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--
* Though 1747 was the date of the final founding of these reductions,
as early as 1697 about four hundred Indians were discovered
in the woods of the Taruma by Fathers Robles and Ximenes,
and established in the mission of Nuestra Senora de Fe;
but in the year 1721 they all returned to the woods,
a famine and an outbreak of the small-pox having frightened them.
After being again established in a mission, and again having left it,
in 1746, they were established definitely at San Joaquin.
** Dobrizhoffer calls the Tobatines by the name of Itatines.
Charlevoix and others refer to them as Tobatines.
--

Then, commenting upon the strangeness of all affairs sublunary,
he relates that accident at length effected what labour could not do.
In 1746 Father Sebastian de Yegros, after a search of forty days,
came on the Indians -- as it were, directed by Providence,
or, as we now say, accident. He built a town for them,
and, as Dobrizhoffer says, `assembled them in Christian polity.'
To the new-founded village cattle of every kind were sent,
with clothes -- useful, of course, to those who had never worn them --
axes, and furniture, and lastly a few music masters,* without whose help
those who build cities spend their toil in vain.

--
* `Account of the Abipones', p. 54.
--

To the new town (in which the simple-hearted priest remained eight years),
in 1753, came Don Carlos Morphi, an Irishman, and Governor of Paraguay;
and, having stayed five days with Dobrizhoffer, departed,
marvelling at the accuracy with which the new-made Christians
(`Cristianos nuevos') managed their double-basses, their flageolets,
their violins, and, in general, all their instruments,
whether of music or of war.

Modestly, but with prolixity, as befits a virtuous, God-fearing man,
the simple Jesuit relates a special instance of the way in which
he was enabled to work both for his own glory and for the profit of the Lord.
Not far from San Estanislao was situate the forest of M'baevera,
in which grew quantities of trees from which the `yerba-mate'
(Paraguayan tea) was made. To reach it was a work of pain and trouble,
for through the woods a track called a `picada' had to be cut;
the rivers were deep, bridgeless, and had to have branches strewed
along the track to give a footing to the struggling mules.*

--
* In 1873, when I visited the outskirts of this forest,
the conditions were similar to those which Dobrizhoffer describes,
with the addition that the depopulation of the country,
owing to the recent long war, had allowed the tigers to multiply
to an extraordinary degree, and my guide and myself,
after feeding our horses, had to sleep alternately,
the waker holding the two horses hobbled and bridled.
--

An expedition having been sent under a certain Spaniard called Villalba
to collect `yerba', came suddenly upon a deserted Indian hut.
As they had started quite unarmed, except with knives and axes
to cut down the boughs, a panic seized them, and, instead of collecting
any leaves,* they hurried back to San Estanislao. No sooner
did Dobrizhoffer hear the news than he set out to find the Indians,
with a few neophytes, upon his own account. Having travelled
the `mournful solitudes' for eighteen days, they came upon no sign of Indians,
and returned footsore and hungry, `the improvement of our patience
being our sole recompense.'

--
* The whole operation of collecting and preparing the leaves
of the `Ilex Paraguayensis', to make the `yerba-mate', was most curious.
Bands of men used to sally out for a six-months' expedition,
either by land with bullock-waggons, or up one of the rivers
in flat-bottomed boats, which were poled along against the rapid current
by crews of six to twelve men. Arrived at the `yerbal',
as the forest was called, they built shelters, after the fashion of those
in use amongst the larger of the anthropoid apes. Some roamed the woods
in search of the proper trees, the boughs of which they cut down
with machetes, whilst others remained and built a large shed of canes
called a `barbacoa'. On this shed were laid the bundles of boughs
brought from the woods, and a large fire was lighted underneath.
During forty-eight hours (if I remember rightly) the toasting went on;
then, when sufficiently dry, the leaves were stripped from the twigs,
and placed on a sort of open space of hard clay, something like
a Spanish threshing-floor. On this they were pounded fine,
and the powder rammed into raw-hide bags. This concluded the operations,
and the `yerba' was then ready for the `higgling of the market'.
--

He himself walked all the way, and `often barefoot',
suffering `what neither I can describe nor yet my reader credit.'
The missionary calling has undergone considerable change since 1750.
Hardships which the greater faith or stronger constitutions
of the missionaries of the last century rendered endurable
are now largely fallen out of fashion, and your missionary
seldom walks barefoot, even in a wood, because to do so would give offence,
and bring discredit on the society for which he works.

Though unsuccessful in his search that year, Dobrizhoffer,
not daunted by his barefoot marching, set out again upon the Gospel trail
next spring. After another journey of some twenty days,
during the whole course of which it rained incessantly,
he came on a community of seemingly quite happy sylvans,
whom he proceeded to convert. In the first hut he met with
there were eight doors, and in it dwelt some sixty Indians --
a palm-built, grass-thatched phalanstery, with hammocks slung
from the rude beams, in which `these heathen' used to sleep.
Each separate family had its own fire, on the hearth of which
stood mugs and gourds and pots of rudely-fashioned earthenware.
Naked and not ashamed `these savages', and the men wore upon their heads
high crowns of parrot feathers. For arms they carried bows and arrows,
and the first man Dobrizhoffer saw was holding a dead pheasant in one hand,
and in the other a short bow. In the woods around the phalanstery
was an `amazing' quantity of maize, of fruits of divers sorts, and of tobacco.
From the hives which the wild bees make in hollow trees, they collected honey
in large quantities, which served them (at least so Dobrizhoffer says)
for meat and drink alike.

Their name for the god they worshipped was Tupa, but `of that God
and his commandments they care to know but little.' This sounds ambiguous,
and would appear at first sight as if the confidence betwixt
the creators and their God had been but slight. Perhaps the ambiguity
may be set down to the translator* who turned the Latin
in which the memoirs first were formed into the vulgar tongue.

--
* `Traduttore traditore', as the proverb says.
--

A thing remarkable enough when one considers how prone mankind is
to act differently was that, although the Itatines knew an evil spirit
under the name of Ana, yet they paid little adoration to him,
apparently content to know as little of him and his laws
as they did of their God.

Those hapless, harmless folk, as innocent of God and devil, right and wrong,
and all the other things which by all rights they should have known,
as they are said to be implanted in the mind of man, no matter what his state,
seem to have lived quite happily in their involuntary sin.* But Dobrizhoffer,
in his simple faith and zeal for what he thought was right, wept bitter tears
when he thought upon their unregenerate state.

--
* Charlevoix says, in his `Histoire de la Nouvelle France',
speaking of the Indians in general: `L'expe/rience a fait voir
qu'il e/toit plus a\ propos de les laisser dans leur simplicite/
et dans leur ignorance, que les sauvages peuvent e^tre des bons Chre/tiens
sans rien prendre de notre politesse et de notre fac,on de vivre,
ou du moins qu'il falloit laisser faire au tems pour les tirer
de leur grossie\rete/, qui ne les empe^che pas de vivre
dans une grande innocence, d'avoir beaucoup de modestie,
et de servir Dieu avec une pie/te/ et une ferveur, que les rendent
tre\s propres aux plus sublimes ope/rations de la gra^ce.'
Had more people thought with Charlevoix, and not been too anxious
to draw savages incontrovertibly to our `politesse' (sic) and `fac,on',
and left more to time (`au tems'), how much misery might have been saved,
and how many interesting peoples preserved! For, in spite of the domination
of the Anglo-Saxon race, it might have been wise to leave other types,
if only to remind us of our superiority.
--

A sycophantic Guarani from the reductions then took up his parable,
and said: `God save ye, brothers; we are come to visit you as friends.
This father-priest is God's own minister, and comes to visit you,
and pray for your estate.' An aged Indian interrupted him,
saying he did not want a father-priest, and that St. Thomas in the past
had prayed sufficiently, as fruits of every sort abounded in the land.
The Indian, in his unsophisticated way, seems to have thought
the presence of a priest acted but as manure on the ground where he abode;
but the Jesuit, almost as simple-minded as himself, took it in kindliness,
and journeyed with the Indian to a large village about three days away.
Arrived there, all the inhabitants of the place sat in a circle
round the missionary. They appeared (he says) in so much modesty and silence
`that I seemed to behold statues, and not live Indians.'
To awaken their attention he played upon the viol d'amore,
and, having thus captured their ears, began to preach to them.
The good priest probably believed all that he said, for, after dwelling
on the perils of the road, he said: `My friends, my errand
is to make you happy.' It did not seem to him that their free life in woods,
in which abounded maize, fruits, and tobacco, with game of every kind,
could possibly have induced content. Content, as Christians know,
comes but with faith, and a true knowledge of the dogma
is above liberty. Kindly, but muddle-headedly, he deplored their lot,
their want of clothes, their want of interest in their God,
their lack of knowledge of that God's commands. Then, coming to the point,
he spoke of hell, and told the astonished Indians that it was quite impossible
for them to avoid its flames, unless, taught by a priest,
they came to know God's law. He then briefly (as he says)
explained the mysteries of our faith. They listened rapt,
except that `the boys laughed a little' when he spoke of hell.*
Nothing more painful than to see a child laughing unconscious of its peril
in the traffic of a crowded street, and we may well believe
that the kind-hearted Dobrizhoffer shuddered at the laughter of these children
when he reflected that had he taken the wrong path,
crossing the marshes or in the woods, the laughers had been damned.
Much more he said to them after exhausting hell, and, to `add weight'
to his oration, presented each of them with scissors, knives,
glass beads, axes, small looking-glasses, and fishing-hooks, for he knew well
that sermons which end in `give me' have but a small effect.

--
* Hell not infrequently seems to have struck the Indians as a joke,
for Charlevoix relates that when the first missionaries
expatiated on its flames to the Chirignanos, they said,
`If there is fire in hell, we could soon get enough water
to put it out.' This answer scandalized the good priest,
who could not foresee that the flames of Tophet would be extinguished
without the necessity of any other waters than those of indifference.
--

He says himself quite frankly, `I seemed to have borne down all before me
because I had mingled my oration with a copious largess.'*
Glass beads and looking-glasses have from the time when
the first Christian missionary preached to the Indians
been potent factors in conversion, and still to-day do yeoman service
in the great work of bringing souls to God.

--
* `Account of the Abipones', p. 74.
--

Seated around the fire `smoking tobacco through a reed',
and pondering perchance over the mysteries of the new expounded faith,
the `cacique' of the Itatines took up his parable.

`I have' (said he) `conceived an affection for the father-priest,
and hope to enjoy his company throughout my life. My daughter
is the prettiest girl in the whole world, and I am now resolved
to give her to the father-priest, that he may always stay with me,
and with my family, here in the woods.'

The Indians from the missions broke into laughter, after the fashion
of all those who, knowing but a little, think that they are wise.
The `cacique', who knew nothing, was astounded that any man,
no matter what his calling, could live without a wife, and asked the Jesuit
if the strange thing was true. His doubts being satisfied, they fell
discoursing on the nature of the Deity, a subject not easy of exhaustion,
and difficult to treat of through the medium of an interpreter.
`We know' (the `cacique' said) `that there is someone who dwells in heaven.'
This vagueness put the missionary upon his mettle, and he set out at once
to expatiate upon the attributes of God. They seemed to please the `cacique',
who inquired, `What is it that displeases, then, the dweller in the skies?'

Lies, calumnies, adulteries, thefts, all were enumerated,
and received the Indian's assent; but the injunction not to kill
provoked a bystander to ask if it was not permitted to a man to slay those
who attacked his life. He added, `I have endeavoured so to do
since the first day I carried arms.'

`Fanatical casuist' is a stout argument in the mouth of a man
nurtured upon Suarez and Molina, but no doubt it did good service,
and Dobrizhoffer uses it when speaking of the chief. But Dobrizhoffer
did better work than mere theological disputation, for he prevailed upon
eighteen of the Indians to accompany him to the settlement of San Joaquin;
and after having `for some months tried the constancy' of a youth
called Arapotiyu, he admitted him to the sacrament of baptism,
and `not long afterwards united him in marriage according to
the Christian rites.' It is evident that baptism should precede marriage;
but it is an open question as to the duration of the interval
between the two ceremonies, and we may be permitted to wonder whether,
after all, both might not be advantageously dispensed at the same time.
In the case of Arapotiyu the system worked satisfactorily,
for he `surpassed in every kind of virtue, and might have been taken
for an old disciple of Christianity.' Even `old Christians' occasionally,
despite their more laborious induction into the rites and customs
of their faith, have fallen from grace, perhaps from the undue prolongation
of the term between the ceremonies.

In the case of another youth (one Gato) things did not go
so smoothly, for though he, too, by his conduct obtained
both baptism and Christian wedlock, Dobrizhoffer adds without comment,
`not many months after he died of a slow disease.'* The slow disease
was not improbably the nostalgia of the woods, from which
the efforts of the good missionary had so successfully withdrawn him.

--
* Padre del Techo, in his `History of Paraguay', says of the wood Indians
that `they died like plants which, grown in the shade,
will not bear the sun.'
--

The labours of the Jesuits in the three isolated missions
in the north of Paraguay* seem to have been as successful
as those in the Chaco were unfortunate. In dealing with
the wild equestrian tribes of the Gran Chaco, the system of the Jesuits
was not so likely to achieve success as amongst the peaceful Guaranis.
That of the Spanish settlers was entirely ineffectual, and has remained so
down to the present day, when still the shattered remnants of the Lules,
Lenguas, Mocobios, and the rest, roam on their horses or in their canoes
about the Chaco and its rivers, having received no other benefits
from contact with the European races but gunpowder and gin.

--
* San Joaquin, San Estanislao, and Belen.
--




Chapter IX

The Spanish and Portuguese attempt to force new laws on the Indians --
The Indians revolt against them -- The hopeless struggle goes on
for eight years -- Ruin of the missions



The missions in the Chaco and the Taruma, all founded between 1700 and 1760,
the last (Belen) but seven years before the expulsion of the Jesuits
from America, go far towards disproving the allegations of some writers,*1*
that the apostolic energy of the first foundations had decayed,
and that the Jesuits were merely living on the good name of the first founders
in the beginning of the past century. But let the zeal of any class of men
be what it may, if they oppose themselves to slavery and at the same time
are reported to have lands in which is gold, and resolutely
exclude adventurers from them, their doom is sealed.
Both crimes were set down to the Jesuits. Writing in 1784,
or twenty years after the expulsion of his order, Dobrizhoffer refers
to the Indians of the reductions as `being in subjection*2*
only to the Catholic King and the royal Governors, not in dreaded slavery
amongst private Spaniards as the other Indians;' and Montoya, Lozano,
and Del Techo, writing in earlier times, all confirm the statement,
which is also doubly confirmed by the various royal edicts on the subject.*3*
The reports of gold-mines, too, had never ceased, although they had been
repeatedly disproved, and those, together with the stand for freedom
for the Indians, led to the events which finally brought about
the expulsion of the Order from the territories where they had worked so long.

--
*1* Notably those of Azara.
*2* `Account of the Abipones', p. 15.
*3* As that of Philip V., from the palace of Buen Retiro, December 28, 1743,
and his two letters to the Jesuits of Paraguay. Also the previous edict
obtained by Montoya from Philip II., and by the various additions
on the same head made from time to time to the code
known as `The Laws of the Indies'.
--

In 1740, Gomez de Andrade, Governor for the King of Portugal
in Rio de Janeiro, being one of those who was convinced
that the reason why the Jesuits guarded their territories so religiously
was that they had mines, bethought him of a plan. His plan,
like most of those conceived on the fantastic reasons
which are called `of State', took no account of sentiment, and therefore,
as mankind are and will ever be a thousand times more influenced by sentiment
than by hard reasoning, was from the first bound of itself to fail.

The colony of Sacramento upon the river Plate had for a hundred years
been the source of conflict between the Spaniards and the Portuguese.*1*
Situated as it was almost in front of Buenos Ayres, it served
as a depot for smugglers; and, moreover, being fortified,
menaced the navigation both of the Parana and Paraguay.
Slavers from England, Holland, and the German ports crowded the harbour.
Arms of all kinds were stored there, and were distributed to all adventurers
who meditated assaults against the crown of Spain. Twice or three times
it had been taken and restored, the Indians of the missions
always rendering most efficient help. At the time of which I write (1740)
it had passed again by treaty under the dominion of the Portuguese,
but still remained a standing menace to the Spaniards.
Gomez Andrade advised the court of Lisbon to exchange it against
the seven reductions*2* of the Uruguay, and thus at once
to secure a country rich in gold and to adjust the frontier
at the river Uruguay. Nothing appears so simple to a statesman
as to exchange one piece of territory for another. A parchment signed
after some international negotiations, and the whole thing is done.
If, though, as happened in this case, one of the territories
contains a population such as that which inhabited the seven towns
upon the Uruguay, and which has conquered the country in which it lives
from virgin forest, and defended it against all comers, it sometimes happens
that the unreasonable inhabitants, by clinging to their homes,
defeat the statesmen's plans. Yet statesmen, once embarked in any plan,
do not stick at such trifles as the affection of a people for its home,
but quietly pursue their path, knowing that that which is conceived
by ministers of State must in the end be beneficial to mankind.
Without this patriotic abnegation of their feelings, no statesmen
would be worthy of the name. Indifference to the feelings of others
is perhaps the greatest proof a public man can give of his attachment
to the State. After negotiations, lasting many years,
in 1750 a treaty was signed between Portugal and Spain agreeing that
the former should give up the Colonia del Sacramento to the Spaniards
in exchange for the seven Jesuit towns upon the Uruguay, and that both nations
should furnish a commission to fix the frontiers of the two nations
on the Uruguay.*3* On February 15, 1750, the Spanish court
sent to the Jesuits of the seven towns to prepare their Indians
to leave their homes and march into the forests, and there found new towns.

--
*1* Since the discovery of America the Spaniards and the Portuguese
had been in constant rivalry throughout the south-eastern portion.
Their frontier, between what are now Brazil and Argentina, had never
been defined. In 1494 King John II. of Castile concluded a treaty
signed at Tordesillas with the King of Portugal, placing the dividing-line
between the countries two hundred leagues more to the westward
than that of the famous Bull of Pope Alexander VI. (May 4, 1493),
which placed it at one hundred leagues west of Cape Verd,
cutting the world in two from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole.
From the signing of the treaty of Tordesillas trouble began
in South America between the Powers, as by that treaty a portion of Brazil
came into the power of Portugal.
*2* These were the towns of San Angel, San Nicolas, San Luis, San Lorenzo,
San Miguel, San Juan, and San Borja.
*3* According to the 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia
(in the article titled "Reductions of Paraguay") this treaty,
signed in secret on 15 January 1750, was a deliberate assault
on the Jesuit Order by the Ministers of Spain and Portugal,
the latter of whom, Pombal, is said to have been responsible
also for the false and libelous `Histoire de Nicolas I.,
Roy du Paraguai et Empereur des Mamalus' (referred to in this chapter)
which was distributed throughout Europe as another attack on the Jesuits.
As anyone familiar with the situation could see that the Indians
would not be happy about the treaty's requirement to abandon their homes,
it was a well-calculated, though detestable, move. -- A. L., 1998.
--

At that date Francois Retz was General of the Jesuits, and on him devolved
the duty of communicating the orders of the courts of Spain and Portugal
to the Jesuits in the missions of the Uruguay. Father Bernard Neyderdorffer
was the man on whom the Provincial of Paraguay (Father Barreda)
imposed the task of communicating to the Indians the wishes of the two courts.
Though he had lived already thirty-five years in the missions,
and knew the Indians well, and was respected by them as a father,
he seems at first to have shrunk from such a task. When the news was brought
to the towns upon the Uruguay, none of the Indians at first would credit it.
The `caciques' (chiefs) of the seven towns declared that they
would rather die than leave their native place. Nothing was heard
but lamentations and expressions of hatred of the Portuguese,
mingled with denunciations of the Jesuits themselves, who the poor Indians
not unnaturally believed were in league with Spain to sell them
to the Portuguese. But in a little the clamours turned to action,
and, not content with refusing to obey the edict of the two courts,
the Indians broke into revolt. Two most important narratives
of this revolt exist, one by Father Cardiel and one by Father Ennis,
both of whom were witnesses of the events. After considerable negotiations,
which lasted till 1753,*1* the united troops of Portugal and Spain advanced
into the mission territory to arrange the occupation of the ceded towns.
The commissioners of the two nations were, for Spain,
the Marques de Valdelirios, and for Portugal General Gomez Freyre de Andrade,
and both of them appear to have come to America already prejudiced
against the Jesuits. On March 24, 1753, Andrade wrote to Valdelirios,
almost before he could have heard anything definite about
the mission territory, to which they both were strangers,
telling him that opposition was to be expected, and that the Jesuits
were urging the Indians to revolt.*2* The opposition that
the two commissioners so confidently hoped to find,*3*
and which contemporary writers have set forth in its true colours
as but the revolt of ignorant Indians rendered desperate
by being arbitrarily dispossessed of lands which they themselves
had settled and held for almost a hundred years, was fraught
with serious consequences, not only to the Jesuits in Paraguay,
but to the Order throughout the world at large. For years their enemies
had said the Jesuits were endeavouring to set up in the missions
a State quite independent of the Spanish crown. By their own conduct
the Jesuits to some extent had given colour to the report,
for by excluding (in the interest of the Indians) all Spaniards
from the mission territories, it looked as if they were at work
at something which they wished to keep a secret, as no one at that time
deemed it a serious plea to enter into any line of conduct
for the good of Indians, whom in general the Spanish settlers looked upon
as beasts. That it was the best policy they could have possibly pursued
under the circumstances is proved abundantly by the code of instructions
laid down by Don Francisco Bucareli, the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres,
under whose auspices the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1760 was carried out.
In that code occurs the following article:*4* `You will not allow
any strangers, of whatever estate, quality, or condition they may be,
to reside in the town (that is, of the missions), even if they be artisans,*5*
and much less that they deal or take contracts in them
either for themselves or for others, and you shall take especial care
that the Laws of the Indies be executed, and specially those
which are contained in Article 27 of Book IX.;*6* and also
if any Portuguese deserters or other persons of whatever conditions
should come to the towns, you will instantly conduct them to this city,
taking every precaution to prevent their escape.'

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