Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

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The celebrated Dr. Francia, dictator of Paraguay, used to refer to the Jesuits
as `cunning rogues',*1* 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.*2*
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.*3*
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.*4* 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.

--
*1* `Pillos muy ladinos' (Robertson, `Letters from Paraguay').
*2* Ferrer del Rio, in his `Coleccion de los articulos
de la Esperanza sobre Carlos III.' (Madrid, 1859), says:
`Fuera de las misiones de los Jesuitas particularmente en el Paraguay
se consideraban los Indios entre los seres mas infelices del mundo.'

Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, in their celebrated `Secret Report'
(`Noticias Secretas de America'): `La compan~ia (de Jesus) atiende
a sus fines particularmente con los misioneros que llevan de Espan~a;
pero con todo eso no se olvida de la conversion de los Indios,
ni tiene abandonado este asunto pues aunque van poco adelante en el,
que es lo que no se esperimenten en las demas religiones.'
*3* Many travellers, as Azara, Demersay, Du Graty, and D'Orbigny,
have remarked how fond of music was the Guarani race,
and how soon they learned the use of European instruments. D'Orbigny
(`Fragment d'un Voyage au Centre de l'Ame/rique Me/ridianale'),
in his interesting account of the mission of El Santo Corazon,
in the district of Chiquitos, says: `Je fus tre\s e/tonne/
d'entendre exe/cuter apre\s les danses indige\nes des morceaux
de Rossini et . . . de Weber . . . la grande messe chante/e en musique
e/tait exe/cute/e d'une manie\re tre\s remarquable pour des Indiens.'

Vargas Machuca, in his most curious and rare `Milicia y Descripcion
de las Indias', says, under the heading of `Musica del Indio':
`Usan sus musicas antiguas en sus regocijos, y son muy tristes
en la tonada.' To-day the Indians of Paraguay have songs
known as `tristes'. The brigadier Don Diego de Alvear,
in his `Relacion de Misiones' (Coleccion de Angelis),
says that the first to teach the Guaranis European music
was a Flemish Jesuit, P. Juan Basco, who had been `maestro de capilla'
to the Archduke Albert.
*4* See also P. Cardiel, `Declaracion de la Verdad', p. 274:
`. . . y esta acabada, se toca a/ Misa a/ que entran todos cantando
el Bendito, y alabado en su lengua, o/ en Castellano,
que en las dos lenguas lo saben.'
--

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* 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.

--
* Dean Funes, in his `Ensayo de la Historia del Paraguay', etc.,
says that in the `estancia' of Santa Tecla, in the missions of Paraguay,
during the time of the Jesuits, there were 50,000 head of cattle.
--

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.*
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,** and they produced manuscripts
as finely executed as those made by the monks in European monasteries.

--
* `Inventarios de los bienes hallados a/ la expulsion de los Jesuitas',
Introduction, xxvii, Francisco Javier Brabo.
** The rare and much-sought-after `Manuale ad usum Patrum Societatis Jesu
qui in Reductionibus Paraquariae versantur, ex Rituale Romano
ad Toletano decerptum', was printed at the mission of Loreto.
It contains prayers in Guarani as well as in Latin.
Here also was printed a curious book of Guarani sermons
by Nicolas Yapuguay, many Guarani vocabularies,
and the `Arte de la Lengua Guarani/' of Ruiz Montoya.
--

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 Guarani 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.*
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.

--
* P. Cardiel, `Declaracion de la Verdad', p. 295: `De estos granos comunales
se da para sembrar', etc.
--

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'* 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.

--
* This jerked beef is called `charqui' in South America.
--

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 Guarani `tipoi',*
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** (or the community)
but little, and a rude plenty was the order of the land.
The greatest luxury of the Indians was `mate', 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.

--
* The poorer classes in Paraguay all used to wear the `tipoi'.
They covered themselves when it was cold with a white cotton sheet
wrapped in many folds.
** The Jesuits themselves were dressed in homespun clothes,
for Matias Angles -- quoted in the introduction to
the `Declaracion de la Verdad' of Father Cardiel, published at
Buenos Ayres in 1900 (the introduction by P. Pablo Hernandez) -- says:
`El vestuario de los Padres es de lienzo de algodon ten~ido de negro,
hilado y fabricado por las mismas Indias de los pueblos;
y si tal qual Padre tiene un capote o/ manteo de pan~a de Castilla
se sucede de unos a/ otros, y dura un siglo entero.'
--

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 Guaranis 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,*1* 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.*2*
The humblest and the highest had their part, and the heaviest burden,
no doubt, fell upon the two Jesuits,*3* who were answerable for all.
The foremost duty was to get the procession ready for the march,
and saddle `los caballos del santo'*4* to serve as escort, mounted by Indians
in rich dresses, kept specially for feasts.

--
*1* In the `Relacion de Misiones' of the Brigadier Don Diego de Alvear,
written between 1788 and 1801, and preserved in
the `Coleccion de Angelis', occurs the following curious description
of the feast-day of a patron saint of a Jesuit reduction: `They make
a long alley of interwoven canes, which ends in a triumphal arch,
which they adorn with branches of palms and other trees
with considerable grace and taste (`con bastante gracia y simetria').
Under the arch they hang their images of saints, their clothes,
their first-fruits -- as corn and sugar-cane, and calabashes
full of maize-beer (`chicha') -- their meat and bread,
together with animals both alive and dead, such as they can procure
(`como los pueden haber con su diligencia'). Then, forming in a ring,
they dance and shout, `Viva el rey! Viva el santo tutelar!'
*2* Many and curious are the names by which the office-bearers went.
Thus, in the Mission of el Santo Corazon, in the Chiquitos,
I find the following: Corregidor, the Mayor; Teniente, Lieutenant;
Alferez, Sub-Lieutenant; Alcalde Primero, Head Alcalde;
Alcalde Segundo, Second Alcalde; Commandante, Captain (of the Militia);
Justicia Mayor, Chief Justice; Sargento Mayor, Sergeant-Major.
Then came fiscales, fiscals; sacristan mayor, head-beadle;
capitan de estancia, chief of the cattle farm; capitan de pinturas,
carpinteria, herreros, etc. -- captain of painters, carpenters,
smiths, etc. All the offices were competed for ardently,
and those of Corregidor and Alcalde in especial were prized so highly
that Indians who were degraded from them for bad conduct or carelessness
not infrequently died of grief.
*3* In each reduction there were two priests. In all Paraguay,
at the expulsion of the Order in 1767, there were only
seventy-eight Jesuits (Dean Funes, `Ensayo de la Historia
del Paraguay', etc., cap. i., vol. ii.).
*4* In the mission of Los Apostoles there were 599 of these
`horses of the saint', according to an inventory preserved by Brabo.
--

The inventory of the town of Los Apostoles*1* 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.*2*
In the front of all rode on a white horse the Alferez Real,*3*
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,*4* 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 Parana, 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 nandubay, 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.

--
*1* Furnished to Bucareli, Viceroy of Buenos Ayres at the expulsion,
and first printed by Brabo (`Inventarios de los bienes hallados
a/ la expulsion de los Jesuitas').
*2* The Jesuits exercised the Indians a great deal in dancing,
taking advantage of their love of dancing in their savage state.
D'Orbigny and Demersay (`Fragment d'un Voyage au Centre
de l'Ame/rique Me/ridianale', and `Histoire Physique, etc.,
du Paraguay') found between the years 1830 and 1855
that the Indians of the Moxos and Chiquitos still danced as they had done
in the time of the Jesuits.

I have seen them in the then (1873) almost deserted mission of Jesus,
buried in the great woods on the shore of the Parana,
dance a strange, half-savage dance outside the ruined church.
*3* Cardiel, in his `Declaracion de la Verdad', p. 239, says:
`Todos los pueblos ponen su castillo en la plaza y en el medio
de el colocan el retratro del Rey, y el Indio Alferez Real
. . . va al castillo con el Estandarte Real y alli hace su homenage
con otros rendimientos anteel Retratro Real,' saying in Guarani,
`Toicohengatu/ n~ande Mbaru bicha guazu/! Toicohengatu/ n~ande
Rey marangatu/! Toicohengatu/ n~ande Rey Fernando Sesto!'
(`Long live our King, the great chief! Long live our good King!
Long live our King Ferdinand VI.').
*4* `Chupas de damasco carmesi con encajes de plata.'
--

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 enchaine/s afin qu'ils ne troublerent point la fe^te,'
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.'*1* The Indians who had some office,
and who wore the clothes*2* 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*3* 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.

--
*1* It may be roughly translated, `a good stone wall between
a male and female saint.'
*2* These clothes were the property of the community,
and not of the individual Indians.
*3* Brabo, xxxv., Introduction to `Los inventarios de los bienes.'
--

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 Guaranis, 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.* 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.

--
* A recent writer in the little journal published on yellow packing-paper
in the Socialist colony of Cosme, in Paraguay (`Cosme Monthly',
November, 1898), has a curious passage corroborating what I have so often
observed myself. Under the heading of `A Paraguayan Market',
he says: `The Guarani clings stubbornly to the Guarani customs.
This is irritating to the European, but who shall say
that the Guarani is not right? . . . European settlement
cannot but be fatal to the Guarani, however profitable it may be
to land-owning and mercantile classes. . . . The Paraguayan market
is a woman's club . . . they will come thirty or forty miles
with a clothful of the white curd-cheese of the country,
contentedly journeying on foot along the narrow paths.
They will cut a cabbage into sixteenths and eat their cheese themselves
rather than sell it under market price.' Long may they do so,
for so long will they be free, and perhaps poor; but, then,
in countries such as Paraguay freedom and poverty are identical.
--

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