The missions established by the Jesuits show the impotence of their
system for the civilisation of the wild man. The territory where they
carried on their chief labours exists on the eastern bank of the Parana,
to the north of Uruguay and Corrientes, bordering on the Brazilian
territory. After three hundred years of labour, they left these savages
utterly incapable of self-government.
"The Indian mind, indeed," observes Captain Page--an American--"laying
aside its atrocities, has never emerged from the intellectual
development of childhood. These savages showed the imitative faculties
of the animal. When taught, they delved and ploughed, planted cotton
and sugar-cane, and executed work in carpentry and wove fabrics, and
performed other manual operations; yet their reason and intelligence has
not advanced, even _pari passu_ in any degree with the progress of
European civilisation; nor have the natures of their female population
become modified with the slightest trait of the humanities and
tendernesses which are the brightest attributes of the women of the
present century."
"Among the Jesuit missions in the Gran Chaco," observes another writer,
"are found no remaining evidence of better knowledge, than that the
Indians now prefer horse-flesh to any other kind of meat."
The same writer gives us the derivation of the names of several of the
rivers:--Parana, resembling the sea; Paraguay, from the Payaguas, a
tribe of Indians who were met with by the discoverers navigating the
river; and Uruguay, from a bird--the uru--which is found on the banks of
that stream.