THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL.
Though we now make our first inquiry into the conduct of the Portuguese
towards the natives of their colonies, and enter upon so immense a
scene of action as that of the vast empire of Brazil, our notice may
happily be condensed into a comparatively small space, because the
features of the settlement of Paraguay by the Spaniards, and that of
Brazil by the Portuguese are wonderfully similar. The natives were of
a like character, bold and warlike, and were treated in like fashion.
They were destroyed, enslaved, given away in Encomiendos, just as it
suited the purpose of the invaders; the Jesuits arrived, and undertook
their defence and civilization, and were finally expelled, like their
brethren of Paraguay, as pestilential fellows, that would not let the
colonists “do as they pleased with their own.”
Yanez Pinzon, the Spaniard, was the first who discovered the coast
of Brazil, in A.D. 1500, and coasting northward from Cape Agostinho,
he gave the natives such a taste of the faith and intentions of the
whites as must have prepared them to resist them to the utmost on
their reappearance. Betwixt Cape Agostinho and the river Maranham,
seeing a party of the natives on a hill near the shore, they landed,
and endeavoured to open some degree of intercourse; but the natives not
liking their appearance, attempted to drive them away, killed eight
of them, wounded more, and pursued them with fury to their boat. The
Spaniards, of course, did not spare the natives, and soon afterwards
shewed that the natives were very much in the right in repelling
them, for on entering the Maranham, where the natives _did_ receive
them cordially, they seized about thirty of these innocent people and
carried them off for slaves.
Scarcely had Pinzon departed, when Cabral, with the Portuguese
squadron, made his accidental visit to the same coast. In the following
year Amerigo Vespucci was sent thither to make further discoveries,
and having advanced as far southward as 52°, returned home. In 1503,
he was sent out again, and effected a settlement in 18° S. in what
was afterwards called the Captaincy of Porto Seguro. One of the very
first acts of Portugal was to ship thither as colonists the refuse of
her prisons, as Spain had done to her colonies, and as Portugal also
had done to Africa and India; a horrible mode of inflicting the worst
curses of European society on new countries, and of presenting to the
natives under the name of Christians, men rank and fuming with every
species of brutal vice and pestiferous corruption.
Ten years after the discovery of Brazil, a young noble, Diego Alvarez,
who was going out on a voyage of adventure, was wrecked on the coast
of Bahia, and was received with cordiality by the natives, and named
Caramuru, or the Man of Fire, from the possession of fire-arms. Here he
married the daughter of the chief, and finally became the great chief
himself, with a numerous progeny around him. Another man, Joam Ramalho,
who also had been shipwrecked, married a daughter of the chief of
Piratininga, and these circumstances gave the Portuguese a favourable
reception in different places of this immense coast. In about thirty
years after its discovery the country was divided into captaincies, the
sugar-cane was introduced, and the work of colonization went rapidly
on. The natives were attacked on all sides; they defended themselves
with great spirit, but were compelled to yield before the power of
fire-arms. But while the natives suffered from the colonists, the
colonists suffered too from the despotism of the governors of the
captaincies; a Governor-general was therefore appointed just half a
century after the discovery, in the person of Thome de Sousa, and some
Jesuits were sent out with him to civilize the natives.
Amongst these was Father Manoel de Nobrega, chief of the mission,
who distinguished himself so nobly in behalf of the Indians. The
city of Salvador, in the bay of All-Saints, was founded as the
seat of government, and the Jesuits immediately began the work of
civilization. There was great need of it both amongst the Indians
and their own countrymen. “Indeed, the fathers,” says Southey,
“had greater difficulties to encounter in the conduct of their own
countrymen than in the customs and disposition of the natives. During
half a century, the colonization of Brazil had been left to chance;
the colonists were almost without law and religion. Many settlers had
never either confessed or communicated since they entered the country;
the ordinances of the church were neglected for want of a clergy to
celebrate them, and the moral precepts had been forgotten with the
ceremonies. Crimes which might easily at first have been prevented, had
become habitual, and the habit was now too strong to be overcome. There
were indeed individuals in whom the moral sense could be discovered,
but in the majority it had been utterly destroyed. They were of that
description of men over whom the fear of the gallows may have some
effect; the fear of God has none. A system of concubinage was practised
among them, worse than the loose polygamy of the savages. The savage
had as many women as consented to become his wives—the colonist as
many as he could enslave. There is an ineffaceable stigma upon the
Europeans in their intercourse with those whom they treat as inferior
races—there is a perpetual contradiction between their lust and their
avarice. The planter will one day take a slave for his harlot, and sell
her the next as a being of some lower species—a beast of labour. If
she be indeed an inferior animal, what shall be said of the one action?
If she be equally with himself an human being and an immortal soul,
what shall be said of the other? Either way there is a crime committed
against human nature. Nobrega and his companions refused to administer
the sacraments of the church to those persons who retained native women
as concubines, or men as slaves. Many were reclaimed by this resolute
and Christian conduct; some, because their consciences had not been
dead, but sleeping; others, for worldly fear, because they believed the
Jesuits were armed with secular as well as spiritual authority. The
good effect which was produced on such persons was therefore only for
a season. Mighty as the Catholic religion is, avarice is mightier; and
in spite of all the best and ablest men that ever the Jesuit order, so
fertile of great men, has had to glory in, the practice of enslaving
the natives continued.”
Yet, according to the same authority, the country had not been entirely
without priests; but they had become so brutal that Nobrega said, “No
devil had persecuted him and his brethren so greatly as they did. These
wretches encouraged the colonists in their abominations, and openly
maintained that it was lawful to enslave the natives, because they
were beasts; and then lawful to use the women as concubines, because
they were slaves. This was their public doctrine! Well might Nobrega
say they did the work of the devil. They opposed the Jesuits with the
utmost virulence. Their interest was at stake. They could not bear
the presence of men who said mass and performed all the ceremonies of
religion gratuitously.” Much less, it may be believed, who maintained
the freedom of the natives.
Such were the people amongst which the Jesuits had to act, yet they set
to work with their usual alacrity. Fresh brethren came out to their
aid; and Nobrega was appointed Vice-provincial of Brazil. They soon
ingratiated themselves with the natives by their usual affability and
kindness. They zealously acquainted themselves with the language; gave
presents to the children; visited the sick; but above all, stood firmly
between them and the atrocities of their countrymen. When the Jesuits
arrived, these atrocities had driven many tribes into the fiercest
hostility, and so evident was it that nothing but these atrocities had
made, or kept them hostile, that when they heard the joyful report
that the Jesuits were come as friends and protectors of the Indians,
and when they saw their conduct so consonant to these tidings, _they
brought their bows to the governor, and solicited to be received
as allies_! How universally, on the slightest opportunity, have
those called savage nations shamed the Europeans styling themselves
civilized, by proofs of their greater faith and disposition to peace!
Amicable intercourse and civilization are the natural order of things
between the powerful and enlightened, and the weak and simple, if
avarice and lust did not intervene.
Nobrega and his brethren soon produced striking changes on these poor
people. They persuaded them to live in peace, to abandon their old
habits, to build churches and schools. The avidity of the children to
learn to read was wonderful. One of the natives soon was able to make
a catechism in the Tupi tongue, and to translate prayers into it. They
taught them not only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to sing in
the church; an accomplishment which perfectly enchanted them. “Nobrega
usually took with him four or five of these little choristers on his
preaching expeditions. When they approached an inhabited place, one
carried the crucifix before them, and they began singing the Litany.
The savages, like snakes, were won by the voice of the charmer. They
received him joyfully; and when he departed with the same ceremony, the
children followed the music. He set the catechism, creed, and ordinary
prayers to _sol fa_; and the pleasure of learning to sing was such
a temptation, that the little Tupis sometimes ran away from their
parents to put themselves under the care of the Jesuits.”
Fresh coadjutors arrived, and with them the celebrated Joseph de
Anchieta, who became more celebrated than Nobrega himself. Nobrega
now established a college in the plains of Piratininga, and sent
thither thirteen of the brethren, with Anchieta as schoolmaster. If
our settlers, in the different new nations where they have located
themselves, had imitated the conduct of this great man, what a world
would this be now! what a history of colonization would have to be
written! how different to the scene I am doomed to lay open. “Day
and night,” says the historian, “did this indefatigable man labour
in discharging the duties of his office. There were no books for the
pupils; he wrote for every one his lesson on a separate leaf, after the
business of the day was done, and it was sometimes day-light before his
task was completed. The profane songs that were in use, he parodied
into hymns in Portugueze, Castilian, Latin and Tupinamban. The ballads
of the natives underwent the same travesty in their own tongue.” He did
not disdain to act as physician, barber, nor even shoemaker, to win
them and to benefit them.
But it was not merely in such peaceful and blessed acts that the
Jesuits were obliged to employ themselves. They were soon called upon
to save the very colonies from their enemies. The French entered
the country, and the native tribes smarting under the wrongs which
the Portuguese had heaped plentifully on them, were only too glad
to unite with them against their merciless oppressors. The Jesuits
defended their own settlements, and then proceeded to give one of the
most splendid examples in history of the power there is in Christian
principle to suspersede wars, and to extort attention and protection
even from men in the fiercest irritation and resentment of injuries.
While the Portuguese were making war on the Tamoyos, and other martial
tribes, Nobrega denounced their proceedings as heaping injustice upon
injustice, for the natives would, he said, trust in the Portuguese if
they saw any hope of fair treatment—any safety from the man-hunters.
But when the Indians were triumphant, and had surrounded Espirito
Santo, and threatened the very existence of the place, Nobrega and
Anchieta set sail for that port, everybody looking upon them as madmen
rushing upon certain destruction. A more fearful, and to all but that
noble faith in truth and justice which is capable of working wonders,
a more hopeless enterprise never was undertaken. As they entered the
port, a host of war-canoes came out to meet them; but the moment they
saw that they were Jesuits, the Indians knew that they came with
peaceful intentions, and dropped their hostile attitude. Spite of
all the exasperation of their wrongs, and the natural presumption of
success, they carried the vessel without injury or insult into port,
and listened with attention to the words of the fathers.
For two months these excellent men lived in the midst of those
exasperated Indians, nay, one of them remained there alone for a
considerable time, labouring to soothe their wrath, to convince them
of better treatment, and dispose them to peace. The fiercer natives
threatened them daily with death, and with being devoured, but the
better spirits and their own blameless lives protected them. They
built a little church, and thatched it with palm-leaves, where they
preached and celebrated mass daily, and at length effected a peace,
and the salvation of the colonies; for they found that a wide-spread
coalition was forming amongst the Indian tribes to sweep their
oppressors out of the land.
One would have thought that such instances as these of the wisdom
and sound policy of virtue, would have been enough to persuade the
Portuguese to adopt more righteous measures towards the natives; but
avarice and cruelty are not easily eradicated—a famine broke out—they
purchased the Indians for slaves with provisions! Nothing can equal
the blindness of base minds. Whenever affairs went wrong with them,
the Portuguese had recourse to the Jesuits, and the Jesuits by their
influence with the Indians, achieved the most signal service for
them. They marched against the French, and drove them out. They built
towns; they protected the state from hostile tribes. A Jesuit, with
his crucifix in his hand, was of more avail at the head of armies than
the most able general; but these things once accomplished, all these
services were forgotten—the slave-hunters were at work again, and the
colonies fell again as rapidly into troubles and consequent decline.
By the end of the century, from the discovery of Brazil, the Jesuits
had collected all the natives along the coast as far as the Portuguese
territories reached, into their aldeas, or villages, and were busy
in the work of civilization. Nothing indeed would have been easier
than for them to civilize the whole country, had it been possible to
civilize the Portuguese first. But their conduct to the natives was
but one continued practice of treachery and outrage. When they needed
their aid to defend them from their enemies, out marched the natives
under their Jesuit leaders, and fought for them; and the first act
of the colonists, when the victory was won, was to seize on their
benefactors and portion them out as slaves. The man-hunters broke into
the villages and carried off numbers, having, in fact, depopulated the
whole country besides. There is no species of kidnapping, no burnings
of huts, no fomenting of wars between different tribes; no horror, in
short, which has made the names of Christians so infamous for the last
three hundred years in Africa that had not its parallel then in Brazil.
Besides, for more than a hundred years, Brazil was the constant scene
of war and contention between the European powers terming themselves
Christian. French, English, and Dutch, were in turn endeavouring to
seize upon one part or other of it; and every description of rapine,
bloodshed, and treachery which can disgrace nations pretending to any
degree of civilization was going on before the eyes of the astonished
natives. What notions of Christianity must the Indians have had, when
these people called themselves Christians? They saw them assailing one
another, fighting like madmen for what in reality belonged to none of
them; burning towns, destroying sugar plantations; massacring all,
native or colonist, that fell into their hands, or seizing them for
slaves. They saw bishops contending with governors, priests contending
with one another; they saw their beautiful country desolated from end
to end (down to 1664), and every thing which is sacred to heaven or
honourable or valuable to men, treated with contempt.—What was it
possible for them to believe of Christianity, than that it was some
devilish compact, which at once invested men with a terrible power, and
with the will to wield it, for the accomplishment of the widest ruin
and the profoundest misery?
Through all this, under all changes, whoever were masters, or whoever
were contending—the Indians experienced but one lot, slavery and ruin.
Laws indeed were repeatedly enacted in Portugal on their behalf—they
were repeatedly declared free—but as everywhere else, they were
laughed at by the colonists, or resisted with rebellious fury.
Amid this long career of violence, the only thing which the mind
can repose on with any degree of pleasure, is the conduct of the
Jesuits, the steady friends of justice and the Indians; and towards
the latter part of this period there arrived in Maranham one of the
most extraordinary men, which not only that remarkable order, but
which the world has produced. This was Antonio Vieyra, a young Jesuit,
who had left the favour of the king and court, and the most brilliant
prospects, for the single purpose of devoting himself to the cause
of the Indians. His boldness, his honesty of speech and purpose, his
resolute resistance to the system of base oppression, operating through
the whole mass of society around him—were perhaps equalled by his
fellows; but the greatness of his talents, and the vehement splendour
of his eloquence, have few equals in any age. Mr. Southey has given the
substance of a sermon preached by him before the governor at St. Lewis,
which so startled and moved the whole people, by the novel and fearful
view in which he exhibited to them their treatment of the Indians,
that with one accord they resolved to set them free.
It is worth while here to give a slight specimen or two of this
extraordinary discourse. His text was, the offer of Satan:—“All
these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship
me.”—“Things,” said he, “are estimated at what they cost. What then
did the world cost our Saviour, and what did a soul cost him? The
world cost him a word—He spoke, and it was made. A soul cost Him his
life, and his blood. But if the world cost only a word of God, and a
soul cost the blood of God, a soul is worth more than all the world.
This Christ thought, and this the devil confessed. Yet you know how
cheaply we value our souls? you know at what rate we sell them? We
wonder that Judas should have sold his Master and his soul for thirty
pieces of silver; but how many are there who offer their own to the
devil for less than fifteen! Christians! I am not now telling you
that you ought not to sell your souls, for I know that you must sell
them;—I only entreat that you will sell them by weight. Weigh well
what a soul is worth, and what it cost, and then sell it and welcome!
But in what scales is it to be weighed? You think I shall say, In those
of St. Michael the archangel, in which souls are weighed. I do not
require so much. Weigh them in the devil’s own balance, and I shall be
satisfied! Take the devil’s balance in one hand, put the whole world
in one scale and a soul in the other, and you will find that your soul
weighs more than the world.—‘All this will I give thee, if thou wilt
fall down and worship me.’... But at what a different price now does
the devil purchase souls from that which he formerly offered for them?
I mean in this country. The devil has not a fair in the world where
they go cheaper! In the Gospel he offers all the kingdoms of the world
to purchase a single soul;—he does not require so large a price to
purchase all that are in Maranham. It is not necessary to offer worlds;
it is not necessary to offer kingdoms, nor cities, nor towns, nor
villages;—it is enough for the devil to point at a plantation, and a
couple of Tapuyas, and down goes the man upon his knees to worship him!
Oh what a market! A negro for a soul, and the soul the blacker of the
two! The negro shall be your slave for the few days you have to live,
and your soul shall be my slave through all eternity—as long as God is
God! This is the bargain which the devil makes with you.”
Amazing as was the effect of this celebrated sermon, of course it did
not last long. But Vieyra did not rest here. He hastened to Portugal,
and stated the treatment of the Indians to the king. He obtained an
order, that all the Indian settlements in the state of Maranham should
be under the direction of the Jesuits; that Vieyra should direct all
expeditions into the interior, and settle the reduced Indians where he
pleased; and that all ransomed Indians should be slaves for five years
and no longer, their labour in that time being an ample compensation
for their original cost. Here was a sort of apprenticeship system more
favourable than the modern British one, but destined to be just as
little observed.