THE SPANIARDS IN PARAGUAY.
One more march in the bloody track of the Spaniards, and then, thank
God! we have done with them—at least, in this hemisphere. In this
chapter we shall, however, have a new feature presented. Hitherto we
have seen these human ogres ranging through country after country,
slaying, plundering, and laying waste, without almost a single arm
of power raised to check their violence, or a voice of pity to plead
successfully for their victims. The solitary cry of Las Casas,
indeed, was heard in Hispaniola; but it was heard in vain. The name
of Christianity was made familiar to the natives, but it was to them
a terrible name, for it came accompanied by deeds of blood, and lust
and infamy. It must have seemed indeed, to them, the revelation
of some monstrous Moloch, more horrible, because more widely and
indiscriminately destructive than any war-god of their own. How
dreadful must have appeared the very rites of this religion of the
white-men! They baptized thousands upon thousands, and then sent them
to the life-in-death of slavery—to the consuming pestilence of the
plantation and the mine. We are assured by their own authors, that the
moment after they had baptized numbers of these unhappy creatures, they
cut their throats that they might prevent all possibility of a relapse,
and send them straight to heaven! Against these profanations of the
most humane of religions, what adequate power had arisen? What was
there to prove that Christianity was really the very opposite in nature
to what those wretches, by their deeds, had represented it? Nothing, or
next to nothing. The remonstrances and the enactments of the Spanish
crown were non-existent to the Indians, for they fell dead before they
reached those distant regions where such a tremendous power of avarice
and despotism had raised itself in virtual opposition to authority,
human or divine. Some of the ecclesiastics, indeed, denounced the
violence and injustice of their countrymen; but they were few, and
disconnected in their efforts, and abodes; and their assurances that
the religion of Christ was in reality merciful and kind, were belied
by the daily and hourly deeds of their kindred; and were doubly belied
by the lives of the far greater portion of their own order, who
yielded to none in unholy license, avarice, and cruelty. How could the
Indians be persuaded of its divine power?—for it exhibited no power
over nine-tenths of all that they saw professing it. But now there
came a new era. There came an order of men who not only displayed the
effects of Christian principle in themselves, but who had the sagacity
to combine their efforts, till they became sufficiently powerful to
make Christianity practicable, and capable of conferring some of its
genuine benefits on its neophytes. These were the Jesuits—an order
recent in its origin, but famous above all others for the talent, the
ambition and the profound policy of its members. We need not here
enter further into its general history, or inquire how far it merited
that degree of odium which has attached to it in every quarter of the
globe—for in every quarter of the globe it has signalised its spirit
of proselytism, and has been expelled with aversion. I shall content
myself with stating, that I have formerly ranked its operations in
Paraguay and Brazil amongst those of its worst ambition; but more
extended inquiry has convinced me that, in this instance, I, in
common with others, did them grievous wrong. A patient perusal of
Charlevoix’s History of Paraguay, and of the vast mass of evidence
brought together by Mr. Southey from the best Spanish authorities in
his History of Brazil, must be more than sufficient to exhibit their
conduct in these countries as one of the most illustrious examples
of Christian devotion—Christian patience—Christian benevolence and
disinterested virtue upon record. It gives me the sincerest pleasure,
having elsewhere expressed my opinion of the general character of the
order, amid the bloody and revolting scenes of Spanish violence in the
New World, to point to the Jesuits as the first to stand collectively
in the very face of public outrage and the dishonour of the Christian
religion, as the friends of that religion and of humanity.
I do not mean to say that they exhibited Christianity in all the
splendour of its unadulterated truth;—no, they had enough of the empty
forms and legends, and false pretences, and false miracles of Rome,
about them; but they exhibited one great feature of its spirit—love to
the poor and the oppressed, and it was at once acknowledged by them to
be divine. I do not mean to say that they adopted the soundest system
of policy in their treatment of the Indians; for their besetting sin,
the love of power and the pride of intellectual dominance, were but
too apparent in it; and this prevented their labours from acquiring
that permanence which they otherwise would: but they did this, which
was a glorious thing in that age, and in those countries—they showed
what Christianity, even in an imperfect form, can accomplish in the
civilization of the wildest people. They showed to the outraged
Indians, that Christianity was really a blessing where really embraced;
and to the Spaniards, that their favourite dogmas of the incapacity
of the Indians for the reception of divine truth, and for the patient
endurance of labour and civil restraint, were as baseless as their own
profession of the Christian faith. They stood up against universal
power and rapacity, in defence of the weak, the innocent, and the
calumniated; and they had the usual fate of such men—they were
the martyrs of their virtue, and deserve the thanks and honourable
remembrance of all ages.
In strictly chronological order we should have noticed the Portuguese
in Brazil, before following the Spaniards to Paraguay; as Paraguay was
not taken possession of by the Spaniards till about twenty years after
the Portuguese had seized upon Brazil: but it is of more consequence
to us to take a consecutive view of the conduct of the Spaniards in
South America, than to take the settlement of different countries in
exact order of time. Having with this chapter dismissed the Spaniards,
we shall next turn our attention to the Portuguese in the neighbouring
regions of Brazil, and then pursue our inquiries into their treatment
of the natives in their colonies in the opposite regions of the world.
The Spaniards entered this beautiful country with the same spirit that
they had done every other that they had hitherto discovered;—but
they found here a different race. They had neither creatures gentle
as those of the Lucayo Islands, nor of Peru, nor men so far civilized
as these last, nor as the Mexicans to contend with. They did not find
the natives of these regions appalled with their wonder, or paralysed
with prophecies and superstitious fears; but like the Charaib natives,
they were fierce and ferocious—tattooed and disfigured with strange
gashes and pouches for stones in their faces; quick in resentment,
and desperate cannibals. When Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the Plata
in 1515, he landed with a party of his men in order to seize some of
the natives; but they killed, roasted, and devoured, both him and
his companions. Cabot, who was sent out to form a settlement there
ten years afterwards, treated the natives with as little ceremony,
and found them as quick to return the insult. Diego Garcia, who soon
followed Cabot, came with the intention of carrying off _eight hundred
slaves to Portugal_, which he actually accomplished, putting them and
his vessel into the charge of a Portuguese of St. Vincente. Garcia made
war on the great tribe of the Guaranies for this purpose, and thus made
them hostile to the settlement of the Spaniards. In 1534, the powerful
armament of Don Pedro de Mendoza, consisting of eleven ships and eight
hundred men, entered the Plata, and laid the foundation of Buenos
Ayres. One of his first acts was to murder his deputy-commandant, Juan
Osorio; and one of the next to make war on the powerful and vindictive
tribe of the Quirandies, who possessed the country round his new
settlement: the consequences of which were, that they reduced him to
the most horrid state of famine, burnt his town about his ears, and
eventually obliged him to set sail homeward, on which voyage he died.
These were proceedings as impolitic as they were wicked, in the attempt
to colonize a new, a vast, and a warlike country; but it was the mode
which the Spaniards had generally practised. They seemed to despise
the natives alike as enemies and as men; and they went on fighting,
and destroying, and enslaving, as matters of course. As they were now
in a great country, abounding with martial tribes, we must necessarily
take a very rapid glance at their proceedings. They advanced up the
Paraguay, under the command of Ayolas, whom Mendoza had left in
command, and seized on the town of Assumpcion, a place which, from
its situation, became afterwards of the highest consequence. This
noble country, stretching through no less than twenty degrees of south
latitude, and surrounded by the vast mountains of Brazil to the east,
of Chili to the west, and of Moxos and Matto Grosso to the north,
is singularly watered with some of the noblest rivers in the world,
descending from the mountains on all sides, and as they traverse it in
all its quarters, fall southward, one after another, into the great
central stream, till they finally _debouche_ in the great estuary of
the Plata. Assumpcion, situated at the junction of the Paraguay and
the Pilcomayo, besides the advantages of a direct navigation, was so
centrally placed as naturally to be pointed out as a station of great
importance in the discovery and settlement of the country.
Ayolas, whom Mendoza had left in command, having subdued several tribes
of the natives to the Spanish yoke, set out up the river Paraguay in
quest of the great lure of the Spaniards, gold, where he and all his
men were cut off by the Indians of the Payagoa tribe. His deputy,
Yrala, after sharing his fate, caught two of the Payagoas, tortured
and burnt them alive; and then, spite of the fate of their comrades,
and only fired by the same news of gold, resolved to follow in the
same track; fresh forces in the mean time arriving from Spain, and
committing fresh aggressions on the natives along the course of the
river. Cabeza de Vaca being appointed Adelantado in the place of
Mendoza, arrived at Assumpcion in 1542, and after subduing the two
great tribes of the Guaranies and Guaycurus, set off also in the
great quest of gold. He sent out expeditions, moreover, in various
directions; but Vaca, though he had no scruples in conquering the
Indians, was too good for the people about him. He would not suffer
them to use the men as slaves, and to carry off the women. So they
mutinied against him, and shipped him off for Spain. Yrala was thus
again left in power, and to keep his soldiers in exercise, actually
marched across the country three hundred and seventy-two leagues, and
reached the confines of Peru. Returning from this stupendous march,
he next attacked the Indians on the borders of Brazil, and defined
the limits of the provinces of Portugal and Spain. He then divided
the land into _Repartimientos_, as the Spaniards had done every where
else; thus giving the country to the adventurers, and the people upon
it as a part of the property. “The settlers,” says Southey, “in the
mean time, went on in those habits of lasciviousness and cruelty which
characterize the Creoles of every stock whatever. He made little or no
attempt to check them, perhaps because he knew that any attempt would
be ineffectual, ... perhaps because he thought all was as it should be,
... that the Creator had destined the people of colour to serve those
of a whiter complexion, and be at the mercy of their lust and avarice.”
By such men, Yrala, Veyaor who founded Ciudad Real on the Parana,
Chaves who founded the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Moxos, and
the infamous Zarate, were the name, power, and crimes of the Spaniards
spread in Paraguay, when the Jesuits were invited thither from Brazil
and Peru in 1586.
This is one of the greatest events in the history of the Spaniards in
the New World. With these men they introduced a power, which had it
been permitted to proceed, would have speedily put a stop to their
cruelties on the natives, and would eventually have civilized all that
mighty continent. But the Spaniards were not long in perceiving this,
and such a storm of vengeance and abuse was raised, as ultimately
broke up one of the most singular institutions that ever existed, and
dispersed those holy fathers and their works as a dream.
They were, indeed, received at first with unbounded joy. Those from
Peru, says Southey, came from Potosi; and were received at Salta with
incredible joy as though they had been angels from heaven. For although
the Spaniards were corrupted by plenty of slaves and women whom they
had at command, they, nevertheless, regretted the want of that outward
religion, the observance of which was so easily made compatible with
every kind of vice. At Santiago de Estero, which was then the capital
and episcopal city, triumphal arches were erected; the way was strewn
with flowers; the governor, with the soldiers and chief inhabitants
went out to meet them, and solemn thanksgiving was celebrated, at
which the bishop chanted the Te Deum. At Corduba, they met with five
brethren of their order who had arrived from Brazil: Leonardo Armenio,
the superior, an Italian; Juan Salernio; Thomas Filds, a Scotchman;
Estevam de Grao, and Manoel de Ortiga, both Portuguese. The Jesuits
found, wherever the Spaniards had penetrated, the Indians groaning
under their oppressions and licentiousness, ready to burst out, and
take summary vengeance at the first opportunity; and they were on all
sides surrounded by tribes of others in a state of hostile irritation,
regarding the Spaniards as the most perfidious as well as powerful
enemies, from whom nothing was to be hoped, and against whom every
advantage was to be seized. Yet amongst these fierce tribes, the
Jesuits boldly advanced, trusting to that principle which ought always
to have been acted upon by those calling themselves Christians, that
where no evil is intended evil will seldom be received. It is wonderful
how successful this system was in their hands. With his breviary in
his hand, and a cross of six feet high, which served him for a staff,
the Jesuit missionary set out to penetrate into some new region. He
was accompanied by a few converted Indians who might act as guides and
interpreters. They took with them a stock of maize as provision in the
wilderness, where the bows of the Indians did not supply them with
game; for they carefully avoided carrying fire-arms, lest they should
excite alarm or suspicion. They thus encountered all the difficulties
of a wild country; climbing mountains, and cutting their way through
pathless woods with axes; and at night, if they reached no human
habitation, they made fires to keep off the wild beasts, and reposed
beneath the forest trees. When they arrived amongst the tribes they
sought, they explained through their interpreters, that they came thus
and threw themselves into their power, to prove to them that they were
their friends; to teach them the arts, and to endow them with the
advantages of the Europeans. In some cases they had to suffer for the
villanies of their countrymen—the natives being too much exasperated
by their wrongs to be able to conceive that some fresh experiment of
evil towards them was not concealed under this peaceful shew. But, in
the far greater number of cases, their success was marvellous. They
speedily inspired the Indians with confidence in their good intentions
towards them; for the natives of every country yet discovered, have
been found as quick in recognizing their friends as they have been
in resenting the injuries of their enemies. The following anecdote
given by Charlevoix, is peculiarly indicative of their manner of
proceeding.—Father Monroy, with a lay-brother Jesuit, called Juan de
Toledo, had at length reached the Omaguacas, whose cacique Piltipicon
had once been baptized, but, owing to the treatment of the Spaniards,
had renounced their religion, and pursued them with every possible
evil; massacred their priests; burnt their churches; and ravaged their
settlements. Father Monroy was told that certain and instant death
would be the consequence of his appearing before Piltipicon; but armed
with all that confidence which Jesus Christ has so much recommended
to the preachers of his gospel, he entered the house of the terrible
cacique, and thus addressed him: “The good which I desire you, has made
me despise the terrors of almost certain death; but you cannot expect
much honour in taking away the life of a naked man. If, contrary to my
expectation, you will consent to listen to me, all the advantage of
our conversation will be yours; whereas, if I die by your hands, an
immortal crown in heaven will be my reward.” Piltipicon was so amazed,
or rather softened by the missionary’s boldness, that he immediately
offered him some of the beer brewed from maize, which the Omaguacas
use; and not only granted his request to proceed further up his
country, but furnished him with provisions for the journey. The end of
it was, that Piltipicon made peace with the Spaniards, and ultimately
embraced Christianity, with all his people.
The Jesuits, once admitted by the Indians, soon convinced them that
they could have no end in view but their good; and the resistance
which they made to the attempts of the Spaniards to enslave them,
gave them such a fame amongst all the surrounding nations as was most
favourable to the progress of their plans. When they had acquired an
influence over a tribe, they soon prevailed upon them to come into
their settlements, which they called REDUCTIONS, and where they
gradually accustomed them to the order and comforts of civilized life.
These Reductions were principally situated in Guayra, on the Parana,
and in the tract of country between the Parana and the Uruguay, the
great river which, descending from the mountains of Rio Grande, runs
southward parallel with the Parana, and debouches in the Plata. In
process of time they had established thirty of these Reductions in
La Plata and Paraguay, thirteen of them being in the diocese of the
Assumpcion, besides those amongst the Chiquitos and other nations. In
the centre of every mission was the Reduction, and in the centre of
the Reduction was a square, which the church faced, and likewise the
arsenal, in which all the arms and ammunition were laid up. In this
square the Indians were exercised every week, for there were in every
town two companies of militia, the officers of which had handsome
uniforms laced with gold and silver, which, however, they only wore on
those occasions, or when they took the field. At each corner of the
square was a cross, and in the centre an image of the Virgin. They had
a large house on the right-hand of the church for the Jesuits, and
near it the public workshops. On the left-hand of the church was the
public burial-ground and the widows’ house. Every necessary trade was
taught, and the boys were taken to the public workshops and instructed
in such trades as they chose. To every family was given a house, and
a piece of ground sufficient to supply it with all necessaries. Oxen
were supplied from the common stock for cultivating it, and while
this family was capable of doing the necessary work, this land never
was taken away. Besides this private property, there were two larger
portions, called Tupamba, or God’s Possession, to which all the
community contributed the necessary labour, and raised provisions for
the aged, sick, widows, and orphans, and income for the public service,
and the payment of the national tribute. The boys were employed in
weeding, keeping the roads in order, and various other offices. They
went to work with the music of flutes and in procession. The girls were
employed in gathering cotton, and driving birds from the fields. Every
one had his or her proper avocation, and officers were appointed to
superintend every different department, and to see that all was going
on well in shops and in fields. They had, however, their days and hours
of relaxation. They were taught singing, music, and dancing, under
certain regulations. On holidays, the men played at various games,
shot at marks, played with balls of elastic gum, or went out hunting
and fishing. Every kind of art that was innocent or ornamental was
practised. They cast bells, and carved and gilded with great elegance.
The women, beside their other domestic duties, made pottery, and spun
and wove cotton for garments. The Jesuits exported large quantities of
the Caa, or Paraguay tea, and introduced valuable improvements in the
mode of its preparation.
Such were some of the regulations which the Jesuits had established
in these settlements; and notwithstanding the regular system of
employment kept up, the natives flocked into them in such numbers, that
it required all the ingenuity of the fathers to accommodate them all.
The largest of their Reductions contained as many as eight thousand
inhabitants; the smallest fifteen hundred; the average was about three
thousand. To preserve that purity of morals which was inculcated, it
was found necessary to obtain a royal mandate, that no Spaniard should
enter these Reductions except when going to the bishop or superior.
“And one thing,” says Charlevoix, “greatly to their honour, was
universally allowed by all the Europeans settled in South America:
the converted Indians inhabiting them, no longer exhibited traces of
their former proneness to vengeance, cruelty, and the grosser vices.
They were no longer, in any respect, the same men they formerly were.
The most cordial love and affection for each other, and charity for
all men, delighted all who visited them, the infidels especially, whom
their behaviour served to inspire with the most favourable opinion of
the Christian religion.” “It is,” he adds, “no ways surprising that
God should work such wonders in such pure souls; nor that those very
Indians, to whom some learned doctors would not allow reason enough to
be received into the bosom of the church, should be at this day one of
its greatest ornaments, and perhaps the most precious portion of the
flock of Christ.”
There is nothing more wonderful in all the inscrutable dispensations of
Providence, than that this beautiful scene of innocence and happiness
should have been suffered to be broken in upon by the wolves of avarice
and violence, and all dispersed as a morning dream. But the Jesuits,
by their advocacy and civilization of these poor people, had raised
up against them three hostile powers,—the Spaniards—the man-hunters
of Santo Paulo—and political demagogues. The Spaniards soon hated
them for standing between them and their victims. They hated them for
presuming to tell them that they had no right to enslave, to debauch,
to exterminate them. They hated them because they would not suffer
them to be given up to them as property—mere live stock—beasts of
labour, in their Encomiendas. They regarded them as robbing them of
just so much property, and as setting a bad example to the other
Indians who were already enslaved, or were yet to be so. They hated
them because their refusing them entrance into their Reductions was a
standing and perpetual reproof of the licentiousness of their lives.
They foresaw that if this system became universal, the very pillars of
their indolent and debased existence would be thrown down: “for,” says
Charlevoix, “the Spaniards here think it beneath them to exercise any
manual employment. Those even who are but just landed from Spain, put
every stitch they have brought with them upon their backs, and set up
for gentlemen, above serving in any menial capacity.”
Whoever, therefore, sought to seize upon any unauthorized power in
the colony, began to flatter these lazy people, by representing the
Jesuits as their greatest enemies, who were seeking to undermine their
fortunes, and deprive them of the services of the Indians. Such men
were, Cardenas the bishop of Assumpcion, and Antequera;—Cardenas,
entering irregularly into his office in 1640, and Antequera who was
sent as judge to Assumpcion in 1721, more than eighty years afterwards,
and who seized on the government itself. Both attacked the Jesuits
as the surest means of winning the popular favour. They knew the
jealousy with which their civilization of the Indians was regarded,
and they had only to thunder accusations in the public ears calculated
to foment that jealousy, in order to secure the favour of the people.
Accordingly, these ambitious, intriguing, and turbulent persons, made
not only South America, but Europe itself ring with alarms of the
Jesuits. They contended that they were ruining the growing fortunes of
the Spanish states,—that they were aiming at an independent power,
and were training the Indians for the purpose of effecting it. They
talked loudly of wealthy mines, which the Jesuits worked while they
kept their location strictly secret. These mines could never be found.
They represented that they dwelt in wealthy cities, adorned with the
most magnificent churches and palaces, and lived in a condition the
most sensual with the Indians. These calumnies, only too well relished
by the lazy and rapacious Spaniards, did not fail of their effect—the
Jesuits were attacked in their Reductions, harassed in a variety of
modes, and eventually driven out of the country; where circumstances
connected with the less worthy members of their order in Europe, added
their fatal influence to the odium already existing here. But of that
anon.
During their existence in this country, the greatest curse and scourge
of their Reductions were the Paulistas, or Man-hunters, of Santo Paulo
in Brazil. These people were a colony of Mamelucoes, or descendants of
Portuguese and Indians; and a more dreadful set of men are not upon
record. Their great business was to hunt for mines, and for Indians.
For this purpose they ranged through the interior, sometimes in
large troops, armed and capable of reducing a strong town, at others,
they were scattered into smaller parties prowling through the woods,
and pouncing on all that fell into their clutches. They were fierce,
savage, and merciless. They seemed to take a wild delight in the
destruction of human settlements, and in the blaze of human abodes.
They maintained themselves in the wilds by hunting, fishing, the
plunder of the natives; and when that failed, they could subsist on
the pine-nuts, and the flour prepared from the carob, or locust-tree,
termed by them war-meal.
Their abominable practices had been vehemently denounced by the
Jesuits of Santo Paulo, and in consequence they became bitter enemies
of the order. One of their favourite stratagems, was to appear in
small parties, led by commanders in the habits of Jesuits, in those
places which they knew the Jesuits frequented in the hopes of making
proselytes. The first thing they did there, was to erect crosses. They
next made little presents to the Indians they met; distributed remedies
amongst the sick; and as they were masters of the Guarani language,
exhorted them to embrace the Christian religion, of which they
explained to them in a few words, the principal articles. When they
had, by these arts, assembled a great number of them, they proposed to
them to remove to some more convenient spot, where they assured them
they should want for nothing. Most of these poor creatures permitted
themselves to be thus led by these wolves in sheep’s clothing, till the
traitors, dropping the mask, began to tie them, cutting the throats of
those who endeavoured to escape, and carried the rest into slavery.
Some, however, escaped from time to time, and alarmed the whole
country. This scheme served two purposes; it for a time procured them
great numbers of Indians, and it cast an odium on the Jesuits, to whom
it was attributed, which long operated against them. But it was not
long that these base miscreants were contented with this mischief. It
struck them, that the Reductions of the Jesuits in Guayra, a province
adjoining their own, might be made an easy prey; and would furnish
them with a rich booty of human flesh at a little cost of labour. They
accordingly soon fell upon them, and the relation of the miseries and
desolation inflicted on these peaceful and flourishing settlements,
as given by Charlevoix, is heart-rending. Nine hundred Mamelucoes,
accompanied by two thousand Indians, under one of their most famous
commanders Anthony Rasposo, broke into Guayra, and beset the reduction
of St. Anthony, which was under the care of Father Mola. They put to
the sword all the Indians that attempted to resist; butchered, even
at the foot of the altar, such as fled there for refuge; loaded the
principal men with chains, and plundered the church. Some of them
having entered the missionary’s house, in hopes of a rich booty,
finding nothing but a threadbare soutane and a few tattered shirts,
told the Indians they must be very foolish to take for masters,
strangers who came into their country because they had not wherewith
to live in their own; that they would be much happier in Brazil, where
they would want for nothing, and would not be obliged to maintain their
pastors.
These were, no doubt, fine speeches to be made to people loaded with
chains, and whose relatives and countrymen had been but that instant
butchered before their eyes. Father Mola in vain threw himself at the
commander’s feet; represented to him the innocence and simplicity of
these poor Indians; conjured him by all that was most sacred, to set
bounds to the fury of the soldiers; and at last, threatened them with
the indignation of heaven: but these savages answered him, that it was
enough to be baptized again to be admitted into heaven, and that they
would make their way into it though God himself should oppose their
entrance.[11] They carried away into slavery two thousand five hundred
Indians.
Some of the prisoners escaped, and returned to join Father Mola and
such of their brethren as had fled to the woods. The father, they found
amid the ruins of his Reduction sunk in the deepest sorrow. However, he
roused himself and persuaded them to retire with him to the Reduction
of the Incarnation. The Reductions of St. Michael and of Jesus-Maria,
were speedily treated in the same manner; and they set out for Santo
Paulo, driving their victims before them as so many cattle. Nine months
the march continued. The merciless wretches urged them forward till
numbers fell by the way, worn out with fatigue and famine. The first
who gave way were sick women and aged persons; who begged in vain that
their husbands, wives, or children, might remain with them in their
dying hours. All that could be forced on by goading and blows, were,
and when they fell, they were left to perish by the wild beasts. Two
Jesuit fathers, Mansilla and Maceta, however, followed their unhappy
people, imploring more gentleness towards the failing, and comforting
the dying. When Father Maceta first beheld his people chained like
galley slaves, he could not contain himself. He ran up to embrace them,
in spite of the cocked muskets, with which he was threatened, and
volleys of blows poured upon him at every step. Seeing in the throng
the cazique Guiravara and his wife chained together, he ran up to the
cazique, who before his conversion had used Father Maceta very cruelly,
and kissing his chain, told him that he was overjoyed to be able to
shew him that he entertained no resentment of his ill usage, and would
risk his life to procure his liberty. He procured both their freedom,
and that of several other Indians, on promise of a ransom. Thus these
noble men followed their captive people through the whole dreadful
journey, administering every comfort and hope of final liberation in
their power; and their services and sympathy, we may well imagine, were
sufficiently needed, for out of the whole number of captives collected
in Guayra, fifteen hundred only arrived in life at Santo Paulo.
But the journey of the fathers did not end here. They could get no
redress; and therefore hastened to Rio Janeiro; and succeeding no
better there, went on to the Bay of All-Saints, to Don Diego Lewis
Oliveyra, governor and captain-general of the kingdom. The governor
ordered an officer to repair with them to Santo Paulo; but it was too
late, the prisoners were distributed far and wide, and the commissary
could not or dared not attempt to recall them. News also of fresh
enterprises meditated against the Paraguay Reductions, by these hideous
man-hunters, made the fathers hasten away to put their brethren upon
their guard.
The story of the successive devastation of the Reductions is long. The
Jesuits were compelled to retreat southward from one place to another
with their wretched neophytes. The magistrates and governors gave them
no aid, for they entertained no good-will towards them; and they were,
even in the central ground between the Parana and Uruguay, compelled
to train their people to arms, and defend themselves. It is not only
a long but sorrowful recital, both of the injuries received from the
Paulistas and from their own countrymen—we must therefore pass it
over, and merely notice the manner of their final expulsion.
The court of Spain ordered the banishment of the Jesuits, and the
authorities, only too happy to execute the order, surrounded their
colleges in the night with soldiers, seized the persons of the
missionaries,—their libraries and manuscripts, which in time became
destroyed, an irreparable loss to historical literature. Old men in
their beds even were not suffered to remain and die in peace, but were
compelled to accompany the rest, till they died on their mules in the
immense journey from some of the settlements, and across the wildest
mountains to the sea. The words of Mr. Southey may well close this
strange and melancholy history.
“Bucarelli shipped off the Jesuits of La Plata, Tucuman, and
Paraguay, one hundred and fifty-five in number, before he attacked
the Reductions. This part of the business he chose to perform in
person; and the precautions which he took for arresting seventy-eight
defenceless missionaries, will be regarded with contempt, or with
indignation, as they may be supposed to have proceeded from ignorance
of the real state of things, or from fear, basely affected for the
purpose of courting favour by countenancing successful calumnies. He
had previously sent for all the Caciques and Corregidores to Buenos
Ayres, and persuaded them that the king was about to make a great
change for their advantage. Two hundred soldiers from Paraguay were
ordered to guard the pass of the Tebiquary; two hundred Corrientines to
take post in the vicinity of St. Miguel; and he defended the Uruguay
with threescore dragoons, and three companies of grenadiers. They
landed at the Falls; one detachment proceeded to join the Paraguay
party, and seize the Parana Jesuits; another incorporated itself with
the Corrientines, and marched against those on the eastern side of the
Uruguay; and the Viceroy himself advanced upon Yapeyen, and those which
lay between the two rivers. The Reductions were peaceably delivered up.
The Jesuits, without a murmur, followed their brethren into banishment;
and Bucarelli was vile enough to take credit in his dispatches for the
address with which he had so happily performed a dangerous service; and
to seek favour by loading the persecuted Company with charges of the
grossest and foulest calumnies.”
The American Jesuits were sent from Cadiz to Italy, where Faenza and
Ravenna were assigned for their places of abode. Most of the Paraguay
brethren settled at Faenza. There they employed the melancholy hours
of age and exile in preserving, as far as they could from memory
alone (for they had been deprived of all their papers), the knowledge
which they had so painfully acquired of strange countries, strange
manners, savage languages, and savage man. The Company originated
in extravagance and madness; in its progress it was supported and
aggrandized by fraud and falsehood; and its history is stained by
actions of the darkest dye. But it fell with honour. No men ever
behaved with greater equanimity, under undeserved disgrace, than the
last of the Jesuits; and the extinction of the order was a heavy loss
to literature, a great evil to the Catholic world, and an irreparable
injury to the tribes of South America.
“Bucarelli replaced the exiled missionaries by priests from the
different Mendicant orders; but the temporal authority was not vested
in their hands—this was vested in lay-administrators.... Here ended
the prosperity of these celebrated communities—here ended the
tranquillity and welfare of the Guaranies. The administrators, hungry
ruffians from the Plata, or fresh from Spain, neither knew the language
nor had patience to acquire it. It sufficed for them that they could
make their commands intelligible by the whip. The priests had no
authority to check the enormities of these wretches; nor were they
always irreproachable themselves. A year had scarce elapsed before
the Viceroy discovered that the Guaranies, for the sake of escaping
from this intolerable state of oppression, were beginning to emigrate
into the Portuguese territories, and actually soliciting protection
from their old enemies. Upon the first alarm of so unexpected an
occurrence, Bucarelli displaced all the administrators; but the new
administrators were as brutal and rapacious as their predecessors;
the governor was presently involved in a violent struggle with the
priests, touching their respective powers, and the confusion which
ensued, evinced how wisely the Jesuits had acted in combining the
spiritual and temporal authorities.... The Viceroy then instituted a
new form of administration. The Indians were declared exempt from all
personal service, not subject to the Encomienda system, and entitled
to possess property—a right of which, Bucarelli said, they had been
deprived by the Jesuits; for this governor affected to emancipate
the Guaranies, and talked of placing them under the safeguard of the
law, and purifying the Reductions from tyranny! They were to labour
for the community under the direction of the administrators; and as
an encouragement to industry, the Reductions were opened to traders
during the months of February, March, and April. The end of all
this was, that compulsory and cruel labour left the Indians neither
time nor inclination—neither heart nor strength—to labour for
themselves. The arts which the Jesuits had introduced, were neglected
and forgotten; their gardens lay waste; their looms fell to pieces;
and in these communities, where the inhabitants for many generations
had enjoyed a greater exemption from physical and moral evil than any
other inhabitants of the globe, the people were now made vicious and
miserable. Their only alternative was to remain, and to be treated
like slaves, or fly to the woods, and take their chance as savages.”
Here we must close our review of the Spaniards in the New World.
Our narrative has been necessarily brief and rapid, for the history
of their crimes extends over a vast continent, and through three
centuries; and would, related at length, fill a hundred volumes. We
have found them, however, everywhere the same—cruel, treacherous, and
regardless of the feelings of humanity and the sense of justice. They
have wreaked alike their vengeance on the natives of every country
they have entered, and on those of their own race who dared to espouse
the cause of the sufferers. This spirit continued to the last. In all
their colonies, the natives, whether of Indian blood, or the Creoles
descended of their own, were carefully excluded from the direction of
their own affairs, and the emoluments of office. Spaniards from the
mother country were sent over in rapacious swarms, to fatten on the
vitals of these vast states, and return when they had sucked their
fill. The retribution has followed; and Spain has not now left a single
foot of all these countries which she has drenched in the blood, and
filled with the groans of their native children.
Mr. Ward, in his “Mexico in 1827,” says that in 1803, the number of
Indians remaining in Mexico was two millions and a half; but that their
history is everywhere a blank. Some have become habituated to civil
life, and are excellent artizans, but the greater portion are totally
neglected. That, during the Revolution, the sense of the injuries which
the race had received from the Spaniards, and which seemed to have
slumbered in their bosoms for three centuries, blazed up and shewed
itself in the eager and burning enthusiasm with which they flocked
to the revolutionary standard to throw off the yoke of their ancient
oppressors. He adds, “Whatever may be the advantages which they may
derive from the recent changes, and the nature of these time alone can
determine, the fruits of the introduction of boasted civilization into
the New World have been hitherto bitter indeed. Throughout America the
Indian race has been sacrificed; nor can I discover that in New Spain
any one step has been taken for their improvement. In the neighbourhood
of the capital nothing can be more wretched than their appearance;
and although under a republican form of government, they must enjoy,
in theory at least, an equality of rights with every other class of
citizens, they seemed practically, at the period of my first visit, to
be under the orders of every one, whether officer, soldier, churchman,
or civilian, who chose to honour them with a command.”—vol. ii. p.
215.