Chapter I

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

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 Paraná 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’,[1] 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.

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 Paraná 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 Nuñez, who also struts through his brief chapter in the

pages of my most imperfect book. Still, I admit men of the stamp of

Alvar Nuñez 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 Paraná 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,[2] all was corruption, and, as the

Governor, Don Juan José Vertiz, writes to the Viceroy,[3] 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.

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[4] 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 Guaranís 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.

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 Nuñez—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 Paraná

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 José 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 Nuñez—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 Eugène

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’,[5] 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.

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.[6] 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.[7]

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.

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.[8]

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.

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 Paraná, they found

that the Guaranís 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[9] 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.

Be that as it may, the Chaco Indians of to-day, comprising the remnants

of the Lulis, Tobas, Lenguas, Mocobiós, and others, are almost as

savage as when first we hear of them in the pages of Alvar Nuñez 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’.[10] It was only when the Jesuits encountered the more peaceful

Guaranís that they met with real success.

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.[11]

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 café 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_[12] 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.’

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,[13] 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 maté_, were all destroyed.

In the vast forests, stretching to the Salto de Guayrá, 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 Fé.

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 á uña, los Jesuitas á 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.’[14]

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.[15] 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.’

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 Paraná, 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,

Paraná, 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 Fé, 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,[16] 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 Paraná to the island of Apipé, 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.

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 à puñaladas_). 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,[17] ‘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 Nuñez, under whom he served.

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 Guaraní 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[18] 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.[19]

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[20] ‘at the rate of (_á 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.

The expedition went up the Paraguay to a place near Fort Olimpo (21°

long., 58° 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 Guaranís, 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 Guaranís were spread from the Guianas to

the shores of the river Plate, and occupied all the islands of the

Paraná extending up to latitude 20° 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 Chiriguanás

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 Guaraní, that Dr.

Baptista de Almeida, in his preface to his grammar published at Rio

Janeiro (1879), computes that there are more words derived from Guaraní

than even from Arabic in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil.[21] The

Guaranís in Brazil were known either as Tupis, from the word

_tupy_,[22] savage, or Tupinambás, from _tupynambá_, literally, the

savage or indigenous men.

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 Français_, 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

reçoivent fort humainement les estrangers amis qui les vont

visiter.’[23] 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 moitié (_i.e._, la poudre) de charbon broyé.’ This may have

been a wise precaution, but he omits to state if the _charbon broyé_

was _bailli_ at the same price as good powder. According to Azara, who

takes his facts partly from the contemporary writers—Schmidel, Alvar

Nuñez, Ruy Diaz de Guzman, and Barco de la Centenera—the Guaranís 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 Guaranís 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 Guaranís, 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.’[24]

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 á

alcanzarle.’ This I have myself observed when travelling with Indians,

even on horseback.

There was one characteristic of the Guaranís 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 Guaraní 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’,[25]

thinks it probable that the word is an alteration of the word

_guaranai_, _i.e._, numerous. Barco de la Centenera[26] (‘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

Guaranís 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 _abá_, Indian or man, is how they speak of their people, and to

the language they apply the word _Abanêe_.

In the same way the word ‘Paraguay’ is variously derived from a

corruption of the word ‘Payaguá’ (the name of an Indian tribe), and

_y_, the Guaraní word for water, meaning river of the Payaguas. Others,

again, derive it from a Guaraní 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 paraquá

(_Ortolida paraqua_). Again, Angelis, in his work ‘Serie de los Señores

Gobernadores del Paraguay’ (lib. ii., p. 187), derives it from Paraguá,

the name of a celebrated Indian chief at the time of the conquest. What

is certain is that _y_ is the Guaraní 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.[27] 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.

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.[28] 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.

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 Guaraní race.[29] 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’[30]

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.

To-day all the Guaranís 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 Igatimí, an affluent of the Paraná, and

in the chain of mountains known either as San Jose or Mbaracayú. The

Paraguayans generally refer to them as Monteses (dwellers in the

woods), and sometimes as Caaguás. 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 Guaranís is

less noticeable than amongst Europeans. Their language is poorer than

the Guaraní 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.[31]

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 Guaranís 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

Guaranís, and the Jesuits often refer to them under that name.[32] This

point would be easily set at rest by examining if any Guaraní 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.

D’Orbigny in his ‘L’Homme Américain’, estimates the Guaranís 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 Guaranís, 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 Payaguá Indians in

rebellion, and in the battle which ensued he is reported to have slain

seven of them with his own hand.[33] He still maintained a fitful

search for Juan de Ayolas, but without success.

Galan returned to Buenos Ayres, and, stopping at Corpus Christi, took

occasion to fall upon the friendly and unsuspecting Timbú 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[34] 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.

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[35] set about at once to learn the language and

preach to the people. They also seem to have endeavoured to reduce the

Guaraní 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.

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 Guaranís in Paraguay, Charles V. had

not forgotten that the new settlement of Buenos Ayres had been

abandoned. After much search, he selected Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca to

be the new Governor; and, as Alvar Nuñez 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,[36] his ‘father was that

Pedro de Vera who won Canaria,’ and his mother ‘Doña 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.

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 Nuñez

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.[37] 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_[38] and _capitulacion_[39] 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.

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 Nuñez

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 Nuñez 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 Iguazú, he sent the two friars ahead to collect

provisions, and ‘when the Governor arrived the Indians had no more to

give.’[40]

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 Guaycurús 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 Guaycurús 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 Guaycurús.

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,[41] 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,

chañares, ñandubay, 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[42] 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,[43]

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 Nuñez, 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,[44] 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.

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 Pagayuás, 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 Corumbá. There Alvar

Nuñez 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, Nuñez 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 Nuñez

had arrived, had worked upon the people, saying that Nuñez wished to

take away their property. As their chief property was in Indians whom

they had enslaved, this rendered Nuñez 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 Nuñez[45] 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[46] 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 Nuñez 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 Nuñez. 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.[47] 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 Nuñez, 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 Guaycurús burnt all the suburbs, and

threatened to attack the town. Nuñez 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 Nuñez 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 Nuñez 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 Nuñez, 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 Nuñez 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.

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. Nuñez 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 Nuñez

says, forgot to repay him what he had expended in his service.[48] With

Alvar Nuñez 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 Nuñez 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.

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 Nuñez 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 Guaranís.

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 Itá 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 Nuñez 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,[49] or about 1550,

they had landed at San Salvador de Bahia in Brazil.

In 1554, in the district of Guayrá, on the upper waters of the Paraná,

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 Guayrá, 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

Chiriguanás, 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.[50] 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.

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 Guayrá.

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 José Cataldino (both Italians) left Asuncion

on October 10, 1609, and arrived in February, 1610, on the banks of the

river Paranapané.[51]

There they met the Indians amongst whom Fields and Ortega had begun to

labour, and there they founded the Reduction[52] of Loreto, the first

permanent establishment instituted by the Jesuits amongst the Guaranís.

Thus, in the woods of Paraguay, upon a tributary of the Paraná 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.

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.