Description of the mission territory and towns founded by the
Jesuits—Their endeavours to attract the Indians—Religious feasts and
processions—Agricultural and commercial organizations
With the death of Cardenas the most dangerous enemy the Jesuits ever
had in Paraguay had disappeared. They worsted him, and drove him from
his see; but the movement set on foot by him and the calumnies he
levelled at their Order still remained and flourished, and in the end
prevailed against them and drove them from the land. A calumny is hard
to kill; mankind in general cherish it; they never let it die, and, if
it languishes, resuscitate it under another form; they hold to it in
evil and in good repute, so that, once fairly rooted, it goes on
growing like a forest-tree throughout the centuries. Therefore, the
charges against the Jesuits in Paraguay, which Cardenas first started,
are with us still, and warp our judgment as to the doings of the Order
in the missions of the Paraná and Uruguay even until to-day.
But neither calumny nor the raids of the Paulistas, nor yet the
jealousy of the Spanish settlers in Paraguay, deterred the Jesuits from
the prosecution of their task. The missions gradually extended, till
they ranged from Santa Maria la Mayor, in Paraguay, to San Miguel, in
what is now Brazil; and from Jesus, upon the Paraná, to Yapeyu, upon
the Uruguay. Most of the country, with the exception of the missions of
Jesus and Trinidad, upon the Paraná, which to-day, at least, are only
clearings in the primeval forest, is composed of open rolling plains,
with wood upon the banks of all the streams. Covered as it was and is
with fine, short grass, it formed excellent cattle-breeding country,
and hence the great industry of the Indians was to look after stock.
The country being so favourable for cattle, they multiplied
immoderately, so that in the various establishments (_estancias_),
according to the inventories published by Brabo, their numbers were
immense.[148]
These open rolling plains, called by the natives _campos quebrantados_,
are generally studded thickly with stunted palms called yatais,[149]
but not so thickly as to spoil the grass which covers them in spring
and early summer, and even in winter they remain good feeding ground.
Thick clumps of hard-wood trees[150] break up the prairie here and
there into peninsulas and islands, and in the hollows and rocky valleys
bushy palmetto rises above a horse’s knees. In general the soil is of a
rich bright red, which, gleaming through the trees, gives a peculiarly
warm colour to the land. All the French Jesuit writers refer to it as
‘la terre rouge des missions’. The Jesuits used it and another earth of
a yellow shade for painting their churches and their houses in the
mission territory. Its composition is rather sandy, though after rain
it makes thick mud, and renders travelling most laborious. The flowers
and shrubs of the territory are quite as interesting and still more
varied than are the trees. Many of the Jesuits were botanists, and the
works of Fathers Montenegro,[151] Sigismund Asperger and Lozano are
most curious, and give descriptions and lists of many of the plants
unclassified even to-day. The celebrated Bonpland, so long detained by
Dr. Francia in Paraguay, unfortunately never published anything; but
modern writers[152] have done much, though still the flora of the whole
country is but most imperfectly known, and much remains to do before it
is all classified. The _Croton succirubrus_ (from which a resin known
as ‘sangre-de-drago’ is extracted), the sumaha (bombax—the fruit of
which yields a fine vegetable silk), the erythroxylon or coca of
Paraguay, the incienso or incense-tree of the Jesuits, are some of the
most remarkable of the myriad shrubs. But if the shrubs are myriad, the
flowers are past the power of man to count. Lianas, with their yellow
and red and purple clusters of blossoms, like enormous bunches of
grapes, hang from the forest-trees. In the open glades upon the
ñandubays,[153] the algarrobos, and the espinillos, hang various
Orchidaceæ,[154] called by the natives ‘flores del aire’, covering the
trees with their aerial roots, their hanging blossoms, and their
foliage of tender green. The Labiatæ, Compositæ, Daturæ, Umbelliferæ,
Convolvulaceæ, and many other species, cover the ground in spring or
run up trees and bushes after the fashion of our honeysuckle and the
traveller’s joy.
The lakes and backwaters of rivers are covered with myriads of
water-lilies (all lumped together by the natives as ‘camalote’), whilst
in the woodland pools the Victoria Regis carpets the water with its
giant leaves. In every wood the orange and the lemon with the sweet
lime have become wild, and form great thickets. Each farm and _rancho_
has its orange-grove, beneath the shade of which I have so often
camped, that the scent of orange-blossom always brings back to me the
dense primeval woods, the silent plains, the quiet Indians, and the
unnavigated waterways, in which the alligators basked. Except the
Sierra de Mbaracayu,[155] on the north-east, throughout the mission
territory there are no mountains of considerable height; and through
the middle of the country run the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, the latter
forming the boundary on the south-east. The rolling plains and woods
alternate with great marshes called _esteros_, which in some districts,
as of that of Ñeembucu, cover large tracts of land, forming in winter
an almost impenetrable morass, and in the spring and early summer
excellent feeding-ground for sheep. Throughout the territory the
climate is healthy, except towards the woody northern hills. With this
rich territory and the false reports of mines, which even unsuccessful
exploration could not dispel, it is but natural that the Jesuits were
hated far and wide. It must have been annoying to a society composed,
as were the greater portion of the Spanish settlements in Paraguay, of
adventurers, who treated the Indians as brute beasts,[156] to see a
preserve of Indians separated from their territory by no great barrier
of Nature, and still beyond their power.[157] Bonpland, in speaking of
the country, says: ‘The whole of the land exceeds description; at every
step one meets with things useful and new in natural history.’ Such
also was the opinion of the French travellers Demersay and D’Orbigny;
of Colonel du Graty, whose interesting work (‘La République du
Paraguay’, Brussels, 1862) is one of the best on the country; the
recent French explorer Bourgade la Dardye, and of all those who have
ever visited the missions of Paraguay.[158]
In this rich territory the Jesuits, when, after infinite trouble, they
had united a sufficient[159] quantity of Indians, formed them into
townships, almost all of which were built upon one plan. In Paraguay
itself only some three or four remain; but they remain so well
preserved that, by the help of contemporary accounts, it is easy to
reconstruct almost exactly what the missions must have been like during
the Jesuits’ rule.[160]
Built round a square, the church and store-houses filled one end, and
the dwellings of the Indians, formed of sun-dried bricks or wattled
canes in three long pent-houses, completed the three sides. In general,
the houses were of enormous length, after the fashion of a St. Simonian
phalanstery, or of a ‘miners’ row’ in Lanarkshire. Each family had its
own apartments, which were but separated from the apartments of the
next by a lath-and-plaster wall, called in Spanish _tabique_; but one
veranda and one roof served for a hundred or more families. The space
in the middle of the square was carpeted with the finest grass, kept
short by being pastured close by sheep. The churches, sometimes built
of stone, and sometimes of the hard woods with which the country
abounds, were beyond all description splendid, taking into
consideration the remoteness of the Jesuit towns from the outside
world. Frequently—as, for instance, in the mission of Los Apostoles—the
churches had three aisles, and were adorned with lofty towers, rich
altars,[161] super-altars, and statuary, brought at great expense from
Italy and Spain. Though the churches were often built of stone, it was
not usual for the houses of the Indians to be so built; but in
situations where stone was plentiful, as at the mission of San Borja,
the houses of the Jesuits were of masonry, with verandas held up by
columns, and with staircases with balustrades of sculptured stone.[162]
The ordinary ground-plan of the priest’s house was that of the Spanish
Moorish dwelling, so like in all its details to a Roman house at
Pompeii or at Herculaneum. Built round a square courtyard, with a
fountain in the middle, the Jesuits’ house formed but a portion of a
sort of inner town, which was surrounded by a wall, in which a gate,
closed by a porter’s lodge, communicated with the outside world. Within
the wall was situated the church (although it had an entrance to the
plaza), the rooms of the inferior priest, a garden, a guest-chamber,
stables, and a store-house, in which were kept the arms belonging to
the town, the corn, flour, and wool, and the provisions necessary for
life in a remote and often dangerous place. In every case the houses
were of one story; the furniture was modest, and in general home-made;
in every room hung images and pious pictures, the latter often painted
by the Indians themselves. In the smaller missions two Jesuits managed
all the Indians.[163]
The greatest difficulty which the Jesuits had to face was the natural
indolence of their neophytes. Quite unaccustomed as they were to
regular work of any kind, the ordinary European system, as practised in
the Spanish settlements, promptly reduced them to despair, and often
killed them off in hundreds. Therefore the Jesuits instituted the
semi-communal system of agriculture and of public works with which
their name will be associated for ever in America.[164]
The celebrated Dr. Francia, dictator of Paraguay, used to refer to the
Jesuits as ‘cunning rogues’,[165] and, as he certainly himself was
versed in every phase of cunningness, perhaps his estimate—to some
extent, at least—was just. A rogue in politics is but a man who
disagrees with you; but, still, it wanted no little knowledge of
mankind to present a daily task to men, unversed in any kind of labour,
as of the nature of a pleasure in itself. The difficulty was enormous,
as the Indians seemed never to have come under the primeval curse, but
passed their lives in wandering about, occasionally cultivating just
sufficient for their needs. Whether a missionary, Jesuit, or Jansenist,
Protestant, Catholic, or Mohammedan, does well in forcing his own mode
of life and faith on those who live a happier, freer life than any his
instructor can hold out to them is a moot point. Only the future can
resolve the question, and judge of what we do to-day—no doubt with good
intentions, but with the ignorance born of our self-conceit. Much of
the misery of the world has been brought about with good intentions;
but of the Jesuits, at least, it can be said that what they did in
Paraguay did not spread death and extinction to the tribes with whom
they dealt.[166] So to the task of agriculture the Jesuits marshalled
their neophytes to the sound of music, and in procession to the fields,
with a saint borne high aloft, the community each day at sunrise took
its way. Along the paths, at stated intervals, were shrines of saints,
and before each of them they prayed, and between each shrine sang
hymns.[167] As the procession advanced, it became gradually smaller as
groups of Indians dropped off to work the various fields, and finally
the priest and acolyte with the musicians returned alone.[168] At
mid-day, before eating, they all united and sang hymns, and then, after
their meal and siesta, returned to work till sundown, when the
procession again re-formed, and the labourers, singing, returned to
their abodes. A pleasing and Arcadian style of tillage, and different
from the system of the ‘swinked’ labourer in more northern climes. But
even then the hymnal day was not concluded; for after a brief rest they
all repaired to church to sing the ‘rosary’, and then to sup and bed.
On rainy days they worked at other industries in the same
half-Arcadian, half-communistic manner, only they sang their hymns in
church instead of in the fields. The system was so different to that
under which the Indians endured their lives in the _encomiendas_ and
the _mitas_ of the Spanish settlements, that the fact alone is
sufficient to account for much of the contemporary hatred which the
Jesuits incurred.
Imagine a semi-communistic settlement set close to the borders of
Rhodesia, in which thousands of Kaffirs passed a life analogous to that
passed by the Indians of the missions—cared for and fed by the
community, looked after in every smallest particular of their lives—and
what a flood of calumny would be let loose upon the unfortunate
devisers of the scheme! Firstly, to withdraw thousands of ‘natives’
from the labour market would be a crime against all progress, and then
to treat them kindly would be heresy, and to seclude them from the
contamination of the scum of Europe in the settlements would be termed
unnatural; for we know that native races derive most benefit from free
competition with the least fitted of our population to instruct. But
besides agriculture the enormous cattle-farms[169] of the mission
territory gave occupation to many of the neophytes. The life on
cattle-farms gave less scope for supervision, and we may suppose that
the herders and the cattlemen were more like Gauchos; but Gauchos under
religious discipline, half-centaurs in the field, sitting a plunging
half-wild colt as if they were part of him, and when on foot at home
submissive to the Jesuits, constant in church, but not so fierce and
bloodthirsty as their descendants soon became after the withdrawal of
the mission rule.
As well as agriculture and _estancia_ life, the Jesuits had introduced
amongst the Indians most of the arts and trades of Europe. By the
inventories taken by Bucareli, Viceroy of Buenos Ayres, at the
expulsion of the Order, we find that they wove cotton largely;
sometimes they made as much as eight thousand five hundred yards of
cloth in a single town in the space of two or three months.[170] And,
in addition to weaving, they had tanneries, carpenters’ shops, tailors,
hat-makers, coopers, cordage-makers, boat-builders, cartwrights,
joiners, and almost every industry useful and necessary to life. They
also made arms and powder, musical instruments, and had silversmiths,
musicians, painters, turners, and printers to work their
printing-presses: for many books were printed at the missions,[171] and
they produced manuscripts as finely executed as those made by the monks
in European monasteries.
All the _estancias_, the agricultural lands and workshops were, so to
speak, the property of the community; that is to say, the community
worked them in common, was fed and maintained by their productions, the
whole under the direction of the two Jesuits who lived in every town. A
portion called _tupinambal_ in Guaraní was set aside especially for the
maintenance of orphans and of widows. The cattle and the horses, with
the exception of ‘los caballos del santo’, destined for show at feasts,
were also used in common. The surplus of the capital was reserved to
purchase necessary commodities from Buenos Ayres and from Spain.[172]
Each family received from the common stock sufficient for its
maintenance during good conduct, for the Jesuits held in its entirety
the Pauline dictum that if a man will not work, then neither shall he
eat. But as they held it, so they practised it themselves, for their
lives were most laborious—teaching and preaching, and acting as
overseers to the Indians in their labours continually, from the first
moment of their arrival at the missions till their death. Thus, if the
mayor of the township complained of any man for remissness at his work,
he received no rations till he had improved.
To inculcate habits of providence amongst the Indians, always inclined
to consume whatever was given to them and go fasting afterwards, they
issued the provisions but once a week, and when they killed their oxen
forced the Indians to ‘jerk’[173] a certain quantity of beef to last
throughout the week. Vegetables each family was obliged to plant both
in their gardens and in the common fields; and all that were not
actually consumed were dealt out to the workers in the common workshops
or preserved for sale.
Certain of the Indians owned their own cows and horses, and had gardens
in which they worked; but all the product was obliged to be disposed of
to the Jesuits for the common good, and in exchange for them they gave
knives, scissors, cloth, and looking-glasses, and other articles made
in the outside world. Clothes were served out to every Indian, and
consisted for the men of trousers, coarse _ponchos_, straw hats or
caps, and shirts; but neither men nor women ever wore shoes, and the
sole costume of the latter was the Guaraní _tipoi_,[174] a long and
sleeveless shift cut rather high, and with coarse embroidery round the
shoulders, and made of a rough cotton cloth. For ornaments they had
glass beads and rosaries of brass or silver, with silver rings, and
necklaces of glass or horn, from which hung crucifixes. Thus food and
clothing cost the Jesuits[175] (or the community) but little, and a
rude plenty was the order of the land. The greatest luxury of the
Indians was _maté_, and to produce it they worked in the _yerbales_ in
the same way in which they worked their fields—in bands and with
processions, to the sound of hymns and headed by a priest.
This, then, was the system by means of which the Jesuits succeeded,
without employing force of any kind, which in their case would have
been quite impossible, lost as they were amongst the crowd of Indians,
in making the Guaranís endure the yoke of toil. The semi-communal
character of their rule accounts for the hostility of Liberals who,
like Azara, saw in competition the best road to progress, but who, like
him, in their consuming thirst for progress lost sight of happiness.
In addition to the means described, the Jesuits had recourse to
frequent religious feasts, for which the calendar gave them full scope,
so that the life in a Jesuit mission was much diversified and rendered
pleasant to the Indians, who have a rooted love of show. Each mission
had, of course, its patron saint,[176] and on his day nobody worked,
whilst all was joyfulness and simple mirth. At break of day a discharge
of rockets and of firearms and peals upon the bells announced the
joyful morn. Then the whole population flocked to church to listen to
an early mass. Those who could find no room inside the church stood in
long lines outside the door, which remained open during the ceremony.
Mass over, each one ran to prepare himself for his part in the
function, the Jesuits having taken care, by multiplying offices and
employments, to leave no man without a direct share in all the others
did.[177] The humblest and the highest had their part, and the heaviest
burden, no doubt, fell upon the two Jesuits,[178] who were answerable
for all. The foremost duty was to get the procession ready for the
march, and saddle ‘los caballos del santo’[179] to serve as escort,
mounted by Indians in rich dresses, kept specially for feasts.
The inventory of the town of Los Apostoles[180] enables us to
reconstruct, with some attempt at accuracy, how the procession was
formed and how it took its way. All the militia of the town were in
attendance, mounted on their best horses, and armed with lances
(_chuzos_), lazo, bolas, and a few with guns. The officers of the
Indians rode at their head, dressed out in gorgeous clothes, and troops
of dancers, at stated intervals, performed a sort of Pyrrhic dance
between the squadrons of the cavalry.[181] In the front of all rode on
a white horse the Alferez Real,[182] dressed in a doublet of blue
velvet richly laced with gold, a waistcoat of brocade, and with short
velvet breeches gartered with silver lace; upon his feet shoes decked
with silver buckles, and the whole scheme completed by a gold-laced
hat. In his right hand he held the royal standard fastened to a long
cane which ended in a silver knob. A sword was by his side, which, as
he only could have worn it on such occasions, and as the ‘horses of the
saint’ were not unlikely as ticklish as most horses of the prairies of
Entre Rios and Corrientes are wont to be, must have embarrassed him
considerably. Behind him came the Corregidor, arrayed in yellow satin,
with a silk waistcoat and gold buttons, breeches of yellow velvet, and
a hat equal in magnificence to that worn by his bold compeer. The two
Alcaldes, less violently dressed, wore straw-coloured silk suits, with
satin waistcoats of the same colour, and hats turned up with gold.
Other officials, as the Commissario, Maestre de Campo, and the Sargento
Mayor, were quite as gaily dressed in scarlet coats, with crimson
damask waistcoats trimmed with silver lace,[183] red breeches, and
black hats adorned with heavy lace. In the bright Paraguayan sunshine,
with the primeval forest for a background, or in some mission in the
midst of a vast plain beside the Paraná, they must have looked as
gorgeous as a flight of parrots from the neighbouring woods, and have
made a Turneresque effect, ambling along, a blaze of colours, quite as
self-satisfied in their finery as if ‘the rainbow had been entail
settled on them and their heirs male.’ Quite probably their broad, flat
noses, and their long, lank hair, their faces fixed immovably, as if
they were carved in ñandubay, contrasted strangely with their finery.
But there were none to judge—no one to make remarks; most likely all
was conscience and tender heart, and not their bitterest enemy has laid
the charge of humour to the Jesuits’ account.
As in the inventories of the thirty towns I find no mention either of
stockings or of shoes for Indians, with the exception of the low shoes
and buckles worn by the Alferez Real, it seems the gorgeous costumes
ended at the knee, and that these popinjays rode barefoot, with,
perhaps, large iron Gaucho spurs fastened by strips of mare-hide round
their ankles, and hanging down below their naked feet. But, not content
with the procession of the elders in parrot guise, there was a parody
of parodies in the _cabildo infantil_, the band composed of children,
who, with the self-same titles as their elders, and in the self-same
clothes adjusted to their size, rode close upon their heels. Lastly, as
Charlevoix tells us, came ‘des lions et des tigres, mais bien enchainés
afin qu’ils ne troublerent point la fête,’ and so the whole procession
took its way towards the church.
The church, all hung with velvet and brocade, was all ablaze with
lights, and fumes of incense (no doubt necessary) almost obscured the
nave. Upon the right and left hand of the choir (which, as is usual in
Spain, was in the middle of the church) the younger Indians were seated
all in rows, the boys and girls being separated, as was the custom in
all the missions of the Jesuits, who, no doubt, were convinced of the
advisability of the saying that ‘entre santa y santo, pared de cal y
canto.’[184] The Indians who had some office, and who wore the
clothes[185] I have described, were seated or knelt in rows, and at the
outside stood the people of the town dressed in white cotton, their
simple clothes, no doubt, forming an effective background to their more
parti-coloured brethren kneeling in the front. Throughout the church
the men and women were separated, and if a rumour of an incursion of
Paulistas was in the air, the Indians carried arms even in the sacred
buildings and at the solemn feasts. Mass was celebrated with a full
band, the oboe, fagot, lute, harp, cornet, clarinet, violin, viola, and
all other kinds of music, figuring in the inventories of the thirty
towns. Indeed, in two of the inventories[186] an opera called
‘Santiago’ is mentioned, which had special costumes and properties to
put it on the stage. Mass over, the procession was reconstituted
outside the church, and after parading once more through the town broke
up, and the Indians devoted the night to feasting, and not infrequently
danced till break of day.
Such were the outward arts with which the Jesuits sought to attach the
simple people, to whom they stood in the position not only of pastors
and masters both in one, but also as protectors from the Paulistas on
one side, and on the other from the Spaniards of the settlements, who,
with their _encomiendas_ and their European system of free competition
between man and man, were perhaps unknowingly the direst enemies of the
whole Indian race. There is, as it would seem, implanted in the minds
of almost all primitive peoples, such as the Guaranís, a solidarity, a
clinging kinship, which if once broken down by competition,
unrestrained after our modern fashion, inevitably leads to their decay.
Hence the keen hatred to the Chinese in California and in Australia.
Naturally, those whom we hate, and in a measure fear, we also vilify,
and this has given rise to all those accusations of Oriental vice (as
if the vice of any Oriental, however much depraved, was comparable to
that of citizens of Paris or of London), of barbarism, and the like, so
freely levelled against the unfortunate Chinese.
In Paraguay nothing is more remarkable in a market in the country than
the way in which the people will not undersell each other, even
refusing to part with goods a fraction lower than the price which they
consider fair.[187] It may be that the Jesuits would have done better
to endeavour to equip their neophytes more fully, so as to take their
place in the battle of the world. It may be that the simple, happy
lives they led were too opposed to the general scheme of outside human
life to find acceptance or a place in our cosmogony. But one thing I am
sure of—that the innocent delight of the poor Indian Alferez Real,
mounted upon his horse, dressed in his motley, barefooted, and
overshadowed by his gold-laced hat, was as entire as if he had eaten of
all the fruits of all the trees of knowledge of his time, and so
perhaps the Jesuits were wise.
Strangely enough—but, then, how strangely all extremes meet in
humanity!—the Jesuits alone (at least, in Paraguay) seem to have
apprehended, as the Arabs certainly have done from immemorial time,
that the first duty of a man is to enjoy his life. Art, science,
literature, ambition—all the frivolities with which men occupy
themselves—have their due place; but life is first, and in some
strange, mysterious way the Jesuits felt it, though, no doubt, they
would have been the first to deny it with a thousand oaths. But in a
Jesuit mission all was not feasting or processioning, for with such
neighbours as the Mamelucos they had to keep themselves prepared.[188]
As for their better government in home affairs each mission had its
police, with officers[189] chosen by the Jesuits amongst the Indians,
so for exterior defence they had militia, and in it the _caciques_[190]
of the different tribes held principal command. Most likely over them,
or at their elbows, were set priests who before entering the Company of
Jesus had been soldiers: for there were many such amongst the Jesuits.
As their own founder once had been a soldier, so the Company was
popular amongst those soldiers who from some cause or other had changed
their swords to crucifixes, and taken service in the ranks of
Christ.[191] As it was most important, both for defence and policy, to
keep the _caciques_ content, they were distinguished by better
treatment than the others in many different ways. Their food was more
abundant, and a guard of Indians was on perpetual duty round the houses
where they lived; these they employed as servants and as messengers to
summon distant companies of Indians to the field. Their method of
organization must have been like that of the Boers or of the Arabs; for
every Indian belonged to a company, which now and then was brought
together for evolutions in the field or for a period of training, after
the fashion of our militia or the German Landwehr. Perhaps this system
of an armed militia, always ready for the field, was what, above all
other reasons, enabled their detractors to represent the Jesuits as
feared and unpopular. Why, it was asked, does this community of priests
maintain an army in its territories? No one remembered that if such
were not the case the missions could not have existed for a year
without a force to defend their borders from the Paulistas. Everyone
forgot that Fathers Montoya and Del Taño had obtained special
permission from the King for the Indians of the missions to bear arms;
and, as no human being is grateful for anything but contumelious
treatment, the Spanish settlers conveniently forgot how many times a
Jesuit army had saved their territories. The body of three thousand
Guaranís sent at the expense of the Company to assist the Spaniards
against the Portuguese at the attack upon the Colonia del
Sacramento[192] on the river Plate, in 1678, was quite forgotten,
together with the innumerable contingents sent by the Jesuits at the
demand of Spanish governors against the Chaco Indians, the Payaguás,
and even against the distant Calchaquis, in what is now the province of
Jujuy. Even when an English pirate, called in the Spanish histories
Roque Barloque (explained by some to be plain Richard Barlow), appeared
off Buenos Ayres, the undaunted neophytes shrank not a moment from
going to the assistance of their co-religionists against the ‘Lutheran
dog’.[193] Lastly, all Spanish governors and writers, both
contemporaneous and at the end of the eighteenth century, seem to
forget that if the Jesuits had an army of neophytes within their
territory the fact was known and approved of at the court of
Spain.[194] But it appears that Calvin had many coadjutors in his
policy of ‘Jesuitas aut necandi aut calumniis opponendi sunt.’[195]
When a Jesuit army took the field, driving before it sufficient cattle
to subsist upon, and with its _caballada_ of spare horses upon its
flank, it must have resembled many a Gaucho army I have seen in Entre
Rios five-and-twenty years ago. The only difference seems to have been
that the Gauchos of yesterday did not use bows and arrows, although
they might have done so with as much benefit to themselves, and no more
danger to their enemies, than was occasioned by the rusty,
ill-conditioned guns they used to bear. The Indians were armed with
bows, and in their expeditions each Indian carried one hundred and
fifty arrows tipped with iron. Others had firearms, but all bore bolas
on their saddles, and carried lazos and long lances,[196] which, like
the Pampa Indians, they used in mounting their horses, placing one hand
upon the mane, and vaulting into the saddles with the other leaning on
the lance. The infantry were armed with lances and a few guns; they
also carried bolas, but they trusted most to slings, for which they
carried bags of hide, with a provision of smooth round stones, and used
them dexterously. On several occasions their rude militia gave proofs
of stubborn valour, and, as they fought under the Jesuits’ eyes, no
doubt acquitted themselves as men would who looked upon their priests
almost in the light of gods. But agriculture and cattle-breeding were
not all the resources of the missions; for the Jesuits engaged in
commerce largely, both with the outer world and by the intricate and
curious barter system which they had set on foot for the mutual
convenience of the different mission towns. In many of the inventories
printed by Brabo, one comes across the entry ‘Deudas’, showing a sort
of account current between the towns for various articles. Thus, they
exchanged cattle for cotton, sugar for rice, wheat for pig-iron or
tools from Europe; as no account of interest ever appears in any
inventory as between town and town, it seems the Jesuits anticipated
Socialism—at least, so far as that they bought and sold for use, and
not for gain. Although between the towns of their own territory all was
arranged for mutual convenience, yet in their dealings with the outside
world the Jesuits adhered to what are known as ‘business principles’.
These principles, if I mistake not, have been deified by politicians
with their ‘Buy in the cheapest, sell in the dearest’ tag, and
therefore even the sternest Protestant or Jansenist (if such there
still exist) can have no stone to throw at the Company of Jesus for its
participation in that system which has made the whole world glad.
Cotton and linen cloth, tobacco, hides, woods of the various hard-wood
forests of the country, and, above all, _yerba-maté_, were their chief
articles of export to the outside world. Their nearest market was in
Buenos Ayres, and to that port they sent their _yerba_ in boats made at
their own yards, of which they had several, but notably at Yapeyú upon
the Uruguay. The money that was made was sent to the Superior of the
missions, who had the disposition of the way in which it was dispensed,
either for use at home or to be sent to Europe for necessary goods. As
well as _yerba-maté_, they sent great quantities of hides. The
inventories of the towns taken at the expulsion state that the number
of green hides[197] exported annually was fifty thousand, together with
six thousand cured; in addition they sold from three to four
arrobas[198] of horse-hair, and wood to the value of twenty-five to
thirty thousand dollars every year. The total export of their _yerba_
ranged between eighty and one hundred thousand arrobas, which at the
lowest price could not have been sold at a profit under seven dollars
an arroba,[199] so that the income[200] of the thirty towns must have
been relatively large.[201] Two or three hundred barrels of honey[202]
and some three or four thousand arrobas of tobacco made up the sum
total of their exports, though, had they needed money, it might have
been increased in such a country, and with so many willing labourers,
almost indefinitely.
Thus it will be seen that the missions were organized both
agriculturally and commercially so as to be almost self-supporting, and
that of the mere necessaries of life they had sufficient for
exportation, no small achievement when we consider how averse from
labour were the Indians with whom they had to deal. But that nothing
should be wanting that a civilized community could possibly desire,
they had their prisons, with good store of chains, fetters, whips, and
all the other instruments with which the moral code is generally
enforced. The most usual punishment was whipping;[203] and the crimes
most frequent were drunkenness, neglect of work, and bigamy, which
latter lapse from virtue the Jesuits chastised severely, not thinking,
being celibates themselves, that not unlikely it was apt to turn into
its own punishment without the aid of stripes.