purpose to reach them through the Straits of Magellan.
Being compelled by want of supplies to abandon his route, he entered
a broad estuary, and ascended it under the impression that he had discovered
another channel to the Pacific. He soon found his mistake,
and began to explore the surrounding country. Fifteen years before,
with the same object, Juan de Solis had entered the same estuary.
On the island of Martin Garcia he was killed by a Chana Indian,
and his expedition returned home. Hearing that there was much silver
at the head-waters, he had called it the Rio de la Plata.
If we take the head-waters of the river Plate to be situated in Bolivia,
there certainly was much silver there; but Cabot was unaware
that the head-waters were above two thousand miles from the estuary,
and he was not destined to come near them. He did go as far
as a point on the river Caracara, in what is now the province of Santa Fe,
and there he built a fort which he named Espiritu Santo,
the first Spanish settlement in that part of America.
Whilst at Espiritu Santo, several exploring parties were sent
to scour the country. One of them, under a soldier of the name of Cesar,
never returned. Tradition, always eager to make up to history
for its want of interest, asserted that after marching for years
they reached a city. Perhaps it was the mystic Trapalanda of which
the Gauchos used to discourse at night when seated round a fire of bones
upon the pampa. Perhaps some other, for enchanted cities and Eldorados
were plentiful in those days in America, alternating with occasional empires,
as that of Puytita, near the Laguna de los Xarayes, Manoa,
and the Ciudad de los Cesares, supposed to be situated near Arauco
in the Chilian Andes. However, one of the party actually returned
after years, and related his adventures to Ruy Diaz de Guzman,*
the first historian of Paraguay. Thus it was that the stream of adventurers
was ever seeking for a channel to the mines of Peru from the Atlantic coast.
Cabot appears to have ascended the Parana to the island of Apipe,
and then, returning, entered the river Paraguay. Having ascended
past what is now Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, Cabot encountered
Indians from the north who told him of the mines in Peru and in Bolivia,
probably unaware that Cabot knew of them already. At this point,
encouraged by what he heard, he gave the name of Rio de la Plata
to what had previously been known either as La Mar Dulce or El Rio de Solis.
Like most names which are wrongly given, it remained to testify
to the want of knowledge of the giver. Four years after, Cabot returned
to Spain, having failed to attract attention to his discoveries.
In the face of the wealth which was pouring in from the Peruvian mines,
another expedition started for the river Plate. Its General -- for in Spain
the title was used indifferently by land and sea -- was Don Pedro de Mendoza,
a gentleman of Guadix in Almeria, and a member of the household of Charles V.
--
* `La Argentina', included in the `Coleccion de Angelis', Buenos Ayres, 1836.
--
Don Pedro had seen service in the Italian wars, and seems to have been
a man of character and bravery, but wanting in the discretion
and the necessary tact essential in the founder of a colony.
In 1534 the expedition started, unfortunate almost from the first.
In a `certain island', as the historian of the expedition, Hulderico Schmidel,
a German or Flemish soldier, calls Rio Janeiro, a dispute occurred
between Don Pedro and his second in command, Juan de Osorio.
At a court-martial held upon Osorio, Don Pedro appears to have let fall
some remarks which Juan de Ayolas, the Alguazil Mayor (Chief Constable),
seems to have taken up as an order for instant execution.
This he performed upon the spot, plunging his dagger repeatedly into Osorio,
or, as Hulderico Schmidel has it, `sewing him up with cuts'
(`cosiendole a\ pun~aladas'). This murder or execution -- for who
shall tell when murder finishes and its legal counterpart begins? --
rendered Don Pedro very unpopular with all the fleet; for, as Schmidel has it
in his history,* `the soldiers loved Osorio.' To be loved by the soldiers
was the only chance a Spanish officer had in those times of holding his own.
Both Schmidel and Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who had both been common soldiers,
and who, curiously, both wrote histories, lose no occasion of vilifying
officers who used the soldiers hardly. It is true that Bernal Diaz
(who, unlike Schmidel, was a man of genius) does so with some discretion,
and always apparently with reason. Schmidel, on the other hand,
seems to have considered that any officer who interfered
between the soldiers and the Indians was a tyrant, and hence
his denunciation of Alvar Nunez, under whom he served.
--
* `Historia y Descubrimiento de el Rio de la Plata y Paraguay',
Hulderico Schmidel, contained in the collection made
by Andres Gonzalez Barcia, and published in 1769 at Madrid
under the title of `Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales'.
--
In 1535 the expedition entered the river Plate. Here Mendoza,
with his usual want of judgment, pitched upon what is now
the site of Buenos Ayres as the spot on which to found his colony.
It would be difficult to select a more inconvenient place
in which to found a town. The site of Buenos Ayres is almost level
with the waters of the river Plate, which there are shallow --
so shallow that large vessels could not approach nearer
than ten to fifteen miles. Without a harbour, the anchorage was exposed
to the full fury of the south-west gales, known as `pamperos'.
However, if the site was bad the air was good; at least, it seems so,
for a captain of the expedition exclaimed on landing, `Que buenos aires
son estos!' and hence the name. Here every sort of evil chance
came on the newborn colony. The Pampa Indians, whom the historian Schmidel
seems to have only known by their Guarani name of Querandis,
at first were friendly. After a little while they ceased to bring provisions,
and the General sent out an expedition to compel them under his brother,
Don Diego de Mendoza. It does not seem to have occurred
to Don Pedro de Mendoza that, had the `cacique' of the Querandis
landed in Spain, no one would have brought him provisions for a single day
without receiving payment. However, Don Pedro* had come to America
to introduce civilization and Christianity, and therefore,
knowing, like Bernal Diaz and the other conquerors, his own moral worth,
was justly indignant that after a day or two the Indians
refused him more supplies. In the encounter which took place
between the Spaniards and the Indians, Don Diego de Mendoza was slain,
and with him several others. Here for the first time we hear of the bolas,
or three stones united, like a Manxman's legs, with strips of hide,
with which, as Hulderico Schmidel tells us, the Indians caught the horses
by the legs and threw them down. After this foretaste of European justice,
the Indians besieged the newly-built town and brought it to great straits,
so much so that, after three men had been hung for stealing a horse,
in the morning it was discovered they had been cut down and eaten.
In this desperate state Don Pedro despatched Juan de Ayolas to get supplies.
He, having obtained some maize from the Timbu Indians, returned,
leaving a hundred of his men in a little fort, called Corpus Christi,
close to Espiritu Santo, the fort which Cabot had constructed.
The friendliness of the Timbus induced Don Pedro to abandon Buenos Ayres
and move to Corpus Christi. There he repaired with about five hundred men,
all who remained of the two thousand six hundred and thirty
with which he sailed from Cadiz. The horses he abandoned on the pampa;
there they became the ancestors of the innumerable herds which at one time
overspread the Argentine Republic from the Chaco to Patagonia,
and whose descendants to this day stock the `estancias' of that country.**
--
* The great Las Casas, who made seven voyages from America to Spain
-- the last at the age of seventy-two -- to protect the Indians,
had a strong opinion about `conquerors' and `conquests'.
In the dedication of his great treatise on the wrongs of the Indians,
he says: `Que no permita (Felipe II.) las atrocidades
que los tiranos inventaron, y que prosiguen haciendo
con titulo de "conquistas". Los que se jactan de ser "conquistadores"
a que descienden de ellos son muchomas orgullosos arrogantes y vanos
que los otros Espan~oles.' Strange that even to-day
the same `atrocidades' of `tiranos' are going on in Africa.
No doubt the descendants of these `conquerors' will be
as arrogant, proud, and vain as the descendants of the `conquistadores'
of whom Las Casas writes.
** Mendoza left (`Azara Apuntamientos para la Historia Natural
de los Quadrupedes del Paraguay', etc.) five mares and seven horses
in the year 1535. In 1580 Don Juan de Garay, at the second founding
of the city, already found troops of wild horses. The cattle increased
to a marvellous extent, and by the end of the century
were wild in Patagonia. Sarmiento (`Civilisation et Barbarisme')
says that early in this century they were often killed by travellers,
who tethered their horses to the carcasses to prevent them
from straying at night.
--
From Corpus Christi Juan de Ayolas was sent out to explore the river,
and try to find the long-sought-for waterway to the Peruvian mines.
He never reached Peru, and Corpus Christi never saw him return.
Mendoza waited a year, and then returned to Spain, leaving his garrison
with provisions for a year, the bread* `at the rate of (`a/ razon de')
a pound a day, and if they wanted more to get it for themselves.'
On the passage home he died insane. The pious were of opinion
that it was a judgment on him for the murder of Don Juan Osorio.
Before he embarked, Don Pedro had despatched a relative, Gonzalo de Mendoza,
to Spain to bring provisions and recruits. Gonzalo, having obtained
provisions in Brazil, returned to Corpus Christi; thence in company
with Salazar de Espinosa he headed an expedition up the river
in search of Juan de Ayolas, who had been appointed successor to Don Pedro.
With them went Domingo Martinez de Irala, a man destined to play a great part
in the conquest of Paraguay.
--
* Hulderico Schmidel, `Historia del Descubrimiento de el Rio de la Plata
y Paraguay'.
--
The expedition went up the Paraguay to a place near Fort Olimpo
(21 Degrees long., 58 Degrees lat.) about a hundred leagues above Asuncion.
Here they sent out exploring parties in all directions to seek Ayolas,
but without success. Irala remained with one hundred men at Fort Olimpo.
Gonzalo de Mendoza on his return, being attracted by the sight of a fine site
for a town, landed, and on the fifteenth day of August, 1537,
founded Asuncion. Here the Spaniards first met the Guaranis,
who were destined in after-years to be the converts of the Jesuits,
and be assembled by them in their famous missions.
`At the discovery of America,' says Felix de Azara in his
`Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay', `the Guaranis were spread
from the Guianas to the shores of the river Plate, and occupied
all the islands of the Parana extending up to latitude 20 Degrees
on the Paraguay, but without crossing either that river or the river Plate.'
They had also a few towns in the province of Chiquitos,
and the nation of the Chiriguanas was an offshoot from them.
In Brazil they were soon all either rendered slaves or so crossed
with the African negro that the pure race has been almost entirely lost,
though the language remains under the name of the Lingoa Geral,
and many words from it have been introduced into Portuguese
spoken by the Brazilians, as `capim', grass; `caipira', half-caste, etc.
In fact, so great is the number of these words, idioms, phrases,
and terms of speech derived from Guarani, that Dr. Baptista de Almeida,
in his preface to his grammar published at Rio Janeiro (1879), computes that
there are more words derived from Guarani than even from Arabic
in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil.* The Guaranis in Brazil
were known either as Tupis, from the word `tupy',** savage, or Tupinambas,
from `tupynamba', literally, the savage or indigenous men.
--
* Perhaps the two most important works upon the language
are the `Tesoro de la Lengua Guarani', by Ruiz de Montoya,
Madrid, 1639 (it is dedicated to the `Soberana Virgen');
and the `Catecismo de la Lengua Guarani', by Diego Diaz de la Guerra,
Madrid, An~o de 1630. He also wrote a `Bocabulario y Arte
de la Lengua Guarani'.
** P. Guevara, in his `Historia del Paraguay', relates a curious story
which he said was current amongst the Indians. Two brothers,
Tupi and Guarani, lived with their families upon the sea-coast of Brazil.
In those days the world was quite unpopulated but by themselves.
They quarrelled about a parrot, and Tupi with his family went north,
and populated all Brazil; whilst Guarani went west,
and was the ancestor of all the Indians of the race of Guaranis.
--
Jean de Lery, the well-known Huguenot pastor and friend of Calvin,
passed a year on the coast of Brazil about 1558, having accompanied
the expedition of the famous Villegagnau. In his book
(`Histoire d'un Voyage faict en la Terre du Brezil') he always
refers to the Indians as Toupinaubaoults, and has preserved
many curious details of them before they had had much contact with Europeans.
He appears to have had a considerable acquaintance with the language,
and has left some curious conversations `en langage sauvage et Franc,ais',
in which he gives some grammatical rules. The language of conversation
is almost identical with that of Paraguay, though some words are used
which are either peculiar to the Tupis or obsolete in Paraguay to-day.
His account of their customs tallies with that of the various
Spanish writers and explorers who have written on the subject.
Tobacco, which seems to have been known under the name of `nicotiane' to Lery,
he finds in Brazil under the name of `petun', the same name
by which it is called in Paraguay at present. He believed
that `petun' and `nicotiane' were two different plants,
but the only reason he adduces for his belief is that `nicotiane'
was brought in his time from Florida, which, as he observes,
is more than a thousand leagues from `Nostre Terre du Brezil'.
His experience of savages was the same as that of Azara,
and almost all early travellers, for he says: `Nos Toupinambaoults
rec,oivent fort humainement les estrangers amis qui les vont visiter.'*
Lery, however, seemed to think that, in spite of their pacific inclination,
it was not prudent to put too much power in their hands, for he remarks:
`Au reste parcequ'ils chargeyent, et remplisseyent leurs mousquets
jusques au bout . . . nous leurs baillions moitie/ (i.e., la poudre)
de charbon broye/.' This may have been a wise precaution,
but he omits to state if the `charbon broye' was `bailli' at the same price
as good powder. According to Azara, who takes his facts partly
from the contemporary writers -- Schmidel, Alvar Nunez,
Ruy Diaz de Guzman, and Barco de la Centenera -- the Guaranis were divided
into numerous tribes, as Imbeguas, Caracaras, Tembues, Colistines,
and many others. These tribes, though apparently of a common origin,
never united, but each lived separately under its own chief.
Their towns were generally either close to or in the middle of forests,
or at the edge of rivers where there is wood. They all cultivated pumpkins,
beans, maize, mani (ground nuts), sweet potatoes, and mandioca;
but they lived largely by the chase, and ate much wild honey.
Diaz in his `Argentina' (lib. i., chap. i.) makes them cannibals.
Azara believes this to have been untrue, as no traditions of cannibalism
were current amongst the Guaranis in his time, i.e., in 1789-1801.
Liberal as Azara was, and careful observer of what he saw himself,
I am disposed to believe the testimony of so many eye-witnesses
of the customs of the primitive Guaranis, though none of them
had the advantage enjoyed by Azara of living three hundred years
after the conquest. It may be, of course, that the powers of observation
were not so well developed in mankind in the beginning of the sixteenth
as at the end of the eighteenth century, but this point I leave to those
whose business it is to prove that the human mind is in a progressive state.
However, Father Montoya, in his `Conquista Espiritual del Paraguay',
affirms most positively that they used to eat their prisoners taken in war.'**
--
* Azara, in his `Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay', has a similar passage:
`Recibe bien todo Indio silvestre, al estrangero que viene de paz.'
** `Por lo comun reparten pedazos de este cuerpo, del qual pedazo cozido
en mucha agua hacen unas gachas (`fritters') y es fiesta muy celebre
para ellos que hacen con muchas cerimonias.'
--
Their general characteristics seem to have been much the same
as those of other Indians of America. For instance, they kept
their hair and teeth to an extreme old age, their sight was keen,
they seldom looked you in the face whilst speaking, and their disposition
was cold and reserved. The tone of their voices was low,
so low that, as Azara says: `La voz nunca es gruesa ni sonora,
y hablan siempre muy bajo, sin gritar aun para quejarse si los matan;
de manera que, si camina uno diez pasos delante, no le llama
el que le necesita, sino que va a/ alcanzarle.' This I have myself observed
when travelling with Indians, even on horseback.
There was one characteristic of the Guaranis in which
they differed greatly from most of the Indian tribes in their vicinity,
as the Indians of the Chaco and the Pampas, for all historians alike agree
that they were most unwarlike. It is from this characteristic
that the Jesuits were able to make such a complete conquest of them,
for, notwithstanding all their efforts, they never really succeeded
in permanently establishing themselves amongst any of the tribes
in the Chaco or upon the Pampas.
The name Guarani is variously derived. Pedro de Angelis,
in his `Coleccion de Obras y Documentos', derives it from `gua', paint,
and `ni', sign of the plural, making the signification of the word
`painted ones' or `painted men'. Demersay, in his `Histoire du Paraguay',*
thinks it probable that the word is an alteration of the word `guaranai',
i.e., numerous. Barco de la Centenera** (`Argentina', book i., canto i.)
says the word means `hornet', and was applied on account of their savageness.
Be that as it may, it is certain that the Guaranis did not
at the time of the conquest, and do not now, apply the word to themselves,
except when talking Spanish or to a foreigner. The word `aba',
Indian or man, is how they speak of their people, and to the language
they apply the word `Abanee'.
--
* `Histoire du Paraguay et des E/tablissements des Je/suites',
L. Alfred Demersay, Paris, 1864.
** `La Argentina', a long poem or rhyming chronicle contained
in the collection of `Historiadores Primitivos de Indias',
of Gonzales Barcia, Madrid, 1749.
--
In the same way the word `Paraguay' is variously derived
from a corruption of the word `Payagua' (the name of an Indian tribe),
and `y', the Guarani word for water, meaning river of the Payaguas.
Others, again, derive it from a Guarani word meaning `crown',
and `y', water, and make it the crowned river, either from the palm-trees
which crown its banks or the feather crowns which the Indians wore
at the first conquest. Others, again, derive it from a bird
called paraqua (`Ortolida paraqua'). Again, Angelis, in his work
`Serie de los Sen~ores Gobernadores del Paraguay' (lib. ii., p. 187),
derives it from Paragua, the name of a celebrated Indian chief
at the time of the conquest. What is certain is that `y'
is the Guarani for water, and this is something in a derivation.
`Y' is perhaps as hard to pronounce as the Gaelic `luogh', a calf,
the nasal `gh' in Arabic, or the Kaffir clicks, having both
a guttural and a nasal aspiration.* It is rarely attempted with success
by foreigners, even when long resident in the country. Though Paraguay
was so completely the country of the Jesuits in after-times,
they were not the first religious Order to go there. Almost in every instance
the ecclesiastics who accompanied the first conquerors of America
were Franciscans. The Jesuits are said to have sent two priests
to Bahia in Brazil ten years after their Order was founded,
but both in Brazil and Paraguay the Franciscans were before them
in point of time.
--
* Lozano, in his `Historia del Paraguay', compares it to Greek,
but in my opinion fails to establish his case; but, then,
so few people know both Greek and Guarani.
--
San Francisco Solano, the first ecclesiastic who rose to much note
as a missionary, and who made his celebrated journey through the Chaco
in 1588-89 from Peru to Paraguay, was a Franciscan.* Thus, the Franciscans
had the honour of having the first American saint in their ranks.
It is noteworthy, though, that he was recalled from Paraguay by his superiors,
who seem to have had no very exalted opinion of him.
--
* He passed through the whole Chaco, descending the Pilcomayo
to its junction with the Paraguay, through territories but little explored
even to-day. Perhaps the most complete description of the Chaco
is that of P. Lozano, with the following comprehensive title:
`Descripcion chorographica de Terreno Rios, Arboles, y Animales
de los dilatadisimas Provincias del Gran Chaco, Gualamba,
y de los Ritos y Costumbres de la inumerables naciones
barbaros e/ infideles que le habitan. Con un cabal Relacion Historica
de lo que en ellos han obrado para conquistarlas algunos
Gobernadores y Ministros Reales, y los Misioneros Jesuitas
para reduc irlos a\ la fe del Verdadero Dios.' Por el Padre Pedro Lozano,
de la Compan~ia de Jesus, An~o de 1733. En Cordoba
por Joseph Santos Balbas.
This book did not appear in a clandestine manner, for it had:
1. Censura, por C. de Palmas. 2. Licencia de la Religion,
por Geronymo de Huro/za, Provincial de los Jesuitas de Andalucia.
3. Licencia del Ordinario por el Dr. Don Francisco Miguel Moreno,
por mandado del Sr. Provisor Alonso Joseph Gomez de Lara.
4. Aprobacion del Rdo. P. Diego Vasquez. 5. Privelegio de su Majestad
por Don Miguel Fernandez Morillo. 6. Fe/ de Corrector por el Licenciado,
Don Manuel Garcia Alesson, Corrector General de su Majestad
(who adds in a note, `este libro corresponde a\ su original').
7. Sumo de Tassa, as follows: `Tassaron los sen~ores del Consejo
este libro a\ seis maravedis cada pliego.'
Palma, in the first `censura', says that he had read it several times
`con repetida complacencia', and that, though it was `breve en volumen'
(it has 484 quarto pages), that it was also short in its concise style,
kept closely to the rules of history, and was `muy copiosa en la doctrina'.
--
Charlevoix remarks (`History of Paraguay') `that it seems as if Providence,
in granting him miraculous powers, had forgotten the other necessary steps
to make them effective.' That he really had these powers seems strange,
but San Francisco Solano narrates of himself that, in passing through
the Chaco, he learned the languages of several of the tribes,
and `preached to them in their own tongues of the birth, death,
and transfiguration of Christ, the mysteries of the Trinity,
Transubstantiation, and Atonement; that he explained to them
the symbols of the Church, the Papal succession from St. Peter downwards,
and that he catechized the Indians by thousands, tens and hundreds
of thousands, and that they came in tears and penitence
to acknowledge their belief.'
Of course, to-day it is difficult to controvert these statements,
even if inclined to do so; but the languages spoken by the Chaco Indians
are amongst the most difficult to learn of any spoken by the human race,
so much so that Father Dobrizhoffer, in his `History of the Abipones',
says `that the sounds produced by the Indians of the Chaco
resembled nothing human, so do they sneeze, and stutter, and cough.'
In such a language the Athanasian Creed itself would be puzzling
to a neophyte.
He also says that several of the Jesuits who had laboured
for years amongst the Indians could never master their dialects,
and when they preached the Indians received their words
with shouts of laughter. This the good priest attributed to
the presence of a `mocking devil' who possessed them. It may be
that the mocking devil was but a sense of humour, the possession of which,
even amongst good Christians, has been known to give offence.
But be this as it may, San Francisco de Solano remained two years at Asuncion,
though whilst he lived there his powers of speech (according to the Jesuits)
seem to have been diminished, and he held no communication with the Indians
in their own languages. It may be that, like St. Paul, he preferred to speak,
when not with Indians, five words with his understanding
rather than ten thousand in an unknown tongue.
At the time of the first conquest Paraguay was almost entirely peopled
by the Guarani race.* It does not appear that their number
was ever very great, perhaps not exceeding a million
in the whole country. From the writings of Montoya, Guevara, Lozano,
and the other missionaries of the time, it is certain that they had attained
to no very high degree of civilization, though they were certainly
more advanced than their neighbours in the Gran Chaco.
It is most probable that they had not a single stone-built town,
or even a house, or that such a thing existed south of New Granada,
to the eastward of the Andes, for we may take the description in Schmidel's
`History of the Casa del Gran Moxo'** either as a mistake or as a story
which he had heard from some Peruvian Indian of the palaces of the Incas.
At any rate, no remains of stone-built houses, still less of palaces,
are known to have been found in Brazil or Paraguay.
--
* This race at one time spread from the Orinoco to the river Plate,
and even in the case of its offshoot, the Chiriguanas,
crossed to the west bank of the Paraguay. Padre Ruiz Montoya,
in his `Conquista Espiritual del Paraguay', cap. i.,
speaking of the Guarani race, says: `Domina ambos mares el del sur
por todo el Brasil y cin~iendo el Peru con los dos mas grandes rios
que conoce el orbe que son el de la Plata, cuya boca en Buenos-Ayres
es de ochenta leguas, y el gran Maran~on, a\ el inferior
en nada e que pasa bien vecino de la ciudad de Cuzco.'
** Barco de la Centenera, in `La Argentina', canto v., also refers
to `La Casa del Gran Moxo'. It was situated `en una laguna',
and was `toda de piedra labrada'.
--
To-day all the Guaranis who are still unconquered live in the impenetrable
forests of the North of Paraguay or in the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso.
Their limits to the south extend to near the ruined missions
of Jesus and Trinidad. By preference, they seem to dwell
about the sources of the Igatimi, an affluent of the Parana,
and in the chain of mountains known either as San Jose or Mbaracayu.
The Paraguayans generally refer to them as Monteses (dwellers in the woods),
and sometimes as Caaguas. They present almost the same characteristics
as they did at the discovery of the country, and wander in the woods
as the Jesuits describe them as doing three hundred years ago.
Olive in colour, rather thickly set, of medium height, thin beards,
and generally little hair upon the body, their type has remained unchanged.
The difference in stature amongst the Guaranis is less noticeable
than amongst Europeans. Their language is poorer than the Guarani spoken
by the Paraguayans, and the pronunciation both more nasal and guttural.
Their numerals only extend to four, as was the case
at the time of the discovery.*
--
* Their numerals are four in number (`petei^, mocoi^, mbohapi=, ira^ndi=');
after this they are said to count in Spanish in the same way
as do the Guarani-speaking Paraguayans. Much has been written
on the Guarani tongue by many authors, but perhaps the `Gramatica',
`Tesoro', and the `Vocabulario' of Padre Antonio Ruiz Montoya,
published at Madrid in 1639 and 1640, remain the most important works
on the language. Padre Sigismundi has left a curious work in Guarani
on the medicinal plants of Paraguay. Before the war of 1866-70
several MS. copies were said to exist in that country.
See Du Gratz's `Re/publique du Paraguay', cap. iv., p. 214.
--
Like their forefathers, they seldom unite in large numbers,
and pay little honour or obedience to their chiefs, who differ in no respect,
either in arms, dress, or position, from the ordinary tribesmen.
In Brazil they are confined to the southern portion of the province
of San Paulo, and are called by the Brazilians Bugres -- that is, slaves.
A more unfitting name it would have been impossible to hit upon,
as all efforts to civilize them have proved abortive, and to-day
they still range the forests, attacking small parties of travellers,
and burning isolated farm-houses. The Brazilians assert
that they are cannibals, but little is known positively as to this.
What has altered them so entirely from the original Guaranis
of the time of the conquest, who were so easily subdued,
it is hard to conjecture. One thing is certain: that the example given them
by the Christian settlers has evidently not been such as to induce them
to leave their wild life and enter into the bonds of civilization.
Diaz, in the `Argentina', thinks the Caribs of the West Indies
were Guaranis, and the Jesuits often refer to them under that name.*
This point would be easily set at rest by examining if any Guarani words
remain in the dialect of the Caribs of the Mosquito coast.
As to their relative numbers at the time of the foundation of the missions,
it is most difficult to judge. At no one time does the population
of the thirty towns seem to have exceeded one hundred and thirty thousand.
--
* See Demersay, `Histoire du Paraguay', p. 324, for names of Guarani tribes.
Alfred Maury also, in his `La Terre et l'Homme Ame/ricain', p. 392,
speaks of `le rameau brasilio-guaranin, ou Cara/ibe, qui s'etendait
jadis depuis les Petites-Antilles jusqu'au Paraguay.'
--
D'Orbigny in his `L'Homme Americain', estimates the Guaranis of Brazil
at one hundred and fifty thousand.
Humboldt cites two hundred and sixty-nine thousand as the probable number
of Indians of every kind in the Brazilian Empire.
The Viscount de Itabayana (a Brazilian writer) fixes the number
at two hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand.
Veloso de Oliveira puts it at eight hundred thousand;
and later statisticians range between one million five hundred thousand
and seven to eight hundred thousand.
The numbers given of Indians by the Spanish conquerors are almost always
grossly overstated, from the wish they not unnaturally had
to magnify the importance of their conquests and to enhance their exploits
in the eyes of those for whom they wrote.
Struck by the tractable character of the Guaranis, Mendoza began
to build a fort on August 15, 1537 (which is the day of the Assumption),
and the name he gave to his fort was Asuncion, which afterwards became
the capital of Paraguay.
Espinosa returned to Corpus Christi, and afterwards to Buenos Ayres,
where a small force had still remained. This force,
tired of the ceaseless battles with the Querandis, or Pampa Indians,
embarked for Asuncion.
Irala, after waiting for many months at Fort Olimpo, returned to Asuncion,
where he found Ruiz de Galan acting as Governor. A dispute at once arose
between them, and Irala, after having been imprisoned, was allowed to return
to Fort Olimpo. Here he found the Payagua Indians in rebellion,
and in the battle which ensued he is reported to have slain seven of them
with his own hand.* He still maintained a fitful search for Juan de Ayolas,
but without success.
--
* Few modern `conquerors' in Africa seem to have engaged in personal combat
with the natives. Even of Mr. Rhodes it is not set down
that he has killed many Matabele with his own hands. Times change,
not always for the bettering of things.
--
Galan returned to Buenos Ayres, and, stopping at Corpus Christi,
took occasion to fall upon the friendly and unsuspecting Timbu Indians
and massacre a quantity of them. Why he did so is quite uncertain,
for the Timbues had been in the habit of supplying the fort of Corpus Christi
with provisions; it may be that the quality of the provisions was inferior,
but neither Ruiz Diaz nor Schmidel informs us on the point.
Galan, after his `victory', re-embarked for Buenos Ayres,
leaving Antonio de Mendoza in command with a hundred men.
One day, when about the half of the force was hunting,
the Indians fell upon it and cut it off to the last man;
but for the opportune arrival of two vessels the fort would have
been destroyed. However, many Spaniards were slain, and Antonio de Mendoza
amongst them.
After this battle, in which Santiago* is said to have appeared
on the top of the principal tower of the fort dressed in white
with a drawn sword in his hand, Galan and Espinosa returned to Asuncion,
taking with them the remainder of the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres.
At Asuncion they found that Irala had again returned
without having discovered traces of Ayolas. Irala was elected Governor
under a clause in the royal letters patent which provided
for the case of Ayolas not returning. His first act was to order
the complete evacuation of Buenos Ayres. An Italian vessel, which was
going to Peru with colonists, having been driven into the river Plate,
united with the remains of the colonists at Buenos Ayres and proceeded
to Asuncion.
--
* Santiago, as in duty bound, usually appeared whenever Spaniards
were hard pressed. Few writers had the courage of Bernal Diaz,
who of a similar appearance said: `But I, sinner that I was,
was not worthy to see him; whom I did see and recognise
was Francisco de Morla on his chestnut horse' (Bernal Diaz,
`Historia de la Conquista de Nueva Espan~a', cap. xxxiv., p. 141;
Madrid, 1795).
--
Curiously enough, the remnants of several expeditions thus joined
to found the first permanent city in the territories of the river Plate;
not at Buenos Ayres, but a thousand miles away in the interior of the country,
where it seemed little probable that their attempt would prove successful.
To preside over the heterogeneous elements of which Asuncion was composed,
Domingo Martinez de Irala was chosen. He was a Biscayan,
a member of that ancient race which neither Romans nor Moors were ever able
to subdue. Nothing is known about his antecedents. Not improbably
he was a son of one of the innumerable small gentlemen with whom
the Basque provinces used to swarm. Almost every house in the little towns
even to-day has its coat of arms over the door. Every inhabitant
claimed to be a nobleman, and in the reign of Charles V. they furnished
many soldiers of repute in the wars of Europe and America.
The system of Irala was to conciliate rather than subdue the natives.
Isolated from help of every kind, the length of the voyage from Spain
precluding all idea of speedy succour in a rebellion, it was the only course
he could pursue.
From the very first he encouraged the soldiers to marry women of the country,
thus creating ties which bound them to the land.
Two Franciscan friars* set about at once to learn the language
and preach to the people. They also seem to have endeavoured
to reduce the Guarani language to writing. So, from several circumstances,
the early history of Paraguay was very different from that of every other
Spanish possession in America. To all the others Spanish women
seem to have gone in greater or in smaller numbers. To Paraguay,
at the foundation of Asuncion, it seems that hardly any women went.
--
* Thus it will be seen that the Franciscans were at work in the country
long before the arrival of the Jesuits. It may be on this account
that they became such bitter enemies of the later comers.
--
So there a different state of society arose to that, for example,
in Chile or in Mexico. In both those countries few Spaniards ever married
native women. Those who did so were either members of the highest class
-- who sometimes, but rarely, married Indian women of position
from motives of policy -- or else the lowest class of Spaniards;
in this case, after a generation, their children became
practically Indians. In Paraguay it was quite the contrary,
and the grandchildren of Indian mothers and Spanish fathers
were almost reckoned Spaniards, and the next generation always so.
Washburne, in his `History of Paraguay' (p. 32, cap. i., vol. i.),
points out the contrast between the effects of the treatment meted out
by Penn to the Indians in Pennsylvania and that by Irala in Paraguay.
Where, he asks, are the Indian tribes with whom the celebrated Quaker treated?
In Paraguay, on the other hand, at least in the time when Washburne
was Minister from the United States to Lopez (from 1861 to 1868),
the few remaining Paraguayans of the upper class were almost all descended
from the intermarriages of the followers of Irala with the natives.
The tyranny of Lopez, and the effects of the disastrous war
with Brazil and the Argentine Republic, have almost extirpated
every Paraguayan (of the old stock) with the least pretensions
to white descent.
Ruiz Diaz de Guzman, speaking of the mixed race in Paraguay and Buenos Ayres,
says:
`They are generally good soldiers, of great spirit and valour,
expert in the use of arms, especially in that of the musquet,
so much so that, when they go on long journeys, they are accustomed
to live on the game which they kill with it. It is common for them
to kill birds on the wing, and he is accounted unfit for a soldier
who cannot bring down a pigeon. They are such excellent horsemen
that there is no one who is not able to tame and ride an unbroken colt.
`The women generally are virtuous, beautiful, and of a gentle disposition.'
If the inhabitants of Paraguay and the river Plate of those days
were good marksmen, it is more than can be said of the Gauchos
of the Argentine provinces and the Paraguayans of twenty years ago.
Without military training, so far from being able to bring down a pigeon
on the wing, few could hit the trunk of a tree at fifty paces.
The usual method of shooting used to be to cram as much ammunition
into the gun as the hand would contain, and then, looking carefully away
from the object aimed at, to close both eyes and pull the trigger.
Accuracy of aim was not so much considered as loudness of report.
As regards their powers of riding, they are still unchanged;
and as to the virtue of their women, virtue is so largely
a matter of convention that it is generally wisest to leave
such matters uncommented on, as it is so easy not to understand
the conventions of the people of whom one writes.
Whilst Irala was conciliating the Guaranis in Paraguay, Charles V. had
not forgotten that the new settlement of Buenos Ayres had been abandoned.
After much search, he selected Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
to be the new Governor; and, as Alvar Nunez was perhaps
the most remarkable of all the Spanish `conquistadores' of the New World,
it may not be out of place to give some facts of his career,
as his policy in regard to the Indians was almost that of the Jesuits
in after-times.
As he himself informs us in his Commentaries,* his `father was that
Pedro de Vera who won Canaria,' and his mother `Dona Teresa Cabeza de Vaca,
a noble lady of Jerez de la Frontera.' After the Spanish fashion of the time,
he used the names of both his parents.
--
* `Comentarios de Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca'. Published by
Don Andres Gonzalez Barcia in his collection of `Early Historians
of the Indies' (Madrid, 1749).
--
In 1529 he sailed with the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez
to Apalache in Florida, was shipwrecked, tried to regain
the Spanish settlements in boats, and then cast by a storm absolutely naked,
and with only three companions, upon an unknown land. Taken by the Indians,
he was made a slave, then rose to be a pedlar, then a doctor,
and finally a chief, held sacred for his mysterious powers.
At last he made his way on foot into the territory of New Spain,
not as a captive, but as the leader of several hundred Indians,
who followed him and did his bidding as if he had been born their chief.
Rambling about for months, but always followed by his Indians,
he at length encountered a Spanish horse-soldier, and, accosting him,
found he had almost forgotten Spanish during his ten years' sojourn
with the Indians. His first entreaty, when he found Spanish
gradually returning to him, was to the Spaniards not to harass
his Indian following. Then he besought the Indians themselves
to cease their nomad life and cultivate the soil. In neither case
was he successful, as the Spaniards, like all other Europeans,
held Indians little removed from dogs. And for the Indians,
the few remaining are as much attached to their old wandering life as in
the days of the discovery of the New World. In all that Alvar Nunez writes,
he shows a grandeur of soul and spirit far different from the writings,
not only of the conquerors of the New World, but of the conquerors of Africa
of to-day. For him no bragging of his exploits.*1* All that he says
he sets down modestly and with excuses (as every now and then,
`Me pesa hablar de mis trabajos'), and as befits a gentleman.
Lastly, he leaves the reader (when describing his captivity in Florida),
by telling him quite quietly and without comment that God was pleased to save
from all these perils himself, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes,
and that the fourth was a negro called Estevanico, a native of Azimur.
But, not contented with his ten years' captivity, after three years at home
he entered into a certain `asiento'*2* and `capitulacion'*3* with the King
to sail at his own charges with an expedition to succour
Don Pedro de Mendoza, who was hard pressed by famine and the Indians
at Buenos Ayres. He agreed to furnish eight thousand ducats,
horses, arms, men, and provisions at his own expense, upon condition
that he was made Governor and Adelantado of the Rio de la Plata,
and General both of its armies and its fleets.
--
*1* It must be allowed, however, that in their writings
few of the Spanish `conquistadores' of America bragged much.
They mostly gave the credit of all their doings to the God of Battles.
The boasting has been reserved for the conquerors of Africa
in our own time.
*2* `Asiento' is a contract. The contract which Charles V.,
at the well-meant but unfortunate instigation of Las Casas,
made with the Genoese to supply negroes for America
is known as `El Asiento de los Negros'.
*3* In the `capitulacion' made by Alvar Nunez with the King
occurs the celebrated clause, `Que no pasasen procuradores ni abogados
a las Indias', i.e., that neither solicitors nor barristers should go
to the Indies. It is unfortunate it was not held to stringently,
as in Paraguay, at least, the Reptilia were already well represented.
--
Upon November 2, 1537, he embarked at Cadiz with his fleet,
consisting of a caravel and two full-rigged ships. All went well
up to the Cape de Verdes. On nearing the equator, it occurred
to the `Maestro del Agua' to examine his stock of water,
and, out of one hundred pipes which had been put aboard, he found
but three remaining, and from these the thirty horses and four hundred men
who were on board all had to drink. Seeing the greatness of the necessity,
the Governor -- for Alvar Nunez almost always speaks of himself
in the third person -- gave orders that the fleet should make for land.
`Three days,' he says in his Commentaries, `we sailed in search of it';
and on the fourth, just before sunrise, occurred a very notable affair,
and, as it is not altogether `fuera de proposito', I set it down,
and it is this -- `that, going towards the land, the ships had almost touched
on some sharp rocks we had not seen.' Then, as now, I take it,
vigilance was not a noticeable quality in Spanish sailors.
Just as the vessels were almost on the rocks, `a cricket commenced to sing,
which cricket a sick soldier had put into the ship at Cadiz, being anxious
to hear its music, and for the two months which our navigation had endured
no one had heard it, whereat the soldier was much enraged;
and as on that morning it felt the land [`sintio la tierra'],
it commenced to sing, and its music wakened all the people of the ship,
who saw the cliffs, which were distant almost a crossbow-shot
from where we were, so we cast out anchors and saved the ship,
and it is certain that if the cricket had not sung all of us,
four hundred soldiers and thirty horses, had been lost.' Some of the crew
accepted the occurrence as a miracle from God; but Nunez himself
is silent on that head, being a better observer of natural history
than a theologian. But `from there, and sailing more than a hundred leagues
along the coast, the cricket every evening gave us his music,
and thus with it we arrived at a little port beyond Cape Frio,
where the Adelantado landed and unfurled his flag, and took possession
for His Majesty.' The expedition disembarked at Santa Catalina in Brazil.
`There the Governor landed his men and twenty-six of the horses
which had escaped the sea, all that remained of forty-six embarked in Spain.'
The `odium theologicum' gave the Governor some work at once.
Two friars -- Fray Bernardo de Armenta and Fray Alonso Lebron, Franciscans --
had burnt the houses of some Indians, who had retaliated
in the heathen fashion by slaughtering two Christians.
The `people being scandalized', the Governor sent for the friars,
admonished them, and told them to restrain their zeal.
This was the first false step he made, and set all friars and priests
throughout America against him. Hearing at Santa Catalina
that Buenos Ayres was almost abandoned, and that the inhabitants had founded
the town of Asuncion del Paraguay, Alvar determined to march thither by land,
and send his ship into the river Plate and up the Paraguay.
The two Franciscan friars he told to remain and `indoctrinate' the Indians.
This they refused to do, saying they wished to reside amongst
the Spaniards in Asuncion. Had they been Jesuits, it is ten to one
they had remained and spent their lives `indoctrinating',
for the Jesuits alone of all the religious Orders were ever ready
to take every risk.
Upon his march the Governor, contrary to all good policy and precedent,
ordered that nothing should be taken from the Indians without due payment
being made. To insure this being done, he paid for all provisions himself,
and served them out to the soldiery. This made him as unpopular
with his soldiers as his dealings with the two Franciscans had made him
amongst the friars. Surely he might have known that Pizarro, Cortes,
Almagro, and the rest, were men who never paid for anything.
Still, he persisted in his conduct to the end, and so brought ruin on himself.
The Indians seemed to appreciate his method, for he says that `when the news
was spread abroad of the good treatment the Governor gave to all,
they came to meet the army decked with flowers and bringing provisions
in great abundance.' It was, he also says, `a thing to see
how frightened the Indians were of the horses, and how they brought them food,
chickens and honey to keep them quiet and in good humour,
and they asked the Governor to tell the horses not to hurt them.'
After passing the river Iguazu, he sent the two friars ahead
to collect provisions, and `when the Governor arrived the Indians had
no more to give.'*
--
* This is perhaps the first account of the levying of the tithe
in the New World.
--
So having started from the coast upon November 2, 1541, he arrived at Asuncion
on March 2, 1542, having accomplished a march of more than two thousand miles
with but the loss of a single man and without the slaughter
of a single Indian. Hardly had he arrived at Asuncion before he found himself
embroiled on every side. The Indians were in full rebellion,
the settlement of Buenos Ayres almost in ruins, and the officers
appointed by the King to collect the royal dues all hostile to him to a man.
After having consulted with the clergy to find if they thought it lawful
to attack the Guaycurus who had assailed the newly-founded town,
he received the opinion `that it was not only lawful, but expedient.'
Therefore he sent off an expedition against them, to which was joined a priest
to require the Guaycurus to become Christians and to acknowledge
the King of Spain. The propositions, not unnaturally,
did not seem reasonable to the Indians, who most likely
were unaware of the benefits which Christianity confers,
and probably heard for the first time of the King of Spain.
The Governor, who seems to have doubted of the humanity of the clergy,
called another council, which confirmed the previous opinion.
Strangely enough, this seems to have surprised him, for he probably
did not reflect that the clergy would not have to fight themselves,
and that the first blood ever spilt on earth was on account
of a religious difference.
Just before the expedition started it was found that the two Franciscan friars
who had come with him from Santa Catalina could not be found.
It then appeared they had started back to the coast
accompanied by a bevy of Indian damsels, thirty-five in all.
They were followed and brought back, and then explained
that they were on their way to Spain to complain against the Governor.
The five-and-thirty dusky catechumens remained without an explanation,
and the people were once more `scandalized'. The Governor then started out
against the Guaycurus. Only those who know the Chaco,
or western bank of the river Paraguay, can form the least idea of what
such an expedition must have been. Even to-day in the Chaco
the change since the beginning of the world can be but slight.
As a steamer slips along the bank, nothing for miles and miles is seen
but swamp, intersected with backwaters,*1* in which lie alligators,
electric eels, and stinging rays. Far as the eye can reach
are swamps, swamps, and more swamps, a sea of waving pampa-grass.
After the swamps thickets of tacuaras (canes), forests of thorny trees,
chanares, nandubay, jacarandas, urundey, talas, and quebrachos,
each one hard enough to split an axe, some, like the black canela,
almost like iron; the inhabitants ferocious and intractable as when
the Governor himself first saw them; the climate heavy and humid, the air dank
with vinchucas*2* and mosquitoes and the little black infernal midget
called the jejen; no roads, no paths, no landmarks, but here and there
at intervals of many leagues a clearing in the forest
where some straggling settlement exists, more rarely still
the walls of a deserted Jesuit mission-house or church. Ostriches and deer,
tigers,*3* capibaras and tapirs, and now and then a herd of cattle
as wild as buffaloes, are seen. Sometimes an Indian with his lance
sits motionless upon his horse to watch the vessel pass --
a sentinel to guard the wilderness from encroachments from without.
So Alvar Nunez, as he tells us in his Commentaries, started with
four hundred men and with one thousand friendly Indians,
all well armed and painted, and with plates of metal on their heads
to reflect the sun, and so strike terror to their enemies.
To save the horses they were put on board,*4* whilst the Indians
marched along the bank, keeping up with the ships. Horses at that time
in Paraguay and in Peru often were worth one thousand crowns of gold,
though Azara tells us that in the last century in Buenos Ayres
you could often buy a good horse for two needles, so cheap had they become.
Then, as at present, time was of no account in Paraguay, so almost every day
they landed the horses to keep them in condition and to chase
the ostriches and deer.
--
*1* These backwaters are known in Guarani by the name of `aguapey'.
*2* The vinchuca is a kind of flying bug common in Paraguay.
Its shape is triangular, its colour gray, and its odour noxious.
It is one of the Hemiptera, and its so-called scientific appellation
is `Conorhinus gigas'.
*3* R. B. Cunninghame Graham writes elsewhere: "All over South America
the jaguar is called a tiger
*4* Azara, in his `Historia del Paraguay', etc., tells us that in 1551
Domingo de Irala at Asuncion bought a fine black horse
for five thousand gold crowns. He bound himself to pay for him
out of the proceeds of his first conquest.
--
Just the kind of army that a thinking man would like to march with;
not too much to eat, but, still, a pleasant feeling of marching
to spread religion and to make one's fortune, with but the solitary
unpleasant feature to the soldier -- the system of payment for provisions
which the Governor prescribed. All was new and strange; the world was
relatively young. Each night the Governor religiously wrote up his diary,
now chronicling the death of some good horse, or of an Indian,
or commenting upon the fruits, the fish, the animals, the trees,
and `all the other things of God which differ from those in the Castiles.'
Occasionally a fight took place with Guasarapos or with Pagayuas,
but nothing of much account (`de mucha monta'); always the tales of gold-mines
to be met with further on. Eventually the expedition came to a point
not far from where is now the town of Corumba. There Alvar Nunez founded
a town to which he gave the name of Reyes, which has long fallen into decay.
He also sent two captains to explore and search for gold,
waiting two or three months for their return, and suffering from
a quartan ague which confined him to his bed; then, having failed to find
the talked-of gold-mines, he set his face again towards Asuncion.
Just before starting he gave the final blow to his waning popularity.
Some of his followers, having taken Indian girls, had hidden them
on board the ships; this, when he knew it, Nunez at once forbade,
and, sending for the fathers of the girls, restored their children to them.
`With this,' he says, `the natives were much pleased, but the Spaniards
rendered angry and desperate, and for this cause they hated me.'
Nothing more natural, and for the same cause the Spanish Paraguayans
hated the Jesuits who carried out the policy which the wise Governor began.
On April 8, 1543, the Governor returned to Asuncion,
worn out and ill with ague. There he found all confusion. Domingo de Irala,
a clever, ambitious Biscayan soldier who had been interim Governor
before Nunez had arrived, had worked upon the people,
saying that Nunez wished to take away their property.
As their chief property was in Indians whom they had enslaved,
this rendered Nunez most unpopular, and the same kind of allegations
were laid against him as were laid against the Jesuits
when in their turn they denounced slavery in Paraguay.
All the complaints were in the name of liberty, as generally is the case
when tyranny or villainy of any sort is to be done.
So Alvar Nunez*1* tells us in his Commentaries that at the hour
of the Ave Maria ten or twelve of the `factious' entered his house
where he lay ill in bed, all shouting `Liberty!' and to prove
they were all good patriots one Jaime Resquin put a bent crossbow to his side,
and forced him to get out of bed, and took him off to prison
amid a crowd all shouting `Liberty!' The friends of liberty
(upon the other side) attempted a rescue, but the patriots*2* were too strong.
So the unpatriotic Governor was thrown, heavily ironed, into a cell,
out of which to make room they let a murderer who was awaiting death.
`He' (Alvar Nunez grimly remarks) `made haste to take my cloak,
and then set off down the street at once, calling out "Liberty!"'
That everything should be in order, the patriots confiscated
all the Governor's goods and took his papers, publishing a proclamation
that they did so because he was a tyrant. Unluckily, the Indians
have not left us any commentaries, or it would be curious to learn
what they thought as to the tyranny of Alvar Nunez. Most probably
they thought as the Indians of the Jesuit missions thought
at the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay, as is set forth
in the curious memorial addressed in 1768 by the people
of the Mission of San Luis to the Governor of Buenos Ayres,
praying that the Jesuits might be suffered to remain instead of the friars,
who had been sent to replace them against the people's will.*3*
Having got the Governor into prison, the patriots had to elect another chief,
and the choice naturally `fell' upon Domingo de Irala, who, having been
interim Governor, had never ceased intriguing from the first.
He promptly put his friends in office, after the fashion of all Governors,
whether they enter office to the cry of `Liberty' or not.
The friends of Alvar Nunez, in the usual Spanish fashion
(long sanctified by use and wont), declared themselves in opposition --
that is, they roamed about the land, proving by theft and murder
that their love of liberty was just as strong as that of those in power.
Things shortly came to such a pass that no one could leave his house by night.
The marauding Guaycurus burnt all the suburbs, and threatened
to attack the town. Nunez himself was guarded day and night
by four men armed with daggers in a close prison. As he says himself,
his prison was not `fitting for his health,' for day and night
he had to keep a candle burning to see to read, and the grass grew
underneath his bed, whilst for the sake of `health' he had
a pair of first-rate fetters on his feet. For his chief gaoler
they procured one Hernando de Sosa, whom Nunez had put in gaol
for striking an Indian chief. A guard watched constantly at the prison gate,
but, still, in spite of this he managed to communicate almost uninterruptedly
with his friends outside. His method was certainly ingenious.
His food was brought to him by an Indian girl, whom, so great
was the fear of the patriots that he should write to the King,
they made walk naked into the prison, carrying the dishes,
and with her head shaved. Notwithstanding this, she managed to bring
a piece of paper hidden between her toes. The party of Liberty,
suspecting that Nunez was communicating with his friends,
procured an Indian youth to make love to the girl and learn the secret.
This he failed to do, owing, perhaps, to his love-making
being wanting in conviction on account of her shaved head.
At last Irala and his friends determined to send the Governor a prisoner
to Spain, taking care, of course, to despatch a messenger beforehand
to distort the facts and prejudice the King. The friends of Nunez, however,
managed to secrete a box of papers, stating the true facts, on board the ship.
At dead of night a band of harquebusiers dragged him from his bed
(after a captivity of eleven months), as he says, `almost with the candle
in his hand' -- i.e., in a dying state. As he left the prison,
he fell upon his knees and thanked God for having let him once more
feel the air of heaven, and then in a loud voice exclaimed:
`I name as my successor Captain Juan de Salazar de Espinosa.'
At this one Garci Vargas rushed at him with a knife, and told him
to recall his words or he would kill him instantly. This he was stopped
from doing, and Nunez was hurried to the ship and chained securely
to a beam. On board the vessel, he says, they tried to poison him;
but this seems doubtful, as there was nothing on earth
to prevent their doing so had they been so inclined.
Still, as a prudent man he took the precaution to provide
some oil and a piece of unicorn (`pedazo de unicornio'),
with which he tried the food. Unicorns he could not have seen in Paraguay,
nor yet in Florida, and he does not explain how he became so luckily equipped.
--
*1* `Comentarios de Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca', contained in Barcia's
`Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales'.
*2* The `patriots' are always those of the prevailing party in a State.
*3* `(I.H.S.)
`God preserve your Excellency, say we, the Cabildo,
and all the Caciques and Indians, men, women and children of San Luis,
as your Excellency is our father. The Corregidor,
Santiago Pindo and Don Pantaleon Caynari, in their love for us,
have written to us of certain birds which they desire we will send them
for the King. . . . We are sorry not to have them to send,
inasmuch as they live where God made them, in the forests,
and fly far away from us, so that we cannot catch them.
Withal we are the vassals of God and of the King, and always desirous
to fulfil the wishes of his Minister . . . so we pray to God
that that best of birds, the Holy Ghost, may descend upon the King. . . .
Furthermore, we desire to say that the Spanish custom
is not to our liking -- for everyone to take care of himself,
instead of helping one another in their daily toil.'
This quaint and touching letter was written originally in Guarani,
and is preserved at Buenos Ayres. `That best of birds,
the Holy Ghost,' shows faith grounded, at least, on ornithology,
and the whole spirit of the simple document is as pathetic
as its unconscious philosophy is true.
--
None the less, of all the discoverers of America he is the man of least
imaginative power -- that is, in matters appertaining to natural history --
so one must conclude he had his piece of unicorn from Spain,
where he most probably had bought it from some dealer in necessaries
for travellers to the New World.
After a stormy voyage he arrived in Spain to find his accusers
just before him. With truly Eastern justice, both accusers and accused
were put in gaol, a custom worthy of adoption in other lands.
Nunez was soon released on bail, and, his accusers having all died,
in eight years' time he was triumphantly acquitted of all the charges brought
against him. To prove, however, that Justice is and always has been blind,
the King never restored him to his government in Paraguay, and,
as Nunez says, forgot to repay him what he had expended in his service.*
With Alvar Nunez was lost the only chance of liberal treatment
to the Indians, for from his time the governors, instead of being
men of the world above the petty spite of party differences,
were chosen either from officers who, having served in the frontier wars,
quite naturally looked on the Indians as enemies, or were appointed
by intriguing Ministers at Court. From the death of Alvar Nunez
to the inauguration of the missions by the Jesuits,
no one arose to take the Indians' side, and it may be
that had his policy prevailed there would have been an Indian population left
in the mission territory of Paraguay; for had the civil governors
co-operated with the Jesuits, the dispersion of the Indians,
which took place at the expulsion of the Jesuits, had not occurred.
--
* Guevara, `Historia del Paraguay' (printed in `La Coleccion de Angelis',
Buenos Aires, 1836), book vi., p. 108, says of Alvar Nunez:
`Merecia estatua por su rectitud, justicia y Christiandad.' And in
another place Guevara says: `La Florida lo cautivo/ con inhumanidad;
La Asuncion lo aprisiono/ con infamia; pero en una y otro parte
fue ejemplar de moderacion . . . recto, prudente y de sano corazon.'
Alvar Nunez died holding the office of `Oidor de la Audiencia de Sevilla',
according to P. del Techo (`Historia del Paraguay');
or as a member of the Consejo de Indias, according to Charlevoix.
--
Thus was Domingo Martinez de Irala left in sole command in Paraguay.
He naturally had all to gain by not communicating with Spain.
Had he done so, the part he played in reference to Alvar Nunez
must have been known. He had, however, certain good qualities,
courage in abundance, Herculean strength and great endurance,
and the power of making himself obeyed. But he had to justify himself
to Spain for his position, and the surest way to do so
was to discover gold-mines. So, naming Francisco de Mendoza
his lieutenant, he started up the Paraguay, taking with him
three hundred and fifty soldiers and two thousand Guaranis.
After many hardships, he reached the frontiers of Peru,
only to find the country already conquered from the Pacific side,
and to be met by the messengers of the wise President, La Gasca,
who told him to return, and named one Diego Centeno Governor of Paraguay
instead of him. Centeno died before he could assume the governorship,
so it seemed that fate determined that Irala was to continue in command.
After a year and a half he returned to Paraguay, having found
no gold or riches, but bringing many thousand Indians as slaves.
It is important to remember that Irala, who was remarkable
for his relatively kind treatment of the Indians, on this occasion
led so many of them captive. On arriving at Asuncion he found
a rebellion going on, as not infrequently occurred when a Spanish Governor
left his domains. His lieutenant, Mendoza, had been killed
by one Diego de Abreu. After quieting matters in Asuncion,
he despatched Nuflo de Chaves (one of his captains) to found a town
on the higher waters of the Paraguay.
Like many other captains of those days, the idea of Chaves was to make himself
quite independent of authority; so, striking into the interior,
he founded the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia.
After many adventures he was killed by an Indian, who struck him with a club
whilst he was sitting eating without his helmet.
Irala died at the little village of Ita in 1557, and was buried
in the cathedral at Asuncion, which he was building at the time.
With him expired the generation of the conquering soldiers of fortune,
who, schooled in the wars of Italy, brought to America
some of the virtues and all the vices of the Old World.
After him began the reign of the half-caste Spaniards who were
the progenitors of the modern occupants of the Spanish-American republics.
At Irala's death the usual feuds, which have for the last three hundred years
disgraced every part of Spanish America, began. Into them it is unnecessary
to enter, for with Irala died almost the only Governor of Paraguay
who showed the smallest capacity to make himself obeyed.
True indeed that Arias de Saavedra, a native of Paraguay
and Lieutenant-Governor under Ramirez de Velasco, the Governor of Tucuman,
displayed some traces of ability and of intelligence. He it was
who first appealed to Spain for missionaries to convert the Indians.
Whilst Alvar Nunez and Irala, with Nuflo de Chaves and the other captains,
had been conquering and building towns, the Jesuits had been
preaching in the wilderness and gathering together the Indian tribes.
Not ten years after the foundation of their Order,* or about 1550,
they had landed at San Salvador de Bahia in Brazil.
--
* Acquaviva was General of the Order at this time; he was a man
of marked ability and great energy.
--
In 1554, in the district of Guayra, on the upper waters of the Parana,
and above the cataract, the towns of Ontiveros, Ciudad Real, and Villa Rica,
had been founded by Don Ruy Diaz de Melgarejo.
In 1586 Fathers Alfonso Barcena and Angulo left the town of Santa Maria
de las Charcas (Bolivia) at the request of Francisco Vitoria,
Bishop of Santiago, who had appealed for missionaries to the Society of Jesus.
They reached the province of Guayra, and began their labours.
Shortly afterwards they were joined by Fathers Estezan Grao,
Juan Solano, and Thomas Fields; Solano and Fields had already visited
some of the wandering tribes upon the Rio Vermejo in the Chaco.
In 1593 others arrived, as Juan Romero, Gaspar de Monroy,
and Marcelino Lorenzana. Shortly after this they founded
the college in Asuncion. Then Fathers Ortega and Vellarnao penetrated
into the mountains of the Chiriguanas, and began to preach the Gospel
to the Indians.
In 1602 Acquaviva, seeing the necessity of common action,
called all the scattered Jesuits of Paraguay and the river Plate
to a conference at Salta to deliberate as to their future policy.* In 1605
Father Diego Torres was named Provincial of the Jesuits of Paraguay and Chile,
thus proving both the paucity of Jesuits in South America at the time,
and the little idea the General in Rome had of the immensity of the countries
he was dealing with.
--
* Before this date the Jesuits in Paraguay had been under
the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishops of Peru.
--
Torres arrived in Lima with fifteen priests, and almost at the same time
some others arrived at Buenos Ayres; both parties proceeded to Paraguay.
Already the Jesuits found themselves a prey to calumny.
Both in Tucuman and Paraguay they were expected to lend themselves
to the enslavement of the Indians. In Chile Father Valdivia
was expelled from Santiago, and took refuge at Tucuman. There he found
the condition of affairs so intolerable that he went to Madrid
to solicit the protection of the King, Philip III., for his Indian subjects.
In 1608 Philip issued his royal letters patent to the Society of Jesus
for the conversion of the Indians in the province of Guayra.
The Bishop and the Governor, Arias de Saavedra (himself a Paraguayan
by birth), offered no objection, and the scheme of colonization
was agreed upon at once.
Thus the Jesuits obtained their first official status in America.
Fathers Simon Maceta and Jose Cataldino (both Italians)
left Asuncion on October 10, 1609, and arrived in February, 1610,
on the banks of the river Paranapane.*
--
* Paranapane = the White Parana, or, according to others,
the Parana without fish.
--
There they met the Indians amongst whom Fields and Ortega
had begun to labour, and there they founded the Reduction* of Loreto,
the first permanent establishment instituted by the Jesuits
amongst the Guaranis. Thus, in the woods of Paraguay,
upon a tributary of the Parana but little known even to-day,
did the Society of Jesus lay the first foundation of their famous missions.
But little more than fifty years from the foundation of their Order,
thus had they penetrated to what was then, and is perchance to-day,
after their missions all are ruined, one of the remotest corners of the world.
--
* Reduction (`reduccion') was the Spanish name for a missionary establishment.
--
There they built up the system with which their name is linked for ever
-- the system which for two hundred years was able to hold together
wandering Indian tribes, restless as Arabs, suspicious above
every other race of men -- and which to-day has disappeared,
leaving nothing of a like nature in all the world.
Chapter II
Early days of the missions -- New settlements founded --
Relations of Jesuits with Indians and Spanish colonists --
Destruction of missions by the Mamelucos -- Father Maceta --
Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya -- His work and influence --
Retreat of the Jesuits down the Parana
It does not seem doubtful but that the work done by Fathers Ortega and Filds*
had borne some fruit. Perhaps not quite after the fashion
that the Jesuits believed; but when Maceta and Cataldino
arrived at Guayra and founded the Reduction of Loreto,
their success at first was of a nature that almost justified
the epithet `miraculous', an epithet which indeed all men apply
to any enterprise of theirs which meets success. Almost from
the first inception of the missions, the Jesuits found themselves
in the strange position of, though being hated by the Spanish settlers,
yet recurred to as mediators when any of the wild tribes
proved too powerful for the Spanish arms. Thus, far from cities,
far from even such elementary civilization as Paraguay should show,
almost upon the edge of the great cataract of the Parana,
the Jesuits founded their first reduction; to which the Indians flocked
in such numbers that a second was soon necessary, to which they gave
the name of San Ignacio, in memory of the founder of their rule.
--
* Some of the Spanish writers refer to Filds as Padre Tom Filds.
His real name was Fields, and he was a Scotchman.
--
For the first few years all went well with the Jesuits. The Indians,
happy to escape the persecutions of the Spaniards on the one hand,
and the incursions of the Paulistas* on the other, flocked to the reductions,
mission after mission was soon formed, and the wild Indians
gathered up into townships and taught the arts of peace.
But though the Guaranis at first entered into the Jesuit reductions
as a refuge against their persecutors, the Portuguese and Spaniards,
soon, as was only natural to men accustomed to a wild forest life,
they found the Jesuit discipline too irksome, and often fled
back to the woods. Then the poor priest, left without his flock,
had to take up the trail of the flying neophytes, follow them
to the recesses of the forests, and persuade them to come back.
--
* The Paulistas were the inhabitants of the Portuguese (now Brazilian)
town of Sao Paulo. Azara, who hated the Jesuits (his brother,
Don Nicolas de Azara, having been concerned in their expulsion),
says that fear of the Paulistas contributed to the success of the Jesuits
with the Indians. Dean Funes (`Historia del Paraguay', etc.)
says just as reasonably that it was fear of the Spanish settlers.
--
As a means to secure the confidence of the Indians, the Jesuits
found themselves obliged to communicate as rarely as possible
with the Spanish settlements. Thus, from the first the policy of isolation,
which was one of the chief charges brought against the Order in later years,
was of necessity begun.* Voltaire, no lover of religious Orders,
says of the Jesuits:** `When in 1768 the missions of Paraguay
left the hands of the Jesuits, they had arrived at perhaps
the highest degree of civilization to which it is possible
to conduct a young people, and certainly at a far superior state
than that which existed in the rest of the new hemisphere.
The laws were respected there, morals were pure, a happy brotherhood
united every heart, all the useful arts were in a flourishing state,
and even some of the more agreeable sciences; plenty was universal.'
--
* There was, however, a royal Order (`cedula real') which applied
to all America, which especially prohibited Spaniards from living
in the Indian towns, and, moreover, provided that even for purposes of trade
no Spaniard should remain for more than three days in an Indian town.
** `Histoire Politique et Philosophique des Indes', vol. i., p. 289
(Gene\ve, 1780).
--
It is, however, to be remembered that Voltaire wrote as a philosopher,
and not as an economist, and that his statement most probably
would be traversed by those who see advancement rather
in material improvement than in moral happiness, for without doubt,
in Lima and in Mexico upon the whole, society must have made
amongst the Spanish and Spanish-descended citizens greater advances
than in the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay. In some respects
their almost inaccessible situation close to the cataract of the Parana
was favourable to the early Jesuits, and in quick succession
the villages of Loreto, San Francisco Xavier, San Jose, San Ignacio,
San Pedro, and others of less importance, were founded, containing in all
about forty thousand souls.*
--
* Cretineau Joly, `Histoire Religieuse, Politique et Litte/raire
de la Compagnie de Je/sus', vol. iii., cap. v., p. 322 (Paris, 1846).
--
So in the Jesuit reductions of the province of Guayra
was first begun the system of treating the Indians kindly,
and standing between them and the Spanish settlers,
which made the Company of Jesus so hated afterwards in Paraguay.
Little by little their influence grew, so that when, in 1614,
Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya arrived, he found that there were already
one hundred and nineteen Jesuits in Guayra and in Paraguay.
Of all the Jesuits who, during the long period of their labours,
appeared in Paraguay, he was the most remarkable; one of the most learned men
of the age in which he lived, he yet united in himself
the qualities of a man of action to those of scholar and of missionary.
Without his presence most likely not a tenth part of the Indians
would have escaped after the destruction of the missions of Guayra
in 1630 and 1631 at the hands of the half-civilized hordes
known as Paulistas or Mamalucos, who from the city of San Paulo
carried fire and sword amongst the Guaranis.
It is easy to understand that the Spanish colonists,
who had looked on all the Indians as slaves, were rendered furious
by the advent of the Jesuits, who treated them as men.
To-day the European colonist in Africa labours less to enslave
than to exterminate the natives; but if a body of clergy of any sect
having the abnegation and disregard of consequences of the Jesuits of old
should arise, fancy the fury that would be evoked if they insisted
that it were as truly murder to slay a black man as it is to kill a man
whose skin is white. Most fortunately, our clergy of to-day,
especially those of the various churches militant in Uganda, think otherwise,
and hold that Christ was the first inventor of the `colour-line'.
At the first settlement of South America great semi-feudal fiefs
called `encomiendas' were granted to the conquerors. One of the conditions
of their tenure was that the `encomenderos' (the owners of the fiefs)
`should see to the religious education of the Indians'.
Much the same kind of thing as to enjoin kindness and Christian forbearance
upon the directors of a modern Chartered Company. But, in addition
to the `encomiendas', two other systems were in vogue called
`yanaconas' and `mitayos', which were in fact designed to reduce the Indians
to the condition of mere slaves.
Herrera* says that the `"yanaconas" were men destined from birth
to perpetual slavery and captivity, and in their clothing, treatment,
and the conditions of their toil, were differently treated from free men.'
--
* `Historia General de los hechos de los Castellanos
en las Islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano', decad. v., lib. iv., cap. xl.
--
In Paraguay these `yanaconas' were known as `Indios Originarios',
and generally were descendants of Indians conquered in war; they, too,
were in a condition of serfdom. They lived in the house of the `encomendero',
and could not be sold, and the `encomendero' was (in theory) obliged
not only to feed and clothe them, but to instruct them in religious truths.
In order to see that these conditions were duly carried out, visitors were
sent each year to hear what mutually the `encomenderos' and the Indians
had to say.
Herrera*1* describes the Indians under the `mitayo' system
by the name of `mitayos tindarunas', explaining that the word `tindaruna'
signifies `forced labour'. The chiefs had to provide
a certain number of them every year to work in mines and manufactories,
and so well was the labour in the mines known to be fatal,
that the Indians upon being drawn for service disposed of all their property,
and not infrequently divorced their wives. The `mitayos' were
at the beginning Indians who had not fought against the Spaniards,
but had submitted to their rule. They were grouped in townships
composed of portions of a tribe under a chief to whom the Spaniards gave
the position of Alcalde. In the towns thus formed only the men
between eighteen and fifty were liable to be drawn for service in the mines;
originally their term of service was for only two months in the year,
and for the remaining ten months they were in theory as free
as were the Spanish settlers. By 1612 the abuses of their system
had so diminished the number of the Indians that Don Francisco de Alfaro
was named by the Spanish Government to report upon it,
and to reform abuses where he found it possible. His report declared
that the Guaranis and Guaycurus should not be made slaves of,
and it abolished in their favour the forced labour which they had
previously endured. The European settlers in Asuncion thought
that this was owing to the influence of the Jesuits, and therefore
they expelled them from the town. Recalled to Santiago,
they founded there a college, and those who remained in Paraguay
pushed on the mission-work. Brabo*2* points out that
the first twenty reductions founded by the Company of Jesus were settled
in the first twenty years from their first appearance in the land,*3*
and that from the foundation of the Mission of St. George
(the last established of the first twenty towns) to that of San Joaquim,
in the wild forests of the Taruma, they employed a hundred and twelve years.
In the interval they chiefly occupied themselves in the consolidation
of their first settlements, and in various unsuccessful attempts
to institute similar reductions amongst the Indians of the Chaco
across the Paraguay.
--
*1* `Historia General de los hechos de los Castellanos en
las Islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano', decad. v., lib. x., cap. lxxx.
*2* `Inventarios de los bienes hallados a/ la Expulsion de los Jesuitas'
(Madrid, 1872).
*3* The Franciscans had already five or six settlements.
--
But whilst the Jesuits were settling their reductions
in the province of Guayra and those upon the Parana and Uruguay,
a nest of hawks looked at their neophytes as pigeons
ready fattening for their use. Almost eight hundred miles away,
at the city of San Paulo de Piritinanga, in Brazil, a strange society
had come into existence by degrees. Peopled at first
by Portuguese and Dutch adventurers and malefactors, it had become
a nest of pirates and a home for all the desperadoes of Brazil and Paraguay.
This engaging population, being in want of wives whereby
to propagate their virtues, took to themselves Indians and negresses,
and bred a race worse ten times than were themselves,
as often happens both in the cases of Mulattos and Mestizos in America.
Under the name of Mamelucos* (given to them no one knows why)
they soon became the terror of the land. Equally at home on horseback,
in canoes upon the rivers, or in schooners on the sea,
excellent marksmen and courageous fighters, they subsisted chiefly
by procuring Indians as slaves for the plantations in Brazil.
In a short time they exhausted all the Indians near San Paulo,
and were forced to search far in the depths of the unknown interior.
Little by little, following the course of the great rivers in their canoes,
they reached the Jesuit settlements upon the upper waters of the Parana,
where they burned the towns and the churches, made captives of the converts,
and killed the priests. Montoya relates that a Jesuit,
having clasped an Indian in his arms to save him, was deluged with his blood,
a Mameluco having crept up behind him and plunged his lance into the Indian
behind the Jesuit's back. The Mameluco, on being, as Montoya says,
`reprehended' by the Jesuit, dogmatically remarked, `I shall be saved
in spite of God, for to be saved a man has only to believe,'**
a remark which showed him clearly an honest opponent of the Jesuits,
as they insisted greatly on the doctrine of good works.
--
* The word in Brazil is used to designate a half-breed, but the etymology
seems unknown.
** `Me he de salvar a pesar de Dios, porque para salvarse el hombre
no ha menester mas que creer' (Ruiz Montoya, `Conquista Espiritual').
Montoya adds with a touch of humour quite in Cervantes' vein:
`Este, sabe ya por experiencia la falsedad de su doctrina,
porque le mataron de tres balazos, sin confesion.'
--
Ruiz Montoya and others tell us that the plan of action of the Paulistas
was either to attack the Jesuit reductions on Sunday, when the sheep
were gathered in the fold listening to Mass, surround the church,
murder the priest, and carry off the neophytes as slaves; or else,
disguised as Jesuits, enter a mission, gain the confidence of the Indians,
and then communicate with their soldiers, who were waiting in the woods.
But not content with this, it seems, so often did they practise singing Mass
to pass as Jesuits, that on returning to San Paulo, in their orgies,
their great diversion was to masquerade as priests. So that the rascals
not only profited by their villainy, but extracted much amusement
from their wicked deeds.* This, in Montoya's opinion, was even more damnable
than the actual crime. And so no doubt it was, and we in England,
by having made our vice as dull as virtue is in other lands,
have gone some way towards morality, for vice and virtue,
both deprived of humour, become not so far separated
as some virtuous dull folk may think.
--
* The Mamelucos sometimes pushed their forays right through Paraguay
into the district of the Moxos, and Padre Patricio Fernandez,
in his curious `Relacion de los Indios Chiquitos' (Madrid, 1726),
relates their adventures in that far-distant district,
and the conflicts which the Indians, led by their priests and helped
by the Spanish settlers, sustained.
--
Quite naturally, these redoubtable land and river pirates
saw in the Jesuit reductions upon the Paranapane, and generally
throughout the district of Guayra, merely an opportunity of capturing
more Indians than usual at a haul. In 1629 they first appeared
before the Mission of San Antonio and destroyed it utterly,
burning the church and houses, and driving off the Indians to sell as slaves.
San Miguel and Jesus-Maria shortly suffered the same fate. In Concepcion
Padre Salazar was regularly besieged, and he and all the people reduced
to eating dogs, cats, rats, mice, and even snakes. At the last moment,
when about to surrender, Father Cataldino, hastily arming some Indians with
any rude weapons at his command, marched on the place and raised the siege.
A worthy member of the Church militant this exploring, fighting,
intrepid Italian priest, and one the Company of Jesus should honour,
for to him, perhaps as much as to any of these first explorers
of the Upper Parana, is credit due.
But still the Mamelucos ran their course, destroying town after town,
so that in the short space of a year (1630-31) they destroyed partially
the reductions of San Francisco Xavier, San Jose, San Pedro,
and La Concepcion; and the two first founded, San Ignacio and Loreto,
were ruined utterly. The wretched Indians, to whom by law
the Jesuits were forbidden to serve out firearms, stood no chance
against the well-trained Paulistas, with their horses, guns, and bloodhounds,
assisted as they were by troops of savage Indians who discharged
poisoned arrows from blowpipes and from bows. Small wonder that,
as Montoya, Charlevoix, Lahier,*1* and Filiberto Monero*2* all agree,
despair took hold of them, so that in many instances
they cursed the Jesuits and fled back to the woods. When one reflects
that many of the Indian tribes looked upon baptism as a poison,*3*
it is not strange that they should have associated effect with cause,
and set down all their sufferings to the influence of the malignant rite
to which the Jesuits had subjected them. The isolated Jesuits
ran considerable risk from their own sheep, and Padre Mola,
after the ruin of San Antonio, was suspected by them of being in league
with the Paulistas, and had to flee for safety to another town;
and as a touch of comedy is seldom wanting to make things bitterer
to those in misfortune, a troop of savage Indians, having arrived
to attack the Reduction of San Antonio, and finding it already burning,
instantly thought poor Padre Mola had been the instigator,
and, starting on his trail, almost surprised him before he reached a refuge
from their patriotic rage.
--
*1* Lahier (Francisci) S. I., `Annae Paraguarie, Annor. 1635, et duor. sequ.'
*2* `Relazioni della Provincia del Paraguai'.
*3* Brabo.
--
Thus in the greater world reformers of all sorts have not infrequently
in times of scarcity and danger been taken by their proteges
for the authors of their trials and stoned, whilst the smug Government
which caused the ruin, well bolstered up in the affection of its `taxables',
chuckled, serenely confident in the unending folly of mankind.
Most certainly the Jesuits struggled to do their duty to their neophytes
in what they thought they saw was right. On foot and unattended
Fathers Maceta and Mansilla followed the fifteen thousand captives to Brazil,
confessing those who fell upon the road before they died,
and instant in supplication to the Paulistas for the prisoners' release.
Father Maceta especially behaved heroically, carrying the chains of those
who could hardly drag themselves along, himself half dead
with hunger and his constant toil. Especially he strove to effect
the release of a captive chief called Guiravera, who had been
one of his bitterest enemies, and strove so hard that a Paulista captain,
either touched by his zeal or wearied with his pleading,
released the chief, his wife and family, and six of the Indians of his tribe.
The chief returned to become the Jesuits' best friend,
and the two priests on foot followed the captives' train.
What they endured on foot without provisions, tortured by insects,
and in danger from wild beasts, as well as constant perils from the Paulistas,
who now and then pricked them with lances or fired pistols over their heads
to frighten them away, none but those who have journeyed
in the forests of that forgotten corner of the world can estimate.
I see them in their torn and sun-browned cassocks struggling through
the `esteros'*1* in water to the knees, falling and rising oft,
after the fashion of the supposititious Christian on life's way;
pushing along through forest paths across which darted humming-birds,
now coming on a dying man and kneeling by his side, now gathering
the berries of the guavirami*2* to eat upon the road, and then again
catching sight of a jaguar as it slunk beside the trail, and all the time
convinced that all their efforts, like the efforts of most of those
who strive, would be in vain. So stumbling through the woods,
crossing the rivers on inflated ox-skins, baked by the sun
upon the open plains, at length the Jesuits reached San Paulo,
where they had a college, and without resting set at once to work.
In season (and what in cases of the kind is ten times more important),
out of season, they besought, pleaded, and preached, and finding
as little grace from the Paulista chiefs as a transgressor against
some fiery dogma would find from a sour-faced North British dogmatist,
they started for Rio de Janeiro to see the Council-General of Brazil.
There they were told that the right person to address
was the Captain-General of the colony, who had his residence in Bahia,
five or six hundred miles away. Not the least daunted, they set out,
and found Don Diego Luis Oliveira more or less friendly, but as usual
fearful of giving offence to those who had a vested interest in the trade.
Then the two Jesuits, hearing that another invasion of the Paulistas
was expected in Guayra, started back on their long journey
through the woods, over the plains, across the mountain ranges,
and through the dank `esteros' which lay between them and their missions
on the Parana. The Captain-General seems to have been roused
to a sense of the position by their words, for on his annual visitation
at San Paulo he spoke in public to the colonists against their slave raids,
when a shot fired from the meeting ended his speech.*3* The inhabitants
then signified to him that, sooner than give up what seemed to them
a justifiable and honest means of life, they would be debaptized.
How they proposed to debaptize themselves is not related,
but perhaps after the fashion of the Guaranis -- by sand, hot water,
and scraping with a shell; though why the tongue should be thus scarified
seems doubtful, for no sect of Christians that is known
exacts that people at that sacrament should put out their tongues,
and even baptism does little or nothing to increase the power of scandal
inherent both in those who have been and those who never were baptized.
--
*1* An `estero' is a tract of country covered by water
to the depth of two or three feet. The bottom is usually hard,
but it is full of holes and hummocks. High pampa grass and reeds
not infrequently obscure the view, and clouds of insects
make life miserable. If the tract extends to more than a day's journey,
the night passed on a dry hummock, holding one's horse and listening
without a fire to the wild beasts, is likely to remain
present to one in after-life, especially if alone; the only things
that seem to link one to humanity are one's horse and the familiar stars.
Perhaps that is why Capella has always seemed to me in some sort
my own property.
*2* This curious berry, about the size of a large damson,
grows on a little shrub in sandy and rocky soils.
It has a thick yellow rind and several large seeds,
and the property of being icy cold in the hottest weather --
a true traveller's joy. Dr. de Bourgade de la Dardye,
in his excellent book on Paraguay (the English edition
published in London in 1892), thinks it is either a eugenia or a myrtus.
*3* Charlevoix, vol. i., liv. vii., p. 384.
--
About this time (1630) the poor Jesuits were much tormented
by the return to paganism of their Indians, and most especially
by a hideous dwarf who set himself up as a god, and found
a host of worshippers. Good Father Charlevoix thinks
that `ce petit-monstre',* despairing of being thought a man, had no resource
but to give out he was a god, and remarks that, as even more hideous gods
have been adored, it is not surprising that the Indians took him at his word.
When stripped of the somewhat strange phraseology of the simple Jesuit,
there is nothing really shocking in the incident. People in general,
in making gods, endue them with their own least admirable attributes,
and logically these poor Indians but followed out the general scheme.
--
* Ibid., liv. vii., p. 359.
--
But in the midst of heresies and dwarf-gods, with the Paulistas
almost always in the field, a man arose who was to lead
the Jesuits and their neophytes out of Guayra and settle them
securely below the cataract in the Misiones of Paraguay.
Born probably late in the sixteenth century in Spain,
Antonio Ruiz de Montoya was amongst the first of the Jesuit Fathers
who came to Paraguay. In 1612 we find him recently arrived from Spain;*1*
sent up to the province of Guayra to the assistance of Fathers
Maceta and Cataldino. For thirty years,*2* as he himself informs us
in his book, he remained in Paraguay, and in his own pathetic words
he tells us how most of his life was spent. `I have lived,' he says,
`all through the period of thirty years in Paraguay, as in the desert
searching for wild beasts -- that is, for savage Indians --
crossing wild countries, traversing mountain chains, in order
to find Indians and bring them to the true sheepfold of the Holy Church
and to the service of His Majesty.*3* With my companions I established
thirteen reductions or townships in the wilds, and this I did
with great anxiety, in hunger, nakedness, and frequent peril of my life.
And all these years I passed far from my brother Spaniards have made me
almost a rustic and ignorant of the polished language of the Court.'
Travelling as he did continually, few knew the country
from Guayra to Yapeyu*4* so well as he; he tells us that
for `all travelling equipment' he took a hammock, and a little mandioca flour,
that he usually travelled on foot with either sandals or bare feet,
and that for eight or nine years he never once tasted bread.
--
*1* Charlevoix, `Histoire du Paraguay', vol. lvi., p. 285.
*2* `Conquista Espiritual del Paraguay', Ruiz de Montoya,
introductory chapter.
*3* This may either mean to the service of God or to the service of the King
(Philip III.), for in the time of Montoya `Majesty' was used in addressing
both the King of Spain and the King of Heaven.
*4* Yapeyu, or Reyes, was the southernmost of the Jesuit reductions.
It was situated upon the Uruguay in what is now
the Argentine province of Entre Rios.
--
About the year 1611-12 we find him charged with a mission
to the Provincial at Asuncion to disabuse him of a report
which had been carried there that the Jesuits of Guayra
were garnering in no fruit from all their labours in the wilds.
The rumour had been so much repeated that the superiors in Asuncion
were on the point of calling back the missionaries and giving up all hope.
Montoya, accompanied by six Indians, set out upon the journey,
which by land to-day is enough to appal the boldest traveller.
Walking along, he found himself about the middle of his way alone,
his Indians having loitered in the rear. Night caught him in the forests,
and a storm came on. He passed the night at the foot of a large tree,
hungry and wet, and, waking in the morning, found himself
so crippled with arthritic pains as to be obliged to continue his journey
on his hands and knees. Alone and helpless, he dragged himself to a place
called Maracayu, and, failing to obtain a canoe, went on another league,
and there lay down to die, his leg being swelled enormously
with the rheumatic pains. Then, as he says himself, he prayed to San Ignacio,
telling him that from a sentiment of obedience he had set out upon
the journey through the waste. Nothing could have been better,
for the saint (who must have seen him all the time), flattered, perhaps,
that his own chief virtue had been the cause of so much pain,
promptly healed him and restored his leg to its usual size,
and Montoya went on his way rejoicing to Asuncion. The Provincial
heard and was disabused, but was unable to send a single man to help,
and poor Montoya set off again back to Guayra alone, having gained nothing
but his sufferings on the road.
Again, in 1614, we find him in Asuncion combating calumnies
spread by the Spanish settlers against the Jesuits.
In the same year (as he informs us*) he was witness
in the Reduction of Loreto of a strange circumstance.
`An Indian,' he says, `of intelligence and pious conduct called me
to administer the last Sacraments, and to confess him before he died,
and this I did. As there seemed little hope of his recovery,
and pressing business called me away, I quitted him after having given orders
for his burial. He died in a short time -- at least, all those
who were with him had no doubt of this; on my return I found the man
whom I had charged to stay beside the Indian till his death
preparing for his funeral. Toward mid-day they came to tell me
that the dead man had come to life, and wished to speak to me. I ran there,
and found him with a cheerful face in the middle of a crowd of Indians.
I asked him what had happened since I last saw him, and he answered me
that the instant that I quitted him his soul had taken its departure
from his body; then, at a point which he thought near to his hammock,
a devil had appeared, who said to him, "You are my prey,"
and that he answered it could not be, for he had confessed himself
to the best of his ability, and had received the holy Viaticum
before his death; that the devil had sustained that his confession
had been incomplete, and that he had forgotten to confess
that twice he had been drunk, to which he answered that it was an oversight,
and he hoped that God would not remember it. Then, on the devil sustaining
that he had committed a sacrilege, St. Peter had appeared, followed by angels,
and driven off the fiend. I asked him how he had known St. Peter,
and he replied by describing him, though he had never seen
an image of the saint. "The saint," he said, "covered me with his mantle,
and I felt myself instantly carried through the air. First I perceived
a lovely landscape, and further on a great city, from which
a shining light appeared. Then the Apostle and the angels stopped,
and the first said to me, `This is the city of the Lord;
we live here with Him, but the time of your entry is not yet.
It is written that your soul shall once more join your body,
and in three days you must appear in church.' Then all was dark,
and in an instant I woke up alive and well."
--
* `Conquista Espiritual', p. 22.
--
`I,' says Montoya, `understood by the last words of St. Peter
that the man had to die in three days, and I asked what he thought himself.
"I think," said he, "that next Sunday they will carry my body to the church,
and I am certain that I only returned to life in order to exhort
my relatives and my friends to listen to your instructions." . . .
When Sunday came he made his general confession,* admitted the two sins
the devil had reproached him with, exhorted all to live a Christian life,
and a few moments afterwards quietly gave up the ghost.'
--
* This time, it is to be hoped, without omissions.
--
This is the sole occasion on which Padre Ruiz Montoya even remotely
touches the field of miracles, as he in general relies
upon himself, his knowledge of the world, and on his patience,
which must have been almost North British in its quality,
if he acted up to his own favourite maxim of `by returning thanks for injuries
is how wise men conduct their business.'*
--
* `Dando gracias por agravios negocian los hombres sabios.'
--
In 1623 we find him praying Father Cataldino to let him accompany
the expedition to Itiranbaru, a mountain wooded to the summit,
in which lived several wild tribes. There he so worked upon the Indians
as to establish them in a reduction under the title of St. Francis Xavier,*
and left the mountain, which had been a haunt of savages,
as Padre del Techo says in his curious work on Paraguay,
`all at the service of the Lord.'
--
* Soon afterwards ruined by the Paulistas.
--
In 1623, whilst preaching, he was suddenly assailed by hostile Indians,
and seven of his Indians pierced with arrows at his feet.
Undoubtedly, he must have been killed had not an Indian
taken his hat and cloak, and run into the middle of the enemy
to distract the fire. In the confusion both the heroic Indian and Montoya
managed to escape, the latter getting into a canoe which, fortunately,
was ready at the river-side. But in the midst of all his occupations
he had time to study natural history in the spirit of the time,
as the following description clearly shows: `Amongst the other
rarities of the land is an amphibious animal. . . . It is like a sheep,
with but the difference that its teeth and nails are like a tiger's,
which animal it equals in ferocity. The Indians never look on it
without terror, and when it sallies from the marshes where it lives
(which it does ordinarily in troops), they have no other chance of escape
but to climb up a tree, and even then sometimes are not in safety,
for this terrible creature sometimes uproots the tree, or sometimes
stays on guard until the Indian falls into its jaws.' Thus far Montoya;
but Charlevoix informs us that, `en langue Guaranie', it is known as the `ao',
and rather tamely adds, `When one of these animals is slain,
the people make a jacket of its skin.'
Again, Montoya tells us of the horse on which the venerable Padre Roque
used to ride, which, when he died, refused all food, and wept perpetually,
two streams of water running from its eyes. It never allowed an Indian
to mount it after its master's death, and finally expired,
close to his grave, of grief. A kindly, scholarly, intrepid priest,
well skilled in knowledge of the world, and not without
some tincture of studies in science, as the above-related anecdotes
reveal to us. No doubt the Indians loved him far and wide,
and his superiors stood in some little awe of him, as those in office
often do of their subordinates when they show that capacity for action
which is a sure bar to advancement either in Church or State.
In 1627 Montoya was made head of the missions in Guayra,
which opened up to him the opportunity of showing what kind of man he was.
In this year the Spaniards of Villa Rica, the nearest town in Paraguay
to the reductions in Guayra, sent out an expedition to chastize some Indians
who had insulted a chief called Tayaoba, whom Montoya had baptized.
This was the pretext for the expedition, but Montoya knew well
that the real object was to hunt for slaves. He brought before the Governor
the edict of the King of Spain forbidding any war to be made upon the Indians
without sufficient cause. All was in vain, and the expedition
left Villa Rica and plunged into the wilds. Montoya, sore against
the Governor's desire, went with the expedition, taking with him
Padre Salazar and some well-armed Indians. It was lucky for the Spaniards
that he was there, for on the second day a flight of arrows
burst from a wood and wounded many of them. The captain of the expedition
ordered a retreat, which, situated as they were, exposed on all sides
to the fire of an enemy whom they could not see, must have proved fatal.
Montoya counselled throwing up earthworks before some huts
which stood upon the edge of the woods in which the Indians were;
this done, he sent a messenger to Villa Rica for reinforcements.
Even behind the earthworks the Spaniards were hard pressed;
no one could show himself without being pierced by an arrow.
The number of the Indians daily increased, till on the third day
they numbered about four thousand, and seemed likely to advance upon the huts.
The Spanish captain ordered a rally, and the neophytes wished to decamp,
taking Montoya with them, and then gain the shelter of the woods.
This he would not allow, and, charging with the soldiers,
put the Indians to flight. The Spaniards, far from being grateful
for their lives, seeing their hopes of making prisoners had vanished,
wished to lay hands upon the Indians whom Montoya had brought,
and who had fought beside them in the recent fray. Hearing that
in the morning the Spanish soldiers would attack his neophytes,
Montoya sent them off by night, and in the morning, when the Spanish captain
found him and the other priest alone, he said, `Thinking you had no other use
for the Indians, I advised them to return.' The captain had the grace
to say nothing but, `Then, you gave them good advice, my father.'
The two priests waited patiently till the soldiers had retired,
and then sent for their Indians and quietly went home. Thus it appears
that at necessity Padre Montoya was a true son of San Ignacio.
In 1628 Montoya seems to have met for the first time Padre Diaz Tano,
who afterwards was his companion both in the retreat from Guayra
down the Parana and in his mission to the King. No matter
whether a man make his career with Indians in the wilds of Paraguay
or amongst the so-called reasoning people in more sophisticated lands,
if he once show himself superior to the ordinary run of men,
there is something of an invidious character certain to be attributed to him
by those who think that genius is the worst attribute that man can have.
This, Montoya did not escape from amongst the Spaniards, but the Indians,
at least, were less envious, being perhaps less educated, for they believed
that the soul of one of their `caciques',* known in his life as Quaratici,
had entered into him. The rumour reached at last a chief called Guiravera,
known to the Spaniards as the `Exterminator' from his cruelty,
who, hearing that the soul of his late rival had entered into Montoya,
came to see him at the head of a large retinue of people of his tribe.
Montoya and Maceta were at Villa Rica, and on the chief's approach
they happened to be seated in the plaza of the town. As he approached them,
followed by his men, and with a threatening air, they remained seated,
merely motioning him to take a seat upon a bench. This he did, after making
one of his men cover the seat with a tiger-skin and stand behind on guard.
What passed between them, most unluckily, Montoya has not set down.
What he has told us only makes us wish for more, for it appears
that after the usual salutations Guiravera refused to speak,
and getting up walked about the town, silently looking at everything.
But, as it ever happens, even Montoya was no exception
to the general run of history-writers, who usually are occupied alone
with facts which seem to them important at the time,
forgetting that posterity (for whom they write) can judge of the result
as well as they themselves, but thirst for details to complete the chain
betwixt them and their predecessors. One thing is set down `in extenso'
-- not by Montoya, but by another Jesuit -- that is,
the sermon which Montoya preached to bring the chief into the fold.
Considered as a sermon it does not seem out of the common way,
and judged by its results was futile at the time, for the chief
answered coldly that he would think the matter over, and then retired
into the woods. But the seed thus sown in Villa Rica was to bear fruit,
for in a year the chief, either tired of his ancestral gods or having pondered
on the sermon, came into the fold and was baptized as Paul.
--
* `Cacique' = chief.
--
An irruption*1* of the Mamelucos called Father Montoya from
baptizing Indians and recovering their souls to the more prosaic,
if as useful, task of saving their bodies, which he did
at the immediate peril of his own. The Mamelucos had appeared (1628)
before the Reduction of Encarnacion, and many of the Indians had already
taken refuge in the woods. Those who remained were like a flock of sheep
without a shepherd, and knew not what to do. Padre Montoya hastened
to the spot, and called on every Christian to take up arms.
Under the circumstances he undoubtedly was right; still, in reading history
one is puzzled to observe how often and in how many different countries
Christians have to resort to arms. But before proceeding to extremities,
Montoya sent out Fathers Mendoza and Domenecchi with some of
the principal inhabitants of the reduction to parley with the Mamelucos,
who, under their celebrated leader Antonio Raposo, were encamped
outside the place. Upon arriving within range of the Paulista camp
they were greeted with a shower of balls and arrows, which killed
several of the Indians and wounded Father Mendoza in the foot. But when,
in spite of his wound, the Jesuit advanced towards the camp and insisted
on speaking with the leader, the Mamelucos were so struck with his courage
that they gave up to him several of the Indians whom they had taken prisoners
upon the previous day. Next day Father Montoya, encouraged by
the unhoped-for success of Father Mendoza, went out himself,
and, facing the Paulistas, somewhat imprudently threatened them
with the wrath of Heaven and the King if they did not retire.
The wrath of Heaven is often somewhat capricious in its action,
and the King of Spain, although as wrathful as he had been an Emperor,
was too far away to inspire much terror in his subjects on the Parana.
So that the Paulista treated the wrath of both their Majesties
as qualities which he could well neglect, and for sole answer
ordered his men to march upon the town. But, whether owing
to their hard hearts having been touched by the good Father's eloquence,
or the fact that the neophytes were under arms, when the Paulistas
arrived close to the town they altered their intentions and filed off
into the woods. Profiting by the respite from hostilities,
Montoya, in conjunction with Padre Diaz Tano and a Father bearing
the somewhat curious name of Padre Justo Vansurk Mansilla,*2*
devoted all his attention for the time to the Mission of Santa Maria la Mayor,
which was the most flourishing of all the missions of the time,
and which to-day still shows the greatest remnants of the Jesuits' work,
both in regard to architecture and the remains of Indian population
still settled on the old mission lands. But even there
the Jesuits did not escape without their trials, for it appears*3*
that a quantity of new proselytes arrived with women, whom the good Fathers
stigmatized as `concubines', and whom the ignorant Indians
in the innocence of their hearts looked on as wives. The order being given
to dismiss these concubines (or wives), a few submitted; but the rest,
leaving the mission, started cultivating a tract of land in the vicinity.
--
*1* These raids were known as `malocas'.
*2* In Paraguay it was not unusual for foreign Jesuits
to hispaniolize their names; thus, Smith became Esmid.
But it was more usual to add a Spanish name, as appears
to have been the case with P. Vansurk Mansilla. Father Manuel Querini,
in his report to the King of Spain in 1750, mentions the names of Boxer,
Keiner, and Limp, with many other French, English, and German names,
amongst those of priests at the various missions.
*3* Montoya, `Conquista Espiritual'. Also Charlevoix.
--
Then the good Fathers, with Montoya at their head, hit on a stroke of genius.
Taking the opportunity when the seceding Indians were away
gathering their crops, they set fire to their houses and carried off
the children and the women,* back to the mission. The recalcitrants
appeared next day at Santa Maria la Mayor, and were received again
into the bosom of the Church. Heresy, also, now and then made its appearance,
for two rascals, having built two temples upon two hills,
transported to them the skeletons of two magicians long since dead,
and the fickle people left the churches empty, and went to worship
at the magicians' shrines. But in this season of sorrow and of care,
and whilst the churches in the Mission of Encarnacion were left deserted,
Montoya once again showed his determination, and put things right.
Not being able to cope alone with the heathen, Father Diaz Tano
went to Guayra, and induced Montoya (still the superior of the reductions
in that province) to give his aid. He came, and, having armed
some of the faithful, at dead of night attacked the temples and razed them
to the ground.
--
* It is certain that the Guaranis, like many other Indians,
were polygamists, and Xarque, in his `Vida Apostolica
del P. Joseph Cataldino', thus explains the matter:
`El tener tanto numero de concubinas, no solamente lo ocasiona
su natural lascivo, sino tambien, el vicio de la embriaguez,
pues teniendo tantas criadas tenian con mas abundancia su cerveza y vino.'
Thus Xarque seems to agree with the late Miss Mary Kingsley,
who in one of her books (though she says nothing about
the `natural lascivo' of the negroes of the West Coast of Africa)
seems to attribute the polygamy of the negroes to the difficulty
a man experiences, in the countries in which she travelled,
in getting his food prepared by one wife.
--
In 1631 Montoya and others came in the forests of Guayra
upon the wild Caaguas. These they strove hard to civilize,
but, after labouring long, with all their eloquence were able
to induce only eighteen to return with them to the Encarnacion.
It was `with difficulty that they were able to give them
a sufficient knowledge of the mysteries of our faith to be able
to bestow the rite of baptism.' It may be that the Caaguas,
not having much to occupy their minds, approached the mysteries of our faith
in more receptive attitudes than is attained by those whose minds are full.
But, anyhow, Montoya, with true prudence, deferred their baptism
till just before their death, for a few months of life outside the forests
proved fatal to them all. Faith is a wondrous thing,
and able to move most things, even common-sense. One wonders, though,
why, when the Jesuits learned from experience that the poor Indians
invariably died when exposed to the burning sun upon the plains,
they continued in their fatal efforts to inflict baptism
on the unoffending people of the woods. If it were necessary,
it surely might have taken place in their own homes, and the patients then
might have been left to chance, to see how the reception of the holy rite
acted upon their lives.
In 1631 the Mamelucos broke into the province of Guayra.
All was confusion, and Montoya sent Father Diaz Tano to Asuncion
to beg the Governor, Don Luis de Cespedes, to send them help.
He answered that he could do nothing, and thus by leaving
the whole territory of Guayra without defence lost a rich province
to the Crown of Spain. Though at the time (1631) Portugal and Spain
were united, yet in the Indies their subjects were at war,
and though in Europe Spain was the stronger of the two,
in America the Portuguese conquered about that time rich provinces,
which to-day form part of the quondam Empire of Brazil.
Upon the failure of Don Luis de Cespedes to render help,
Padre Diaz Tano was despatched to Charcas*1* to lay the matter
before the Audiencia Real (the High Court of the Indies).
The frequent journeys and diplomatic negotiations in which
the Jesuits of Paraguay were engaged rendered them far more apt
to manage business than members of the other Orders in America.
Whilst in Guayra all was confusion, and the Paulistas swept through the land
ruining everything, upon the Uruguay things prospered, and Padre Romero
founded two new reductions (1631), known as San Carlos and Apostoles;
he also laid the foundation of that territory in which
the persecuted neophytes of Guayra were soon to find a safe retreat.
Father Diaz Tano by this time had returned from Charcas
with a decree of the High Court, declaring the action of Don Luis de Cespedes
in failing to protect Guayra against the Mamelucos prejudicial to
the interests of the King; but as neither he nor the High Court of Charcas
possessed any power by means of which to stimulate the Governor
to greater zeal, the decree was useless, and Tano and Ruiz Montoya
found themselves summoned hastily to meet a new attack. But before
they arrived the missions, both of San Francisco Xavier and of San Jose,
had been destroyed. As there were still three reductions undestroyed,
Montoya, as Provincial of Guayra, called all the Jesuits of the province
to deliberate as to their chance of making a defence. The debate ran high;
some of the priests wished that the neophytes should fight to the end;
others, more sensible, pointed out that the ill-armed and quite untrained
militia of the missions could do nothing with their bows and arrows
against the well-led and well-disciplined Paulistas all armed with guns.*2*
Padre Truxillo gave it as his opinion that it would be more prudent
to transport the Indians to a place of safety, and pointed out
that near the cataract of Guayra they would be able
to cross the river and place it between themselves and the Paulistas
in case of an attack. This advice seemed prudent to the rest,
and Father Truxillo set out to make his preparation for the march.
Few European travellers even to-day have visited the great cataract
known as El Salto de Guayra, or in Portuguese As sete Quedas.
Bourgade la Dardye*3* has described it in his book on Paraguay.
Situated as it is in the midst of almost impenetrable forests,
it has not even now been properly placed upon the map. Bourgade la Dardye
inclines to think he was the first to visit it since the expedition sent
by the elder Lopez, President of Paraguay, under Lieutenant Patino in 1861.
Before that time it had been left unvisited since 1788,
when the Boundary Commissioners sent to determine the dividing line
between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions camped near it for a week.
Felix de Azara writes about it in his `Historia del Paraguay',*4*
but he does little more than reproduce the account given
by the Boundary Commissioners. He places it in 24d 4' 27" lat.,
and refers to it as `a tremendous precipice of water*5*
worthy of Homer or of Virgil's pen.' He says the waters do not fall
vertically as from a balcony or window (`como por un balcon o/ ventana'),
but by an inclined plane at an inclination of about fifty degrees.
The river close to the top of the falls is about four thousand nine hundred
Castilian yards in breadth, and suddenly narrows to about seventy yards,
and rushes over the fall with such terrific violence as if it wished
to `displace the centre of the earth, and cause thus the nutation
which astronomers have observed in the earth's axis.' The dew or vapour
which rises from the fall is seen in the shape of a column
from many miles away, and on it hangs a perpetual rainbow,
which trembles as the earth seems to tremble under one's feet.
`The noise,' he says, `is heard full six leagues off, and in the neighbourhood
neither bird nor beast is found.' In Azara's time the journey
was not too pleasant, for he says: `He who wishes to see this fall
must cross the desert for thirty leagues from the town of Curuguaty
to the river Guatimi. There he must choose trees to construct canoes.
In these he must embark all those who go with him, arms and provisions,
and besides, where he embarks, leave an armed escort
to secure his base of supplies from the wild Indians' attack.
In the canoes he then must navigate the Guatimi for thirty leagues
until it joins the Parana, and always with much care,
for in the woods upon its banks are Indians who give no quarter.*6* . . .
Then there remain three leagues to sail upon the Parana,
then one can reach the falls either in the canoes or struggling along
the woods which fringe the river's bank.'
--
*1* Charcas is situated in what is now Bolivia, and was extremely inconvenient
for all dwellers on the eastern side of the Andes to reach.
Whether this was a masterpiece of policy calculated
to discourage lawsuits, or whether it was merely due
to Spanish incuriousness and maladministration, is a moot point.
*2* The Indians of the missions were not allowed to possess firearms
at this period.
*3* `Paraguay', Dr. E. de Bourgade la Dardye; English edition
by George Philips junior (London, 1892). The Indians
call it Salto de Canandiyu, which, according to Azara,
was the name of a `cacique' whom the first Spaniards met there.
*4* `Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay', Madrid, 1847.
*5* `Y es un espantoso despen~adero de agua', etc.
(`Descripcion del Paraguay', tomo i., p. 39).
*6* `No dan cuartel'.
--
Azara was, perhaps, of all the travellers of the last century,
the man who above all things shines in accuracy, and in point of fact
his description of the cataract is the best we have up to the present time.
Bourgade la Dardye tells us that not far above the cataract
the Parana expands into a lake almost five miles in breadth,
and from the lake the river issues in two great arms, which have
forced their way through the mountains known as the Sierra de Mbaracyu.
Dr. Bourgade la Dardye seems to think the circular eddies found in the whirls
are the most curious features of the falls. He describes them thus:
`They flow in falls varying from fifty to sixty feet in depth;
these circular eddies, which are quite independent of one another,
range along an arc of about two miles in its stretch.
They are detached like giant caldrons yawning unexpectedly at one's feet,
in which the flood seethes with incredible fury; every one of these
has opened for itself a narrow orifice in the rock, through which
like a stone from a sling the water is hurled into the central whirlpool.
The width of these outlets rarely exceeds fifteen yards,
but their depth cannot be estimated. They all empty themselves
into one immense central chamber about two hundred feet wide,
rushing into it with astounding velocity. . . . A more imposing spectacle
can scarcely be conceived, and I doubt whether abysses such as these
exist elsewhere in the world.' He places the falls in latitude 24d 2' 59",
but corrects the longitude given by Azara as 56d 55' west of Paris
to 58d 18' 8" -- that is, 53d 57' 53" west from Greenwich, which certainly
has some importance in fixing the breadth of the territory of Paraguay.
But neither Azara nor the French traveller, with their yards and feet,
their longitude and latitude, and the rest, give an idea
of the grandeur of the place. Buried in the primeval forests,
forgotten by the world, known to the wandering Indians who give no quarter
(any more to-day than in Azara's time), the giant cataract
is a lost wonder of the world. In the ruined missions on the Parana,
two hundred miles away, I have heard the Indians talk of it with awe.
They told how through the woods tangled with undergrowth,
matted together with lianas, they had hewed a path. Monkeys and parrots
chattered at them, and a white miasmatic vapour hung over trees and lakes,
burying the clearings in its wreaths, and lifting only at mid-day,
to close again upon the woods at night. They talked of alligators, jaguars,
the giant ant-eater, and the mysterious bird known to them as the `ipetata',
which in its tail carries a burning fire. In the recesses of the thickets
demons lurked, and wild Caaguas, who with a blowpipe and a poisoned arrow
slew you and your horse, themselves unseen. Pools covered
with Victoria regia; masses of red and yellow flowers upon the trees,
the trees themselves gigantic, and the moss which floated from their branches
long as a spear; the voyage in canoes, whirled like a cork upon the rapids;
lastly the falls themselves, and how they, awestricken at the sight,
fell prostrate and promised many candles to the Virgin and the saints
on their return, they talked of into the watches of the night.
Somehow, I like those countries which, as the province of Guayra
and Paraguay, appear to have no future, and of which the charm is in the past.
It pleases me to think that the sharp business men of times gone by,
patting their stomachs (the prison of their brain),
predicted great advancement, and were all deceived. For then it seems
as if the prognostications of to-day's schemes may also fail,
and countries which they have doomed to progress still remain as is Guayra,
their towns deserted, with but the broken spire of some old church
emerging from the verdure of the tropics, as the St. Paul's Rocks
rise sheer out of the sea. If there is charm in the unknown,
there is at least as great a charm in the forgotten,
and the Salto de Guayra is one of the most forgotten corners of the earth.
To this wild place Father Mendoza proposed to lead the Indians
from the Reductions of San Jose and San Francisco Xavier,
and then unite with them any of the fugitives he could assemble
from those reductions which had been destroyed. But even
the doglike patience of the Indians was at an end, and they preferred
to die or be led captives rather than run the chances of escape
in such a solitary place. In their despair, and placed between
the Paulistas and the fear of emigration, the neophytes turned,
as even more civilized people than themselves will turn,
on their best friends, and held the Jesuits responsible for all their woes.
Two Indian women, wives of `caciques', having been taken by the Paulistas,
the Indians broke into the church where a Jesuit (Padre Salazar)
was officiating, and interrupted him during the Mass
with the most bitter insults. One of the Indians menaced him with a lance,
another with an arrow, whilst a third tried to snatch the chalice
from his hands. He escaped, and ran, holding the chalice,
out into the woods, followed by two little Indian boys. Wandering about,
he fell in with the other Jesuits, all like himself outcasts,
without a church, and almost deserted by the Indians.
Padre Ruiz Montoya alone possessed a shadow of authority,
and he advised the outcasts with the remnant of their flocks
to retire into the woods, and sow a crop of maize for food,
whilst he endeavoured to get help from Paraguay. Hardly was this done,
when news was brought him which made him alter all his plans.
Two messengers came to inform him that an army of Paulistas
was marching on Villa Rica, and that a strong detachment of them
was advancing from the south. Then Padre Montoya took a supreme resolve,
and ordered the evacuation of the two principal reductions
(San Ignacio and Loreto) which yet remained intact. They were the first
which had been founded in Guayra, and were as important as
any of the Spanish towns in Paraguay. The churches, all the Jesuit writers,
as Montoya, Charlevoix, Mastrilli, and Lozano, are agreed,
were finer than any in the land. The Indians were, according to Montoya,
far better Christians than the inhabitants of the Spanish settlements,
and their faith and innocence were above all praise.
They cultivated cotton and had large herds of cattle,
so that the most bitter enemies of the Jesuits must allow
that much had been accomplished in the short space of two-and-twenty years.
In 1609 the Jesuits came to Guayra, and found it absolutely untouched;
and when in 1631 they left it, it was upon the road to become
one of the most flourishing American provinces of the Spanish throne.
The other missionaries imagined that nothing would persuade the Indians
to depart from their homes, where for so many years they had been happy;
but after Montoya explained to them his plans, they all assented to them
as with a single voice.
The plan by means of which the Jesuit Moses led his sheep
out of the wilderness of Guayra was most remarkable.
The river Parana forms a great artery between Brazil and Paraguay;
upon each side of it a network of rivers disembogue. The Paranapane,
on which most of the missions of Guayra were situated, flows from the east,
and falls into the Parana, not much more than fifty miles
above the cataract. After the last of the once-flourishing
six Jesuit reductions had been evacuated at the orders of Montoya,
he collected all the boats, rafts, and canoes, and after much persuasion
got all the Indians persuaded to follow him to seek for safer habitations
lower down the Parana. The population of the six reductions
has been estimated at about one hundred thousand souls; but of these,
during the years of 1629 and 1630, thousands had been led captive
to San Paulo, and thousands had dispersed into the woods.
Still, assembled on the banks of the Paranapane, there was
a multitude of Indians of every sex and age. Fortunately or unfortunately,
no record by an eye-witness exists,* except that written by Montoya,
and he is modest to a fault about all details, and absolutely silent
as to the part he played himself. He tells us that at the starting-point
were gathered two thousand five hundred families, and this
in spite of the dispersions and the efforts made by the Spanish settlers
in the town of Ciudad Real,** who feared, with cause, to be exposed
to the full fury of the Paulistas without allies. It appears the Indians
were in a state of spiritual exaltation, for some young men having remarked
the Jesuits were packing up a Christ and an image of the Blessed Virgin,
which in happier times had been miraculous, they declared
that to affront exile, and even death, in such good company
was a foretaste of heaven.
--
* At least, I have been unable to discover any other account
by an eye-witness.
** This city was situated near the great falls of Guayra,
and was destroyed by the Paulistas, as well as the city of Villa Rica,
after the Jesuits and their Indians left the province.
--
Montoya, in opposition to the modern style, tries to shift
the burden of the praise on to the shoulders of the Provincial,
Padre Francisco Lopez Truxillo,*1* but with indifferent success.
This matter of bearing your own praise will require regulation in the future,
when an advance of civilization has opened people's eyes to the perception
that praise is just as disagreeable to the sufferer as is blame.
The sentinel whom they had placed to warn them of the enemy's approach
gave the alarm. Montoya sent at once to Ciudad Real for help,
but the Spanish settlers were too hard pressed themselves to give assistance.
Nothing remained but to make a portage of all their rafts, boats,
and canoes, and then to re-embark and sail down the Parana
out of the reach of the Paulistas. Montoya passed in review his boats,
and found he had seven hundred, and that twelve thousand people
had embarked with him on leaving the Paranapane. When the Paulistas found
the Jesuits had evacuated all their towns, they burnt the churches,
on the principle, perhaps, that, the nests once pulled down,
the rooks would not return. They turned the Jesuit cells into barracks
for themselves, taking, as Montoya says with horror, `infamous women'
into those chaste abodes, where never woman had passed through the doors.
The Paulistas then entered into a rigorous examination*2* of the Jesuits'
private lives, hoping to find some scandal to bring against them.
Especially they questioned the Indian women, giving them presents to discover
everything they knew. All was in vain, the discipline of the Order,
or the strict conscientiousness of the individual members of it, not having
given scandal any hold.*3* The most difficult part of the great exodus
was now to come. The rapids and the cataracts of the Parana extend
to nearly ninety miles, and the whole country is a maze of tangled forest
interspersed with rocks. No paths exist, the place is desert,
and over the dank mass of vegetation the moisture from the clouds of vapour
thrown up by the falling water descends in never-ending rain.*4*
In order to endeavour to save the trouble of reconstructing
new rafts and canoes at the bottom of the cataract, Montoya launched
three hundred empty boats (sending an Indian in advance) to see if any of them
would arrive safely at the bottom of the falls. Not one escaped;
and so the pilgrimage began, almost without provisions and without arms,
in the middle of a country quite uncultivated, and where game was scarce.*5*
To make things worse, intelligence was brought that, a few miles below
the beginning of the falls, the Spaniards of Guayra had built a wooden fort,
surrounded with a strong stockade, hoping to intercept the retreating Indians,
and make slaves of any who might fall into their hands. Montoya himself,
dressed as an Indian, went out to observe the enemy, and on his return
the whole immense assemblage silently plunged into the woods,
leaving so little traces of its passage that the Spaniards in the fort
were still expecting them when they were far beyond their reach.
--
*1* `Conquista Espiritual', p. 48.
*2* `Rigoroso examen' (`Conquista Espiritual').
*3* In all the books and pamphlets I have searched about the Jesuits
in Paraguay, both friendly and unfriendly to the Order,
I have never found a charge of personal unchastity advanced
against a Jesuit. In regard to the other religious Orders
it is far otherwise.
*4* Azara, `Descripcion e Historia del Paraguay', tomo i., p. 40:
`En las inmediaciones del Salto hay proporcion para tomar
las medidas geometricas que se quiera y metiendose por el bosque
se puede reconocer lo inferior del Salto, bien que para este
es menester desnudare totalmente porque llueve mucho.'
*5* Azara records (book i.) the Indian fable that no living thing
could exist near the cataract. Though this is of course untrue,
yet in most Paraguayan forests near water, game is both scarce
and hard to find.
--
Each Indian had to take his bundle on his back; even the children
carried bundles in proportion to their strength. The missionaries carried
what was held most sacred, as altar-plate and images of saints.
In front a band of men armed with machetes (cane-knives)
opened the way through the dense woods and pathless jungle of the bank;
and as they marched along, Montoya says they sang hymns
which the Jesuits had taught them, and at the sound of them
fugitives who had been hiding in the woods came out and joined
their march. Especially those from the out-station of Tayaoba
joined them; their priest, Pedro de Espinosa, had met his death
`with a good chance of his eternal welfare,' as Montoya says.*
But after the second day the hymns no longer sounded through the woods,
nor did they play upon the harps and other instruments,
whose strings being all broken and the wood unglued,
`they left them on the rocks, being too sad to look at them.'
All through the weary journey Montoya seems never once to have despaired,
and sets down in his book the adventures of each separate day,
never forgetting to chronicle anything strange or pathetic
as it occurred to him. On the fourth day he sent off Fathers Diego,
Nicolas Hennerio, and Mansilla into the province of Itatines
to found a mission there, acting upon orders which had just reached him
from the Provincial of the Order shortly before he had started from Guayra.
They took with them `bells, images, and everything suitable
for the foundation of a mission'; but the first two were martyred
by the wild Indians, and the third just fled in time to save his life.
It took the fugitive Indians eight weary days of marching
to reach the lower end of the cataract, where once again
the Parana was navigable. On their arrival they hoped to find
provisions and more boats; but none were there, their own stores
were almost done, and the people too exhausted to march on.
Fever broke out, and many of them died; and others, lost in the forests,
without a guide, wandered about till death released them from their march.
A weaker man than Padre Montoya might have despaired of ever issuing
from the woods. However, he set the Indians to work to make canoes,
and others** to cultivate patches of maize for food, working himself
alternately with axe and hoe to give example to the neophytes.
Others, again, cut down the enormous canes, which in that region
grew to fifty feet in height, to make them into rafts.
--
* `Con buenas prendas de su salud eterna' (`Conquista Espiritual').
** Fathers Suarez, Contreras, and Espinosa were Montoya's lieutenants
in this memorable retreat. It is difficult to give the palm
to the energy and courage of the four priests, or to
the resignation and faith of the immense multitude of Indians
who were saved by them.
--
So, after a considerable time, all was in readiness for a new start,
and luckily provisions from the reductions on the Parana arrived.
So they embarked again, and on the journey a raft in which
a woman and two children were sitting upset, to Montoya's agony,
as he knew that `in that river there are fish that the people call culebras,*
which have been seen to swallow men entire, and throw them out again
with all their bones broken as if it had been done with stones.'
He says: `I confess I suffered infinitely, and, turning my eyes to heaven,
I blamed my sins as having been the cause of so much misery,
and said, "O Lord, is it possible that for this Thou hast brought
these people out of their country, that my eyes should endure
the spectacle of so much misery, and my heart break at so much suffering,
and then to let them die devoured by savage fish!"' As the good man
was praying, the Indian woman's head appeared above the water,
and Montoya himself, aided by Indians, drew her and the children
in safety to the land. But his trials were not at an end,
for many of the hastily constructed rafts and canoes sank before his eyes,
and the mortality of Indians was great. Eventually they found
a temporary refuge in the Reduction of the Nativity upon the Acaray,
and at Santa Maria la Mayor upon the Iguazu. Then famine raged,
and the arrival of so many people increased the scarcity,
so that six hundred of the new arrivals died in one reduction,
and five hundred in the next. At last the scarcity became so great
that the poor Indians had to roam about the forests to gather fruit,
and many of them died in the recesses of the woods.
--
* `Culebra' is the Spanish for a serpent. These fish may have been waterboas,
or, again, as seems probable by their digestive powers,
some kind of hypothetical fish not yet catalogued.
--
Seeing no hopes of saving the remainder, Montoya led them further on
to the banks of a little river called the Jubaburrus,*
and there he once again founded two reductions, which he named
Loreto and San Ignacio, after the two the Mamelucos had destroyed.
He bought ten thousand head of cattle out of the money the King allowed
to the Jesuits of Guayra, and from the sale of some few objects
saved from the general destruction of the towns, and settled down his Indians,
who in Guayra had been all agriculturists, to a pastoral life.
Thus did he bring successfully nearly twelve thousand people
a distance of about five hundred miles through desert country,
and down a river broken in all its course by rapids,
landing them far from their enemies in a safe haven at the last.
Most commonly the world forgets or never knows its greatest men,
while its lard-headed fools, who in their lives perhaps have been
the toys of fortune, sleep in their honoured graves, their memory
living in the page of history, preserved like grapes in aspic
by writers suet-headed as themselves. But though this Hegira
was the most stirring episode of Montoya's life, he yet had work to do,
and in the province of diplomacy rendered as great, or even greater,
services to the Indians, whom he loved better than himself,
as in the memorable journey when he led them down the Parana.
--
* The name of this river seems to have passed through the machine
of some medieval typewriter, for it is like no name in any language,
and Montoya knew Guarani well, having written much in that language.
--
Chapter III
Spain and Portugal in South America -- Enmity between
Brazilians and Argentines -- Expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay --
Struggles with the natives -- Father Mendoza killed --
Death of Father Montoya
In the province of Guayra the Spaniards who had looked with disfavour
on the Jesuits, and had enslaved the Indians when they were able,
were in sore straits. The Mamelucos, finding no more Indians to enslave,
fell on the two towns of Villa Rica and Ciudad Real, destroyed them utterly,
and forced the inhabitants to flee for refuge into Paraguay.
Thus Guayra went the way of Matto Grosso and several other
provinces of Spain, and became Portuguese. Strangely enough,
most of these losses happened when Spain and Portugal were joined
under one crown. At home the Spaniards and the Portuguese,
however much they detested one another, were forced to keep the peace.
In America they were always at war, which ended invariably
to the detriment of Spain.* The strife begun by the Papal Bull of 1493,
in which Pope Alexander VI. divided the territories
discovered and to be discovered between Portugal and Spain, went on,
till bit by bit Spain was stripped of the provinces of Matto Grosso,
Rio Grande, and Guayra, and found herself drawn into the numerous disputes
about the Colonia del Sacramento, which cost so much blood
to both contending Powers. Perhaps the most curious and interesting
incident of the long struggle was the Three Years' War,
which began in 1750, after the marriage of Ferdinand VI. of Spain
with Dona Barbara of Portugal. By the treaty entered into at this marriage,
seven of the most flourishing of the missions situated
on the left bank of the Uruguay were ceded to Portugal
in exchange for La Colonia del Sacramento on the river Plate.
The towns resisted change of sovereignty, as Portugal to them
was typified by the Paulistas, their most inveterate enemies.
The Marquis de Valdelirios in his curious despatches touches much
upon this war, but perhaps the best account is to be found
in the curious memoir of the Irish Jesuit Father, Tadeo Hennis,**
who was the backbone of the resisting Guaranis.
--
* Even so late as the year 1777, in which the last treaty of boundaries
was signed at San Ildefonso, Portugal was the gainer, though not so greatly
as by the former treaties of 1681 and 1750.
** `Efemerides o Diario de la Guerra de los Guaranies', por P. Tadeo Hennis.
This journal has, I think, never been published in its entirety,
but portions of it are to be found in the collection of documents,
Bulls, despatches, etc., published at Madrid in 1768
under the title of `Causa Jesuitica de Portugal'. The author of this book
calls Hennis a German, but his name, Thadeus Ennis (as it is often spelt),
and his love of fighting look un-Germanic. Portions of the diary
are also to be found in the work of Bernardo Ibanez de Echegarray,
entitled `Histoire du Paraguay sous les Je/suites' (Amsterdam, 1780).
Either the original or an old manuscript copy exists
in the archives of Simancas, where I have seen, but unfortunately
did not examine, it. A portion of the work is also included
in the `Coleccion de Angelis' (Buenos Ayres, 1836).
--
The ancient enmity of the two nations has been continued in their descendants,
the Brazilians and the Argentines and Uruguayans, and little by little
Brazil is absorbing all the northern portion of the Republic of Uruguay.
After the retreat under Montoya down the Parana, the Jesuit missions,
especially in Paraguay and what is now the province of Corrientes,
for some time enjoyed a period of peace and of repose, and the strange
policy of the Jesuits was developed, and township after township arose
amongst the Guaranis (1630-31). But there was still no rest
for Ruiz Montoya, who was of those who rest but in the grave. In 1632,
at the instance of the Governor and magistrates of the township of Jerez,
Montoya sent Fathers Jean Ranconier and Mansilla to the north of Paraguay
to found a mission amongst the Itatines, a forest-dwelling tribe.
Their territory was marshy and the climate bad, and woods of indiarubber-trees
covered all the land. Fathers del Techo and Charlevoix
both speak of the `rebounding balls' with which they played,
which, thrown upon the ground, start up again as if they were filled with air.
This is, perhaps, one of the first times that indiarubber is mentioned,
though in some places Jean de Lery* seems to indicate he was acquainted
with its use.
--
* `Histoire d'un Voyage faict en la Terre du Bre/sil'.
--
The Jesuits found that to make progress was not easy with these Indians,
who willingly enough listened to their preaching, but refused to alter
their social habits, to which the Jesuits ascribe the fact that even then
their numbers were diminishing. Like most of the Indians of America,
they were polygamists, which custom in their race operates differently to
polygamy amongst the negroes: for whereas they seem to increase and thrive,
the Indians even at the conquest often tended to become extinct.
When a headman amongst the Itatines died, a number of his followers
jumped down precipices to accompany him upon his journey to a better world.
This custom and polygamy gave much trouble to the Jesuits,
but their most admirable patience and knowledge of mankind helped them
to overcome them by degrees. All was about to flourish in the mission,
when one Acosta, a Brazilian priest, appeared. Perhaps he was in league
with the Paulistas, or perhaps was jealous of the Jesuits, for he tried hard
to lead a number of the Indians to San Paulo to show them (as he said)
how they should follow the true law of God.*
--
* The way of the neophyte even to-day is hard, so many priests
of different jarring sects disputing for his soul as hotly as if
it were a preference stock which they had private intimation
was just about to rise.
--
The Itatines, either suspecting that Acosta's true law was false,
or tired of his preaching, rose and killed him; but the effect was bad,
and there grew up amongst those infidels a coldness even towards
the Jesuits themselves. Had it not been for two miraculous events
which happened opportunely, as such things should happen
if they are to be turned to good account, much harm might have been done.
A chief, having cursed a priest, was seized at once with a malignant ulcer
in the throat, which shortly killed him. The Itatines did not apparently
think anything of the influence of the unhealthy climate in which they lived,
and set the occurrence down to the act of God.
But more was still to come. Another chief having so far forgotten himself
as to jeer at a priest, a thunderbolt fell so close to him
that he was knocked senseless, and lay as dead. These two events confirmed
the Jesuits' power, and things began to flourish in their four new missions.
But the Great Power, so careful of the individual effort of His priests,
seems to have been most unaccountably remiss of their success considered
as a whole. In the same year (1632) the Mamelucos appeared and ruined
all the four missions, so that the efforts of the Jesuits and the miracles
were lost.
In 1633 the first skirmish took place between the Bishop of Paraguay
and the Jesuits. This skirmish little by little grew into a war,
kept up for more than a hundred years, and ended finally
in the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay. The Governor,
Don Luis de Cespedes, having called upon the Indians of the Jesuit missions
for personal service, a proceeding quite against both
the King's orders and the Papal Bulls, the Bishop thought the moment
opportune to press for tithes. This, too, was equally forbidden
both by a Bull and by an order of the Council of the Indies. Padre Romero
went to Asuncion and displayed his Bulls and his orders of the Council,
and the Governor withdrew his claims. The Bishop, after some opposition,
withdrew likewise, and the Provincial of the Order arrived at Asuncion,
bringing with him an order from the King signifying that
the Indians of the reductions were to be left entirely to the Jesuits.
So for the present the Jesuits scored a victory, though in the future
it was to cost them dear. But the Governor of Paraguay
having returned apparently to his design of exacting personal service
from the Indians of the missions, the Provincial checkmated him
with a royal order from Philip IV. The order was addressed
to the Viceroy of Peru, the fourth Count of Chinchon. The missive,
dated at Madrid in 1633, condemned in the strongest terms
all personal service (that is, forced labour) amongst the Indians,
not only of the Jesuit missions, but of Peru and Mexico.
With a touching confidence in his own powers, and absolute right Divine,
the well-meaning King added to his orders a paragraph commanding
all to be done as he had ordered within six months. Strange to find
Philip IV., whom Velasquez has immortalized and shown us as he sat upon
his horse ineffable, so far away from the Museo del Prado, where alone
he ever seems really to have lived. But foolish Governors and Bishops
were not the Jesuits' worst enemies in Paraguay. In 1634 the Provincial,
Father Boroa, was shipwrecked in a voyage up the Uruguay, and only saved
by the devotion of his neophytes.
Sometimes the cruel treatment of the natives by the Spanish settlers
was avenged upon the Jesuits. This was the case with a band of Guapalaches,
who, coming on Father Espinosa in a wood, attacked and massacred
him and all his Indians, and, having cut his body into pieces,
left it for the wild beasts to eat. Upon another occasion Father Mendoza
fell into an ambuscade, from which he might have escaped had not his horse
sunk in a miry stream. Long he defended himself with an Indian shield,
but at length was stretched upon the ground and left for dead.
During the night he revived, and dragged himself up to some rocks;
but the Indians in the morning, following up his trail, came on him
praying in a loud voice. They told him that he served a blind God,
or at best a powerless God, as He did nothing to defend His servant;
then, after torturing him cruelly, they despatched him,
and, taking out his heart, said: `Let us see if his soul
will take the road to heaven.' These savages do not seem to have been
genuinely interested in finding out what became of the soul
after the dissolution of the body, for they sat down and made
a hearty meal of two young Indians who accompanied the unlucky priest.
But they had heard their victim say that when he baptized them
it purified their souls, and the last words of Father Mendoza had been
to recommend his soul to God. I often wonder if the Christians of to-day,
their creed so firmly fixed by the martyrdoms of simple folk,
who held their faith without perhaps much reasoning on it,
know what they owe to men like Father Christopher Mendoza,
slain by the Indians in the Paraguayan woods. Your ancient martyr,
fallen out of fashion and forgotten by the Christians of to-day,
should have his homage done to him, if only by the chance writer,
who in his studies for some subject of no interest to the general world
comes on his trail of blood; for martyrdom, no matter how obscure,
forgotten by the people of the faith for which the martyr suffered,
is a slur not only on the faithful, but on the faith itself. In 1636 occurred
the second invasion of the Paulistas, which induced Father Montoya,
accompanied by Father Diaz Tano, to go to Europe to seek protection
for the Indians both from the King of Spain and from the Pope.
The Mamelucos burst into the province of Tape,* and,
as the mission of Jesus-Maria (one of the few left undestroyed
at the former invasion) was most exposed, Father Romero asked
permission of the Governor of the River Plate** to make some trenches
to defend the place. The Governor consented, but the storm burst
on the mission before the defences were in a fit state to defend.
The mission priests Antonio Bernal and Juan Cardenas were in the front ranks
encouraging the Indians, and both were badly wounded. Fathers Mola and Romero
went about ministering to the wounded, but escaped themselves. At last,
the Mamelucos having set fire to the church, capitulation became inevitable,
and the chief part of the Indians were led away in chains.
The same fate would have overtaken the mission of San Cristobal,
where father Romero had retreated with some fugitives from Jesus-Maria,
had not the people and their priest retreated hastily upon
the mission of Santa Ana. But even there they were not long in safety,
and had to undertake another perilous journey down the river Iguai.
Here a party of passing Mamelucos fell into an ambuscade,
and were hewn in pieces, presumably before the Lord. The Mamelucos
pushed their advance so far that Father Montoya had given orders
that all the missions of that province should be burned. The inhabitants,
who trusted him quite blindly, were just about to begin to burn their houses,
when an order from the Provincial stopped them from doing so till he himself
appeared upon the scene. He arrived, and, gathering up the scattered Indians
as far as he was able, left them for safety in some of the missions
which had not been destroyed, and set off himself to ask for help
from the Governor of Paraguay.
--
* This province was sometimes called Guayra, and sometimes La Provincia
de Vera, Vera being the family name of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.
Its position, etc., may be determined by reference to
the curious volume of maps published at Madrid by Don Francisco Javier Brabo
in 1872.
** That a mission could be so undefended as to need trenches,
that a Jesuit should ask leave to make such elementary defences,
even in the face of imminent danger, seems to prove that the Jesuits
at least in 1636 had no intention of defying the sovereign power,
as was so often alleged against them.
--
Finding no help either from him or from the Governor of the River Plate,
he went to Corrientes, and was received almost with contumely.
Then, desperate, he equipped an army of the mission Indians,
and advanced to fight the Mamelucos; but they had retreated into Brazil,
and were beyond his reach. Seeing that nothing was to be hoped
from the Spanish Governors, he sent a box of papers in a ship
going to Portugal, and laid his case before the Council of the Indies.
Montoya and Charlevoix relate that the box was thrown into the sea near Lisbon
by some enemy of the Jesuits, but providentially was washed up by the tide,
and, being found miraculously, was taken to the King of Spain.
Whether this happened as it is written, who shall say? But, in distress,
when have good men (before the time of the encyclopaedists)
been without a miracle to sustain their cause? In the next year (1637)
Father Montoya and Tano started upon their mission to Europe,
and a new field was opened to Montoya in which to show his talents
on the Indians' behalf.
Whilst Father Montoya was in Spain, the Provincial appointed Father Alfaro
to take his place. He fell on troublous times, for the Mamelucos
were preparing to attack the three remaining missions
in the province of Guayra.* As they were not defensible,
it was agreed to evacuate them, and to retreat into the provinces
upon the Uruguay. When they were just about to start from Santa Teresa,
where the inhabitants of the other missions had been collected,
the Mamelucos appeared just before Christmas. The Indians were driven off
as slaves, and the Mamelucos, with their usual sense of humour,
attended Mass as penitents on Christmas Day, with candles in their hands,
and listened to the sermon in an edifying way. The priest reproached them
for their cruelty, and they, after listening devoutly, gave him
the liberty of two choir boys, and quietly left the church.
--
* San Joaquin, Santa Teresa, Santa Ana.
--
At length the Jesuits, rendered desperate by the perils to which
the mission Indians were exposed, armed several bands of Indians and attacked
the Mamelucos. But, as was to be expected, the half-armed Indians
were always worsted by the well-armed and disciplined Paulista bands,
and then the Jesuits took the supreme resolve to evacuate Guayra entirely,
and place the Indians in safety between the rivers Parana and Uruguay.
Formed into three great companies, the Indians started on their second exodus.
Although the difficulties were less than in the voyage down the Parana,
still, to march several thousand Indians just emerged from savagery,
accompanied by their women and children, and charged with
all their possessions, through a wild country, where they were exposed
to the attack of a well-armed enemy upon the way, was not an easy task.
Father Christobal Arenas formed them into three divisions,
leading the first himself; but the Provincial seems to have done
most of the organizing, for Charlevoix says that `to his courage, prudence,
and inalterable kindness,' the success was due.*
--
* `Histoire du Paraguay', liv. ix., p. 446.
--
Courage and prudence and inalterable kindness are the three virtues
which have most moved the world; perhaps the last has been most efficacious,
and one would hope that in the future it would be the only one
of the whole three required.
Twelve thousand Indians, not counting women and children,
were thus led into a territory* between the rivers Uruguay and Parana,
rich, fertile, and, as the distance between the rivers
is not above some five-and-twenty miles, defended in some measure,
and easily rendered almost impregnable.
--
* This territory is now the Argentine province of Misiones.
--
No one can see the heart of man, and, even if God sees it,
He never tells us what is there, so that we are obliged to judge of actions
as we find them, and leave the search for motives to omniscients.
On the face of it, the Jesuits, both those who led the Indians
down the Parana and those who headed them in this migration
to the Mesopotamia between the Uruguay and Parana, were not impelled
by thought of gain; and if a Jesuit must of necessity have some dark scheme
behind the smallest action of his life, these men concealed it so deep down
within their souls that all the researches of their keenest enemies
have not been able to throw light on it. But, even settled
in their new homes, the Indians were defenceless against the Mamelucos,
as it was a state maxim of the Spanish court that the Indians
should never be allowed the use of guns. This was a wise enough precaution,
without doubt, for the Indians of the Encomiendas, who lived
amongst the Spaniards and owed them personal services;
but arms for the Indians of the missions were a necessity of life.
Therefore, before he started for Madrid, the Provincial impressed upon Montoya
to approach the Council of the Indies and the King, and represent to them
that it was impossible to guarantee the existence of the reductions
against the Mamelucos unless the Indians were allowed to provide themselves
with arms. So Father Montoya, though he was charged to press
for various reforms, was most especially impressed upon this point.
He was to tell the King that the Indians were not to be allowed
to keep their arms themselves, but that they would be kept by the Jesuits,
and served out to the Indians in case of an attack; then, that the arms
would not cost a penny to the treasury, but be all paid out of the alms
collected for the purpose by the Company; lastly, and this was
a true stroke of Jesuit policy, that, to instruct the Indians how to shoot,
they would bring from Chile certain Jesuits who in the world had served
as soldiers. One sees them brought from the frontiers of Araucania,
and from the outposts of the trans-Andean towns, half sacristan,
half sergeant, instant in prayer, and yet with a look about them
like a serious bull terrier -- a fitting kind of priest for a frontier town,
and such as could alone be found amongst the Jesuits.
About this time (1639) the third invasion of the Mamelucos took place,
and Father Alfaro, who had been left in charge of the missions
on the Uruguay and Parana, was shot by a Mameluco with a crossbow,
and fell dead from his horse. The Governor of Paraguay, on hearing of it,
marched with an army, and, having killed two or three hundred
of the Mamelucos, took the rest prisoners, and carried them
back to Asuncion. There, to the disgust of all the Jesuit historians,
he menaced them with the wrath of Heaven and let them go.
The feelings of a churchman, when his own privilege is thus usurped,
may be compared to those of a strict game-preserver who sees
his coverts poached. It is not so much the damage that is done
as the personal insult and the humiliation which he suffers in his pride.
In this year, too, the Indians of the missions rendered
their first armed service to the State which afterwards so often
drew on them in its necessity and treated them so ill.
The Governor of Buenos Ayres, Don Pedro Estevan Davila,
was setting out upon an expedition against a tribe of Indians
who had taken refuge in the islands of the Lake Ybera.
Eighty of the Indians were sent, and, being well led and armed,
contributed considerably towards success. Next year a second contingent
was required by the Governor of Tucuman, and duly sent to his assistance.
History seems to repeat itself, and foolish soldiers and others
never to gain experience; for the Governor (Padre del Techo
in his `Historia Paraquaiae' tells us), having made war in Flanders,
could never be dissuaded that the same system was not suitable
for warfare in America. Accordingly, he set out in good order,
but neglected to send out scouts, and consequently fell into
the middle of the Calchaquis strongly entrenched within a marsh,
attacked them with a rush, lost heavily, and had to retire to Tucuman.
But all this time Father Montoya and Diaz Tano were striving
in Rome and at Madrid with the Pope and with the King.
Urban VIII., at that time God's vicegerent for the Christian portion
of the world, received Diaz Tano kindly, listened to all he had to say
with interest, promised him his help, and gave him a Papal letter
menacing the Mamelucos with the wrath of God. From Rome Father Tano
went to Madrid, and thence to Lisbon, whence he sailed armed with
the protection of the Pope and accompanied by a fresh band of zealous priests.
Arrived in Rio de Janeiro, he published the Papal letter, and fixed it
on the doors of the Jesuit College and on those of their church. He seems
on this occasion to have been wanting in the chief Jesuit virtue, prudence,
or at the least he seems to have mistaken the character of the people
amongst whom he was. Most of the colonists having relations
with the Mamelucos were indignant, and a mob broke in the doors
both of the college and of the church. The riot grew so serious
that the Governor convoked a council, and cited Father Tano to appear.
He came and spoke, and in the eyes of the chief people of the place
made out his case; but the multitude, caring not much for reason
(and nothing for philanthropy), became more furious, but was appeased at last
by a petition being sent in protest to the Pope.
But if these things passed in Rio de Janeiro (which Del Techo refers to
as `oppido sanctorum'), what was the fury of the people in San Paulo,
the very centre of the Mamelucos, when the Vicar-General published the brief
by order of Don Pedro Albornoz! The people rose immediately,
and menaced the Vicar-General with instant death unless he instantly
withdrew the brief. This he refused to do, although forced on his knees
and with a naked sword held at his throat. His courage quieted them,
and they drew up an appeal which they tried hard to make him sign,
but he again refused. The mob, having demanded the brief,
was told it was in the college of the Jesuits. Thither they went post-haste,
and were met upon the steps by the Superior, dressed in canonicals and holding
the holy wafer in his hand. He spoke, and most of them fell prostrate
on the ground before the Body of our Lord. Others stood upright,
and said that, whilst they adored the Holy Sacrament with their whole souls,
they would not suffer that their slaves, who were their chiefest property,
should be set free. An atheist (or some kind of Protestant) cried out
to fire upon the priest, but he had no support. The Superior then gave them
a copy of the brief, and they returned to the Vicar-General
to ask for absolution for any censure of the Church they might have incurred;
but he for the third time was obdurate, and let them welter in their sin.
The news of the revolution which liberated Portugal from Spain
having just reached the town, the Jesuits had to retreat from it,
leaving the inhabitants enraged against them and more determined than before
to push their forays into Paraguay. But the time was past
for their incursions, for Father Ruiz Montoya had prospered at Madrid,
and secured even more than he had hoped for when he started on his quest.
On arriving at Madrid, which he did after a prosperous journey of four months,
he waited on the King (Philip IV.), and laid before him and commissaries
chosen from the Indies and Castile the following points:
1. That the law of 1611, which provided that no Indians, unless taken
in a just war, should be reduced to slavery, should be put into effect.
2. That the Pope should be approached to confirm the briefs
of Paul III. and Clement VIII., which contained the same provisions.
3. That those who did not conform to these instructions
should be handed over to the Inquisition to be judged.
4. That the Indians who had been enslaved by the Paulistas
should be at once set free and the aggressors punished.
The King after deliberation granted every point, and, further,
regulated the tribute which the Indians were to pay.* All this was easy
to enact, but, like most other laws, not quite so easy to put into effect.
Moreover, as the revolution which separated Portugal from Spain
had just occurred, all Spanish thunder against the Mamelucos
was of but small account. Montoya then pressed the demand
for license to use firearms in self-defence against the Mamelucos.
The King after deliberation granted this last point, and from that time
the incursions of the Mamelucos ceased in Paraguay and generally
throughout the mission territory. Then also there was set on foot
that Jesuit militia which rendered such good service to the crown,
but was the cause of so much murmuring, as it protected the mission Indians
both from the Paulistas and from the inroads of the Spanish colonists.
--
* This seems to prove the malice of those who set about
that the Indians of the missions paid no taxes to the Crown.
--
Father Montoya never returned to Paraguay, where he had fought so long
and done so much for the poor Indians. Apparently it was not written
that he should see the results of all his efforts, for, having embarked
at Seville for Peru, he was detained at Lima on business of the Order.
From thence he went to Tucuman, and, having returned to Lima,
died aged seventy. The Viceroy and the chief members of the Audiencia
(with whom he had struggled all his life) accompanied his body to the grave,
and it is said that several miracles showed forth the glory
he enjoyed in heaven.
That may be so, and if they happened (as they well may have done,
for, after all, a miracle* really exists for those who credit it),
if Heaven has honoured him, 'tis more than man has done:
for even in Paraguay his name is not remembered, though it remains enshrined
in the neglected pages of many a dusty Latin or a Spanish book.
--
* Vieyra, the great Portuguese Jesuit, said that all miracles
were possible to God, but yet that he had never heard that our Lord
had ever cured anyone of folly.
--
But all the time that Fathers Montoya and Diaz Tano were in Europe
a serious danger to the Jesuits was growing up. At the discovery
of the New World, the Franciscans had been the first of all the Orders
to go out. Some had accompanied Columbus, some were with Cortes in Mexico.
Almagro and Pizarro's hosts had their Franciscan chaplains.
In his commentaries, Alvar Nunez relates how he met some of the Order
in Brazil. Lastly, the first of all the saints of the New World
was a Franciscan.
In 1638 the Franciscans in the province of Jujuy* disputed with the Jesuits
the right to certain missions, accusing them, as Padre del Techo says,
`of putting their sickle into their ripening corn.'**
What could be more annoying if it were true? As if a Wesleyan mission
in the Paumotus Group should, after having shed its Bibles and its blankets
like dry leaves, suddenly find an emissary from Babylon itself
arrive and mark the sheep!
--
* Now a province of the Argentine Republic.
** `Historia Paraquariae', book xii., cap. xii.
--
But from Jujuy the dissensions spread to Paraguay, where the Franciscans
had several missions extending from Yuti to Cazapa, thus being
almost within touch of the Jesuit Gospellers in Santa Maria,
upon the eastern bank of the Tebicuari, which bounds their territory.
These jealousies might have gone smouldering on, and never burst out
into fire, had not the appointment of a Franciscan to the see of Paraguay
caused the flames to flare out fiercely.
Had a firebrand been wanted to stir up strife, none better
could have been found than Don Bernardino de Cardenas, who was just then
appointed to the bishopric of Paraguay.
Chapter IV
Don Bernardino de Cardenas, Bishop of Paraguay -- His labours
as apostolic missionary -- His ambitions and cunning --
Pretensions to saintliness -- His attempts to acquire supreme power --
Quarrels between Cardenas and Don Gregorio, the temporal Governor
Don Bernardino de Cardenas first saw the light in the town of La Plata,*
capital of the province of Charcas in Bolivia, or, as it was then called,
Alta Peru. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it would appear
to have been in the early years of the seventeenth century. At an early age
he entered the Franciscan Order.
--
* La Plata was sometimes called Chuquisaca, and is to-day known as Sucre.
--
As the Franciscans had had the honour of having furnished to the calendar
the first saint canonized in the New World, it seems to have been
the dream of Cardenas from his earliest youth to emulate him.
In this desire he seems to have acted in good faith,
and all his life the dream of saintship haunted him.
Charlevoix* says `he made a rather superficial study of theology,
and then engaged in preaching, in which, with memory, assurance, and facility,
he found it easy to succeed in a country where brilliant gifts
are more esteemed than solid learning.' Certainly a preacher
without assurance, memory, and facility would scarcely have succeeded
in any country; and in what country in the world is brilliancy
not far esteemed above the deepest scholarship? Besides, `he was
a man of visions (`homme a\ visions') and revelations, which he
took good care to publish.' Visions are generally, in the case of saints,
confined to the soul's eye, and revelation to the inward ear;
if, therefore, the recipient of them does not make them known,
they run the risk of being lost. In a word, according to Charlevoix,**
he was `one of the most complete and dangerous ecstatics that ever lived.'
`His first successes' (whether as preacher or ecstatic are not specified)
caused his superiors to name him guardian of their college of La Plata.
They soon repented of their choice. No sooner was he named Superior
than he sought to qualify himself for saintship by a sort of royal road.
Saints are of several classes, and, in looking through the calendars,
it strikes one how different seem to have been the methods by which
they severally attained their goal.
--
* `Histoire du Paraguay', vol. i., book ix., p. 478.
** Charlevoix, vol. i., book xi. Dean Funes, in his
`Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay, Buenos Ayres y Tucuman',
vol. ii., book iii., p. 10 (Buenos Ayres, 1816), says of him:
`Se adquirio/ muy en breve una reputacion mas brillante que solida.'
--
Prince Juan Manuel, in the preface to his `Fifty Pleasant Stories
of Patronio', says that, `amongst the many strange things our Lord God made,
He thought good to make one marvellous in special -- that is, that,
of the numberless men who are on earth, not one entirely resembles any other
in his face.' He might have said the same of saints and of their ways.
One, like St. Francis of Assisi, treats his father (as it seems to me)
but scurvily, and yet to every other created man and all the animals he is
a brother. The saint of Avila founds convents, mingles with men of business,
and has visions in the intervals of her journeying through Spain upon an ass.
Again, another preaches to the Indians or the Japanese,
gives up his substance, begs his bread from door to door,
and leaves the devil's advocate scarcely a quillet or a quiddity against him.
Lastly, you find against the names of some merely the docket
`virgin' or `martyr', as their case or sex may serve.
Don Bernardino adopted none of these methods of procedure.
Carrying a heavy cross, with ashes on his head and shoulders bared,
followed by all his priests, he sallied out one day to discipline himself
in public. This plan did not succeed with all the world,
for his superiors ordered him to remain inside his convent gates.
There he remained, and, as his Life informs us, profited by his retreat
to study Holy Scriptures, and to such good effect that,
the next time he preached, he charmed his hearers by his eloquence.
Soon after this the Archbishop of La Plata held a provincial council,
with the object of reforming the morals of the Indians in his diocese.
Cardenas, being a fluent speaker, was chosen for the post
of Apostolic Missionary. From this time dates the beginning of his fame.
In those days all the Indians of the Charcas, and generally of all Peru,
were sunk in misery, but little removed from slaves, and their religion
was a mixture of Christianity and paganism -- just the kind of folk
a fluent preacher of the style of Cardenas could work upon.
All through the province he made his apostolic progress,
preaching, converting, and confessing, everywhere preceded by his fame
as seer of visions, miracle-worker, and recipient of celestial light.
He took his way, dressed like a pilgrim, on foot, carrying a wooden cross,
and followed by a multitude of Indians from town to town.
Religion in America (Catholic or Protestant) has always tended to revert
to the original Eastern form, from which, no doubt, it sprung. The influence
of the vast plains and forests, and the great distances to travel,
have introduced the system of camp meetings amongst the Protestants,
whereas the Catholics have often held a sort of ambulatory mission,
the people of one village following the preacher to the next, and so on,
in the same fashion as in Palestine the people seem to have followed
John the Baptist.
Soon the news was spread about that the Indians who followed Cardenas had
told him of rich mines, on the condition that he would not divulge the secret
to the Spaniards. At that time the search for mines was carried
almost to madness in Peru. Even to-day, in almost every mining town,
a mysterious, poverty-stricken man sometimes approaches you
with great precaution, and, drawing from his pocket an object
wrapped in greasy paper, declares with oaths that it is `rosicler'
(red silver ore), and that he knows where there are tons and tons of it.
In Mexico the curious class of miners known as `gambusinos'
rove through the valleys of the Sierra Madre armed with pick and pan,
passing their lives in hunting mines, as pigs hunt truffles.
If they come upon a mine, they never try to work it, but sell the secret
for a trifling sum, and, drinking out the money, start on again to find
the mines worked by the Aztecs, till an Apache bullet or arrow stops them,
their El Dorado still ahead, or they are found beside their pick and shovel
dead of thirst.
Neither in Mexico nor in Peru do things grow less in telling,
and we may well suppose the stories of the mines the Indians told to Cardenas
became colossal; for at last the Alcalde of Cochabamba wrote on the subject
to the Count of Salvatierra, the Viceroy of Peru.
As Charlevoix says, `it seemed as if it all worked to the advantage
of the holy missionary, who, not content with saving souls, did not forget
the interests of his native land.' In the middle of his triumphs,
being recalled to Lima, no one doubted that it was in order
to confer with the Viceroy about the supposititious mines. Others, again,
imagined that a mitre was destined for the successful evangelist,
and therefore many, even quite poor people, pressed forward to offer funds
to help him on his way. With quite apostolic assurance,
he took all that was offered to him, being certain, as some think,
that, the mines being real, he could some day repay with usury
all he had borrowed, or, as others said, being indifferent
about the matter, and trusting to repay in that better country
where no usury exists and where no gold corrupts.
The Viceroy, being a man of little faith, sent to investigate
the supposititious mines, but found them non-existent.
The superiors of Cardenas, as judicious as the higher officers
of the Franciscan Order often proved themselves throughout America,
informed him that he had given offence to many by his
public scourgings and processions carrying a cross, and, most of all,
that in his sermons propositions had escaped him of a nature
likely to bring him under the censure of the Holy Office.
A convent in Lima was assigned to him as a retreat and place of meditation
on the virtues of submission and obedience.
As we may well believe, no man who felt he had the stuff within himself
to make a saint ever cared much for obedience or submission, except in others;
so in his convent, instead of meditating on his faults, he passed his time
in writing a memorial to the Council of the Indies, setting forth his views
on the way in which to spread the gospel amongst the Indians.
Nothing was better calculated to win him favour. Every Indian baptized
was so much yearly gain to the Spanish Government.
Conversion and taxation always went hand-in-hand, and therefore
Indians who, unbaptized, brought nothing to the treasury,
having received the Gospel truths, were taxed so much a head
to show them that from thenceforth they were Christians.
Thus, we find that in the Paraguayan missions each Indian paid
a dollar every year as a sort of poll-tax, and most of the disputes
between the Viceroys of Paraguay and the Jesuits arose from
the number of the Indians taxable. The Viceroys always alleged
that the population of the missions never increased, on account of the Jesuits
returning false numbers to avoid the tax.
Cardenas specially inculcated, in his memorial to the Council of the Indies,
that it was not expedient to place the Indians under the regular clergy,
a theory of which he himself was destined to become a great antagonist.
Promotion, as we know, cometh neither from the east nor from the west;
so it fell out that during his retreat, through the influence of his friend
Don Juan de Solorzano, a celebrated lawyer, who had heard him preach
when Governor of Guancavelico, he found himself named Bishop of Asuncion
del Paraguay. This piece of luck opened the doors of his convent to him,
and he repaired at once to Potosi to wait the arrival of the Papal Bull
authorizing him to take possession of his bishopric. There he appeared
in the habit of his Order, a little wooden cross upon his breast,
and a green hat upon his head, a costume which, if not quite fitting
to his new dignity, was at least suited to the Indian taste.
His biographer informs us that, without a word to anyone,
he began to preach and hear confessions. Being absolutely without resources,
he was reduced to distribute indulgences and little objects of piety,
and at the end of every sermon to send his green hat round the audience.
His talent for preaching stood him in good stead, and after every sermon
gifts were showered upon him, and a crowd accompanied him home.
The priest of Potosi being just dead, Don Bernardino took his place
without permission, and set himself up in the double character
of parish priest and Bishop to hold a visitation throughout the diocese.
Some people took this conduct as evidence of his saint-like humility
in condescending, though a Bishop, to officiate as a mere priest.
The Archbishop had a different opinion, but, as Don Bernardino
had a great following, he thought it best to dissemble his resentment.
Cardenas himself, by his imprudence, furnished the Archbishop with an excuse
to get him out of the bishopric.
A rich Indian, whom Cardenas confessed upon his death-bed, left him
ten thousand crowns. Not content with that, he influenced one Diego Vargas
to change his will and leave him money. On this the Archbishop wrote to him,
requesting that he would go and govern his own see. He had to go,
but left the town, which he had entered without a farthing,
with a long train of mules carrying his money, plate, and furniture.
Why he did not instantly go to Asuncion is not quite clear,
for in America it was the custom, owing to the great distance from Rome,
that Bishops, on receipt of the royal order of appointment,
got themselves chosen by the chapter of their diocese to govern provisionally.
Instead of doing that, he went to Tucuman, and thence to Salta,
where he arrived in 1641.
In Salta, his first visit was to the Jesuit college, where he laid his case
before the Jesuit fathers, and showed them several letters,
one from the Cardinal Antonio Barberini dated in 1638,
and another from the King without a date, naming him Bishop of Asuncion.
On the strength of these two letters he asked the Jesuits
if he could get himself consecrated without the Papal Bulls.
Charlevoix alleges that they dared not refuse to answer
in the way he wished. Why this was so is not so easy to make out,
as, even with his green hat and wooden cross, he could not at that time
have been a formidable personage. Their written opinion
he sent at once to the rector of the Jesuit college at Cordova,
asking for his opinion and that of the doctors of the university.
The answer reached him in Santiago del Estero, and was unfavourable.
On reading the letter, Cardenas fell into a most unsaint-like fury,
and tore it up without communicating it to anyone, not even
to the Bishop of Tucuman, Don Melchior Maldonado. This was not strange,
as he had counted on this Bishop to consecrate him.
Notwithstanding what was at stake, he went on in the diocese of Tucuman
just as he had done in that of Charcas, preaching, confessing,
and celebrating Mass. Don Melchior Maldonado, a quiet man of no pretensions,
wrote him a letter in which he said: `You came into my diocese
like a St. Bernard; such is the reputation you have for holiness and preaching
that my people pay me no respect, and only look on me as a man
of common virtue and mediocre talents. Although I hope I am not jealous,
still, I must remind you that you act as if you were St. Paul.'
A Bishop of common virtue and of mediocre talents is, of course,
a Bishop lost, and one can well conceive that poor Don Melchior Maldonado
was placed in an unpleasant position during the stay of Cardenas
in his diocese. Such were Don Bernardino's powers of persuasion
that at last the Bishop consecrated him. The ceremony was hardly over,
when a letter arrived from the Rector of the University of Cordova
advising Bishop Maldonado against the consecration. Unluckily for Paraguay,
it was too late to undo the action, and Cardenas was now in a position
to take possession of his see. Poor Melchior Maldonado, Bishop of Tucuman,
had, as it happened, laid hands a little hastily upon the candidate.
The Council of Trent pronounced upon the case, and found
`that the consecration of the Bishop of Paraguay had been a valid one
as touching the sacrament (ordination), and the impression of the character,
but that it had been void as regards the power of discharging the functions
attaching to the dignity, and that the Bishop and his consecrator
had need of absolution, which the same holy congregation thinks
ought to be accorded with the good pleasure of the Pope.'
As the same holy congregation had previously declared
the taking possession of the diocese by Cardenas had been illegal,
it is difficult for ordinary minds to grasp their real opinion of the case.
Finding that he had failed with the University of Cordova,
Don Bernardino took his way to Santa Fe, from whence he wrote
an insulting letter to the poor rector. The letter was conceived
in such outrageous terms that the Bishop of Tucuman wrote in expostulation,
saying he expected to see something extraordinary happen in Paraguay
if he gave way to such excess of passion.
Don Bernardino's usual luck attended him in Santa Fe. This town then formed
part of the diocese of Buenos Ayres, though situated about four hundred miles
from the metropolis. It happened that the see of Buenos Ayres was vacant,
and the chapter of the cathedral invited Cardenas to visit
that portion of the diocese through which he had to pass.
Cardenas was, of course, delighted to show his talents for preaching,
as he had done before in Charcas and in Potosi. When he arrived at Corrientes
the enthusiasm for his holiness and talents was extraordinary.
In Corrientes, Don Bernardino seems to have felt, for the first time,
his calling and election really sure. At the time he landed (1642)
the land was sunk in ignorance and superstition. Even to-day in Corrientes
(the city of the seven currents), situated just at the junction of the rivers
Parana and Paraguay, close to the celebrated missions of the Jesuits,
the inhabitants, living in a country almost tropical,
are half Indians in type.
What Corrientes looked like in Don Bernardino's time
is matter of conjecture. Perhaps it was not greatly
different from some remote Spanish-American frontier towns
some five-and-twenty years ago, save for the groups of Spanish soldiery,
with their steel morions, trunk hose and heavy arquebuses lounging about,
and in the matter of the scarcity of horses in the streets.
No doubt the self-same listless air hung over everything,
and in the place of the modern blue and white barred flags
with a rising sun or cap of liberty stuck like a trade-mark in the corner,
the blood and orange Spanish colours with the quarterings
of castles and of lions flapped heavily against the flagstaff of the fort.
The Indian women dressed all in white, their hair cut
square across the forehead and hanging down their backs,
sat with their baskets of fruit and flowers in the market-place. The town,
as now, built chiefly of adobes, with a few wooden huts dotted about,
was semi-oriental in design. On every church were cupolas
after the eastern fashion, flat roofs on every house, and everything
shone dazzling white against the dark, metallic-looking foliage of the trees.
The streets, as now, were sandy water-courses, crossed here and there
with traverses of rough-hewn stone to break the force of the water
in the season of the rains.
At night the fireflies glistened amongst the heavy leaves
of the mamayes and the orange-trees, whilst from the Chaco rose
the mysterious voices of the desert night, and from the outskirts of the town
the wailing Indian Jarabis and Cielitos sung in a high falsetto key
to the tinkling of a cracked guitar, but broken now and then
by the sharp warning cry `Alerta centinela!' of the soldiers on the walls.
Could one have landed there, one would have felt much as a sailor feels,
dropped on the beach of Eromango or on some yet unbemissionaried island
of the Paumotus Group.
Embarking from Corrientes up the river Paraguay, the Bishop met two vessels
sent from Asuncion to do him honour. When night approached he put in practice
one of the manoeuvres which in Peru had stood him in good stead.
On every side a swarm of launches and canoes accompanied the ship
to see the Bishop, whom already many believed a saint. He asked them all
to retire a little from his ship. All did so but the guard of honour
sent from Asuncion. Towards the middle of the night the sound of scourging
wakened them. It was their Bishop trying to prepare himself for the duties
that awaited him. Every succeeding night the same thing happened.
During the day he celebrated Mass pontifically upon the deck. Voyages upon
the river Paraguay before the days of steamers took a considerable time,
especially as every night the custom was to anchor or to make fast the vessel
to a tree. Soon the rumour reached Asuncion that a second St. Thomas
was on his way to visit them. St. Thomas, as is said, once visited Paraguay,
and a cave in the vicinity of a town called Paraguari, where he once lived,
exists to-day to prove the passage of the saint.
Fate seemed determined that the Bishop should always meet the Jesuits,
no matter where he went.
Becoming weary of the slow progress of the ships, he disembarked
four leagues below Asuncion, at a farm belonging to the Company.
He managed to dissemble his resentment so perfectly that no one knew
he had a grudge against them. Arrived at the capital,
he went at once to the church of San Blas, then to the Cathedral,
where he celebrated Mass and preached, his mitre on his head.
After service he dismissed the people to their homes to dine, saying, however,
that he himself was nourished by an invisible food and by a beverage
which men could not perceive. `My food' (he said) `is but to do
the work and will of Him who sent me.' Therefore he remained
in prayer and meditation until vespers, and that office finished,
he retired to the palace accompanied by a shouting crowd.
In his position his conduct was most adroit, for, as his Bulls
had not arrived, he must have known he had no legal status, and that,
in default of that, he had to conquer public sympathy. The chapter
never doubted that Don Bernardino would place himself entirely in their hands
as his Bulls had not arrived. He, however, seems to have thought
that the act of celebrating Mass pontifically in the Cathedral
had put him in possession of his powers. So he named one Cristobal Sanchez
as his Vicar-General. Two of the members of the chapter,
Don Diego Ponce de Leon and Don Fernando Sanchez, remonstrated,
but a considerable portion of the chapter sided with Cardenas.
The stronger party left the Cathedral and celebrated Mass
in the church belonging to the Jesuits, thus giving Cardenas
a second cause of offence against the Company.
The Bishop, not being secure of his position, had recourse to every art*
to catch the public eye: fasting and scourging, prayers before the altar,
two Masses every day, barefoot processions -- himself the central figure,
carrying a cross -- each had their turn. Along the deep red roads
between the orange-gardens which lead from Asuncion towards
the Recoleta and the Campo Grande, he used to take his way
accompanied by Indians crowned with flowers, giving his benediction
as he passed, to turn away (according to himself) the plague and to insure
a fertile harvest. Not being content with the opportunities
which life afforded, he instituted an evening service in a church
in order to prepare for death.
--
* But besides putting into execution all his histrionic talents, he had
the adroitness to address himself to those feelings of self-interest which
he knew were perhaps more powerful than those of admiration and respect
for his own saintly proceedings in his new diocese. Cretineau Joly,
in his `Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus', vol. iii., p. 333
(Paris, 1845), tells us that Cardenas `parle aux Espagnols,
il s'addresse a\ leurs intere^ts, il re/veille les vieux levain
de discorde . . . et il accuse les missionnaires d'e^tre seuls
les apo^tres de la liberte/ des Indiens.'
--
Soon, as was to be expected in such a country, this service proved
the occasion of much scandal, and, instead of showing people
how to leave the world, became the means of introducing many into life
in a clandestine way. The rector of the Jesuit college thought it his duty
to inform the Bishop; but he, like all good men, thought nothing bad
could spring from anything that he himself originated. No doubt
he put it down to malice, as good people will when worldlings put the finger
on the weak spot of a religious institution; but anyhow,
regardless of the scandals, he continued his nocturnal rites.
The Governor of Paraguay at that time was one Gregorio de Hinostrosa,
an officer born in Chile, an honest, pious, wooden-headed man,
and much beloved by the inhabitants of Paraguay. On his arrival
Don Bernardino tried to conciliate him. Unluckily, a friendship
with the Bishop was impossible without a blind submission to his will.
In the beginning all was flattery; when Don Gregorio attended Mass,
the Bishop used to meet him at the church door. Not to be outdone,
the Governor returned the Bishop's politeness in a similar way,
but went so far in his complaisance that Don Bernardino
ceased to respect him. Soon there arose bickerings and jealousies,
and at length they hated one another fervently.
Nor was the Bishop more successful with his clergy. Some of them laughed
at his pretensions to be a saint, and called him an ambitious schemer.
Again, amongst the laity, many did not quite understand
his habit of celebrating two Masses every day. He answered
that he never celebrated without releasing a soul from purgatory,
and that there had been saints who celebrated nine Masses every day,
and, moreover, that he was Pope in his own diocese. This cut the ground from
under the feet of his detractors, for in a town of the calibre of Asuncion
the people looked on a service in a church as a welcome means of getting
through the day, and had he celebrated a dozen masses they would but have been
more delighted with their new Bishop.
Under the pretext that there were not enough priests to serve the churches,
he, by degrees, took several parishes into his own hands,
and went from church to church to celebrate his Mass in each,
whilst not forgetting to draw the various stipends for his work.
But, not content with this, he began to ordain young men who knew no Latin,
and even criminals, setting forth the view that ordination
was a sort of second baptism, which purged all crimes --
a most convenient theory, and one which is not half enough insisted on
in these degenerate days.
The position of Asuncion gave him an opportunity of an almost unique kind
to show his talents in another sphere. Across the river Paraguay,
there about one mile broad, extends the country called the Chaco,
a vast domain of swamp and forest, inhabited in those days, as at present,
by tribes of wandering Indians. From the city walls, whilst listening to
the church-bells, one can see the smoke of Indian encampments across the river
only a mile away.
Of all the Indian tribes in the time of Cardenas, the most ferocious
were the Guaycurus. The Jesuits had laboured almost in vain amongst them.
Missions had been founded, and all gone well for months, and even years,
when on a sudden, and without reason, the Guaycurus had burned the houses,
killed the priests, and gone back to the wilds. From Santa Fe
up to the province of Matto Grosso they kept the frontier in a turmoil,
crossing the river and feeding like locusts on the settlements in Paraguay.
Not long before his arrival the Guaycurus had intimated
their intention of holding a conference with Don Gregorio Hinostrosa.
Don Bernardino thought the chance too good to lose, and at once declared that,
as a Bishop, it was his place to carry on negotiations with the barbarians.
Dressed in his robes and with an escort furnished by the Governor, he met
the chiefs -- who no doubt looked on him as a new kind of medicine-man --
preached to them through an interpreter, curiously being without
the gift of tongues, but notwithstanding that a reasonable number of them
were baptized. On his return, he wrote to the King that by his efforts
he had appeased the most ferocious Indians within his Majesty's domains.
Within a week the Guaycurus surprised and burned a settlement
a little higher up the stream. Not content with this Caligulesque apostolate
to the Guaycurus, the Bishop longed for serious occupation,
and caused it to be rumoured about the city that he did nothing
except by the direct authority of the Holy Ghost, an allegation
hard to confute, and if allowed, likely to lead to difficulties
even in Paraguay.
Some years before the advent of Don Bernardino the Dominicans had built
a convent in Asuncion. As they had no license to build,
they were in the position of religious squatters on the domain of God.
The citizens had applied to the Audiencia of Charcas, the supreme court on
all such matters in South America, situated, with true Spanish unpracticality,
in one of the most secluded districts of the continent. The Audiencia
had refused the license, but had taken the matter `ad advisandum'
for ten years. To take a matter into consideration for ten years,
even in Spain or South America, where the law's delay is generally more mortal
than in any other country, was as good as giving a permission.
So the Dominicans construed it, and no one dreamed of now molesting them.
One day the Bishop, dressed in his robes, proceeded from his palace
to the convent, informing the Governor that he wanted him to meet him there.
Entering the convent church, he took the sacrament from off the altar
and stripped the church of all its ornaments, setting a gang of workmen
to demolish both the convent and the church. When the work was over,
he went to a neighbouring church, and then and there, without confession,
celebrated Mass, remarking to the faithful that there was no need for him
to make confession, as he was satisfied of the condition of his conscience.
Some murmured; but the greater portion of the people, always ready
to take a saint at his own valuation, were delighted with his act.
Doubts must have crossed his mind, as shortly afterwards he wrote
to Don Melchior Maldonado, Bishop of Tucuman, for his opinion.
That Bishop answered rather tartly that his zeal appeared to him
to savour more of the zeal of Elias than of Jesus Christ,
and that in a country where churches were so few it seemed imprudent
to pull down rather than to build. `However,' he added,
`my light is not so brilliant as the light your lordship is illumined by.'
When once a man is well convinced that all he does comes from the Holy Ghost,
there is but little that he cannot do with satisfaction to himself.
Self-murderers, according to the custom of those times,
were not allowed admission into holy ground, as if the fact
of having found their life unbearable debarred them from the right
to be considered men. Such a man a few years previously had been buried
at a cross-road. It now occurred to Cardenas to have a special revelation
on the subject; and, curiously enough, this special revelation
was on the side of common-sense. `This body,' said the Bishop,
`is that of a Christian, and I feel pretty sure his soul is now in bliss.'
He gave no reason for his opinion, as is the way of most religious folk,
but, as he had special means of communication with heaven,
most people were contented. Incontinently he had the corpse dug up
and buried in the church of the Incarnation, himself performing
all the funeral rites.
Although a miracle or two would have shocked nobody,
still, in the matter of the suicide he had gone too far
for the simple people of the place. They murmured, and for a moment
the Bishop's prestige was in jeopardy; but in the nick of time
his Bulls arrived, brought by his nephew, Pedro de Cardenas,
who, like himself, was a Franciscan friar. This saved him,
and gave the people something new to think of, though at the same time
he incurred a new anxiety.
In the Bulls there was a passage to the effect that, if at his consecration
any irregularity had been incurred, he was liable to suspension
from all his functions. This the Jesuit who translated the documents
into Spanish for the purpose of publication drew his attention to.
However, Cardenas was not a man to be intimidated by so small a matter,
but read the translation to the people in the Cathedral,
and intimated to them that the Pope had given him unlimited power in Paraguay,
both in matters spiritual and temporal.
Though Don Gregorio, the Governor, was present at the ceremony,
he made no protest at the assumption of temporal power by Cardenas.
He had remarked it, though, and secretly determined to show him
that his pretensions were unfounded. His nephew, Don Pedro de Cardenas,
furnished the occasion. This young man had been despatched to Spain
to get the Bulls. Upon the voyage he seems to have conducted himself
with scant propriety. On his return, when passing Corrientes,
he took on board a lady whom Charlevoix, quite in the spirit of the author
of the Book of Proverbs, describes as `une jeune femme bien faite'.
Having some qualms of conscience, he put on a secular dress,
and on nearing Asuncion put his religious habit over it.
In such a climate this double costume must have been inconvenient,
and why he should have worn one dress above the other does not appear.
His uncle, in his delight at the forthcoming of the Bulls,
most probably paid little attention to his appearance.
He lodged him in the palace, and assigned him a prebendary which was vacant.
Where the `jeune femme bien faite' was lodged is not set down,
and the people of Asuncion no doubt looked leniently on such affairs,
as does society to-day in England. After his usual fashion,
the Bishop set all down to calumny.
About this time the Governor had put in prison one Ambrosio Morales,
a sub-official of the Inquisition, who had had a quarrel with an officer.
Cardenas, being informed of this, could not lose so good a chance
of exercising the power he arrogated in temporal affairs.
Holding a monstrance in his hands, he went to the prison and asked
for the prisoner, placing the monstrance on a table at the prison gate.
The rector of the Jesuit college came and expostulated with him,
saying that it was not fitting to expose the body of Jesus Christ
in such a place, and that it was not decent that the Bishop himself
should stay there. Considering his position, and the times in which he lived,
it seems the rector was judicious in his expostulation. Cardenas replied
that he would stay there till the prisoner was released. The rector,
knowing him to be as obstinate as a male mule, went and begged the Governor
to let Morales out. This he did at once, and then the Bishop, cross in hand,
returned in triumph to the palace with the rescued Inquisitor
following amongst his train. The people, whose lives were dull,
snatched at the opportunity for some amusement, and said that it was good luck
the Governor and Bishop were not always of one mind, for that their agreement
had caused the demolition of a church and convent, and their quarrel
the setting of a prisoner free.
This little triumph emboldened the Bishop to go further. He admitted Morales
into minor orders, gave him the tonsure, and thus, having placed him
above the temporal power, enabled him to brave the Governor openly.
The Bishop's nephew, taking the Governor's kindness for weakness,
broke publicly into insulting terms about him. The Governor's brother,
Father Hinostrosa, pressed him to vindicate his dignity,
but he refused, saying he wanted peace at any price. This policy
the Bishop did not understand, for all concessions he set down as weakness,
and they encouraged him to fresh exactions and more violence.
Dining with the Governor, the Bishop chanced to see upon the table
a fine pair of silver candlesticks. To see and to desire
with Cardenas was to ask, and so he intimated to the Governor
his wish to have them. The Governor, thinking, perhaps,
to wipe out the remembrance of the difficulty about Morales,
sent them to the palace with his compliments. The Bishop took the present,
and, turning to the man who brought them, said, `I should now be quite content
if I only had the silver ewer and flagon which I noticed
in your master's house.' The Governor, we may suppose,
on hearing this made what the Spaniards call `la risa del conejo';
but sent the plate and a message, saying all his house contained was at
the Bishop's service. Don Bernardino, who, though he may have been a saint,
as his friends proclaimed, was certainly far from a gentleman,
sent for the flagon and the ewer, which he received at once,
together with a friendly message from the Governor.
But even this free-will offering brought no quiet, for a new quarrel
soon arose between the Bishop and the unlucky wielder of the temporal power.
The Society of the Holy Sacrament enjoyed an `encomienda'
at or near Asuncion. The Bishop, no doubt thinking he was most fitted
to indoctrinate the Indians, endeavoured to persuade the Governor to get
the Society of the Holy Sacrament to make their Indians over to himself.
The Governor, who knew his fellow-countrymen, flatly refused,
and upon this Don Bernardino fell into a fury, and reproached him with
such bitterness that Don Gregorio, too, overstepped the bounds of prudence,
and threw the conduct of his nephew with the `jeune femme bien faite'
into the Bishop's teeth.
Hell has been said to have no fury equal to a woman scorned,
but a Bishop thwarted makes a very tolerable show. Don Bernardino
was one of those who think an insult to themselves carries with it
a challenge to God, an outrage on religion, and generally conceive
the honour of Heaven is attacked by any contradiction of themselves.
To animadvert upon the actions of a Bishop's nephew is as bad as heresy
-- far worse than simony -- and the man who does it cannot but be
a heretic at heart. So, at least, Don Bernardino thought;
for, with candle, bell, and book, and what was requisite,
he excommunicated the poor Governor, and declared him incompetent
to bear the royal standard in a religious festival which was shortly
to take place. Excommunication was at least as serious then
as bankruptcy is now, though in Spanish America it did not carry with it
such direful consequences as in European States.
Not wishing to use force, the Governor yielded the point,
and did not trouble the procession. His moderate conduct
gained him many partisans, and put many people against the Cardenas.
The nephew, Pedro de Cardenas, thought it a good occasion
to insult the Governor in public; so one day in the street he followed him,
casting reflections on his mother and his female relatives.
Don Gregorio, who was a man of tried courage, having served for years
against the Indians of Arauco, the bravest race of all the Indians of America,
controlled his temper, and, turning to the young Franciscan,
said, `Go with God, my father; but do not try me any more.'
It was not to be expected that in those times and such a place
a man like Don Gregorio de Hinostrosa, who had passed his life
upon the frontiers, and who held supreme authority, would quietly submit
to such a public insult; so one night he appeared at the Bishop's palace,
accompanied by soldiers, to arrest Don Pedro. Out came Cardenas,
and excommunicated the Governor and all his soldiers on the spot,
and Don Pedro pointed a pistol at his head. He, seeing himself obliged
either to make a public scandal or retire, being for peace at any price,
retired, and the triumphant Bishop published his edict of excommunication,
which he extended with a fine of fifty crowns to every soldier
who had been present at the scene. On reflection, thinking, perhaps,
it was unwise to excommunicate so many soldiers, who might be needed
to repel an Indian attack, he sent and told the Governor
he was ready to absolve him upon easy terms. The Governor,
who had made light of the first excommunication, was rather staggered
when he found the second posted at the Cathedral door.
And now a comedy ensued; for Don Gregorio went to the Bishop,
and on his knees asked for forgiveness. He, taken unawares,
also knelt down, and, when the Governor kissed his hand,
wished to return the compliment, and would have done so
had the rector of the Jesuit college not prevented him.
As Charlevoix says, `to see them on their knees, no one could have imagined
which one it was who asked the other's grace.' The Bishop granted absolution
to the Governor; but the soldiers' action had been flat sacrilege at least,
for every one of them was forced to pay the fine.
Two excommunications in a week were almost, one would think,
enough to satisfy a Pope; but having nominated one Diego Hernandez,
a Portuguese, to the post of Alguacil Mayor of the Inquisition,
and given him the right to wear a sword in virtue of his office,
the Governor, meeting the man in the street wearing a sword
against his regulations, made him a prisoner. At once Don Bernardino
launched another excommunication. But this time he had gone too far;
the Governor laughed at his thunder, and condemned the prisoner to be hanged.
At his wits' end, the Bishop sent a servant to the man,
and told him to fear nothing, for that, if he suffered death,
he was a martyr, and that he himself would preach his funeral sermon.
The Governor, who was perhaps a humorist, laughed at the message, which,
he said, was not consoling, and then himself let Hernandez out of prison
under heavy bail. The excommunication was then taken off,
and peace once more reigned in Asuncion.
As well as being not given to wine, it is essential that a Bishop
shall know how to keep his own counsel -- as Lorenzo Gracian expresses it,*
`not to lie, but not for that to speak out always the whole truth.'
Everyone who knew the Bishop and his hasty temper was astonished at
his behaviour to the Jesuits. No one imagined he had forgotten the attitude
the rector of the University of Cordova had assumed towards his consecration,
and still the Bishop seemed to show more favour to the Jesuits in Asuncion
than to the members of the other religious communities.
Perhaps he felt the want of partisans amongst the educated classes,
for his quarrel with the Governor had lost him many friends.
Certainly in Asuncion it was of great importance that the Jesuits
should not declare against him openly.
--
* `Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia' (Amsterdam, en casa
de Juan Blau, 1659).
--
He praised them fulsomely both in the pulpit and in conversation,
went in procession to their church, and treated them in public
with marked consideration. As a contemporaneous Jesuit has left a record,
they were not his dupes, but still endeavoured to live up to the praises
he dispensed to them. He went so far as in a letter to the King, Philip IV.,
to say that the Jesuits only in all Paraguay were really fitted
to have the care of Indians, and he advised the King to transfer
the Indians who were under other religious bodies, as well as those
under the secular clergy, to the care and guidance of that Order.
No doubt in this the Bishop was right, even if not sincere.
One of the qualifications the Jesuits had for the care of Indians
was that the Indians did not look on them as Spaniards.
As in the same way that in Matabeleland, perhaps, a German, Frenchman,
or Italian is less hateful to the natives than an Englishman,
so in Paraguay the Indians liked the Jesuits better than the other Orders,
for there were many foreigners amongst their ranks. The Jesuits
soon comprehended that the Bishop wished to make them odious to the public
by overpraise. To set to work in such a manner almost requires
an early training in a seminary, and that such tactics should have been
put in force against such skilled diplomatists as were the Jesuits
argues no ordinary capacity for diplomatic work in Cardenas.
With him, however, the Spanish proverb, `Betwixt the word and deed
the space is great', had little application. The vicar of a place
called Arecaya, close to Asuncion, had fallen into disgrace; the Bishop
removed him from his parish, and asked the rector of the Jesuit college
to send a priest to take his place. The answer he received was politic,
and to the effect that there was no Jesuit who could be spared,
and even if there was it ill-befitted any Jesuit to infringe upon
the duties of the secular clergy; but that, if Cardenas intended to found
a new reduction with all the privileges that the King had always given
to that kind of establishment, the rector himself would ask permission
from his Provincial to undertake the work. A splendid answer,
and one which proved that the man who gave it was a man wasted in Paraguay,
and that his place by rights was Rome or, at the least, some court.
Don Bernardino, who in matters such as these was quite as cunning
as the rector, thanked him, and said he did not want a saint,
but a priest to take the duty of another priest for a short time.
The rector, seeing his diplomacy had failed, told Father Mansilla,
who was at Itatines, to transfer himself to Arecaya,
and, writing to the Bishop, told him that he had no doubt
Mansilla would do all that was fitting in the case. The Bishop,
who had gained his point and saw no further use for diplomacy, said:
`Of that I am quite sure, and if he does not I shall excommunicate him,
and lay the district of the Itatines under an interdict.'
Nothing appeared to give Don Bernardino such unmitigated pleasure
as an excommunication; on the slightest protest he was ready,
so that during his episcopate someone or other in Asuncion
must have always been under the ban of Holy Mother Church.
The rector felt instinctively that Don Bernardino had not done with him.
This was the case, for soon another order came to send two Jesuits
to undertake the guidance of a mission near Villa Rica.
As at the time the Jesuits had no missions near Villa Rica,
the order was most unpleasant to him. Firstly, the two who went
-- Fathers Gomez and Domenecchi -- had to leave their missions and undertake
a lengthy journey in the wilds. On reaching Villa Rica,
they found not only that the inhabitants looked on them with great disfavour
as interlopers, but that the Indians, whom they were sent to guide,
were under the `encomienda' system, thus forcing them to wink at that
which they disapproved. The resolution that they took did them great honour;
it was to leave the town of Villa Rica and live out in the forests
with the Indians.
The Jesuits of the college at Asuncion felt the situation keenly.
People began to murmur at them for their invasion of the spiritual domains
of others, and the rector, in despair, sent to the Bishop, and begged him
not to praise them in his sermons. Nothing cost Cardenas so little
as to promise, so he promised not to mention them again,
and next time that he preached he spent an hour in telling of the wonders
that the Jesuits had done in saving souls, not only amongst Catholics,
but also amongst the infidels and Turks. The tactics of the Bishop
were so marked that at last a rumour reached Don Melchior Maldonado,
the Bishop of Tucuman, of whom Don Bernardino always stood in dread.
His letter somehow became public, and as in it he spoke
most warmly of the Jesuits, and praised the rector, the public turned again
upon their side. Just at this time, however, the sleeping feud
between the Bishop and the Governor broke out anew with so much fury
that attention was directed from the Jesuits for the time being;
but on them the situation still was hung, and both sides made advances to them
for support.
Chapter V
Renewal of the feud between the Bishop and Don Gregorio --
Wholesale excommunications in Asuncion -- Cardenas in 1644
formulates his celebrated charges against the Jesuits --
The Governor, after long negotiations and much display of force,
ultimately succeeds in driving out the Bishop -- For three years
Cardenas is in desperate straits -- In 1648 Don Gregorio
is suddenly dismissed, Cardenas elects himself Governor,
and for a short time becomes supreme in Asuncion -- The Jesuits
are forced to leave the town and to flee to Corrientes -- A new Governor
is appointed in Asuncion -- He defeats Cardenas on the field of battle --
The latter is deprived of his power, and dies soon after as Bishop of La Paz
The Governor, like a prudent soldier, was biding his time. The Bishop,
not yet strong enough to walk alone, dared not break openly with the Jesuits.
Don Pedro Cardenas still following up his evil courses,
poor Don Gregorio Hinostrosa, accustomed all his life
to deal with `officers and gentlemen', thought fit to bring this
under his uncle's notice. The Bishop spoke to his nephew
in a paternal fashion, enjoining certain penances upon him,
and amongst others that he was to kiss the earth. Although Don Pedro Cardenas
was not a man accustomed to lavish kisses on things inanimate, he complied,
but, though complying, still pursued his vicious course.
Quite in the manner of King Charles (of pious memory), the Governor determined
to arrest the recalcitrant with his own hand. Armed to the teeth,
and with a band of musketeers accompanying him, he appeared
before the convent of St. Francis, where Father Cardenas had taken refuge,
and, dragging him from his bed, haled him incontinently to the river's bank,
and left him gagged and bound, a prey to flies and sun, for two whole days,
dressed in his drawers and shirt. On the third day he was embarked
in a canoe for Corrientes, with a small quantity of jerked beef
for all provision, and a woman's cloak wrapped round his shoulders
to shield him from the cold. Not quite the guise in which a clergyman
would care to appear before the eyes of his superiors, even in Paraguay.
Naturally, the Bishop, having nothing else to do, got out his excommunication
in his usual style, but no man marked him.
Meantime Asuncion was in confusion, the Bishop and the Governor
keeping no measure with the other man of sin. One tried to obtain
possession of the other's person to throw him into prison;
the other strove to animate the preachers in the various churches
to consign his rival's soul to hell. In the deserted streets drums thundered,
whilst in the air bells jangled, and the quiet, sleepy town was rent in twain
by the dissensions of the opposing powers. The churches closed their doors,
and the consolations of religion were withdrawn from those who wanted them.
To add to the confusion, Don Pedro Cardenas escaped from Corrientes, and,
having taken to himself a companion -- one Francisco Sanchez de Carreras --
raged through the city like a devil unchained. In his extremity,
the poor Bishop went to the Jesuits for advice, informing them
he could not stand the scandals that were taking place, and that he intended
to leave the city after launching an interdict of excommunication upon all.
Placed in the position of declaring openly either for Bishop or for Governor,
the Jesuits refused an answer, knowing that anything they said
would be brought up against them. All their advice to him was,
`to trust in God, to persevere in his good efforts, to resign himself
to divine will, which will, as the Bishop knew full well,
worked sometimes in a mysterious fashion for the welfare of the soul.'
The Bishop answered this advice `fort sechement',* taking it
for a reproach, and as a sort of thing not to be tolerated
amongst professionals -- as if one lawyer, having gone to another
for his advice upon a private matter, had received for answer
a lecture on conveyancing or a short treatise upon Roman Law.
--
* Charlevoix.
--
Still, the occasion called for something to be done;
so, calling an Indian servant, he stripped to the waist,
and, to the horror and amazement of the public, appeared with
naked feet and shoulders, dressed in a sack and armed with a heavy scourge.
At the first blow he gave himself some canons of the Cathedral begged him
to desist; but he, after prayer, replied that he intended, so to speak,
to act as his own Pascal lamb, and wipe out the affront done to St. Francis
in his unworthy blood.
A naked Bishop in a sack is almost sure to attract some observation
even in Paraguay. Religious women not unfrequently have been attracted
by such a spectacle, and so it proved on this occasion.
Although the Jesuits and the saner portion of the population
blamed the Bishop's action, he made himself a host of partisans
amongst the women of all classes, who followed him as they have often followed
other thaumaturgists in times present and gone by.
His friend Don Melchior Maldonado, hearing what had passed,
wrote to reprove him for his inconsiderate zeal. In his epistle
he observed that, though some of the Apostles had scourged themselves,
it was not their habit to appear half naked before a crowd of women;
that our Lord Himself had not of His own accord taken off His garments
for the scourger; that saints who scourged themselves had, as a general rule,
chosen a private place for their self-discipline. This was quite reasonable,
but the advice was little to the taste of the recipient, who hated criticism
when levelled at himself.
If crosses make a saint, about this time Don Bernardino had
his full share of them. News came from Itatines, where the two Jesuits had
been marooned, that both of them were ill. Cardenas, who, we may remember,
was `homme a visions', called in the rector of the Jesuit college
to inform him that the Company of Jesus had a new martyr in their ranks.
Though martyrs (even to-day) enter the ranks of General Loyola's army
pretty frequently, it still seemed strange that the Bishop
should know of this particular recruit before the rector.
Pressed for an explanation, he replied that a pious person who was vouchsafed
communication with the Lord in prayer had seen Father Domenecchi in heaven
shining in glory and with a halo round his head.
Nothing could be more satisfactory. All the essentials
of a well-attested miracle had been complied with. A man was dead,
another man had seen the dead man in an ecstasy of prayer,
and, to make all complete, refused to testify himself, sending the Bishop
as a sort of pious phonograph. No true believer in such a case could doubt,
and all went well till it appeared a man from Itatines, charged with a message
to the Jesuit college, had passed the night before he gave his message
at the Bishop's house. In Holy Writ we read the wicked man
shall have no rest; if this is so, it is as it should be,
though generally the good seem just as troubled in their lives
as the most erring of their brethren. He who would be a saint
must be a-doing, year in, year out, just like a common workman,
and Cardenas was no exception to the rule.
The pseudo-miracle not having been quite a success, he turned to other fields,
and summoned all the inhabitants of Paraguay to attend at the Cathedral
upon a certain day. The Governor, thinking there was a revolution
likely to break out, fixed a review of all the troops for the same date.
A Jesuit priest waited upon the Bishop to persuade him that the crowds
which would assemble might break the peace. The Bishop reassured him,
and sent him to the Governor to say that his intention
was to preach to the people and explain to them the faith; further,
that he intended on that day to raise his excommunication and be reconciled:
only he asked him to allow the troops to attend and hear his sermon.
The crowd was great; the Bishop mounted the pulpit, and,
extending his forefinger in the attitude of malediction so dear to Bishops,
straight began to preach. For a time all went well. The Governor,
presumably, was waiting for the circulation of the hat -- that awful mystery
which makes all sects kin -- when to his horror Cardenas began to enumerate
all his offences: he was anathema, was excommunicated, a disbeliever,
and had endeavoured to cast down that which the Lord Himself had set on high.
The Bishop then informed the crowd that God was angry with the Governor,
talked about Moses, and dwelt with unction on the fact that the great lawgiver
had been swift to slay.
In a peroration which, no doubt, went home to all, he called upon his hearers,
under penalty of a heavy fine and his displeasure, to seize the Governor,
adding that if there was resistance `he should kill his brother, his friend,
or his nearest relative.'* After these words he seized a banner
from the hands of the astonished officer who stood nearest to him,
and stood forth, like another Phineas, surrounded by his clergy,
all of whom had arms beneath their cloaks.
--
* Exod. 32:27.
--
A most dramatic scene, and probably almost successful, had but the Bishop
only reckoned with two things: Firstly, he had forgotten that the Governor
was an old Indian fighter, and ready for surprises; and, secondly,
he had not taken into account the usual apathy of the common people
when their leaders fight. Dumbly and quite unmoved the people stood,
staring like armadillos at a snake, and made no sign. Then word was brought
that the Governor had left the church and was assembling
a force of arquebusiers.
Surrounded only by clergymen, Don Bernardino had to yield,
and yielded like a Levite, with a subterfuge. He sent a priest
to beg the magistrates to come to the Cathedral and reason with him.
After a consultation this was done, and Cardenas consented
to abate his fury and exhale his wrath. He said that Holy Writ itself
gave leave to recur to force in self-defence (but did not quote the text),
and that the Governor had meditated a like enterprise against himself;
moreover, that, he being an excommunicated man, it became lawful
for God's vicegerent to lay hold on him.
After the scene was over, and the Bishop was escorted back to his palace
by the magistrates, a second letter came from Tucuman
making plain his conduct to him after the manner of a friend.
The rector of the Jesuits also thought fit to remonstrate,
and say that Cardenas had gone too far in attempting to assume
the temporal power. This sufficed to further strain the relations
between the Bishop and the Jesuits.
As, even in Asuncion in 1643, it was unusual that the Governor should remain
for ever under the ban of Holy Mother Church, arbiters were chosen
to discuss the matter, and provide means whereby the Bishop could
conveniently climb down. The arbiters absolved the Governor on the condition
that he paid a fine of four thousand arrobas* of `yerba mate',
which in money amounted to eight thousand crowns. Quite naturally,
the Bishop refused to abide by the decision, replaced his adversary
under the ban, and recommenced to preach against him with considerable force.
--
* The arroba is about twenty-five pounds weight.
--
The higgling of the market not having proved effectual
in the adjustment of the sum to be paid by the Governor, a priest,
one Juan Lozano, who had been condemned to imprisonment by his superiors
for his loose life, and who had taken refuge with the Bishop,
hit on a stroke of veritable genius. At a conference which took place
between the Bishop and several notables of the place,
including the rector of the Jesuits, Lozano gave it as his opinion that,
if the Governor refused to pay, a general interdict should be proclaimed.
The rector of the Jesuits retired indignantly, and `Pe\re Lozano,
retroussant sa robe le poursuivit en criant a\ pleine te^te,
et s'exprimant en des termes peu seans a\ sa profession.'*
By this time Asuncion must have been like a madhouse, for no one seems
to have been astonished, or even to have thought his conduct singular.
The Bishop, always ready to take the worst advice, got ready for his task,
and on Easter Eve embarked upon the river, leaving his Vicar-General
under orders to proclaim the general ban. This was done,
and the edict so contrived as to catch the luckless Governor
in every church. The practical effect was to close all the churches,
for to whatever church the Governor went the priest refused
to celebrate the Mass. Several other persons were mentioned in the ban,
which was posted up below a crucifix in the choir of the Cathedral.
As Don Bernardino had omitted to state the particular offences
for which they were condemned, the general confusion became intense,
and no one attended Mass, so that the churches were deserted.
After a little some of the churches opened in a clandestine manner,
others remained closed, and the followers of the Bishop and the Governor
alternately assembled in a rabble, and threw stones at all the churches,
dispensing their favours quite impartially. The various religious Orders,
not to be behindhand, also took sides, the Jesuits giving as their opinion
that the Governor, not having a war upon his back, was really excommunicated;
the Dominicans holding that the Bishop, in the general interest,
ought to absolve him. He, armed with the opinion of the latter Order,
marched to the dwelling of the Bishop's Vicar-General,
and, having nailed up both doors and windows, sent a trumpeter
to tell him he should not leave his house till absolution had been granted.
Still nothing came of it, and then the Governor did what he should have done
at first: he sent a statement of the whole proceedings
to the high court at Charcas. This high court (Audiencia) was situated
right in the middle of what is now Bolivia, miles away from Lima,
half a world from Paraguay, at least two thousand miles from Buenos Ayres,
and separated from Chile by the whole Cordillera of the Andes.
Even to-day the journey from Paraguay often exceeds a month.
--
* Charlevoix.
--
The Bishop, not to be outdone, also prepared a statement,
in which he accused his adversary of all the crimes that he could think of,
and confirmed his statement with an oath. The chapter,
thinking things were in an impossible condition, besought that
the fine laid on the excommunicated folk should be raised or lessened,
as it appeared to them there was not money in the town to satisfy it.
Cardenas refused, and thus four months elapsed. Soon after this
arrived one Father Truxillo, of the Order of St. Francis,
who came from Tucuman as Vice-Provincial. Cardenas, thinking,
as they were both Franciscans, that Truxillo must needs be favourable
to his cause, made him his Vicar-General, with power to bind and to unloose --
that is, to free the excommunicated folk from all their disabilities if,
on examination, it seemed good to him. Truxillo, who was quite unbiassed
as to matters in Asuncion, looked into everything, and declared
the Governor and everybody ought to be absolved. He further gave it
as his opinion that, the affair having gone to the high court at Charcas,
he could do nothing but give an interim decree. Don Bernardino heard the news
at Itati, an Indian village a few miles outside Asuncion. From thence
he went to a somewhat larger village called Yaguaron, and shut himself up
in a convent, after declaring everyone (except the superior clergy)
under the severest censure of the Church if they should dare approach.
Not a bad place for prayer and meditation is Yaguaron. A score or two
of little houses, built of straw and wood and thatched with palm-leaves,
straggle on the hillside above the shores of a great camalote-covered* lake.
Parrots scream noisily amongst the trees, and red macaws hover like hawks
over the little patches of maize and mandioca planted amongst the palms.
Round every house is set a grove of orange-trees, mingled with lemons,
sweet limes, and guayabas. Inside the houses all is so clean
that you could eat from any floor with less repulsion than from the plates
at a first-class hotel. A place where life slips on as listless and luxuriant
as the growth of a banana, and where at evening time,
when the women of the place go to fetch water in a long line
with earthen jars balanced upon their heads, the golden age
seems less improbable even than in Theocritus. To Yaguaron
the higher clergy flocked to intercede for the good people of Asuncion,
all except Father Truxillo, who, knowing something of his Bishop,
did not go. That he was wise, events proved shortly. Two canons
-- Diego Ponce de Leon and Fernando Sanchez -- he imprisoned in their rooms,
calling them traitors to their Bishop and their Church.
Deputations came from the capital to beg for their release,
but all in vain. The Bishop answered them that he had set his mind
to purge his diocese of traitors; and the two canons remained in prison.
After a detention which lasted forty days, they escaped and fled
to Corrientes, which must have looked upon Asuncion as a vast madhouse.
Truxillo, who seems to have been a man not quite so absolutely devoid of sense
as the other clergy, endeavoured to organize a religious `coup d'etat';
but, most unfortunately, a letter he had written to some of the saner clergy
fell into the Bishop's hands. Excommunications now positively rained
upon the land. The Governor, the Jesuits, the Dominicans,
each had their turn; but, curiously enough, the poorer people
still stood firm to Cardenas, thinking, no doubt, a man who treated
all the richer sort so harshly must do something for the poor.
Nothing, however, was further from the thoughts of Cardenas,
who thought the whole world circled round himself. The Bishop's nephew
having returned to Corrientes and his former naughty life, Don Bernardino,
casting about for another secretary, came on one Francisco Nieto,
an apostate from the Order of St. Francis, and living openly
with an Indian woman, by whom he had a son. Him the Bishop made his chaplain,
then his confessor; and poor Nieto found himself obliged to send
his Indian wife away in spite of all his protests and his wish to live
obscurely as he had been living before his elevation to the post of secretary.
A veritable beachcomber Father Francisco Nieto seems to have been,
and the type of many a European in Paraguay, who asks no better
than to forget the tedium of our modern life and pass his days
in a little palm-thatched hut lost in a clearing of a wood or near some lake.
--
* Camalote is a species of water-lily which forms a thick covering
on stagnant rivers and lakes in Paraguay and in the Argentine Republic.
--
So in Asuncion things went from bad to worse. Such trade as then existed
was at a standstill, and bands of starving people swarmed in the streets,
whilst the incursions of the savage Indians daily became more frequent.
In fact, Asuncion was but a type of what the world would be
under the domination of any of the sects without the counterpoise
of any civil power. The Governor, seeing the misery on every side,
determined, like an honest man, to pocket up his pride and reconcile himself
with Cardenas at any price. So, setting forth with all his staff,
he came to Yaguaron. There, like a penitent, he had to bear
a reprimand before the assembled village and engage to pay a fine
before the rancorous churchman would relieve him from the ban.
The weakness of the Governor had the effect that might have
been expected, and heavy fines were laid on all and sundry
who had in any manner displeased the Bishop or leaned to the other side
in the course of the dispute.
Right in the middle of the struggle between the clerical and lay authorities,
a band of over three hundred Guaycurus appeared before the town.
Unluckily, all the chief officers of the garrison were excommunicated,
and thus incapable of doing anything to defend the place.
Foolish as Cardenas most indubitably was, his folly did not carry him so far
as to leave the capital of his diocese quite undefended.
Still, he would not give way first, and only at the moment when the Indians
seemed prepared to attack the town, at the entreaty of a `pious virgin',
he raised the excommunication on the Governor and his officers
for fifteen days. The Governor, instead of, like a sensible man,
seizing the Bishop and giving him to the `cacique' of the Guaycurus,
led out his troops and drove the Indians off. That very night
he found himself once more under the censure of the Church, and the conflict
with his opponent more bitter than at first. The Viceroy of Peru,
the Marquis of Mancera, indignant at the weakness of the Governor,
wrote sharply to him, reprimanding him and telling him at once
to assert himself and force the Bishop to confine himself
to matters spiritual. On the Governor's attempt to reassert himself,
the answer was a general interdict laying the entire capital
under the Church's ban. On this, he marched to Yaguaron with all his troops,
resolved to take the Bishop prisoner; but he, seeing the troops approach,
went out at once, fell on the Governor's neck, and straightway absolved him.
After the absolution came a banquet, which must have been
a little constrained, one might imagine, and even less amusing
than the regulation dinner-party of the London season,
where one sits between two half-naked and perspiring women
eating half-raw meat and drinking fiery wines with the thermometer
at eighty in the shade. Thus disembarrassed from the Governor,
Don Bernardino turned his attention to the Jesuits, and signified to them
that he intended to take the education of the young out of their hands.
This was a mortal affront to the Jesuits, as they have always understood
that men, just as the other animals, can only learn whilst young.
Hard upon this new step, Cardenas issued an edict forbidding them to preach
or hear confessions. As for the Governor, the Bishop did not fear him,
and the poorer people of Asuncion had always inclined to the Bishop's party,
either through terror of the Church's ban or from their natural instinct
that the Bishop was against the Government.
But Cardenas saw clearly that, to deal as he wished with the Jesuits,
he must entirely gain the Governor's confidence. This he tried to do
by sending to him one Father Lopez, Provincial of the Dominicans.
This Lopez was an able and apparently quite honest man,
for he told the Governor that the wish of Cardenas was to expel the Jesuits
from Paraguay, and from their missions, warning him at the same time
not to allow himself to be made use of by the Bishop in his design.
From that moment the two adversaries seemed to have changed characters,
and Don Gregorio became as cautious as a churchman, whereas the Bishop
seemed to lose all his diplomacy.
To all the protestations of friendship which were addressed to him,
the Governor answered so adroitly that the Bishop fell
into the trap, and thought he had secured a partner to help him
in the expulsion of the Jesuits. Finally, at Yaguaron, during a sermon,
he formulated his celebrated charges against the Jesuits, which,
set on foot by him in 1644, eventually caused the expulsion of the whole Order
from America, and, though refuted a thousand times, still linger
in the writing of all those who treat the question down to the present day.
The charges were seven in number, and so ingeniously contrived
that royal, national, and domestic indignation were all aroused by them.
The first was that the Jesuits prevented the Indians from paying*1*
their annual taxes to the crown. Secondly, that the Jesuits kept back
the tithes from Bishops and Archbishops.*2* Thirdly, he said the Jesuits
had rich mines in their possession, and that the product of these mines
was all sent out of the country to the general fund at Rome.
This the Jesuits disproved on several occasions, but, as often happens
in such cases, proof was of no avail against the folly of mankind,
to whom it seemed incredible that the Jesuits should
bury themselves in deserts to preach to savages, unless there was
some countervailing advantage to be gained. Even the fact
that at the expulsion of the Company of Jesus from America no treasure at all
was found at any of their colleges or missions did not dispel the conviction
that they owned rich mines. The fourth charge was that the Jesuits
were not particular about the secrets of the confessional,
and that they used the information thus acquired for their own selfish ends.
Further, that Father Ruiz de Montoya had acquired from the King,
under a misapprehension, a royal edict,*3* giving the territory
of the missions to the Jesuits, thus taking the fruits of their conquest
from the Spanish colonists. Fifthly, that the Jesuits entered Paraguay
possessed but of the clothes upon their backs, that they had made themselves
into the sovereign rulers of a great territory, but that he was going
to expel them, as the Venetians had expelled them from Venetia.*4*
Sixthly, that even the Portuguese of San Paulo de Piritinanga
had expelled them.*5* His last assertion was that he himself, together with
the Bishop of Tucuman and others, had secret orders from the King
to expel the Jesuits from their dioceses, but that the other Bishops
lacked the courage which he (Cardenas) was then about to show.
He wound up all by saying that, once the Jesuits were gone,
the King would once again enjoy his rights, the Church be once again
restored to freedom, and, lastly, that there would be plenty of Indians
for the settlers to enslave. Quite possibly enough, the public,
ever generous to a fault with other people's goods, cared little
for the rights of a King who lived ten thousand miles away;
and as for the Church, it seems most probable they failed to see
the peril that she ran. But when the Bishop spoke of enslaving the Indians,
they saw the Jesuits must go, for from the conquest the Jesuits had stood
between the settlers and their prey. All things considered,
Don Bernardino made a remarkable discourse that Sunday morning
in the palm-thatched village by the lake, for the echo of it still resounds
in the religious world against the Jesuits.
--
*1* This was untrue, as the Jesuit missions were not at that time (1644)
apportioned into parishes under the authority of the Jesuits,
and such tribute as then was customary was all collected
by government officials.
*2* This was also untrue, as the tithes were never regulated in Paraguay
till 1649.
*3* This accusation was quite untrue, for the edict referred to
was not obtained under misapprehension, but after a complete
exposition of all the facts. Moreover, it was subsequently
renewed on several occasions by the Spanish Kings.
*4* The Venetians did not expel the Jesuits, they left Venetia
of their own accord.
*5* Fathers Montoya and Tano went respectively to Rome and to Madrid
to lay the sorrows of the Indians before the King and Pope.
Having obtained the edict from the King that Cardenas referred to,
and a brief from the Pope (Urban VIII.) forbidding slavery,
they had the hardihood to appear within the city of San Paulo
and affix both edicts to the church door. As was to be expected,
the Paulistas immediately expelled them from their territories,
and hence the semi-truth of the sixth charge made by Bishop Cardenas.
--
Like other men after a notable pronouncement, it is most probable
that Cardenas was unaware of the full import of his words.
Perhaps he thought (as speakers will) that all the best portions of his sermon
had been left unsaid. Be that as it may, he shortly turned his thoughts
to other matters of more direct importance to himself.
In judging of his life, it should not be forgotten that,
by his sermon at Yaguaron, he placed himself upon the side of those
who wanted to enslave the Indians. Perhaps he did not know this,
and certainly his popularity amongst the Indians outside the missions
was enormous. His next adventure was to try and eject the Jesuits
from a farm they had, called San Isidro. The Governor having forbidden him
to do so, he armed an army of his partisans to expel the Jesuits
from their college in the capital.
Outside Asuncion the Lieutenant-Governor, Don Francisco Florez,
met the Bishop's secretary, Father Nieto, who informed him of the enterprise,
exhorting him to enlist the sympathies of the Governor in so good a cause.
Florez, a better diplomatist than his commanding officer, seemed to approve,
and naturally deceived poor Father Nieto, who, like most hypocrites,
became an easy prey to his own tactics when used against himself.
Florez informed the Governor at once, and he sent to the Jesuits,
and put them on their guard. Next day he met the Bishop, and told him
that his enterprise could not succeed, as the Jesuits were under arms.
No doubt he learned these artifices in his campaigns against
the Indians of Arauco, or it may have been that, like others
who have had to strive with churchmen, he learned to beat them
with their own controversial arms. The Bishop fell completely into the snare,
and, thinking the Governor was a fast friend, confided all his plans to him
for the expulsion of the Jesuits and the conquest of the mission territory.
Just then Captain Don Pedro Diaz del Valle came from La Plata,
and gave Don Bernardino a new decision of the High Court of Charcas,
telling him to live in peace with all men, and govern his diocese with zeal.
He certainly was zealous to an extraordinary degree, if not judicious.
Therefore, the very mention of the word `zeal' must have been
peculiarly offensive to such a zealous man. The letter went on to say
that all the fines he had exacted were illegal, and commanded him
to give back the `yerba' which he had extorted from his involuntary penitents,
and in the future live on better terms with all around him. To all of this
he paid no notice, as was to be expected, but, to avoid returning the `yerba',
sent a letter to his officers to have it burned. This letter,
which he denied, was subsequently produced against him
in the High Court at Charcas.
Seeing the Governor was bent on frustrating or on deceiving him,
he tried to get from Don Sebastian Leon, who held an office
under the Governor, an edict of the Emperor Charles V.,
which he had heard was in the archives, and which provided that,
in case a Governor should die or be deposed, the notables of the place
had power to appoint an interim Governor to fill his place.
If such a paper ever existed, it must have been a very early document
given by Charles V. at the foundation of the colony, for nothing
was more opposed to the traditions of Spanish policy throughout America.
Don Sebastian Leon having informed the Governor, the latter saw that things
were coming to a crisis, and that either he or the Bishop would have
to leave the place. Not being sure of all his troops, and the Bishop having
the populace upon his side, he sent to the Jesuit missions
for six hundred Indians. Thus the supremacy of the royal government
fell to be supported by men but just emerging from a semi-nomad life,
who owed the tincture of civilization they possessed
to the calumniated Jesuits.
On many occasions armies of Indians from the Jesuit missions
rendered important services to the crown of Spain: not only against
the Portuguese, but against English corsairs, and in rebellions,
as in the case of Cardenas; or as when, in the year 1680,
Philip V. wrote to the Governor of Buenos Ayres to garrison the port
with a contingent of Indians from the Jesuit reductions; in 1681,
when the French attacked the port with a squadron of four-and-twenty ships;
and at the first siege of the Colonia, in 1678, when three thousand Indians
marched to the attack, accompanied by their Jesuit pastors,
but under the command of Spanish officers.*
--
* Funes, `Historia Civil del Paraguay, Buenos-Ayres, y Tucuman'.
--
An army from the Jesuit missions consisted almost entirely of cavalry.
It marched much like a South American army of twenty years ago
was wont to march. In front was driven the `caballada',
consisting of the spare horses; then came the vanguard,
composed of the best mounted soldiers, under their `caciques'.
Then followed the wives and women of the soldiers, driving the baggage-mules,
and lastly some herdsmen drove a troop of cattle for the men to eat.
When Jesuits accompanied the army, they did not enter into action,
but were most intrepid in succouring the wounded under fire,
as Funes, in his `Historia Civil del Paraguay', etc.,*
relates when speaking of their conduct at the siege of the Colonia in 1703.
For arms they carried lances, slings, `chuzos' (broad-pointed spears),
lazos, and bolas, and had amongst them certain very long English guns
with rests to fire from, not very heavy, and of a good range.
Each day the accompanying Jesuits said Mass, and each town carried
its particular banner before the troop. They generally camped, if possible,
in the open plain, both to avoid surprises and for convenience in guarding
the cattle and the `caballada'. In all the territories of South America
no such quiet and well-behaved soldiery was to be found;
for in Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, the passage of an army
was similar to the passing of a swarm of locusts in its effect.
--
* The testimony of Funes is as follows: `A/ juicio de testigo ocular
no es ma/s admirable la sangre fria de sus capellanes'
(`Historia Civil del Paraguay', book iii., cap. viii.).
--
Don Bernardino, on his side, was occupied in animating the populace
against the Jesuits with all the fervour of an Apostle. Naturally,
he first commenced by launching his usual sentence of excommunication
against them, and having done so returned again to Yaguaron. This village,
like other Paraguayan villages, many of which in times gone by have been
the scenes of stirring episodes, retains to-day but little to distinguish it.
Nature has proved too powerful in the long-run for men to fight against.
On every side the woods seem ready to overwhelm the place.
Grass grows between the wooden steps of the neglected church;
seibos, lapachos, espinillos de olor, all bound together with lianas,
encroach to the verges of the little clearings in which grows mandioca,
looking like a field of sticks. All day the parrots scream,
and toucans and picaflores dart about; at evening the monkeys howl in chorus;
at night the jaguar prowls about, and giant bats fasten upon
the incautious sleeper, or, fixing themselves upon a horse,
leave him exhausted in the morning with the loss of blood.
When Cardenas used the place as a sort of Avignon from which
to safely utter his anathemas, it must have worn a different aspect.
No doubt processions and ceremonies were continual, with carrying about
the saints in public, a custom which the Paraguayans irreverently refer to
as `sacando a/ luz los bultos'.* Messengers (`chasquis'), no doubt,
came and went perpetually, as is the custom in countries such as Paraguay,
where news is valuable and horseflesh cheap. Thereto flocked,
to a moral certainty, all the broken soldiers who swarmed in countries
like Peru and Paraguay, with Indian `caciques' looking out for work to do
when white men quarrelled and throats were to be cut. Priests went and came,
friars and missionaries; and Cardenas most certainly, who loved effect,
gave all his emerald ring to kiss, and made those promises
which leaders of revolt lavish on everyone in times of difficulty.
--
* Literally, `taking out the blocks to air'. The effigies
are made of hard and heavy wood, and I remember once
in Concepcion de Paraguay assisting on a sweltering day
to carry a Madonna weighing about five hundredweight.
--
When the Indian contingent arrived, the Governor marched upon Yaguaron,
although the air was positively lurid with excommunications.
The Bishop, rushing to the church, was intercepted by the Governor,
who seized his arm and tried to stop him. Cardenas struggled with him,
and declared him excommunicated for laying his hand upon
the anointed of the Lord. But, most unfortunately, there was
no Fitz-Urse at hand to rid the Governor of so turbulent a priest.
A mulatto* woman rushed to the Bishop's aid, together with some priests.
This gave him time to gain the altar and seize the Host,
which he exposed at once to the public gaze, and for the moment
all present fell upon their knees. Turning to the Governor,
he asked what he wanted with armed men in a church. The Governor replied
he had come to banish him from Paraguay, by order of the Viceroy,
for having infringed upon the temporal power. Cardenas, taken aback,
replied he would obey, and, turning to the people, took them all
for witnesses. The Governor, no doubt thinking he was dealing
with an honest Araucan chief, retired. The Bishop immediately
denounced the Governor in a furious sermon, after which he left the church,
carrying the Host in full procession, accompanied by the choir
singing the `Pange Lingua', followed by a band of Indian women
with their hair dishevelled, and carrying green branches in their hands.
He then returned to the church, and from the pulpit denounced the Governor,
who, standing at the door surrounded by a group of arquebusiers
blowing their matches, answered him furiously.
--
* The proverb says in Paraguay, `No se fia de mula ni mulata'.
--
The honours, so to speak, being thus equally divided, it remained
for one side or the other to negotiate. Cardenas, knowing himself
much abler in negotiations than his adversary, proposed a conference,
in which he bore himself so skilfully that he made the Governor consent
to dismiss his Indians, and allow him six days to make his preparations
for the road. This settled, at dead of night he set out for the capital.
Arrived there, he showed himself in public in his green hat,
having upon his breast a little box of glass in which he bore the Host.
A band of priests escorted him, all with arms concealed beneath their cloaks,
in the true spirit of the Church militant. The bells were rung,
and every effort strained to raise a tumult, but all in vain.
He had to throw himself for refuge into the convent of the Franciscans.
At once he set about to fortify the place to stand a siege. In several places
he constructed embrasures for guns, and pierced the walls for musketry.
But, thinking that his best defence lay in the folly of the people
-- as public men always have done, and do -- he sent to the Cathedral
for a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and another of San Blas,
and placed them at the gate. Then, remembering that calumny
was a most serviceable weapon, he put about the town a report
that the Indians from the missions had pillaged Yaguaron,
and that they even then were marching on the place. Again recurring
to the edict of Charles V., which he pretended to have found,
he issued a proclamation that, as the present Governor was excommunicated,
and therefore could not govern, the office being vacant, he intended
to nominate another in his stead. His subsequent behaviour shows most clearly
that he wished to nominate himself.
Again both sides sent off a relation of their doings
to the High Court of Charcas. Don Bernardino wrote in his that the Jesuits
had offered the Governor thirty thousand crowns, and placed a thousand men
at his command, if he would expel the Bishop from the country,
under the belief that he (Don Bernardino) knew of their hidden mines
in the mission territory. His witnesses were students and priests,
and one of these proving recalcitrant, the Bishop had him heavily chained,
and then suspended outside the convent of the Franciscans.
This drastic treatment had the desired effect, as torture always has
with reasonable men, and the poor witness signed, but afterwards protested,
thus giving a good example in himself of the truth of the Spanish saying,
`Protest and pay'.*
--
* `Pagar y apelar'.
--
By this time the patience and long-suffering of the Governor
were quite exhausted. He therefore sent to the Bishop to say a ship was ready
to take him down the river, and at the same time reminded him of his promise
at Yaguaron to obey the order of the Viceroy of Peru. He sent the message
by the royal notary, Gomez de Coyeso, who accordingly repaired
to the convent of San Francisco. At the door a priest appeared,
armed with a javelin, who three times tried to wound the notary,
on which the Governor stationed a band of fifty soldiers at the convent gate,
in spite of the presence of the statues of the Blessed Virgin and San Blas.
Then, having published an edict that the Bishop was deposed,
he proceeded to elect another in his stead.
One of the canons, Don Cristobal Sanchez, who had governed the diocese
during the interregnum before the advent of Don Bernardino,
still lived in retirement near the town. The Governor approached him
with the request that he would once more take the interim charge
until the King should send another Bishop to replace Cardenas.
Sanchez consented, on the understanding that the Governor would guarantee
his personal safety. This being done, Sanchez was taken to the Jesuit college
as the securest place.
So it fell out that everything concurred to strengthen
the hatred of the Bishop to the Jesuits. To the Jesuit college came
the Governor and all the notables, and, having taken Sanchez in procession
through the streets, they placed him on the Bishop's throne in the Cathedral,
and invested him with all the power that he had held before the coming
of Don Bernardino Cardenas. The proclamation set forth by the Governor
alluded to the informality of the consecration of Don Bernardino,
and to his actions during his time of power.
At last the Bishop saw that he must go. So, after launching
a supreme anathema, and after having expressed his great unwillingness
to tarry longer in a city where half the population had incurred
the censure of the Church, and marked with a cross those churches
where he permitted Mass to be celebrated, he went on board the ship.
Before embarking, he drew a silver bell from underneath his cloak,
and to the sound of it he solemnly proclaimed the town accursed.
The bells of the Franciscan convent and the Bishop's palace,
according to his orders, all tolled loudly. This caused
so much confusion that, in order to appease the tumult,
the authorities ordered the bells of all the churches in the town to ring.
Entering the vessel, Don Bernardino sat himself upon the poop
on a low stool, with all the clergy who were faithful to him
grouped about the deck. With him he had the sacred wafer in a glass box,
and not far off a group of sailors on the forecastle lounged about
smoking and drinking `mate' whilst they played at cards.
Someone reminded him it was not fitting that God's Body
should thus be seen so near to sailors, and therefore the Bishop,
according to the custom of the Church in cases of accident or desecration,
consumed the offended wafer, and peace descended on the ship.
Thus, in 1644, he took his first departure from the place where
for the last two years he had brought certainly rather a sword than peace.
His friends assured the public that, at the moment he stepped on board
the ship, stars were seen to fall from heaven towards the church of St. Luke,
and passed from thence to the episcopal palace and disappeared;
that at the same time a slight shock of earthquake had been experienced;
that stones had danced about, and several hills had trembled.
The sun, quite naturally, had appeared blood-red; trouble and desolation
had entered every heart, and animals had prophesied woe and destruction,
predicting ruin and misfortune to the town till the good Bishop
should return once more.
The events of the past two years in Paraguay had not been favourable
to the conversion of the Indians. Not only in the missions,
where the neophytes had seen themselves obliged to furnish troops
against their Bishop, but in the territory of Paraguay itself,
the Indians had not had a good example of how Christians carry out
the duties of their faith. As a general rule, the Indian (unlike the negro)
cares little for dogma, but places his belief entirely in good works.
Perhaps on this account the Jesuits, also believers in good works,
have had the most success amongst them. Be that as it may, the Jesuits,
after the departure of the Bishop, found that many of their recent converts
had fallen away and gone back to the woods.
Whilst Jesuits in Paraguay were seeking to convert the Indians,
and whilst the Governor, no doubt, was thanking his stars for
the absence of his rival, in Rome the question of the Bishop's consecration
filled all minds. From May 9, 1645, to October 2 of the same year
no less than four congregations of the Propaganda had been held
about the case. The Pope himself was present at one of them.
Nothing was arrived at till 1658, when finally the consecration
was declared in order, but not until Don Bernardino was appointed
to another see.
Just about this time (1644-45) a rumour was set on foot that the Jesuits
had discovered mines near their reductions on the Parana. These rumours
were always set about when there was nothing else by means of which
to attack the Jesuits. An Indian by the name of Buenaventura,
who had been a servant in a convent in Buenos Ayres, on this occasion
was the instrument used by their enemies. For a short time
everyone believed him, and excitement was intense; but, most unluckily,
Buenaventura happened at the zenith of his notoriety to run away
with a married woman, and, being pursued, was brought to Buenos Ayres,
and then in public incontinently whipped. In any other country Buenaventura
after his public whipping would have been discredited, but a letter arrived
from the Bishop of Paraguay, telling the Governor of Buenos Ayres
that the mines really existed. At that time a new Governor,
one Don Jacinto de Lara, had just arrived. Being new to America and its ways,
he started out himself to try the question, and with fifty soldiers,
taking Buenaventura as his guide, went to the missions.
As might have been expected, on the journey Buenaventura disappeared,
this time alone. `Cette fuite lui donna beaucoup a\ penser,'
says Charlevoix. But having gone so far, the Governor determined
to try the question thoroughly.
Father Diaz Tano, one of the best and hardest-working missionaries
who ever entered Paraguay, besought the Governor to satisfy himself
and search their territory for gold and silver, and requested him
to call upon the Bishop for confirmation of the statements he had made.
This he did, and then, accompanied by his soldiers, began his search.
He gave out that the first man to find a mine should be
at once promoted to be captain and have a large reward.
After several days' march, and having found no mines,
letters were brought him from the Governor of Paraguay and from the Bishop.
The first informed him that he had heard rumours of mines,
but nothing certain. The second declined to specify the mines,
which thus were destined to remain for ever, so to speak, `in partibus'.
But he gave advice, and good advice is better than any mine,
whether of silver or of gold. He told the Governor to start
by turning out the Jesuits, and he would find the profits of their expulsion
just as valuable as mines.
Whether this also made the Governor pensive I do not know,
but, luckily, the Jesuits, who were concerned in exposing the imposture,
had come on Buenaventura, and brought him ironed to the Governor.
He, after having tried to make him confess his imposture without success,
condemned him to be hung. The Jesuits, with their accustomed humanity
(or ingenuity), begged for his life. This was accorded to them,
and once again Buenaventura received a good sound whipping for his pains.
Thus ended the journey of Don Jacinto, without profit to himself,
except so far as the experience gained. No doubt he saw and marked
the Jesuit towns, the churches built of massive timber or of stone,
and the contented air of Indians and priests, which always struck
all travellers in those times. He saw the countless herds of cattle,
the cultivated fields; enjoyed, no doubt for the first time since arriving
in South America, the sense of perfect safety, at that time to be experienced
alone in Misiones. But in despite of his exposure of the imposture,
the rumour as to the existence of the mines never died out,
and lingers even to-day, in spite of geological research in Paraguay.
Whilst this was going on in Misiones, in the remote and recently-converted
district of the Itatines, in the north of Paraguay, the example
set by the Bishop had borne its fruit. The Indians became unmanageable.
One of the chiefs broke into open rebellion, and wounded a Jesuit father
called Arenas at the very altar-steps. Soon the general corruption of manners
became almost universal throughout the district. This, I fancy,
must be taken to mean that the Indians reverted to polygamy,
for the Jesuits always had trouble in this matter, being unable
to persuade the Indians of the advantage of monogamy.
But most fortuitously, just as the general corruption
gained all hearts, a tiger rushed into the town, and, after killing
fourteen people and some horses, disappeared again into the woods.
The Jesuits, ever ready to take advantage of events like these,
called on the Indians to see in the visitation of the tiger
the wrath of Heaven, and to leave their wicked ways.
The Indians, always as willing to submit as to revolt, submitted,
and the good fathers `prirent le parti de faire un coup d'autorite/,
qui leur re/ussit,' as Charlevoix relates.
They decoyed the chief, his nephew, and son, into another district,
where they seized and shipped them off two hundred leagues
to a remote reduction across the Uruguay. The Spaniards used to say
of Ferdinand VII., when he had committed any great barbarity,
`He is quite a King' (`Es mucho Rey'), and the Indians of the Itatines
esteemed the Jesuits for their `coup d'autorite' in the same manner
as the Spaniards their King.
His usual luck attended Cardenas in his exile in Corrientes. This town formed
part of the diocese of Buenos Ayres, which happened to be vacant at the time.
He therefore took upon himself to act just as he had acted in Paraguay --
appointed officers of justice, held ordinations, and instituted a campaign
against the Jesuits of the town.
Whilst he was thus occupied in his favourite pastime of usurping
other people's functions, two citations were sent him
to appear before the High Court of Charcas. He disregarded them,
and sent a statement of his case by the hands of his nephew
to the Bishop of Tucuman. In the letter he set forth all his complaints
against the Governor of Paraguay, calling him a violator of the Church,
a heretic, and generally applying to him all those terms
in which a thwarted churchman usually exhales his rage.
Mixed up with this was a detailed accusation of the Jesuits,
to whose account he laid all his misfortunes whilst in Paraguay.
Lastly, he called upon the Bishop of Tucuman to summon a provincial council
to condemn the monstrous heresies which he attributed to the Jesuits,
reminding him that the Council of Trent had recommended
the holding of frequent provincial councils, and stating his opinion that,
unless a council were called at once, the Bishop would incur a mortal sin.
The answer Cardenas received from Tucuman was most ironically couched
in the best style that his long-suffering friend was able to command.
After addressing Cardenas as `your illustrious lordship',
he proceeded to demolish all his statements in such a manner as to argue
that he had had much practice with refractory priests in his own diocese.
He told him that the Jesuits were the only Order in Paraguay
that really worked amongst the Indians. He reminded him
that from that Order the `second Paul', i.e., St. Francis Xavier,
had himself issued. He asked him whether, as a churchman,
he thought the yearly sum of twelve thousand crowns given by the King
out of the treasury of Buenos Ayres towards the Jesuits' work
was better saved, or that the thousands of Indians whom
the Jesuits had converted should be lost to God. And as to heresy,
he said he was no judge, leaving such matters to the Pope;
but that no one accused the Jesuits of corruption in their morals,
or of any of the greater crimes to which the great fragility of human nature
renders us liable. He reminded him the Jesuits had made no accusation
on their part, but always spoke of him with moderation and respect.
And as to a provincial council, he said that it was impossible,
for the following good cause: The Bishop of Misque* was too infirm to travel;
the Bishop of La Paz was lately dead, and the see still vacant;
the Bishop of Buenos Ayres only just arrived, and too much occupied
to leave his diocese. Therefore, the only Bishops available
were himself and Cardenas, and that they never would agree.
--
* Misque is at least fifteen hundred miles from Tucuman.
--
`Moreover,' he remarked, `what is it that your illustrious lordship
wishes me to do?
`To advise a Bishop?
`God has only given me the charge of my own sheep. Your lordship knows
as well as I do how a Bishop should comport himself.'
He finished with a quotation, saying that a Bishop's state
was not to lie `in splendore vestium, sed morum; non ad iram,
sed ut omnimodum patientium.'
What Cardenas replied is not set down in any history which has come under
my observation, but what he must have thought is easy to divine.
The Governor of Paraguay, not content with having put his case before
the Supreme Court of Charcas, sent also to the Council General of the Indies
in Seville, detailing all the vagaries of the Bishop. The Jesuits also
empowered an officer to represent them there.
During these preparations, and whilst everyone was off his guard,
the Guaycurus endeavoured to surprise the capital, and would
have done so had not some regiments of Guaranis arrived in time
from the mission territory. This should have been an object-lesson
to those who always tried to show the Jesuits in the light of enemies
to the authority of the King of Spain. Nothing, however,
proved of the least avail, and though on several occasions the Spanish power
in Paraguay was only saved by the exertions of the Jesuits and their Indians,
the calumnies of Cardenas had taken too deep root to be dispelled.
Meanwhile, in Corrientes, Cardenas schemed night and day
to return to Paraguay. In his own city of La Plata naturally he had
some friends, and these did all they could to get him reinstated.
In spite of all their efforts, an order came from Charcas
for him to leave the city under pain of banishment.* Anyone but Cardenas
would have been disconcerted; he, though, pretended, as in the order
he was still styled Bishop of Paraguay, that before leaving for Charcas,
to present himself before the court, he had to go to Asuncion to name
a Vicar-General, and towards the end of 1646 he embarked upon the river
for Paraguay.
--
* `Que lo hagan salir de nuestros Reynos y Sen~orios como ageno y estran~o,
por importar assi para la quietud de aquellas Provincias,
y al servicio de su Majestad.'
--
The Governor was on the alert, and sent a vessel with orders to turn him back,
which order was carried out in spite of his remonstrances,
and he returned to Corrientes in a miserable state.
Then came another citation to appear at Charcas, and an intimation
that he was appointed Bishop of Popayan. As Popayan (in New Granada)
was at least three thousand miles from Asuncion, his joy at the appointment
must have been extreme.
His fortunes now seemed desperate; as he said himself in a letter to the King,
`at an advanced age he could not undertake so great a journey';
and on every side his enemies seemed to have got the upper hand.
In 1648 a change came over everything. Don Gregorio Hinestrosa
was removed from Paraguay, and a new Governor, Don Diego Escobar de Osorio,
appointed in his place. Immediately the news reached Cardenas
he set out for Paraguay. Arriving at Asuncion, his friends all met him
and took him in procession to the Cathedral. His first thought
was to renew his persecution of the Jesuits. Most unfortunately for them,
Don Juan de Palafox, Bishop of Puebla de los Angeles in Mexico,
who had himself in Mexico had many quarrels with the Jesuits,
wrote begging Cardenas and all the Bishops of South America
to join against them.
This Palafox was afterwards beatified, and even in his lifetime enjoyed
the reputation of a saint, so that his letter greatly strengthened Cardenas.
Notwithstanding this, Palafox in subsequent works of his during the time
that he was Bishop of Osma (in Spain) said many things in praise of the work
done by the Jesuits in Paraguay.
The new Governor, himself a member of the Supreme Court of Charcas,
had never been before in Paraguay, and therefore resolved to treat the Bishop
(as Don Gregorio had done) with every respect due to his station.
The Bishop wanted nothing better, and saw at once he had another fool
to deal with. Therefore he made no secret of his intention of not complying
with the citation of the court at Charcas, and set himself at once
to preach against the Jesuits, and stir up popular resentment against them.
Unluckily, proof was wanting of the crimes he alleged they had committed,
so he resorted to the device of getting a petition signed by all and sundry,
asking for the expulsion of the Order from Paraguay. Like all petitions,
it was largely signed by women and by children and by those
who had never thought before about the matter, but liked
the opportunity to write their names after the names of others,
as sheep go through a gap or members give their votes (out of mere sympathy)
in the high court of Parliament.
This device having taken too much time, blank documents
were passed about for all to write upon whatever they imagined
to the disadvantage of the Jesuits. By an untoward chance, a bundle of these,
sent to the agent of the Bishop in Spain, was taken on the voyage
by an English corsair. The worthy pirate (no doubt a Protestant) was,
if we can believe the Jesuits, extremely scandalized at the bad faith of those
who used such means of wreaking their malevolence.
So all seemed once again to smile upon Don Bernardino, who no doubt resumed
his flagellations, his midnight services, and his saying of two Masses,
and once again became the idol of the people of Asuncion.
But in the north, in the wild district of Caaguayu,
hard by the mountains of Mbaracaya, close to the great `yerbales',*
the Jesuits had formed two towns amongst the Indians.
These two towns were destined to be the outposts of the country
against the incursions of the wild Indians from the Chaco.
--
* A `yerbal' is a forest chiefly composed of the `Ilex Paraguayensis',
from the leaves of which the `yerba mate', or `Paraguayan tea', is made.
--
The Bishop prevailed upon the Governor to let him turn out the Jesuits
and replace them by priests of another Order. This being done,
the Indians all deserted, leaving the district quite uninhabited.
The court at Charcas, hearing of this folly, sent an order to the Governor
to send the Jesuits back. A year was passed in ceaseless searching
of the woods and deserts for the Indians, but only half of the population
could ever be persuaded to return, and Father Mansilla, the ex-missionary,
died of the hardships that he underwent.
From that date down to the time of Dr. Francia (circa 1812-35),
the district remained a desert. Francia used it as a penal settlement,
and to-day, save for a few wild, wandering Indians, known as Caaguas,
and a sparse population of yerba-gatherers, it still remains
almost unpopulated.
Meanwhile, the general indignation against the Jesuits seemed to infect
all classes of the population. Certainly, the citizens of Asuncion
had good and sufficient causes of complaint against the Jesuits.
On several occasions the efforts of the Jesuits and their Indians alone
had saved the capital from the wild Indians, and benefits are hard to bear,
if only from their rarity.
Popular hatred, to the full as idiotic as is popular applause,
fell chiefly upon Father Diaz Tano -- he who had saved ten thousand Indians
for the King of Spain in his celebrated retreat before the Mamelucos
down the Parana -- and he was frequently insulted in the streets.
Father Antonio Manquiano, a quiet and learned man, was almost murdered
in open day by a furious fanatic, who fell upon him with
the openly expressed intent `to eat his heart'.
This was the moment Cardenas pitched on to declare the entire
Order of the Jesuits excommunicated. As he had been a year away from
the scene of his former exploits, people were not so used to excommunications,
and therefore took them seriously.
At this eventful juncture the Governor, Don Diego, died so suddenly
that suspicions of his having been poisoned were aroused.
Scarce was he dead than all the population assembled at the palace
to elect an interim successor. This was a most important thing,
as to communicate with Spain took, at the very shortest time,
about eight months. By acclamation the choice fell on the Bishop,
who thus found himself head of the spiritual and the temporal power at once.
The election was absolutely illegal, as the Spanish law
provided that, if a Governor of Paraguay should chance to die,
the nomination of an interim successor should rest first
with the Viceroy of Peru, and failing him with the High Court of Charcas.
Cardenas based his election on the pretended edict of the Emperor Charles V.,
but, if he had a copy of the edict, never produced it. As usual,
`good men daring not, and wise men caring not', but only fools and schemers
taking part in the election, no serious opposition to his usurpation
was encountered.
Cardenas never doubted for a moment that the function of a Governor
was to govern, and he began at once to do so with a will.
Xarque, a Spanish writer, gives the following curious description of how
he set about to get the people on his side to expel the Jesuits:*
--
* Xarque, book ii., cap. xl., p. 30.
--
Preaching one day in the Cathedral, after the consecration
he turned towards the people, and, showing the holy wafer, said,
`Do you believe, my brethren, that Jesus Christ is here?'
All, being true believers, answered as one man that such was their belief.
In the same way as at a scientific lecture, when the lecturer
holds up some substance, and says, `You all know well that
calcium tungstate or barium hydrocyanide has this or the other property,'
the hearers nod assent like sheep, being afraid to contradict
so glib a statement from so eminent a man.
Then said Cardenas, `Believe as firmly that I have an order from the King
to expel the Jesuits.' The people all believed, and Cardenas forgot
to tell them that by the expulsion of the Jesuits twenty thousand Indians
would pass into his power, whom he could then distribute amongst his friends
as slaves, as he proposed to divide the Indians of the missions
amongst the Paraguayan notables to win them to his side.
Being at the head of everything in Asuncion, Cardenas no longer hesitated,
but ordered an officer, Don Juan de Vallejo Villasanti,
with a troop of soldiers to march to the college of the Jesuits.
This he did, and finding the gates all barred, he burst them open,
and, entering the college, signified to the rector an order from the Governor
(duly countersigned by the Bishop) to leave the city with all his priests,
and to evacuate all the missions on the Parana. The rector answered
that the Jesuits had a permission from Philip II., renewed by his successors,
to found a college, and Father Tano exhibited the documents.
Villasanti, who had but little love for documents, snatched the parchments
from his hand, and the soldiers forced the Jesuits in a body
to the port like sheep. There they were tied and thrown into canoes
almost without provisions, and sent off down the river to Corrientes,
the certain haven of the party in Paraguay which has got the worst
of an election or a revolution, and wishes to gain time.
Arrived in Corrientes, Don Manuel Cabral, a pious officer,
received them in his house, and, curiously enough, the population
welcomed the Jesuits with enthusiasm, and pressed them earnestly
to build a college in the town.
Their college at Asuncion was treated like a town taken by storm:
pulpit and font, confessionals and doors, all were torn down and burnt,
and, with a view of justifying what was done, the Bishop's partisans
spread a report that, as the Jesuits were heretics, their temple was unclean.
The population, more artistic in its instincts than the Bishop,
refused to allow the altar, which had been brought from Spain,
to be destroyed. Besides the altar, there were also statues
of San Ignacio and San Francisco Xavier. These the Bishop wished
to turn into St. Peter and St. Paul. With this design he gave them
to an Indian carpenter to work upon. The poor man did his best,
but only managed to turn out two monstrous blocks, which looked like
nothing human.
A statue of the Blessed Virgin which had the eyes turned up to heaven
the Bishop wished to alter, and replace the head by another with the eyes
turned down to earth, as being more befitting to the statue's sex.
The people, less mad or superstitious than the Bishop, refused to allow it,
and the image, too, was placed in the Cathedral.
In 1649 the expulsion of an Order so powerful as were the Jesuits caused
some commotion through the world at large. Miracles happened opportunely
to strengthen waning faith. A fire placed round their church,
though it destroyed, refused to blacken; and ropes fixed
to the tower of the church, although attached to windlasses,
refused to pull it down, so that the tower and church, though gutted,
still remained almost intact, and, on the Jesuits' return,
were easily repaired, and served as a monument of victory.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a mitre, as poor Cardenas found out.
His popularity suffered some decrease by the lack of treasure found
in the Jesuits' college, for he had always dangled millions in prospective
before the people's eyes to engage them on his side, and, most unluckily,
he had no millions to bestow. So, to make all things right,
he sent Fray Diego Villalon* to Madrid to represent his interests.
--
* This Villalon has left some curious memoirs in the case which he submitted
to the Council of the Indies which sat in Seville.
--
The Jesuits upon their side were not inactive. By virtue of
a brief of Gregory XIII. they had the privilege of appointing an official
called a judge conservator in cases where their honour or their possessions
were attacked. Therefore Father Alfonso de Ojeda was sent to Charcas
to arrange about the case. At Charcas they found that Cardenas
had been before them, and had instituted proceedings against their Order
in the High Court. Father Pedro Nolasco, Superior of the Order of Mercy,
was appointed judge conservator. He at once summoned the Bishop
to appear before him, and arranged to try the case and hear the evidence.
Cardenas having refused to appear, sentence went by default against him.
The High Court, being convinced that the pretended edict
of the Emperor Charles V. did not exist, appointed Don Andres Garabito de Leon
to be interim Captain-General of Paraguay, and gave him power, if necessary,
to restore order by force of arms. The court then issued a decree
summoning Cardenas to appear at once at Charcas and give his reasons
why he had had himself made Governor and had expulsed the Jesuits
from Paraguay. It then communicated with the Marquis of Mancera,
Viceroy of Peru, who quite concurred in its decision as to Cardenas.
Apparently upon the principle which prevails amongst Mohammedans
of always appointing, first an officer, and then a caliph to that officer
to do the work, the High Court of Charcas also appointed a commander
to proceed to Paraguay, pending the time that Don Andres should feel inclined
to start himself. As the caliph's name was Sebastian de Leon,
it is not improbable that he was a relation of the first-appointed man.
Don Sebastian de Leon seems to have been in Paraguay already,
for both Charlevoix and Xarque agree that he and his brothers,
after the expulsion of the Jesuits by Cardenas, had retired to an estate
some distance from Asuncion. At the estate the news of his appointment
reached him, and must have placed him in a most difficult position
as to what to do.
On several occasions in the various rebellions which occurred in South America
during the Spanish rule, men were appointed to quell rebellions,
pacify countries, and restore order, and all without an army or any forces
being placed at their command. This was the case with
the celebrated La Gasca, who was sent from Spain to put down
the rebellion of Gonzalo Pizarro, and succeeded in so doing,
though he left Spain without a single soldier in his train.
In this connection it is to be remembered that none of the rebellions in
Spanish America from the days of Charles I. (i.e., the Emperor Charles V.)
to those of Charles III. were for the object of separation
from the metropolis, but merely risings against Governors sent out from Spain.
It seems that both in Peru and Paraguay the very name of the imperial power
was able to draw hundreds of men to the standard of whatever officer held
a commission from Madrid, such as that held by Garabito de Leon or by La Gasca
on the Parana.
At first Don Sebastian did not show himself in Asuncion,
but sent out messengers on every side to summon soldiers, requisition horses,
and collect provisions. He also sent to Corrientes to tell the Jesuits
he was ready to reinstate them in their possessions.
Don Bernardino meanwhile was preparing for the great adventure of his life.
He seems to have believed most firmly that no power on earth
had any right to remove him from the governorship of Paraguay.
In a letter which he addressed to Don Juan Romero de la Cruz*
he says he is on the point of distinguishing himself
by heroic exploits and great victories; that he had on his side
justice and force (a most uncommon combination); that the entire capital
was favourable to him; and that he was resolved neither to readmit the Jesuits
nor to recognise Don Sebastian de Leon as Governor.
--
* Charlevoix, book xii., p. 115.
--
Asuncion was once again convulsed, and all was preparation for the holy war.
The Bishop had given out that angels were to help him,
and this so reassured his soldiers that they provided themselves with cords
to bind the Indians in the army of Don Sebastian Leon, thinking they
would fall an easy prey to them. This matter of the cords explains, perhaps,
why the population of Asuncion was almost unanimous in favour of the Bishop.
In the army of Don Sebastian, as well as the militia of the province,
marched three thousand Indians from the Jesuit reductions on the Parana.
The Spaniards of the capital were all determined not to kill any of them,
but keep them alive for slaves, and hence the cords with which
they armed themselves.
The sacred generalissimo led out his army from Asuncion in person,
celebrating Mass himself, and then heading his troops
like many another Spanish ecclesiastic has done before and after him,
and continued doing even to the latest Carlist war.
The armies met not far from Luque, in a little plain known
as the Campo Grande. An open plain with sandy soil, which gave the horses
a good footing, with several little stagnant pools in the centre
where the wounded men could drink and wash their wounds,
with a most convenient forest on all sides for the deserters and the cowards
to hide in, made a good battlefield. The village of Luque,
grouped round its church, and with a little plaza in the middle
in which sat Paraguayan women selling mandioca, chipa,*1* and rapadura,*2*
with sacks of maize and of mani,*3* stood on the summit of a little hill.
Upon the plain the earth is red, and looks as if a battle
had been fought upon it and much blood spilt. In all directions
run little paths, worn deep by the feet of mules and horses,
and in which the rider has to lift his feet as if he were going
through a stream. To Asuncion there leads one of the deep-sunk roads
planted with orange and paraiso*4* trees, constructed thus
(as Barco de la Centenera tells us in his `Argentina') so as to be defensible
against the Indians after the country was first conquered by the Spaniards.
--
*1* Chipa is a kind of bread made of mandioca flour.
*2* Rapadura is a kind of coarse sugar, generally sold
in little pyramid-shaped lumps, done up in a banana leaf.
It is strongly flavoured with lye.
*3* Mani is ground-nut.
*4* The paraiso is one of the Paulinias.
--
On the Bishop's side hardly a soldier but thought himself an emissary of God,
or doubted of the victory for a moment in his heart. Angels themselves
had promised victory to their leader, who, to make all things safe,
had issued a proclamation punishing surrender with the pain of death;
so they stood quietly in array of battle waiting to be attacked.
Upon his side, Don Sebastian Leon, seeing the attitude of the enemy,
immediately ordered an advance, and charged himself, with all his cavalry,
upon the Bishop's men. They, with the firmness that fanatics so often show,
stood firmly in their ranks, thinking themselves invulnerable.
Their valour proved but momentary, for at the second charge
they broke their ranks and fled. Flight turned to rout,
and Don Sebastian having commanded that they should not be pursued,
they still fled on, no man pursuing them.
The Governor then entered the capital without resistance.
On the plaza he stopped, and having gathered up the wounded
without respect of party, he sent them to the hospital.
Then, having seen to the safety of the town, he rode to the Cathedral
to give thanks to God for having preserved him from the dangers of the fight.
Dressed in his robes and seated on his throne was Cardenas. Don Sebastian
entered the church, dismounted, and kissed his hand respectfully,
like a true Spaniard, and asked him ceremoniously to deign to give him
the baton of the civil power. Cardenas answered not a word,
but handed him the baton, and then retired, accompanied by all his priests.
The victory did not terminate the work of Don Sebastian.
After a reasonable interval, and before witnesses, he cited the Bishop
to appear before the court of Charcas. The Bishop promised to obey,
thinking he had another Don Gregorio Hinostrosa to deal with,
but quite determined never to comply, acting according to
the custom of Governors in South America, who, when an order
reached them from Madrid, either absurd or quite impossible to execute,
solemnly answered, `I obey, but I do not comply,'* saving by the phrase
the honour of their sovereigns and themselves. Upon their side
the Jesuits pressed the judge conservator, Father Nolasco,
to issue his sentence, and free them from the charges under which they lay.
This he did, and gave as his opinion they were quite innocent of all
that Cardenas had laid to their account.
--
* `Obedesco, pero no cumplo.'
--
As in a palace,* things go slow in Spain, and it was not till 1654
that a royal decision confirmed the judgment of Nolasco, and freed the Jesuits
from all the charges raised against them.
--
* `Cosas de palacio van despacio.'
--
Order restored, Cardenas deprived of his usurped authority,
and the Jesuits reinstated, the temporary commission of Sebastian Leon
was at an end. Therefore he retired again to plant his mandioca
under his own guayaba-tree. Yet feeling ran so high that he was hardly safe
from the vengeance of the partisans of Cardenas, so that he found himself
once more obliged to summon the militia of the province,
and lead them to a perfunctory campaign against the Payaguas.
These Indians the earlier historians of the conquest,
Barco de la Centenera and Rui Diaz de Guzman, describe as river-pirates,
almost living in canoes, and dashing out on any passing Spanish vessel
that they thought weak enough. The Jesuits Montoya and Dobrizhoffer tell us
that they went naked, painted in many colours, with a hawk's or parrot's wing
passed through the cartilage of their left ear, and that they were,
of all the Indians of Paraguay, the most indomitable. A few,
when I knew Paraguay some twenty years ago, hung round Asuncion,
squalid and miserable, passing their time in fishing in canoes,
and as attached to their own mode of life as when the first discoverers
called them `sweet-water pirates' and the `most pestilent of all the Indians
on the river Paraguay.' The Payaguas chastised, Don Sebastian,
upon one pretext or another, did not disband his troops,
keeping them always by him, and thus making the position of the Bishop
quite untenable, till by degrees his followers fell away and left him
almost deserted and his party all dissolved. Seeing the game was up,
the Bishop, after having named one Don Adrian Cornejo as his suffragan,
took his departure (1650) for Charcas to appear before the court.
For eight tumultuous years he had kept his bishopric in a perpetual turmoil,
having been the evil genius of the land.
What sort of man he really was is hard to-day to judge, for Xarque, Villalon,
Charlevoix, and Dean Funes,* who chronicle his doings, were all,
on one side or the other, partisans. The Jesuits condemn him as a spoliator,
the Franciscans hold him up as one who fought throughout his life
for the honour of the founder of their rule. Tracts, books,
and pamphlets for and against him have been written in numbers,
and in the history of the times in Paraguay his name bulks large.
One thing is certain -- that the Indians loved and revered him,
and followed him up to the end. Even in Charcas, where he lived for years
upon a pension of two thousand crowns allowed him by the King
whilst his case dragged its weary course to Rome, Madrid, back to Peru,
and then to Rome again, the Indians, when he appeared in public,
greeted him with flowers. He may have been a saint: so many men are saints,
and the world knows them not. He may have been a schemer; but he made
nothing by his schemes except the barren honour of his consecration
to the see of Paraguay. A preacher certainly he was, able and willing
to draw crowds, after the fashion of all those who have the gift of words.
--
* Dean Funes, in his `Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay,
Buenos Ayres y Tucuman' (book ii., cap. i., p. 10), says he was
`Dotado de un temperamento muy facil de inflamarse, de una imaginacion viva,
de una memoria feliz, y de un ingenio no vulgar.'
--
Headstrong and obstinate, through a long life he hated vigorously,
thinking all those who differed from him were accursed of God.
A strenuous member of the Church militant on earth, he was at least
a personality, and those who read the history of his time must reckon with,
and take sides for or against, him after the fashion of the men
with whom he passed his life, who to a man revered him as a saint,
or looked upon him as a devil sent to plague mankind.
Arrived in Charcas, he soon fell on evil times, although at first
he made some partisans. Still looking back to Paraguay, he passed his time
in drawing out petitions to the King; then, one by one, all his friends
fell from him, except some faithful Indians, who considered him a saint.
His dreams of saintship were not fulfilled, for his name never figured
in the calendar. Years did not tame nor yet did hope ever completely
leave him; for in old books I find him always protesting, ever complaining,
and still striving, till, in 1665, Philip IV. in pity made him
Bishop of Santa Cruz. A sentence from the registers of the Consistory at Rome
informs us that, as Bishop of La Paz, in his own province of the Charcas,
he left off troubling, and rested from his agitated life.
Chapter VI
Description of the mission territory and towns founded by the Jesuits --
Their endeavours to attract the Indians -- Religious feasts and processions
-- Agricultural and commercial organizations
With the death of Cardenas the most dangerous enemy the Jesuits
ever had in Paraguay had disappeared. They worsted him, and drove him
from his see; but the movement set on foot by him and the calumnies
he levelled at their Order still remained and flourished,
and in the end prevailed against them and drove them from the land.
A calumny is hard to kill; mankind in general cherish it;
they never let it die, and, if it languishes, resuscitate it
under another form; they hold to it in evil and in good repute,
so that, once fairly rooted, it goes on growing like a forest-tree
throughout the centuries. Therefore, the charges against
the Jesuits in Paraguay, which Cardenas first started,
are with us still, and warp our judgment as to the doings of the Order
in the missions of the Parana and Uruguay even until to-day.
But neither calumny nor the raids of the Paulistas, nor yet
the jealousy of the Spanish settlers in Paraguay, deterred the Jesuits
from the prosecution of their task. The missions gradually extended,
till they ranged from Santa Maria la Mayor, in Paraguay,
to San Miguel, in what is now Brazil; and from Jesus, upon the Parana,
to Yapeyu, upon the Uruguay. Most of the country, with the exception of
the missions of Jesus and Trinidad, upon the Parana, which to-day, at least,
are only clearings in the primeval forest, is composed of open rolling plains,
with wood upon the banks of all the streams. Covered as it was and is
with fine, short grass, it formed excellent cattle-breeding country,
and hence the great industry of the Indians was to look after stock.
The country being so favourable for cattle, they multiplied immoderately,
so that in the various establishments (`estancias'), according to
the inventories published by Brabo, their numbers were immense.*
--
* At the date of the expulsion the number of the cattle
was 719,761; oxen, 44,183; horses, 27,204; sheep, 138,827
(`Inventarios de los bienes hallados a/ la expulsion de los Jesuitas',
Francisco Javier Brabo, Madrid, 1872).
--
These open rolling plains, called by the natives `campos quebrantados',
are generally studded thickly with stunted palms called yatais,*1*
but not so thickly as to spoil the grass which covers them
in spring and early summer, and even in winter they remain
good feeding ground. Thick clumps of hard-wood trees*2*
break up the prairie here and there into peninsulas and islands,
and in the hollows and rocky valleys bushy palmetto rises above
a horse's knees. In general the soil is of a rich bright red, which,
gleaming through the trees, gives a peculiarly warm colour to the land.
All the French Jesuit writers refer to it as `la terre rouge des missions'.
The Jesuits used it and another earth of a yellow shade for painting
their churches and their houses in the mission territory. Its composition
is rather sandy, though after rain it makes thick mud, and renders travelling
most laborious. The flowers and shrubs of the territory
are quite as interesting and still more varied than are the trees.
Many of the Jesuits were botanists, and the works of Fathers Montenegro,*3*
Sigismund Asperger and Lozano are most curious, and give
descriptions and lists of many of the plants unclassified even to-day.
The celebrated Bonpland, so long detained by Dr. Francia in Paraguay,
unfortunately never published anything; but modern writers*4* have done much,
though still the flora of the whole country is but most imperfectly known,
and much remains to do before it is all classified. The `Croton succirubrus'
(from which a resin known as `sangre-de-drago' is extracted),
the sumaha (bombax -- the fruit of which yields a fine vegetable silk),
the erythroxylon or coca of Paraguay, the incienso or incense-tree
of the Jesuits, are some of the most remarkable of the myriad shrubs.
But if the shrubs are myriad, the flowers are past the power of man to count.
Lianas, with their yellow and red and purple clusters of blossoms,
like enormous bunches of grapes, hang from the forest-trees.
In the open glades upon the nandubays,*5* the algarrobos,
and the espinillos, hang various Orchidaceae,*6* called by the natives
`flores del aire', covering the trees with their aerial roots,
their hanging blossoms, and their foliage of tender green.
The Labiatae, Compositae, Daturae, Umbelliferae, Convolvulaceae,
and many other species, cover the ground in spring or run up trees and bushes
after the fashion of our honeysuckle and the traveller's joy.
--
*1* `Cocos yatais'.
*2* Urunday (`Astrenium fraxinifolium: Terebinthaceae'),
curapay (`Piptadenia communis: Leguminaceae'),
lapacho (`Tecoma curialis' and `varia: Begoniaceae'),
taruma (`Vitex Taruma: Verbenaceae'), tatane (`Acacia maleolens:
Leguminaceae'), and cupai (`Copaifera Langsdorfii').
These and many other woods, such as the Palo Santo
(`Guaiacum officinalis'), butacae, and the `Cedrela Braziliensis',
known to the Jesuits as `cedar', and much used by them in their churches,
comprise the chief varieties.
*3* `Libro compuesto por el Hermano Pedro de Montenegro de la C. de J.,
Ano 1711', MS. folio, with pen-and-ink sketches, formerly belonged
to the Dukes of Osuna, and was in their library. Padre Sigismundi
also wrote a herbal in Guarani, and a Portuguese Jesuit, Vasconellos,
has left a curious book upon the flora of Brazil.
*4* Domingo Parodi, in his `Notas sobre algunas plantas usuales del Paraguay'
(Buenos Ayres, 1886), has done much good work.
*5* `Acacia Cavenia'.
*6* `Prosopis dulcis'. The famous `balm of the missions',
known by the vulgar name of `curalo todo' (all-heal),
was made from the gum of the tree called aguacciba,
one of the Terebinthaceae. It was sold by the Jesuits in Europe.
It was so highly esteemed that the inhabitants of the villages
near to which the tree was found were specially enjoined
to send a certain quantity of the balsam every year
to the King's pharmacy in Madrid.
--
The lakes and backwaters of rivers are covered with
myriads of water-lilies (all lumped together by the natives as `camalote'),
whilst in the woodland pools the Victoria Regis carpets the water
with its giant leaves. In every wood the orange and the lemon
with the sweet lime have become wild, and form great thickets.
Each farm and `rancho' has its orange-grove, beneath the shade of which
I have so often camped, that the scent of orange-blossom
always brings back to me the dense primeval woods, the silent plains,
the quiet Indians, and the unnavigated waterways, in which
the alligators basked. Except the Sierra de Mbaracayu,*1*
on the north-east, throughout the mission territory there are
no mountains of considerable height; and through the middle of the country
run the rivers Parana and Uruguay, the latter forming the boundary
on the south-east. The rolling plains and woods alternate
with great marshes called `esteros', which in some districts,
as of that of Neembucu, cover large tracts of land, forming in winter
an almost impenetrable morass, and in the spring and early summer
excellent feeding-ground for sheep. Throughout the territory
the climate is healthy, except towards the woody northern hills.
With this rich territory and the false reports of mines,
which even unsuccessful exploration could not dispel, it is but natural
that the Jesuits were hated far and wide. It must have been annoying
to a society composed, as were the greater portion of the Spanish settlements
in Paraguay, of adventurers, who treated the Indians as brute beasts,*2*
to see a preserve of Indians separated from their territory
by no great barrier of Nature, and still beyond their power.*3*
Bonpland, in speaking of the country, says: `The whole of the land
exceeds description; at every step one meets with things useful and new
in natural history.' Such also was the opinion of the French travellers
Demersay and D'Orbigny; of Colonel du Graty, whose interesting work
(`La Re/publique du Paraguay', Brussels, 1862) is one of the best
on the country; the recent French explorer Bourgade la Dardye,
and of all those who have ever visited the missions of Paraguay.*4*
--
*1* It was from those mountains that the Jesuits procured
the seed of the `Ilex Paraguayensis' to plant in their reductions.
The leaves beaten into a finish powder furnished the `Paraguayan tea',
called `yerba-mate' by the Spaniards and `caa' by the Indians,
from which the Jesuits derived a handsome revenue.
After the expulsion of the Order all the `yerba' in Paraguay was procured,
till a few years ago, from forests in the north of Paraguay,
in which the tree grew wild.
*2* It was by the Bull of Paul III. -- given at the demand of two monks,
Fray Domingo de Betanzos and Fray Domingo de Minaya -- that the Indians
were first considered as reasoning men (`gente de razon'),
and not as unreasonable beings (`gente sin razon'), as Juan Ortiz,
Bishop of Santa Marta, wished.
*3* Ibanez (`Histoire du Paraguay sous les Je/suites M.D.CCIXXX.'),
a great opponent of the Jesuits, says that European offenders
and recalcitrant Indians in the missions were sent as a last resource
to the Spanish settlements. This is not astonishing when we remember
the curious letter of Don Pedro Faxardo, Bishop of Buenos Ayres
(preserved by Charlevoix), written in 1721 to the King of Spain,
in which he says he thinks `that not a mortal crime is committed
in the missions in a year.' He adds that, `if the Jesuits were so rich,
why are their colleges so poor?'
*4* It is to be remembered that, of the thirty Jesuit missions,
only eight were in Paraguay; the rest were in what to-day is Brazil
and the Argentine provinces of Entre Rios, Corrientes, and Misiones.
--
In this rich territory the Jesuits, when, after infinite trouble,
they had united a sufficient* quantity of Indians, formed them into townships,
almost all of which were built upon one plan. In Paraguay itself
only some three or four remain; but they remain so well preserved that,
by the help of contemporary accounts, it is easy to reconstruct almost exactly
what the missions must have been like during the Jesuits' rule.**
--
* Sometimes, when they had been assembled, they all deserted suddenly,
as did the Tobatines, who in 1740 suddenly left the reduction of Santa Fe,
and for eleven years were lost in the forests, till Father Yegros
found them, and, as they would not return, established himself amongst them
(Cretineau Joly, `Histoire de la Compagnie de Je/sus', vol. v., cap. ii.).
** P. Cardiel, `Declaracion de la Verdad', p. 282: `Todos los pueblos
estan bien formados con calles a/ cordel. Las casas de los Indios
son en algunos pueblos de piedras cuadradas pero sin cal
. . . otras de palos y barro todas cubiertas de teja,
y todas tienen soportales o/ corredores, unas con pilares de piedras,
otras de madera.'
--
Built round a square, the church and store-houses filled one end,
and the dwellings of the Indians, formed of sun-dried bricks or wattled canes
in three long pent-houses, completed the three sides. In general, the houses
were of enormous length, after the fashion of a St. Simonian phalanstery,
or of a `miners' row' in Lanarkshire. Each family had its own apartments,
which were but separated from the apartments of the next
by a lath-and-plaster wall, called in Spanish `tabique''
but one veranda and one roof served for a hundred or more families.
The space in the middle of the square was carpeted with the finest grass,
kept short by being pastured close by sheep. The churches,
sometimes built of stone, and sometimes of the hard woods
with which the country abounds, were beyond all description splendid,
taking into consideration the remoteness of the Jesuit towns
from the outside world. Frequently -- as, for instance,
in the mission of Los Apostoles -- the churches had three aisles,
and were adorned with lofty towers, rich altars,*1* super-altars,
and statuary, brought at great expense from Italy and Spain.
Though the churches were often built of stone, it was not usual
for the houses of the Indians to be so built; but in situations
where stone was plentiful, as at the mission of San Borja,
the houses of the Jesuits were of masonry, with verandas held up by columns,
and with staircases with balustrades of sculptured stone.*2*
The ordinary ground-plan of the priest's house was that
of the Spanish Moorish dwelling, so like in all its details to a Roman house
at Pompeii or at Herculaneum. Built round a square courtyard,
with a fountain in the middle, the Jesuits' house formed
but a portion of a sort of inner town, which was surrounded by a wall,
in which a gate, closed by a porter's lodge, communicated with
the outside world. Within the wall was situated the church
(although it had an entrance to the plaza), the rooms of the inferior priest,
a garden, a guest-chamber, stables, and a store-house, in which were kept
the arms belonging to the town, the corn, flour, and wool,
and the provisions necessary for life in a remote and often dangerous place.
In every case the houses were of one story; the furniture was modest,
and in general home-made; in every room hung images and pious pictures,
the latter often painted by the Indians themselves. In the smaller missions
two Jesuits managed all the Indians.*3*
--
*1* Don Francisco Graell, an officer of dragoons in service
during the War of the Seven Towns in 1750, gives the following description
of the church of the mission of San Miguel: `La iglesia es muy capaz,
toda de piedra de silleria con tres naves y media naranja. Muy bien
pintada y dorada con un portico magnifico y de bellisima arquitectura,
bovedas y media naranja son de madera, el altar mayor de talla,
sin dorar y le falta el ultimo cuerpo.'
*2* `Galerias con columnas, barandillas y escaleras de piedra entallada'
(Don Francisco Graell). See also P. Cardiel (`Declaracion de la Verdad',
p. 247), `En todos los pueblos hay reloj de sol y de ruedas,' etc.
The work of Padre Cardiel was written in 1750 in the missions of Paraguay,
but remained unpublished till 1800, when it appeared in Buenos Ayres
from the press of Juan A. Alsina, Calle de Mexico 1422. It is, perhaps,
after the `Conquista Espiritual' of Father Ruiz Montoya,
the most powerful contemporary justification of the policy of the Jesuits
in Paraguay. It is powerfully but simply written, and contains withal
that saving grace of humour which has, from the beginning of the world,
been a stumbling-block to fools.
*3* The mission of San Miguel had 1,353 families in it, or say 6,635 souls.
San Francisco de Borja contained 650 families, or 2,793 souls
(Report by Manuel Querini to the King, dated Cordoba de Tucuman,
y Agosto 1o, 1750).
--
The greatest difficulty which the Jesuits had to face
was the natural indolence of their neophytes. Quite unaccustomed as they were
to regular work of any kind, the ordinary European system,
as practised in the Spanish settlements, promptly reduced them to despair,
and often killed them off in hundreds. Therefore the Jesuits instituted
the semi-communal system of agriculture and of public works with which
their name will be associated for ever in America.*
--
* In their extensive missions in the provinces of Chiquitos and Moxos
they pursued the same system. As they were much more isolated
in those provinces than in Paraguay, and consequently much less
interfered with, it was there that their peculiar system most flourished.
After the expulsion of the Jesuits from America in 1767,
the Spaniards in Alta Peru, and subsequently the Bolivians,
had the sense to follow the Jesuit plan in its entirety; whereas Bucareli,
the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres, entirely changed the Jesuits' rule in Paraguay.
The consequence was that in Bolivia the Indians, instead of dispersing
as they did in Paraguay, remained in the missions, and D'Orbigny
(`Fragment d'un Voyage au Centre de l'Ame/rique Me/ridianale')
saw at the missions of Santiago and El Santo Corazon,
in the province of Chiquitos, the remains of the Jesuits' polity.
There were ten missions in Chiquitos, and fifteen in Moxos.
At the present time the Franciscans have some small establishments
in Bolivia.
--
The celebrated Dr. Francia, dictator of Paraguay, used to refer to the Jesuits
as `cunning rogues',*1* and, as he certainly himself was versed
in every phase of cunningness, perhaps his estimate -- to some extent,
at least -- was just. A rogue in politics is but a man
who disagrees with you; but, still, it wanted no little knowledge of mankind
to present a daily task to men, unversed in any kind of labour,
as of the nature of a pleasure in itself. The difficulty was enormous,
as the Indians seemed never to have come under the primeval curse,
but passed their lives in wandering about, occasionally cultivating
just sufficient for their needs. Whether a missionary, Jesuit, or Jansenist,
Protestant, Catholic, or Mohammedan, does well in forcing
his own mode of life and faith on those who live a happier, freer life
than any his instructor can hold out to them is a moot point. Only the future
can resolve the question, and judge of what we do to-day -- no doubt
with good intentions, but with the ignorance born of our self-conceit.
Much of the misery of the world has been brought about with good intentions;
but of the Jesuits, at least, it can be said that what they did in Paraguay
did not spread death and extinction to the tribes with whom they dealt.*2*
So to the task of agriculture the Jesuits marshalled their neophytes
to the sound of music, and in procession to the fields,
with a saint borne high aloft, the community each day at sunrise took its way.
Along the paths, at stated intervals, were shrines of saints,
and before each of them they prayed, and between each shrine sang hymns.*3*
As the procession advanced, it became gradually smaller as groups of Indians
dropped off to work the various fields, and finally the priest and acolyte
with the musicians returned alone.*4* At mid-day, before eating,
they all united and sang hymns, and then, after their meal and siesta,
returned to work till sundown, when the procession again re-formed,
and the labourers, singing, returned to their abodes. A pleasing and Arcadian
style of tillage, and different from the system of the `swinked' labourer
in more northern climes. But even then the hymnal day was not concluded;
for after a brief rest they all repaired to church to sing the `rosary',
and then to sup and bed. On rainy days they worked at other industries
in the same half-Arcadian, half-communistic manner, only they sang their hymns
in church instead of in the fields. The system was so different
to that under which the Indians endured their lives in the `encomiendas'
and the `mitas' of the Spanish settlements, that the fact alone
is sufficient to account for much of the contemporary hatred
which the Jesuits incurred.
--
*1* `Pillos muy ladinos' (Robertson, `Letters from Paraguay').
*2* Ferrer del Rio, in his `Coleccion de los articulos
de la Esperanza sobre Carlos III.' (Madrid, 1859), says:
`Fuera de las misiones de los Jesuitas particularmente en el Paraguay
se consideraban los Indios entre los seres mas infelices del mundo.'
Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, in their celebrated `Secret Report'
(`Noticias Secretas de America'): `La compan~ia (de Jesus) atiende
a sus fines particularmente con los misioneros que llevan de Espan~a;
pero con todo eso no se olvida de la conversion de los Indios,
ni tiene abandonado este asunto pues aunque van poco adelante en el,
que es lo que no se esperimenten en las demas religiones.'
*3* Many travellers, as Azara, Demersay, Du Graty, and D'Orbigny,
have remarked how fond of music was the Guarani race,
and how soon they learned the use of European instruments. D'Orbigny
(`Fragment d'un Voyage au Centre de l'Ame/rique Me/ridianale'),
in his interesting account of the mission of El Santo Corazon,
in the district of Chiquitos, says: `Je fus tre\s e/tonne/
d'entendre exe/cuter apre\s les danses indige\nes des morceaux
de Rossini et . . . de Weber . . . la grande messe chante/e en musique
e/tait exe/cute/e d'une manie\re tre\s remarquable pour des Indiens.'
Vargas Machuca, in his most curious and rare `Milicia y Descripcion
de las Indias', says, under the heading of `Musica del Indio':
`Usan sus musicas antiguas en sus regocijos, y son muy tristes
en la tonada.' To-day the Indians of Paraguay have songs
known as `tristes'. The brigadier Don Diego de Alvear,
in his `Relacion de Misiones' (Coleccion de Angelis),
says that the first to teach the Guaranis European music
was a Flemish Jesuit, P. Juan Basco, who had been `maestro de capilla'
to the Archduke Albert.
*4* See also P. Cardiel, `Declaracion de la Verdad', p. 274:
`. . . y esta acabada, se toca a/ Misa a/ que entran todos cantando
el Bendito, y alabado en su lengua, o/ en Castellano,
que en las dos lenguas lo saben.'
--
Imagine a semi-communistic settlement set close to the borders of Rhodesia,
in which thousands of Kaffirs passed a life analogous to that
passed by the Indians of the missions -- cared for and fed by the community,
looked after in every smallest particular of their lives --
and what a flood of calumny would be let loose upon the unfortunate
devisers of the scheme! Firstly, to withdraw thousands of `natives'
from the labour market would be a crime against all progress,
and then to treat them kindly would be heresy, and to seclude them
from the contamination of the scum of Europe in the settlements
would be termed unnatural; for we know that native races derive most benefit
from free competition with the least fitted of our population to instruct.
But besides agriculture the enormous cattle-farms* of the mission territory
gave occupation to many of the neophytes. The life on cattle-farms
gave less scope for supervision, and we may suppose
that the herders and the cattlemen were more like Gauchos;
but Gauchos under religious discipline, half-centaurs in the field,
sitting a plunging half-wild colt as if they were part of him,
and when on foot at home submissive to the Jesuits, constant in church,
but not so fierce and bloodthirsty as their descendants soon became
after the withdrawal of the mission rule.
--
* Dean Funes, in his `Ensayo de la Historia del Paraguay', etc.,
says that in the `estancia' of Santa Tecla, in the missions of Paraguay,
during the time of the Jesuits, there were 50,000 head of cattle.
--
As well as agriculture and `estancia' life, the Jesuits had introduced
amongst the Indians most of the arts and trades of Europe.
By the inventories taken by Bucareli, Viceroy of Buenos Ayres,
at the expulsion of the Order, we find that they wove cotton largely;
sometimes they made as much as eight thousand five hundred yards of cloth
in a single town in the space of two or three months.*
And, in addition to weaving, they had tanneries, carpenters' shops,
tailors, hat-makers, coopers, cordage-makers, boat-builders,
cartwrights, joiners, and almost every industry useful and necessary to life.
They also made arms and powder, musical instruments, and had silversmiths,
musicians, painters, turners, and printers to work their printing-presses:
for many books were printed at the missions,** and they produced manuscripts
as finely executed as those made by the monks in European monasteries.
--
* `Inventarios de los bienes hallados a/ la expulsion de los Jesuitas',
Introduction, xxvii, Francisco Javier Brabo.
** The rare and much-sought-after `Manuale ad usum Patrum Societatis Jesu
qui in Reductionibus Paraquariae versantur, ex Rituale Romano
ad Toletano decerptum', was printed at the mission of Loreto.
It contains prayers in Guarani as well as in Latin.
Here also was printed a curious book of Guarani sermons
by Nicolas Yapuguay, many Guarani vocabularies,
and the `Arte de la Lengua Guarani/' of Ruiz Montoya.
--
All the `estancias', the agricultural lands and workshops were, so to speak,
the property of the community; that is to say, the community
worked them in common, was fed and maintained by their productions,
the whole under the direction of the two Jesuits who lived in every town.
A portion called `tupinambal' in Guarani was set aside especially
for the maintenance of orphans and of widows. The cattle and the horses,
with the exception of `los caballos del santo', destined for show at feasts,
were also used in common. The surplus of the capital was reserved
to purchase necessary commodities from Buenos Ayres and from Spain.*
Each family received from the common stock sufficient for its maintenance
during good conduct, for the Jesuits held in its entirety
the Pauline dictum that if a man will not work, then neither shall he eat.
But as they held it, so they practised it themselves, for their lives
were most laborious -- teaching and preaching, and acting
as overseers to the Indians in their labours continually,
from the first moment of their arrival at the missions till their death.
Thus, if the mayor of the township complained of any man for remissness
at his work, he received no rations till he had improved.
--
* P. Cardiel, `Declaracion de la Verdad', p. 295: `De estos granos comunales
se da para sembrar', etc.
--
To inculcate habits of providence amongst the Indians, always inclined
to consume whatever was given to them and go fasting afterwards,
they issued the provisions but once a week, and when they killed their oxen
forced the Indians to `jerk'* a certain quantity of beef
to last throughout the week. Vegetables each family was obliged
to plant both in their gardens and in the common fields;
and all that were not actually consumed were dealt out to the workers
in the common workshops or preserved for sale.
--
* This jerked beef is called `charqui' in South America.
--
Certain of the Indians owned their own cows and horses,
and had gardens in which they worked; but all the product was obliged
to be disposed of to the Jesuits for the common good, and in exchange for them
they gave knives, scissors, cloth, and looking-glasses, and other articles
made in the outside world. Clothes were served out to every Indian,
and consisted for the men of trousers, coarse `ponchos',
straw hats or caps, and shirts; but neither men nor women ever wore shoes,
and the sole costume of the latter was the Guarani `tipoi',*
a long and sleeveless shift cut rather high, and with coarse embroidery
round the shoulders, and made of a rough cotton cloth. For ornaments
they had glass beads and rosaries of brass or silver, with silver rings,
and necklaces of glass or horn, from which hung crucifixes.
Thus food and clothing cost the Jesuits** (or the community)
but little, and a rude plenty was the order of the land.
The greatest luxury of the Indians was `mate', and to produce it
they worked in the `yerbales' in the same way in which
they worked their fields -- in bands and with processions,
to the sound of hymns and headed by a priest.
--
* The poorer classes in Paraguay all used to wear the `tipoi'.
They covered themselves when it was cold with a white cotton sheet
wrapped in many folds.
** The Jesuits themselves were dressed in homespun clothes,
for Matias Angles -- quoted in the introduction to
the `Declaracion de la Verdad' of Father Cardiel, published at
Buenos Ayres in 1900 (the introduction by P. Pablo Hernandez) -- says:
`El vestuario de los Padres es de lienzo de algodon ten~ido de negro,
hilado y fabricado por las mismas Indias de los pueblos;
y si tal qual Padre tiene un capote o/ manteo de pan~a de Castilla
se sucede de unos a/ otros, y dura un siglo entero.'
--
This, then, was the system by means of which the Jesuits succeeded,
without employing force of any kind, which in their case would have been
quite impossible, lost as they were amongst the crowd of Indians,
in making the Guaranis endure the yoke of toil. The semi-communal
character of their rule accounts for the hostility of Liberals who,
like Azara, saw in competition the best road to progress, but who, like him,
in their consuming thirst for progress lost sight of happiness.
In addition to the means described, the Jesuits had recourse
to frequent religious feasts, for which the calendar gave them full scope,
so that the life in a Jesuit mission was much diversified and rendered
pleasant to the Indians, who have a rooted love of show. Each mission had,
of course, its patron saint,*1* and on his day nobody worked,
whilst all was joyfulness and simple mirth. At break of day
a discharge of rockets and of firearms and peals upon the bells
announced the joyful morn. Then the whole population flocked to church
to listen to an early mass. Those who could find no room inside the church
stood in long lines outside the door, which remained open during the ceremony.
Mass over, each one ran to prepare himself for his part in the function,
the Jesuits having taken care, by multiplying offices and employments,
to leave no man without a direct share in all the others did.*2*
The humblest and the highest had their part, and the heaviest burden,
no doubt, fell upon the two Jesuits,*3* who were answerable for all.
The foremost duty was to get the procession ready for the march,
and saddle `los caballos del santo'*4* to serve as escort, mounted by Indians
in rich dresses, kept specially for feasts.
--
*1* In the `Relacion de Misiones' of the Brigadier Don Diego de Alvear,
written between 1788 and 1801, and preserved in
the `Coleccion de Angelis', occurs the following curious description
of the feast-day of a patron saint of a Jesuit reduction: `They make
a long alley of interwoven canes, which ends in a triumphal arch,
which they adorn with branches of palms and other trees
with considerable grace and taste (`con bastante gracia y simetria').
Under the arch they hang their images of saints, their clothes,
their first-fruits -- as corn and sugar-cane, and calabashes
full of maize-beer (`chicha') -- their meat and bread,
together with animals both alive and dead, such as they can procure
(`como los pueden haber con su diligencia'). Then, forming in a ring,
they dance and shout, `Viva el rey! Viva el santo tutelar!'
*2* Many and curious are the names by which the office-bearers went.
Thus, in the Mission of el Santo Corazon, in the Chiquitos,
I find the following: Corregidor, the Mayor; Teniente, Lieutenant;
Alferez, Sub-Lieutenant; Alcalde Primero, Head Alcalde;
Alcalde Segundo, Second Alcalde; Commandante, Captain (of the Militia);
Justicia Mayor, Chief Justice; Sargento Mayor, Sergeant-Major.
Then came fiscales, fiscals; sacristan mayor, head-beadle;
capitan de estancia, chief of the cattle farm; capitan de pinturas,
carpinteria, herreros, etc. -- captain of painters, carpenters,
smiths, etc. All the offices were competed for ardently,
and those of Corregidor and Alcalde in especial were prized so highly
that Indians who were degraded from them for bad conduct or carelessness
not infrequently died of grief.
*3* In each reduction there were two priests. In all Paraguay,
at the expulsion of the Order in 1767, there were only
seventy-eight Jesuits (Dean Funes, `Ensayo de la Historia
del Paraguay', etc., cap. i., vol. ii.).
*4* In the mission of Los Apostoles there were 599 of these
`horses of the saint', according to an inventory preserved by Brabo.
--
The inventory of the town of Los Apostoles*1* enables us to reconstruct,
with some attempt at accuracy, how the procession was formed
and how it took its way. All the militia of the town were in attendance,
mounted on their best horses, and armed with lances (`chuzos'), lazo, bolas,
and a few with guns. The officers of the Indians rode at their head,
dressed out in gorgeous clothes, and troops of dancers, at stated intervals,
performed a sort of Pyrrhic dance between the squadrons of the cavalry.*2*
In the front of all rode on a white horse the Alferez Real,*3*
dressed in a doublet of blue velvet richly laced with gold,
a waistcoat of brocade, and with short velvet breeches
gartered with silver lace; upon his feet shoes decked with silver buckles,
and the whole scheme completed by a gold-laced hat. In his right hand he held
the royal standard fastened to a long cane which ended in a silver knob.
A sword was by his side, which, as he only could have worn it
on such occasions, and as the `horses of the saint' were not unlikely
as ticklish as most horses of the prairies of Entre Rios and Corrientes
are wont to be, must have embarrassed him considerably.
Behind him came the Corregidor, arrayed in yellow satin,
with a silk waistcoat and gold buttons, breeches of yellow velvet,
and a hat equal in magnificence to that worn by his bold compeer.
The two Alcaldes, less violently dressed, wore straw-coloured silk suits,
with satin waistcoats of the same colour, and hats turned up with gold.
Other officials, as the Commissario, Maestre de Campo,
and the Sargento Mayor, were quite as gaily dressed in scarlet coats,
with crimson damask waistcoats trimmed with silver lace,*4* red breeches,
and black hats adorned with heavy lace. In the bright Paraguayan sunshine,
with the primeval forest for a background, or in some mission
in the midst of a vast plain beside the Parana, they must have looked
as gorgeous as a flight of parrots from the neighbouring woods,
and have made a Turneresque effect, ambling along, a blaze of colours,
quite as self-satisfied in their finery as if `the rainbow had been entail
settled on them and their heirs male.' Quite probably their broad,
flat noses, and their long, lank hair, their faces fixed immovably,
as if they were carved in nandubay, contrasted strangely with their finery.
But there were none to judge -- no one to make remarks; most likely
all was conscience and tender heart, and not their bitterest enemy
has laid the charge of humour to the Jesuits' account.
--
*1* Furnished to Bucareli, Viceroy of Buenos Ayres at the expulsion,
and first printed by Brabo (`Inventarios de los bienes hallados
a/ la expulsion de los Jesuitas').
*2* The Jesuits exercised the Indians a great deal in dancing,
taking advantage of their love of dancing in their savage state.
D'Orbigny and Demersay (`Fragment d'un Voyage au Centre
de l'Ame/rique Me/ridianale', and `Histoire Physique, etc.,
du Paraguay') found between the years 1830 and 1855
that the Indians of the Moxos and Chiquitos still danced as they had done
in the time of the Jesuits.
I have seen them in the then (1873) almost deserted mission of Jesus,
buried in the great woods on the shore of the Parana,
dance a strange, half-savage dance outside the ruined church.
*3* Cardiel, in his `Declaracion de la Verdad', p. 239, says:
`Todos los pueblos ponen su castillo en la plaza y en el medio
de el colocan el retratro del Rey, y el Indio Alferez Real
. . . va al castillo con el Estandarte Real y alli hace su homenage
con otros rendimientos anteel Retratro Real,' saying in Guarani,
`Toicohengatu/ n~ande Mbaru bicha guazu/! Toicohengatu/ n~ande
Rey marangatu/! Toicohengatu/ n~ande Rey Fernando Sesto!'
(`Long live our King, the great chief! Long live our good King!
Long live our King Ferdinand VI.').
*4* `Chupas de damasco carmesi con encajes de plata.'
--
As in the inventories of the thirty towns I find no mention
either of stockings or of shoes for Indians, with the exception
of the low shoes and buckles worn by the Alferez Real,
it seems the gorgeous costumes ended at the knee, and that
these popinjays rode barefoot, with, perhaps, large iron Gaucho spurs
fastened by strips of mare-hide round their ankles, and hanging down
below their naked feet. But, not content with the procession of the elders
in parrot guise, there was a parody of parodies in the `cabildo infantil',
the band composed of children, who, with the self-same titles as their elders,
and in the self-same clothes adjusted to their size, rode close upon
their heels. Lastly, as Charlevoix tells us, came `des lions et des tigres,
mais bien enchaine/s afin qu'ils ne troublerent point la fe^te,'
and so the whole procession took its way towards the church.
The church, all hung with velvet and brocade, was all ablaze with lights,
and fumes of incense (no doubt necessary) almost obscured the nave.
Upon the right and left hand of the choir (which, as is usual in Spain,
was in the middle of the church) the younger Indians
were seated all in rows, the boys and girls being separated,
as was the custom in all the missions of the Jesuits, who, no doubt,
were convinced of the advisability of the saying that `entre santa y santo,
pared de cal y canto.'*1* The Indians who had some office,
and who wore the clothes*2* I have described, were seated or knelt in rows,
and at the outside stood the people of the town dressed in white cotton,
their simple clothes, no doubt, forming an effective background
to their more parti-coloured brethren kneeling in the front.
Throughout the church the men and women were separated,
and if a rumour of an incursion of Paulistas was in the air, the Indians
carried arms even in the sacred buildings and at the solemn feasts.
Mass was celebrated with a full band, the oboe, fagot, lute, harp,
cornet, clarinet, violin, viola, and all other kinds of music,
figuring in the inventories of the thirty towns. Indeed,
in two of the inventories*3* an opera called `Santiago' is mentioned,
which had special costumes and properties to put it on the stage.
Mass over, the procession was reconstituted outside the church,
and after parading once more through the town broke up,
and the Indians devoted the night to feasting, and not infrequently
danced till break of day.
--
*1* It may be roughly translated, `a good stone wall between
a male and female saint.'
*2* These clothes were the property of the community,
and not of the individual Indians.
*3* Brabo, xxxv., Introduction to `Los inventarios de los bienes.'
--
Such were the outward arts with which the Jesuits sought
to attach the simple people, to whom they stood in the position
not only of pastors and masters both in one, but also
as protectors from the Paulistas on one side, and on the other
from the Spaniards of the settlements, who, with their `encomiendas'
and their European system of free competition between man and man,
were perhaps unknowingly the direst enemies of the whole Indian race.
There is, as it would seem, implanted in the minds of almost all
primitive peoples, such as the Guaranis, a solidarity,
a clinging kinship, which if once broken down by competition,
unrestrained after our modern fashion, inevitably leads to their decay.
Hence the keen hatred to the Chinese in California and in Australia.
Naturally, those whom we hate, and in a measure fear, we also vilify,
and this has given rise to all those accusations of Oriental vice
(as if the vice of any Oriental, however much depraved, was comparable
to that of citizens of Paris or of London), of barbarism, and the like,
so freely levelled against the unfortunate Chinese.
In Paraguay nothing is more remarkable in a market in the country
than the way in which the people will not undersell each other,
even refusing to part with goods a fraction lower than the price
which they consider fair.* It may be that the Jesuits would have done better
to endeavour to equip their neophytes more fully, so as to take their place
in the battle of the world. It may be that the simple, happy lives they led
were too opposed to the general scheme of outside human life
to find acceptance or a place in our cosmogony. But one thing
I am sure of -- that the innocent delight of the poor Indian Alferez Real,
mounted upon his horse, dressed in his motley, barefooted,
and overshadowed by his gold-laced hat, was as entire as if
he had eaten of all the fruits of all the trees of knowledge of his time,
and so perhaps the Jesuits were wise.
--
* A recent writer in the little journal published on yellow packing-paper
in the Socialist colony of Cosme, in Paraguay (`Cosme Monthly',
November, 1898), has a curious passage corroborating what I have so often
observed myself. Under the heading of `A Paraguayan Market',
he says: `The Guarani clings stubbornly to the Guarani customs.
This is irritating to the European, but who shall say
that the Guarani is not right? . . . European settlement
cannot but be fatal to the Guarani, however profitable it may be
to land-owning and mercantile classes. . . . The Paraguayan market
is a woman's club . . . they will come thirty or forty miles
with a clothful of the white curd-cheese of the country,
contentedly journeying on foot along the narrow paths.
They will cut a cabbage into sixteenths and eat their cheese themselves
rather than sell it under market price.' Long may they do so,
for so long will they be free, and perhaps poor; but, then,
in countries such as Paraguay freedom and poverty are identical.
--
Strangely enough -- but, then, how strangely all extremes meet in humanity! --
the Jesuits alone (at least, in Paraguay) seem to have apprehended,
as the Arabs certainly have done from immemorial time,
that the first duty of a man is to enjoy his life. Art, science,
literature, ambition -- all the frivolities with which men
occup