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Many excellent works in French, and the celebrated `Christianismo Felice
nel Paraguay' of the Abbate Muratori in Italian, certainly exist.
But neither Father Charlevoix, the French historian of the missions,
nor Muratori was ever in Paraguay, and both their books contain
the faults and mistakes of men, however excellent and well intentioned,
writing of countries of which they were personally ignorant.
Both give a good account of the customs and regimen of the missions,
but both seem to have believed too readily fabulous accounts
of the flora and fauna of Paraguay.* The fact of having listened too readily
to a fable about an unknown animal in no way detracts from
the general veracity of an author of the beginning of the eighteenth century,
for in all other respects except natural history Charlevoix keeps
within the bounds of probability, though of course as a Jesuit
he holds a brief for the doings of the Company in Paraguay.
Muratori is more rarely led into extravagances, but is concerned in the main
with the religious side of the Jesuits, as the title of his book indicates.

--
* Though in this respect Charlevoix is not so credulous
as Padre Ruiz de Montoya and the older writers, he yet repeats
the story of the bird that cleans the alligator's teeth,
the magic virtues of the tapir's nails, and many others.
See Charlevoix, vol. i., bk. i., p. 27, Paris, 1756.
[The story of the bird that cleans the teeth of alligators
is very nearly true -- `Pluvianus aegyptius' has a symbiotic relationship
with crocodiles in parts of Africa, and similar relationships exist
throughout the natural world. -- A. L., 1998.]
--

Many other French writers, as Raynal, Montesquieu, and Voltaire,
have treated of Paraguay under Jesuit rule, but their writings are founded
on hearsay evidence. A German, Father Dobrizhoffer, stands alone.*
His delightful `History of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay',
is perhaps the most charming book dealing with the subject.
A simple and easy style, a keen habit of observation,
long acquaintance with the country, a zeal for the conversion of the infidel,
not only to Christianity, but to a more comfortable mode of life,
to which he adds a faith sufficient to move the Cordillera of the Andes,
but at the same time restricted by a common-sense and veracity
not always observable in religious writers, render Dobrizhoffer
a personal friend after the perusal of his writings.

--
* Dobrizhoffer's book was written in Latin, and printed in Vienna in 1784
under the title of `Historia de Abiponibus', etc. A German translation
by Professor Keil was published at Pesth in the same year.
The English translation is of the year 1822.
--

English is singularly barren in regard to the Jesuits in Paraguay.
Father Falconer, an English Jesuit, has left a curious and interesting book
(printed at Hereford in 1774), but he treats exclusively of what is now
the province of Buenos Ayres, the Falkland Islands, and of Patagonia.
As an Englishman and a Jesuit (a somewhat rare combination
in the eighteenth century), and as one who doubtless knew
many of the Paraguayan priests, his testimony would have been most important,
especially as he was a man of great information, much education,
an intrepid traveller, and, moreover, only entered the Company of Jesus
at a comparatively advanced age.

It is in Spanish, or in Latin by Spanish authors, that the greater portion
of the contemporary histories and accounts are to be found.*
Literatures, like other things, have their times of fashion.
At one time a knowledge of Spanish was as requisite as
some tincture of French is at present, and almost as universal.
Men from Germany, England, and Holland who met in a foreign country
communicated in that language. In the early portion of the century
Ticknor, Prescott, and Washington Irving rendered Spanish literature
fashionable to some degree.

--
* It is to be remembered that the Spanish colonists were as a rule
antagonistic to the Jesuits, and that, therefore, Spanish writers
do not of necessity hold a brief for the Jesuits in Paraguay.
Moreover, the names of Esmid (Smith), Fildo (Fields), Dobrizhoffer,
Cataldini and Tomas Bruno (Brown, who is mentioned as being
`natural de Yorca'), Filge, Limp, Pifereti, Enis, and Asperger,
the quaint medical writer on the virtues of plants found
in the mission territory, show how many foreign Jesuits were actually
to be found in the reductions of Paraguay. For more information
on this matter see the `Coleccion de Documentos relativos a/ la Expulsion
de los Jesuitas de la Republica Argentina y Paraguay',
published and collected by Francisco Javier Brabo, Madrid, 1872.
--

Later the historical researches of Sir William Stirling Maxwell
drew some attention to it. To-day hardly any literature of Europe
is so little studied in England. Still leaving apart
the purely literary treasures of the language, it is in Spanish,
and almost alone in Spanish, that the early history of America is to be found.

After the struggle for independence which finished about 1825,
some interest was excited in the Spanish-American countries,
stimulated by the writings of Humboldt; but when it became apparent
that on the whole those countries could never be occupied
by Northern Europeans, interest in them died out except for purposes connected
with the Stock Exchange. Yet there is a charm which attaches to them
which attaches to no other countries in the world. It was there
that one of the greatest dramas, and certainly the greatest adventure
in which the human race has engaged, took place. What Africa has been
for the last twenty years, Spanish America was three hundred years ago,
the difference being that, whereas modern adventure in Africa
goes on under full observation, and deals in the main with absolutely
uncivilized peoples, the conquest of South America was invested
with all the charm of novelty, and brought the conquerors into contact with
at least two peoples almost as advanced in most of the arts of civilization
as they were themselves.

When first Sebastian Cabot and Solis ascended the Parana,
they found that the Guaranis of Paraguay had extended
in no instance to the western shore of either of those rivers.
The western banks were inhabited then, as now, by the wandering Indians
of the still not entirely explored territory of the Gran Chaco.
Chaco* is a Quichua Indian word meaning `hunting' or `hunting-ground',
and it is said that after the conquest of Peru the Indian tribes
which had been recently subjugated by the Incas took refuge
in this huge domain of forest and of swamp.

--
* The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in his `Commentarios Reales' (en Madrid 1723,
en la oficina Real y a/ costa de Nicholas Rodriguez Franco,
Impressor de libros, se hallaran en su casa en la calle
de el Poc,o y en Palacio), derives the word from
the Quichua `Chacu/' = a surrounding. If he is right, it would then be
equivalent to the Gaelic `tinchel'. Taylor, the Water-poet,
has left a curious description of one of these tinchels.
It was at a tinchel that the rising under the Earl of Mar in the '15
was concocted.
--

Be that as it may, the Chaco Indians of to-day, comprising the remnants
of the Lulis, Tobas, Lenguas, Mocobios, and others, are almost as savage
as when first we hear of them in the pages of Alvar Nunez
and Hulderico Schmidel. These tribes the Jesuits on many occasions
attempted to civilize, but almost entirely without success, as the long record
of the martyrdom of Jesuit missionaries in the Chaco proves,
as well as the gradual abandonment of their missions there,
towards the second half of the eighteenth century.

Certain it is that at various places in the Chaco, in the quaint old maps
the Jesuits have left us, one reads `Mission de Santa Cruz de los Vilelas',
`Mission de la Concepcion de los Frontones', and others; but much
more frequently their maps are studded with crosses, and some such legend
as `Hic occisi sunt PP. Antonius Salinus et Petrus Ortiz Zarate'.*
It was only when the Jesuits encountered the more peaceful Guaranis
that they met with real success.

--
* See the curious map contained in the now rare work of P. Pedro Lozano,
entitled, `Descripcion Chorographica . . . del Gran Chaco, Gualamba', etc.
Also in the interesting collection of old maps published in 1872 at Madrid
by Francisco Javier Brabo.
--

What was the nature of their success, how durable it was,
what were the reasons which caused the expulsion of the order from America,
and especially from Paraguay, and what has been the result upon
the remainder of the Indians, it is my object to endeavour to explain.

A long residence in the river Plate, together with two visits to Paraguay,
in one of which I saw almost all the remnants of the Paraguayan missions
and a few of those situated in the province of Corrientes,
and in the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul, have given me
some personal acquaintance with the subject.*

--
* It is, of course, to be taken into consideration that my two journeys
in Paraguay were made after the great war which terminated in 1870,
after lasting four years; but the writings of Demersay
(`Histoire du Paraguay et des E/tablissements des Je/suites',
Paris, 1862), those of Brabo, and of Azara, show the deserted state
of the district of Misiones in the period from 1767,
the date of the expulsion of the Jesuits, to the middle of
the nineteenth century.
--

The actual condition of the rich district of Misiones (Paraguay)
at the time I visited it, shortly after the conclusion of the great war
between Paraguay and Brazil in 1870, does not enable me
to speak with authority on the condition of communities,
the guiding spirits of which were expelled as far back as the year 1767.
The actual buildings of the missions, the churches in a dismantled state,
have indeed survived; in many instances the tall date-palms
the Jesuits planted still wave over them. Generally the college was occupied
by the Indian Alcalde, who came out to meet the visitor on a horse
if he possessed one, with as much silver about the bridle and stirrups
as he could afford, clothed in white, with a cloak of red baize,
a large `jipi-japa' hat, and silver spurs buckled on his naked feet.
If he had never left the mission, he talked with wonder and respect
of the times of the Jesuits, and at the `oracion' knelt down
to pray wherever the sound of the angelus might catch him.
His children before bedtime knelt all in a row to ask his blessing.
If he had been to Asuncion, he probably remarked that the people
under those accursed priests were naught but animals and slaves,
and launched into some disquisition he had heard in the solitary cafe
which Asuncion then boasted. In the latter case, after much
of the rights of man and the duties of hospitality, he generally presented you
with a heavy bill for Indian corn and `pindo'* which your horse had eaten.
In the former, usually he bade you go with God, and, if you spoke of payment,
said: `Well, send me a book of Hours when you get to Asuncion.'

--
* `Cocos Australis'.
--

Of Indians, hardly any were left to judge of, for in the villages in which,
according to the reports furnished to Bucareli, the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres
at the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits, the population numbered
in the thirty towns of the missions one hundred and twenty thousand,*
a population of at most twenty thousand was to be found.
On every side the powerful vegetation had covered up the fields.
On ruined church and chapel, and on broken tower, the lianas climbed
as if on trees, creeping up the belfries, and throwing
great masses of scarlet and purple flowers out of the apertures
where once were hung the bells. In the thick jungles a few half-wild cattle
still were to be found. The vast `estancias', where once
the Jesuits branded two and three thousand calves a year,
and from whence thousands of mules went forth to Chile and Bolivia,
were all neglected. Horses were scarce and poor, crops few and indifferent,
and the plantations made by the Jesuits of the tree (`Ilex Paraguayensis')
from which is made the `yerba mate', were all destroyed.

--
* See the reports of the Marques de Valdelirios and others
in the publications of Francisco Javier Brabo, Madrid, 1872,
and in the `Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay,
Buenos-Ayres y Tucuman', por Dr. Don Gregorio Funes, Buenos Ayres, 1816.
--

In the vast forests, stretching to the Salto de Guayra,
a few scattered tribes, known as Caaguas, roamed through the thickets,
or encamped upon the streams. In the thirty towns,
once full of life and stir, in every one of which there was a church,
finer, as an old Spanish writer says, than any in Buenos Ayres,
there was naught but desolation and despair. The Indians either
had returned into the woods, been killed in the ceaseless revolutionary wars,
or had been absorbed into the Gaucho populations of Corrientes, Rio Grande,
Entre Rios, and of Santa Fe.

It may be that all Indian races are destined to disappear
if they come into contact with Europeans; certainly, experience would seem
to confirm the supposition. The policy of the Jesuits, however,
was based on isolation of their missions, and how this might have worked
is matter at least for speculation. It was on account of the isolation
which they practised that it was possible for the extravagant calumnies
which were circulated as to their rule and riches to gain belief.
It was on account of isolation that the first conflicts arose
betwixt them and the authorities, both clerical and lay. That the Jesuits
were more highly esteemed than the other religious orders in Spanish America
in the seventeenth century, the saying current in those days,
`Los demas van a/ un~a, los Jesuitas a/ una' -- i.e., The others get
all they can, but the Jesuits have one aim (the conversion of the Indians) --
seems to show.

It is not my purpose to deal with the probable reasons
which induced their expulsion in Europe. Suffice it to say that,
whatever crimes or misdemeanours they were guilty of,
they were never called on to answer before any tribunals,
and that in many instances they were treated, especially in Portugal,
with great cruelty and injustice.

The burning, at the age of eighty, of the unfortunate Malagrida in Lisbon
under the auspices of Pombal, for a book which it seems improbable
he could have written in prison at so great an age, and which, moreover,
was never brought into court, only supposed extracts from it being read,
may serve as an example. In order clearly to understand
the position of the Jesuits in America, and especially
in Paraguay and Bolivia, it is necessary to glance briefly
at the history of the first conquest of the river Plate.

The discovery of America opened up to Europe, and especially to Spain,
opportunities for expansion of national territory and individual advancement
which no epoch, either before or since, has equalled.
From a cluster of small States, struggling for existence
against a powerful enemy on their own soil, in a few years
Spain became the greatest empire of the world. The result was that
a spirit of adventure and a desire to grow rich speedily possessed
all classes. In addition to this, every Spaniard in America
during the first few years of the conquest seemed to consider himself,
to some extent, not only as a conqueror, but also as a missionary.

Now, missionaries and conquerors are men, on the whole, more imbued with
their own importance and sanctity, and less disposed to consider consequences,
than almost any other classes of mankind. The conjunction of the two in one
disposed the `conquistadores' of America to imagine that,
no matter how cruel or outrageous their treatment of the Indians was,
they atoned for all by the introduction of what they considered
the blessing of the knowledge of the true faith. It will be
seen at once that, if one can determine with accuracy
which of the many `faiths' preached about the world is actually
the true faith, a man who is in possession of it is acting properly
in endeavouring to diffuse it. The meanest soldier in the various armies
which left Spain to conquer America seems to have had no doubt
about the matter.

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who, as he himself relates,
came to America at the age of eighteen, and therefore could have had
little previous opportunity of studying theology, and who, moreover,
was unfitted to do so by the want of knowledge of Latin, to which
he himself confesses, yet at the end of his history of the conquest of Mexico,
one of the most interesting books ever written, has the following passage:

`But it is to be noted that, after God, it was we, the real conquerors,
who discovered them [the Indians] and conquered them; and from the first
we took away their idols, and taught them our holy doctrine,
and to us is due the reward and credit of it all, before any other people,
even though they be churchmen: for when the beginning is good,
the middle and ending is good, which the curious [i.e., attentive] reader
may see in the Christian polity and justice which we showed them in New Spain.

`And I will leave the matter, and tell the other benefits which, after God,
by our agency, came to the natives of New Spain.'*

--
* Bernal Diaz, `Historia de la Conquista de la Nueva Espan~a',
vol. iv., cap. 207, Madrid, 1796.
--

One would imagine, on reading the above extract, Bernal Diaz had never
killed an Indian in his life, and that he had sacrificed his prospects
in coming to Mexico solely to introduce `a Christian polity and justice'
amongst the inhabitants. Yet he was no hypocrite, but a stout
sagacious soldier, even kindly, according to his lights,
and with a love of animals uncommon in a Spaniard, for he has preserved
the names and qualities of all the horses and mares which came over
in the fleet from the Havana with Cortes.* The phrase, `despues de Dios'
(after God) occurs repeatedly in the writings of almost all
the `conquistadores' of America. Having, after God, conquered America,
the first action of the conquerors was to set about making their fortunes.
In those countries which produced gold and silver, as Mexico and Peru,
they worked the mines by the labour of the Indians,
the cruelties and hardships being so great that, in a letter of Philip II. to
the Come de Chinchon, the Viceroy of Peru, dated Madrid, April 30, 1639,
written fifty years after the discovery, he says: `These Indians flee,
become ill, and die, and have begun to diminish greatly in number,
and they will be finished soon unless an efficient remedy
is provided shortly.'

--
* Especially noting down the appearance and qualities of `el caballo Motilla',
the horse of Gonzalo de Sandoval. Thus does he minutely describe Motilla,
`the best horse in Castille or the Indies'. `El mejor caballo,
y de mejor carrera, revuelto a/ una mano y a\ otra que decian
que no se habia visto mejor en Castilla, ni en esa tierra
era castan~o acastan~ado, y una estrella en la frente,
y un pie izquierdo calzado, que se decia el caballo Motilla;
e/ quando hay ahora diferencia sobre buenos caballos,
suclen decir es en bondad tan bueno como Motilla.'
--

In Paraguay there were no mines, but there were other methods
of extracting money from the Indians. At the first conquest
Paraguay was not the little country bounded on the west by the Paraguay,
on the south by the Parana, on the north by the Aquidaban,
and on the east by Sierra of Mbaracavu, as it is at present.
On the contrary, it embraced almost all that immense territory
known to-day as the Argentine Confederation, some of the Republic of Uruguay,
and a great portion of Brazil, embracing much of the provinces of Misiones,
Rio Grande do Sul, Parana, and Matto Grosso, as well as Paraguay itself.
How the little country, twelve hundred miles from the sea,
came to give its name to such an enormous territory, and to have
the seat of government at Asuncion, demands some explanation.
Peru and Chile were discovered and occupied some time before
the eastern side of South America. Their riches naturally drew
great attention to them; but the voyage, first to Cartagena de Indias,
and then across the isthmus, and the re-embarkation again on the Pacific,
were both costly and arduous. It had been the ambition of all explorers
to discover some river which would lead from the Atlantic
to the mines of Peru and what is now Bolivia, then known as Alta Peru.
Of course, this might have been achieved by ascending the Amazon,
especially after the adventurous descent of it by Orellana,
of which Fray Gaspar de Carbajal has left so curious a description;
but, whether on account of the distance or for some other reason,
it never seems to have been attempted.

In 1526 Sebastian Cabot left Spain with three small vessels and a caravel
for the object of reaching the Moluccas or Spice Islands.
It was his purpose to reach them through the Straits of Magellan.
Being compelled by want of supplies to abandon his route, he entered
a broad estuary, and ascended it under the impression that he had discovered
another channel to the Pacific. He soon found his mistake,
and began to explore the surrounding country. Fifteen years before,
with the same object, Juan de Solis had entered the same estuary.
On the island of Martin Garcia he was killed by a Chana Indian,
and his expedition returned home. Hearing that there was much silver
at the head-waters, he had called it the Rio de la Plata.
If we take the head-waters of the river Plate to be situated in Bolivia,
there certainly was much silver there; but Cabot was unaware
that the head-waters were above two thousand miles from the estuary,
and he was not destined to come near them. He did go as far
as a point on the river Caracara, in what is now the province of Santa Fe,
and there he built a fort which he named Espiritu Santo,
the first Spanish settlement in that part of America.
Whilst at Espiritu Santo, several exploring parties were sent
to scour the country. One of them, under a soldier of the name of Cesar,
never returned. Tradition, always eager to make up to history
for its want of interest, asserted that after marching for years
they reached a city. Perhaps it was the mystic Trapalanda of which
the Gauchos used to discourse at night when seated round a fire of bones
upon the pampa. Perhaps some other, for enchanted cities and Eldorados
were plentiful in those days in America, alternating with occasional empires,
as that of Puytita, near the Laguna de los Xarayes, Manoa,
and the Ciudad de los Cesares, supposed to be situated near Arauco
in the Chilian Andes. However, one of the party actually returned
after years, and related his adventures to Ruy Diaz de Guzman,*
the first historian of Paraguay. Thus it was that the stream of adventurers
was ever seeking for a channel to the mines of Peru from the Atlantic coast.
Cabot appears to have ascended the Parana to the island of Apipe,
and then, returning, entered the river Paraguay. Having ascended
past what is now Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, Cabot encountered
Indians from the north who told him of the mines in Peru and in Bolivia,
probably unaware that Cabot knew of them already. At this point,
encouraged by what he heard, he gave the name of Rio de la Plata
to what had previously been known either as La Mar Dulce or El Rio de Solis.
Like most names which are wrongly given, it remained to testify
to the want of knowledge of the giver. Four years after, Cabot returned
to Spain, having failed to attract attention to his discoveries.
In the face of the wealth which was pouring in from the Peruvian mines,
another expedition started for the river Plate. Its General -- for in Spain
the title was used indifferently by land and sea -- was Don Pedro de Mendoza,
a gentleman of Guadix in Almeria, and a member of the household of Charles V.

--
* `La Argentina', included in the `Coleccion de Angelis', Buenos Ayres, 1836.
--

Don Pedro had seen service in the Italian wars, and seems to have been
a man of character and bravery, but wanting in the discretion
and the necessary tact essential in the founder of a colony.
In 1534 the expedition started, unfortunate almost from the first.
In a `certain island', as the historian of the expedition, Hulderico Schmidel,
a German or Flemish soldier, calls Rio Janeiro, a dispute occurred
between Don Pedro and his second in command, Juan de Osorio.
At a court-martial held upon Osorio, Don Pedro appears to have let fall
some remarks which Juan de Ayolas, the Alguazil Mayor (Chief Constable),
seems to have taken up as an order for instant execution.
This he performed upon the spot, plunging his dagger repeatedly into Osorio,
or, as Hulderico Schmidel has it, `sewing him up with cuts'
(`cosiendole a\ pun~aladas'). This murder or execution -- for who
shall tell when murder finishes and its legal counterpart begins? --
rendered Don Pedro very unpopular with all the fleet; for, as Schmidel has it
in his history,* `the soldiers loved Osorio.' To be loved by the soldiers
was the only chance a Spanish officer had in those times of holding his own.
Both Schmidel and Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who had both been common soldiers,
and who, curiously, both wrote histories, lose no occasion of vilifying
officers who used the soldiers hardly. It is true that Bernal Diaz
(who, unlike Schmidel, was a man of genius) does so with some discretion,
and always apparently with reason. Schmidel, on the other hand,
seems to have considered that any officer who interfered
between the soldiers and the Indians was a tyrant, and hence
his denunciation of Alvar Nunez, under whom he served.

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