Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

C >> Cunninghame Graham >> A Vanished Arcadia,




--
* Vol. iii., book v., cap. viii., p. 130 (`Ensayo de la Historia Civil
del Paraguay', etc.): `Los Caciques y corregidores que acompan~aban
a Bucareli, habian sido alhagados por todos los artificios de sugestion.
Esto a/ la verdad, no era mas que coronar las victimas,
que se destinaban al sacrificio.'
** Chapter IX.
--

At the time of forming his constitution he had been gone but scarce a year
from Buenos Ayres, and yet he writes* complaining bitterly of what
was happening in the missions of Paraguay. He points out that all his trouble
will have been in vain `if the Governor and his lieutenants are not stimulated
to address themselves to the service of God and of the King,
with that zeal which everyone should impart to his duty.'
Then, after a puff preliminary of the beauty of freedom, human and Divine,
he sets forth how the Indians are in future to be ruled.
First, as in duty bound, he points out that anything savouring of communism
is against the laws of Heaven and of man; that the Indians
in their semi-communism were really slaves, the industrious
working for the idle, and so forth; that their clothes were scanty;
that they were not allowed to freely mix with Spaniards, and were kept
a race apart. Then like a prudent statesman having made his apologia
`pro existentia sua', and blown off much virtuous steam, he comes to business,
and business, as we know, is the great soberer of theorists,
no matter on what side they theorize.

--
* Brabo, p. 304.
--

After the article to which I have referred in Chapter IX. comes this
most curious paragraph, taken in connection with the inalienable right which,
according to himself, the Indians had of free communication
with the outer world:*1* `And because I am informed that many Indians
who have been absent in the army of the Portuguese, and have resided
for lengthened periods in Rio Pardo, Viamont and other parts,
have returned to their towns, you will take care that all these
with their families shall be removed to those (towns) either
in the interior or distant from those frontiers, as it is not convenient
that they should remain on them (the frontiers) or close to them;
and thus you will proceed successively with the Indians who return,
without leaving one, in order to avoid any chance of communication,
which might be most prejudicial.' Surely a satire on
his own abuse of the Jesuits for keeping the Indians mewed up from intercourse
with the outside world. It may be that he had perceived the Indians
were not fit to hold their own; indeed, it is certain he had done so,
for on p. 326 he writes, `It is not convenient to leave them (the Indians)
entire liberty,*2* for it would be in the extreme fatal and prejudicial
to their interests, because the astuteness and sagacity of the Spaniards
would triumph easily over their rusticity.' `Sagacity' is
an ingenious euphuism, and might well be used with good effect
in the like circumstances, when occasion serves, to-day.
But as no single article of any document set forth by any Government
can be straightforward and single in its purpose, and as all laws are made
with an eye upon some party presently in power, after the paragraph
just quoted, on the next page occurs the following sentence
under the head of `Commerce with the Spaniards is to be free'.*3*
`It is laid down that between the Indians and the Spaniards
commerce should be free, in order that mutual dealings
should unite them in friendship.' Therefore to the ordinary mind
it is impossible to make out what really was intended,
and whether commerce was to be free or not. Those little differences apart,
the constitution ran entirely upon Jesuit lines. That semi-communism
which was so prejudicial during the Jesuits' rule was formally re-organized
in chapter iv. of the constitution (p. 343) the instant that their power
was placed in other hands. Even the prohibition to the Spaniards
to enter the Jesuit towns, and reside there, was formally kept up
in chapter iii., with the sole alteration that for three months of the year
they might reside amongst the Indians on certain well-defined conditions
most prolixly set forth. So that it will be seen that,
if the Jesuits did ill, as usual, any ill they did was carefully perpetuated
by their successors, and, quite as naturally, all that they strove to do
in favour of the Indians was most carefully undone.

--
*1* Brabo, `Coleccion de Documentos', p. 320: `Y porque estoy
informado que muchos Indios de los que se habian ausentado
con las tropas Portuguesas, y que han residido por gran tiempo
en el Rio Pardo, Viamont, y otras partes se han restituido a sus pueblos,
ciudaran . . . de que todos estos con sus families seran traslados
a los mas interiores o distantes de aquellas fronteras
por no ser conveniente se mantengan en ellas o sus inmediaciones,
y asi en lo sucesivo lo ejecutaran . . . con los Indios que se restituyan,
sin dejar alguno, para evitar todo motivo de communicacion
que puede ser muy prejudicial.'
*2* `No conviene dejarles una entera libertad, que seria por extremo
fatal y prejudicial a/ sus intereses pues la astucia y sagacidad
de los espan~oles triumfaria facilemente de su rudeza.'
*3* Brabo, `Bucareli's Instructions', p. 327: `Que el commercio
de los espan~oles ha de ser libre.'
--




Chapter XI

Conclusion



It is the fashion of some to say that history, of whatever nature,
can but be written dispassionately at a period sufficiently removed
from the events of which it treats to have allowed the heat of passion
to evaporate. This is as false as almost every other dictum which men
take on trust, forgetting that to have passed into the proverbial stage
a saying must have been foolish at the start, in order that it
should have got itself commended by the majority of mankind.

The heat of passion never evaporates in regard to events
which at the epoch of their acting caused great controversies.
From writings of contemporaries the coolest-headed take a bias,
in the same way that men unconsciously pass on the microbes of disease
to their best friends. Only from inventories and rolls of court,
State Papers and the like is it possible to get unbiassed matter,
and even then figures, those chief deceivers of mankind,
can be well cooked for or against, according to the bias of the man
who draws them up. Still, when they are drawn up by enemies, they often
quite unwittingly show out the truth. In a letter dated October 30, 1768,
Bucareli sends a list to Aranda of the effects of many of the Jesuits
taken from Paraguay and sent by him to Spain. The list itself speaks volumes
in defence of the Jesuits in Paraguay. Whatever may have been their faults,
the Governor himself (or even Charles III.) could not have charged
upon the captured priests that they had got together a large stock of property
during their mission life.*1* The first upon the list, P. Pedro Zabaleta,
took ten shirts, two pillow-cases, two sheets, three pocket-handkerchiefs,
two pairs of shoes, two pairs of socks, and a pound and a half of snuff.
The others were in general less well set up with shirts,*2* some few
had cloaks, and one (P. Sigismundo Griera) a nightcap; but all of them
had their snuff, the only relic of their luxurious mission life.
Manuel Vergara, their Provincial, testifies in a paper sent with the list
that most of the clothes were taken from the common stock,
and all the snuff. What sort of treatment they endured upon their passage
in the two frigates `San Fernando' and `San Nicolas' is quite unknown,
but certainly their luggage could not have been in the way;
and for their snuff, no doubt they husbanded it with care
during the long two months, which in those days was thought a record run.*3*
In the missions which they had so long tended with such care,
giving their muddle-headed love to the Indians in their Machiavelian way,
all was confusion in the space of six short months.
Dean Funes and Don Feliz de Azara*4* are the only two contemporary writers
who treat of the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay
outside the official world. The Dean, a man of the old school,
was kindly and humane, well educated, and, having been brought up in Tucuman
amongst an Indian population, looked on the Indians in a kindly way
as fellow-creatures, though differing in essential points from races
which had been for centuries exposed to civilization and its effects.
His description of the Indians has for veracity and observation
not often been surpassed. `Those natives*5* (he says) are of a pale colour,
well made, and well set up. Their talent and capacity
are capable of much advancement. Though they lack invention in themselves,
yet are they excellent in imitation. Idleness seems natural to them,
although it may be more the effect of habit than of temperament;
their inclination towards acquiring knowledge is decided,
and novelty has its full effect upon their minds. Ambitious of command,
they acquit themselves with honour in the positions to which they may attain.
Eloquence is held amongst them in the first place, and avarice in no respect
degrades their minds. An injurious word offends them more than punishments,
which they solicit rather than undergo the former outrage.
Incontinency in their women they look upon but with indifference,
and even husbands are little sensible to acts of infidelity.
Conjugal love has but slight influence upon the treatment
which they give their wives. Fathers of families care for their sons
but little. The serenity of mind of all these Indians
in the midst of the greatest troubles is without equal in the world;
never a sigh with them takes off the bitterness of suffering.'

--
*1* The Paraguayan Jesuits were allowed to take away
all their personal property, and it appears that they did so.
*2* Cayetano Ibarguen had only two, P. Lorenzo Balda three, and so on
(Brabo, `Coleccion de Documentos', p. 388).
*3* So late as 1818 Rengger, in his `Essai Historique sur la Re/volution
du Paraguay', etc., talks of arriving in Buenos Ayres
`apre\s un court trajet de soixante jours.' From thence to Corrientes
he took seven weeks, but does not say if the passage was considered
short or long.
*4* Funes, `Ensayo Critico de la Historia Civil del Paraguay', etc.;
Don Feliz de Azara, `Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay', etc.;
and also `Memorias sobre el estado rural del Rio de la Plata en 1801'.
*5* `Ensayo de la Historia Civil', vol. i., book ii., p. 341.
--

No one who knows the Indians but must confess that Dean Funes
had made a study of their character deeper than is his own.
Azara, on the other hand, was a man of science; his books
upon the birds and quadrupeds of Paraguay still hold the field,
and are esteemed for curious and minute observation and accuracy
as to scientific facts. The man himself was an extremely
able writer, a captain in the Spanish navy, and well educated.
For twenty years he served in Paraguay and in the River Plate,
with credit to himself and profit to the country which he served.
Educated as he was in the school of the Encyclopaedists,
amongst the strictest of the pharisees of Liberalism,
to him the very name of Jesuit was anathema. After the fashion of his kind,
he seemed unable to distinguish between the scheming Jesuits
at European courts and the simple and hard-working missionaries in Paraguay.
All were anathema, and therefore all their system was repugnant to him;
and though a kindly man, as is set forth abundantly in all his works,
he never paused to think that there could be a difference between his ideal
free Liberal citizen, voting and exercising all his right of citizenship
in a free commonwealth, after the fashion of a dormouse
freely exercising his natural functions in the receiver of an air-pump,
and a simple Indian of the Paraguayan woods.

Freedom to him, as it has been to many theorists, was an abstract thing,
possessing which a man, even though starving, must in its mere possession
find true happiness. He never paused to inquire, as even Bucareli did,
if the mission Indians could hold their own under free competition
with the `sagacity' of the surrounding Spanish settlers.
Therefore he is the authority whom Liberals always quote
against the system of the Jesuits. When he inveighs against
their semi-communism, the modern Liberal claps his hands,
and sees a kindred Daniel come to judgment, as he would do to-day
if in Damaraland the Germans set up a Socialistic settlement
amongst the negro tribes, and some Liberal economist denounced it
with an oath. Azara quite forgets that, as Dean Funes says,
the `sentiment of property was very weak amongst the Indians,'
and that their minds were `not degraded by the vice of avarice.'
Still, Azara was an honest man -- a keen observer and impartial,
as far as his upbringing and the tenets he had imbibed in youth
permitted him to be. Upon the question of the Jesuits
he was entirely prejudiced, although few have stood up more stoutly
to condemn the faulty system which the Spaniards pursued towards the Indians
in both Americas. But on account of his political proclivities
Azara is quite silent as to the state into which the missions fell
after the Jesuits had been expelled. No doubt he thought that,
once their faulty system was removed, the Indians would soon become
what he judged civilized, and hold their own with those around them,
though of another race and blood.

Funes, upon the contrary, fully exposes all the rapacity and incompetence
of the new shepherds left by Bucareli to guard the Jesuits' sheep.

`Ignorant* of Guarani, and without patience to acquire it,
confusion reigned in the missions as in a tower of Babel,'
and he goes on to say `an imperious tone of order was substituted
for the paternal manner (of the Jesuits), and as a deaf man who cannot hear
has to be taught by blows, that was the teaching they (the Indians)
had to bear.' Shortly, he says, `a wall of hatred and contempt
began to rise between the Indians and their masters; and the priests,
who by the virtue of their office ought to have been the ministers of peace,
being without influence to command . . . and not entirely irreproachable
in their ministry . . . added themselves to the discord and dissension
which arose.'

--
* Funes, `Ensayo de la Historia Civil', etc., book v., cap. viii., p. 133.
--

Bucareli, as soon as he knew what was going on, advised that all the priests
appointed by himself should be replaced by others. This accordingly was done,
but it was even then too late: the missions went from bad to worse;
of the vast quantities of cattle few were left; the priests followed
the example of their prototypes Hofni and Phineas, went about armed,
took Indian mistresses, and neglected all religious duties,
treating the Indians after the fashion of the Spaniards in the settlements.
Thus the Arcadian life, which had subsisted more than two hundred years,
in the brief space of two short years was lost.

The vast estancias, in which at the expulsion more than
a million head of cattle pastured,* were but bare plains,
in which the cattle that were left had all run wild or perished from neglect.
Wild beasts roamed round the outskirts of the half-deserted towns.
A dense low scrub of yatais and of palmettos invaded all the pasture-lands,
and in the erstwhile cultivated fields rank weeds sprang up, and choked
the crops which in the Jesuits' times had made the mission territories
the most productive of the American possessions of the Spanish crown.
The churches were unserved, and in the evening air no more
the hymns resounded, nor did the long white-robed processions
headed by a cross pass to the fields to peaceful labour,
marshalled by their priests. The fruit-trees round the missions
were either all cut down for firewood or had degenerated,
and the plantations of the Ilex Paraguayensis,** from which they made
their `yerba', which had been brought from the up-country forests
with vast pains, were in decay, and quite uncultivated.

--
* Brabo, `Inventarios', Appendix, p. 669.
** Demersay (`Histoire du Paraguay'), writing in 1847,
says of the mission of La Cruz he saw a few trees still standing
in a miserable state.
--

The Indian population had almost disappeared within the space
of eight-and-twenty years.* The Guaranis collected from the woods
with so much effort to the missionary, then guided down the Parana
by the most noble and self-sacrificing of their priests, Ruiz Montoya,
and after that redeemed with blood from the fierce Mameluco bands,
had shrunk away before the baneful breath of unaccustomed contact
with the civilizing whites.

--
* Funes, `Ensayo de la Historia Civil', etc., book vi., cap. viii., p. 395.
--

The simple ceremonious, if perhaps futile, mission-life had withered up
at the first touch of vivifying competition -- that competition
which has made the whole world gray, reducing everything and everyone
to the most base and commonest denominator.

The self-created goddess Progress was justified by works,
and all the land left barren, waiting the time when factories
shall pollute its sky, and render miserable the European emigrants,
who, flying from their slavery at home, shall have found it waiting for them
in their new paradise beyond the seas.

The world, it would appear, is a vast class-room, and its Creator
but a professor of political economy, apparently unable
to carry out his theories with effect. Therefore, to us,
the Western Europeans, he has turned for help, and upon us
devolved the task of extirpating all those peoples upon whom
he tried his 'prentice hand. On us he laid injunctions to increase at home,
and to the happier portions of the world to carry death
under the guise of life unsuitable to those into whose lands we spread.

Let those made cruel by the want of sympathy with men
that the mere poring over books so often superinduces in the mind
protest when judging of the Jesuits in Paraguay against the outrage
done to their theories by the scheme the Jesuits pursued.

It has been nobly said* `that the extinction of the smallest animal
is a far greater loss than if the works of all the Greeks had perished.'
How much the greater loss that of a type of man such as the Indians,
whom the semi-communistic Jesuit government successfully preserved,
sheltering them from the death-dealing breath of our cold northern life
and its full, fell effects!

--
* Hudson, `Naturalist in La Plata'.
--

There are those, no doubt, who think that a tree brought from the tropics
should be planted out at home, to take its chance of life
in the keen winter of the north, in holy competition with the ash and oak;
and if it dies, there are still pines enough, with stores of dogwood,
thickets of elder, and a wilderness of junipers. They may be right;
but, after all, that which has felt the tropic sun is for the tropics,
and to grow under the tantalizing sunshine of the north, which lights
but does not warm, it must have glass, and shelter from the cold.

But of aforethought to deliberately transplant our fogs
and chilling atmosphere, and so to nip and kill plants
which crave only the sun to live, that is a crime against humanity;
a crime posterity with execration will one day taunt us with,
and hold us up to execration, as we to-day in our hypocrisy
piously curse the memories of Pizarro and Cortes.

In the eternal warfare between those who think that progress
-- which to them means tramways and electric light -- is preferable to
a quiet life of futile happiness of mind there is scant truce, so that
my readers have to take their choice whether to side with Funes or Azara
in judging of the Jesuits' rule in Paraguay. There is no middle course
between the old and new; no halting-place; no chink in which imagination
can drive in its nail to stop the wheels of time; therefore, no doubt,
the Jesuit commonwealth was doomed to disappear. But for myself,
I am glad that five-and-twenty years ago I saw the Indians who still lingered
about the ruined mission towns, mumbling their maimed rites
when the Angelus at eventide awoke the echoes of the encroaching woods,
whilst screeching crowds of parrots and macaws hovered around
the date-palms which in the plaza reared their slender heads,
silent memorials of the departed Jesuits' rule.

Indians and Jesuits are gone from Paraguay, the Indians to that Trapalanda
which is their appointed place; and for the Jesuits, they are forgotten,
except by those who dive into old chronicles, or who write books,
proposing something and concluding nothing, or by travellers,
who, wandering in the Tarumensian woods, come on a clump of orange-trees
run wild amongst the urundeys.



FINIS NON CORONAT OPUS





About the author:

Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936)



Born in London. Lived in Argentina, mostly ranching, from 1869 to 1883,
when he returned to Scotland. Member of the British House of Commons
for North West Lanark (1886-1892). Strong socialist tendencies.
Was elected first president of the Scottish Labour Party in 1888,
first president of the National Party of Scotland in 1928,
and first Honorary President of the Scottish National Party in 1934.
Died in Argentina. He was the model for a number of fictional characters
in books by his friend, Joseph Conrad, and also by G. B. Shaw.




Notes to the etext:



Corrections made:

Preface:

(p. viii) (first footnote)
It is difficult to tell -- it may be merely a smudge -- and if not,
it is probably an error, but the first "c" in "concilium"
seems to have a cedilla.

Chapter I:

(p. 6) (footnote)
[ `Commentarios Reales' (en Madrid CI}. I}CCXXIII., en la oficina ]
where "}" marks a character that is the mirror image of "C", which was
formerly used in Roman Numerals as follows: "CI}" = "M" [1,000];
"I}" = "D" [500]; and subsequent "}"s multiply by ten, as "I}}}" = 50,000.
changed to:
[ `Commentarios Reales' (en Madrid 1723, en la oficina ]
Let us all take this moment to give thanks for Hindu-Arabic numerals, Amen.

(p. 19)
[ `Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay, `the Guarani/s were spread ]
changed to:
[ `Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay', `the Guarani/s were spread ]

(p. 24) (footnote)
[ del Sr Provisor Alonso Joseph Gomez de Lara. ]
changed to:
[ del Sr. Provisor Alonso Joseph Gomez de Lara. ]

(p. 34)
[ and his mother Don~a Teresa Cabeza de Vaca, ]
changed to:
[ and his mother `Don~a Teresa Cabeza de Vaca, ]
as the best guess as to where the quoted section begins,
which is later marked with a closing quote.

Chapter II:

(p. 52) (footnote)
[ de la Compagnie de Je/sus, vol. iii., cap v., p. 322 ]
changed to:
[ de la Compagnie de Je/sus', vol. iii., cap v., p. 322 ]

(p. 74)
[ militia of the missions could no nothing with their bows and arrows ]
changed to:
[ militia of the missions could do nothing with their bows and arrows ]

Chapter V:

(p. 129)
[ to divine will, which, will, as the Bishop ]
changed to:
[ to divine will, which will, as the Bishop ]

(p. 131) (footnote)
[ * Exod. xxxii. 27. ]
updated to:
[ * Exod. 32:27. ]

(p. 138)
[ sending to him one Father Lopez, Provincial of the Dominicians. ]
changed to:
[ sending to him one Father Lopez, Provincial of the Dominicans. ]

Chapter VI:

(p. 181) (footnote)
[ `Declaracion de la Verdad, p. 295: ]
changed to:
[ `Declaracion de la Verdad', p. 295: ]

(p. 184) (footnote)
[ la Historia del Paraguay', etc., cap. i., vol. ii. ]
changed to:
[ la Historia del Paraguay', etc., cap. i., vol. ii.). ]

Chapter IX:

(p. 237)
[ After negotiations, lasting many years, in 1758 a treaty was signed ]
changed to:
[ After negotiations, lasting many years, in 1750 a treaty was signed ]
15 January 1750, to be exact.

Chapter X:

(pp. 263-264) (footnote)
[ Iban~ez rarely spoke he truth, not even when it would ]
changed to:
[ Iban~ez rarely spoke the truth, not even when it would ]

(p. 268) (footnote)
[ The war commenced in 1868 and finished in 1870, ]
changed to:
[ The war commenced in 1865 and finished in 1870, ]
(the dates generally given for this war, though the opening stages
arguably occurred late in 1864.)

(p. 275)
[ signed by the celebrated Nicolas N~eengiuru/ and other Indians, ]
changed to:
[ signed by the celebrated Nicolas N~eenguiru/ and other Indians, ]
and:
[ the family of the N~eengiuru/ had been well known ]
changed to:
[ the family of the N~eenguiru/ had been well known ]
(as it appears elsewhere in the text)

(p. 276)
[ the flattering of Nicolas N~eengiuru ]
changed to:
[ the flattering of Nicolas N~eenguiru ]
The wrong spelling is given throughout Chapter X, but Chapter X only.



The original Map has been omitted by necessity.

The original Index has been omitted as unnecessary in a searchable text.

The excellent film, "The Mission" (1986), was based on events
apparently related to the `Jesuit War' referred to in Chapter IX.



As an example of the difficulty presented by the multitude of languages
used by the individuals who recorded this history, the following lines,
taken from throughout the text, and apparently referring the same place,
should prove useful as a reminder that one has to be careful
when performing automated searches:

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