Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

C >> Cunninghame Graham >> A Vanished Arcadia,




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.*1* As for their better government in home affairs
each mission had its police, with officers*2* chosen by the Jesuits
amongst the Indians, so for exterior defence they had militia,
and in it the `caciques'*3* 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.*4* 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 Tano
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 Guaranis sent at the expense of the Company
to assist the Spaniards against the Portuguese at the attack upon
the Colonia del Sacramento*5* 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 Payaguas, 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'.*6* 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.*7* But it appears
that Calvin had many coadjutors in his policy of `Jesuitas aut necandi
aut calumniis opponendi sunt.'*8* 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,*9* 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.

--
*1* As the Gaucho proverb says, `Las armas son necesarias
pero "naide" sabe cuando.'
*2* Corregidores, alcaldes, regidores, alguaciles, etc.
*3* Hereditary or sometimes elected chiefs.
*4* I remember seeing on the tombstone of a Spanish sailor
his hope of salvation through the intercession of
the Lord High Admiral Christ. After the Spanish custom,
officers were often generals both by sea and land, so that soldiers
were not excluded from the Lord High Admiral's intercession.
*5* Dean Funes (`Ensayo de la Historia de Paraguay', etc.) says:
`These Indians went under the command of Don Antonio de Vera Moxica;
their sergeants were Guaranis and their captains Spaniards.
Their `cacique' was Ignacio Amandaa, who commanded in chief
under Vera Moxica.' They fought bravely, and returned
again and again to the assault of the town after several repulses,
manifesting the same dogged courage and indifference to death
which their descendants showed in the war against Brazil in 1866-70.
In that war bodies of Paraguayans frequently attacked strong positions
defended by artillery, and allowed themselves to be shot down
to the last man rather than retire. At other times, concealed behind
masses of floating herbage, from their canoes they sprang on board
Brazilian ironclads, and were all killed in the vain endeavour
to capture the vessels. I knew a little pettifogging lawyer,
one Izquierdo, who, with ten companions, attempted in a canoe
to take the Brazilian flagship (an ironclad); left alone on her deck,
after the death of his companions, he sprang into the water
under a shower of bullets, and, badly wounded, swam over to the Chaco,
the desert side of the river. There for three days he remained,
subsisting on wild oranges, and then swam across again
on a raft of sticks, in spite of the alligators and many fierce fish
which abound in Paraguay. He got well, and, though lame,
was, when I knew him, as arrant a little scrivening knave
as you could hope to meet in either hemisphere.

On many other occasions the mission Indians performed notable services for
the Spanish Government. In 1681, when the French attacked Buenos Ayres,
a detachment of two thousand Indians was sent to its assistance.
Philip V. himself wrote to the Provincial of Paraguay on this occasion
asking him to send troops to the defence of the city.

In 1785 four thousand Guaranis, commanded by Don Baltazar Garcia,
were at the second siege of the Colonia del Sacramento.
Funes says of them: `A juicio de un testigo ocular,
no es menos admirable la sangre fria de sus capellanes.'
*6* `Perro Luterano'. It is astonishing how in Spain
the comparatively innocuous Luther has fallen heir
to the heritage of hatred that should more properly have belonged
to the inhuman and treacherous Calvin.
*7* Philip V. in 1745, after an examination which lasted six years,
approved of all the actions of the Jesuits in Paraguay
(Cretineau Joly, `Histoire de la Compagnie de Je/sus', vol. v., p. 103).
So that a curious letter of a Jeronimite friar (one Padre Cevallos),
written in 1774, is well within due limits when it says
that all the Jesuits did in Paraguay was `todo probado
por reales cedulas o/ procedia de ordenes expresas.'
*8* One is obliged to allow, in common fairness, that Calvin carried out
in his own practice what he advocated -- as witness his conduct
with Servetus, whom he first calumniated, then entrapped,
and lastly murdered in cold blood.
*9* Don Francisco Corr sent the following list of arms to the Viceroy Zabala,
of Buenos Ayres (Funes, `Ensayo', etc.): `Armas buenas, 850;
lanzas de hierro, 3,850; pedreras (culverins), 10. Las flechas
no se cuentan.' He says: `Todos los Indios quando han de salir
a compan~a llevan 150 flechas de hierro, menos los que llevan
armos de fuego. Asi mismo cargan "bolas" que son dos piedras
en una cuerda. Los de a pie que no llevan escopetas tienen lanza, flecha,
y honda con su provision de piedras en un bolson como de granaderos.
Se prestan caballos entre los pueblos.'
--

Cotton and linen cloth, tobacco, hides, woods of the various
hard-wood forests of the country, and, above all, `yerba-mate',
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 Yapeyu 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-mate', they sent great quantities of hides.
The inventories of the towns taken at the expulsion state
that the number of green hides*1* exported annually was fifty thousand,
together with six thousand cured; in addition they sold
from three to four arrobas*2* 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,*3*
so that the income*4* of the thirty towns must have been relatively large.*5*
Two or three hundred barrels of honey*6* 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.

--
*1* Ibanez (`Histoire du Paraguay sous les Je/suites') states
the hides sold at about three dollars apiece.
*2* The arroba was twenty-five pounds.
*3* These figures are from Brabo's inventories.
*4* Ibanez states that only eighty-four dollars a year were set apart
for the maintenance of each priest.
*5* Dean Funes (`Ensayo de le Historia Civil del Paraguay', etc.)
puts it at a million reales, which almost equals 20,800 Pounds.

Ibanez (`La Republica Jesuitica'), with the noble
disregard of consequences so noticeable in most polemical writers,
boldly alters this to a million dollars, his object being to prove
that the Jesuits exacted exorbitant taxation from the neophytes.
*6* The honey of the missions was celebrated, and the wax made
by the small bee called `Opemus', according to Charlevoix
(livre v., p. 285), `e/tait d'une blancheur qui n'avait rien de pareil,
et ces neophytes ont consacre/ tout qu'ils en peuvent avoir
a\ bruler devant les images de la Ste. Vierge.'
--

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;* 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.

--
* In the inventory of the mission of San Jose I find:
`Item, doce pares de grillos'; but I am bound to say that in this instance
they were for the use of `los Guaicurus infieles prisioneros
que estan en dicha mision.'
--




Chapter VII

Causes of the Jesuits' unpopularity -- Description of the lives and habits
of the priests -- Testimony in favour of the missions --
Their opposition to slavery -- Their system of administration



Much has been written of the interior government of the missions
by the Jesuits, but chiefly by strong partisans, for and against,
on either side, whose only object was to make out a case
to fit the prejudices of those for whom they wrote. Upon the Jesuit side
the Abbe Muratori* describes a paradise. A very Carlo Dolce
amongst writers, with him all in the missions is so cloying sweet
that one's soul sickens, and one longs in his `Happy Christianity'
to find a drop of gall. But for five hundred pages nothing is amiss;
the men of Belial persecute the Jesuit saints, who always
(after the fashion of their Order and mankind) turn both cheeks to the smiter,
and, if their purse is taken, hasten to give up their cloaks.
The Indians are all love and gratitude. No need in the Abbe's pages
for the twelve pair of fetters, which Brabo most unkindly has set down
amongst his inventories. Never a single `lapsus' from the moral rule
the Jesuits imposed -- no drunkenness, and bigamy so seldom met with
that it would seem that Joseph Andrews had been a swaggerer
judged by the standard of these moral Guaranis. Then comes Ibanez,**
the ex-Jesuit, on the other side. In a twinkling of an eye
the scene is changed. For, quite in Hogarth's vein, he paints the missions
as a perpetual march to Finchley, and tells us that the Indians were savages,
and quite unchanged in all their primitive propensities under the Jesuit rule.
And for the Jesuits themselves he has a few home-truths
administered with vinegar, after the fashion of the renegade
the whole world over, who sees nothing good in the society
that has turned him out. He roundly says the Jesuits were loafers,
accuses them of keeping the Indians ignorant for their own purposes,
and paints them quite as black as the Abbe Muratori painted them
rose colour, and with as little art. So that, as usually happens
in the writings of all polemists, no matter upon which side they may write,
but little information, and that distorted to an incredible degree,
is all that they afford.

--
* `Il Cristianesimo Felice nelle Missione dei Padri della Compagnia di Jesu
nel Paraguay'.
** `L'Histoire du Paraguay sous les Je/suites', Amsterdam, 1700, lxxv.
--

In general, curious as it may appear, the bitterest opponents of the Jesuits
were Catholics, and Protestants have often written as apologists.
Buffon, Raynal, and Montesquieu, with Voltaire, Robertson, and Southey,
have written favourably of the internal government of the missions
and the effect which it produced. No other names of equal authority
can be quoted on the other side; but yet the fact remains
that the Jesuits in Paraguay were exposed to constant calumny
from the first day they went there till the last member of the Order
left the land.

It is my object first to try to show what the conditions of their government
really were, and then to try and clear up what was the cause of unpopularity,
and why so many and such persistent calumnies were laid to their account.
Stretching right up and down the banks of both the Parana and Uruguay,
the missions extended from Nuestra Senora de Fe* (or Santa Maria),
in Paraguay, to San Miguel, in what is now the Brazilian province
of Rio Grande do Sul; and from the mission of Corpus,
on the east bank of the Parana, to Yapeyu, upon the Uruguay.
The official capital was placed at Candelaria, on the east bank
of the Parana. In that town the Superior of the missions
had his official residence, and from thence he ruled the whole territory,
having not only the ecclesiastical but the temporal power,
the latter, from the position in which he was placed, so many hundred miles
from any Spanish Governor, having by degrees gradually come into his hands.
The little town of La Candelaria was, when I knew it,
in a most neglected state. The buildings of the Jesuits,
with the exception of the church, were all in ruins.
The streets were sandy and deserted, the foot-walk separated from them
by a line of hard-wood posts, which, as tradition said,
were left there by the Jesuits; but the hard woods of Paraguay
are almost as imperishable as iron.

--
* In all, the missions amounted to thirty; and for their relative situations
vide the curious map [not available in this ASCII text],
the original of which was published in the work of Padre Pedro Lozano,
C. de J., `Descripcion chorographica del terreno, rios, arboles y animales
de las dilatadissimas provincias del Gran Chaco, Gualanba', etc.
Cordoba, del Tucuman, en el Colegio de la Assumpcion,
por Joseph Santos Balbas, 1733.
--

A `balsa' -- that is, a flying bridge worked by a cable --
plied fitfully across the Parana to Ytapua, also a little ex-Jesuit town
upon the other side. Each shop had a sign outside, as was the case in England
a hundred years ago. Indians supplied the place with vegetables,
floating down in canoes piled up with fruit, with flowers,
with sweet potatoes, and returning home empty, or for their cargo
three or four tin pails, a looking-glass, or other of the marvels
which Europe sends as a sample of her manufactures to little frontier towns.
All was as quiet, or perhaps much quieter than in the time when
the Superior of the Jesuits was in residence, and if it had been necessary,
during the hot hours of noon, Godivas by the dozen might have ridden
down the streets, had they been able to find horses quiet enough to ride,
certain that no one in the town would lose his after-breakfast nap
to look at them.

In every mission two chosen Jesuits lived. The elder, selected for
his experience of the country and knowledge of the tongue from amongst those
who had been rectors of colleges or provincials of the Order,
was vested with the civil power, and was responsible direct to the Superior.
The second, generally styled companion (el Companero),
acted as his lieutenant, and had full charge of all things spiritual;
so that they were a check on one another, and their duties did not clash.

In difficulties the Superior transmitted orders, like a general in the field,
by mounted messengers, who frequently rode over a hundred miles a day,
relays of horses always being kept ready for emergencies
every three leagues upon the road.

From La Candelaria roads branched off to every portion of the territory,
most of them fit for carts, and all superior to those tracks which were
the only thoroughfares but twenty years ago. Roads ran to Corrientes,
to Asuncion, others from Yapeyu to the Salto Grande, on the Parana.
Upon the Upper Uruguay were about eighty posts, all guarded,
and with horses ready to equip the messengers. But there were also roads
in the district of the Upper Parana, which I myself remember
as a wilderness, uncrossed, uncrossable, where tigers roamed about
and Indians shot at the rare traveller with poisoned arrows
out of a blow-pipe, whilst they remained unseen in the recesses of the woods.
In the districts of the Upper Uruguay and Parana, besides the roads
and relays of post-horses, they had a fleet both of canoes and boats
in which they carried `yerba'* and the other products of the land.
Thus, with their fleet of boats and of canoes, their highroads branching out
on every side, and their relays of post-horses at intervals, most probably
no State of America at the time had such interior means of communication
with the seat of government. The Incas and the Aztecs certainly had posts
who carried messages and brought up fish from the coast with great rapidity;
but all the Spanish colonies contemporaneous with the Jesuits' settlements
in Paraguay had fallen into a state of lethargy and of interior decay.
The roads the Incas used in Peru were falling fast into disuse,
and it took several weeks to send a letter from Buenos Ayres
to the Pacific coast.

--
* A letter of a certain Jesuit (name lost, but dated 1715) says that
there were at least two thousand canoes in constant use on the Parana,
and almost as many more on the Uruguay (Brabo, `Inventarios', etc.).
--

The system of interior government in the missions was in appearance democratic
-- that is to say, there were officials, as mayors*1* and councillors;
but most of them were named by the Jesuits, and all of them,
even although elected, owed their election entirely to their priests.
This sort of thought-suggested representation was the most fitting
for the Indians at the time,*2* and those who look into
the workings of a County Council of to-day cannot but think at times
that the majority of the councillors would have been better chosen
had the electorate had the benefit of some controlling hand,
though from what quarter it is difficult to see. The problem
which most writers on the Jesuits have quite misunderstood,
is how two Jesuits were able to keep a mission of several thousand Indians
in order, and to rule supreme without armed forces, or any means
of making their power felt or of enforcing obedience to their decrees.
Undoubtedly, the dangerous position in which the Indians stood,
exposed on one side to the Paulistas, and on the other
to the Spanish settlers, both of whom wished to take them as their slaves,
placed power in the Jesuits' hands: for the Indians clearly perceived
that the Jesuits alone stood between them and instant slavery.
Most controversialists who have opposed the Jesuits assert
that the Indians of the missions were, in reality, half slaves.
Nothing is further from the truth, if one consults the contemporary records,
and remembers the small number of the Jesuits. The work the Indians did
was inconsiderable, and under such conditions as to deprive it
of much of the toilsomeness which is incident to any kind of work.
The very essence of a slave's estate is being obliged to work
without remuneration for another man. Nothing was farther from the Indians
than such a state of things. Their work was done for the community,
and though the Jesuits, without doubt, had the full disposition
of all the money earned in commerce,*3* and of the distribution of the goods,
neither the money nor the goods were used for self-aggrandisement,
but were laid out for the benefit of the community at large.
The total population of the thirty towns is variously estimated
from one hundred and forty to one hundred and eighty thousand,*4*
and, curiously enough, it remained almost at the same figure
during the whole period of the Jesuit rule. This fact has been adduced
against the Jesuits, and it has been said that they could not have been
good rulers, or the population must have increased; but those who say so
forget that the Indians of Paraguay were never in great numbers,
and that most writers on the wild tribes, as Dobrizhoffer*5* and Azara,
remark their tendency never to increase.

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