Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

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--
* See Demersay, `Histoire du Paraguay', p. 324, for names of Guarani tribes.
Alfred Maury also, in his `La Terre et l'Homme Ame/ricain', p. 392,
speaks of `le rameau brasilio-guaranin, ou Cara/ibe, qui s'etendait
jadis depuis les Petites-Antilles jusqu'au Paraguay.'
--

D'Orbigny in his `L'Homme Americain', estimates the Guaranis of Brazil
at one hundred and fifty thousand.

Humboldt cites two hundred and sixty-nine thousand as the probable number
of Indians of every kind in the Brazilian Empire.

The Viscount de Itabayana (a Brazilian writer) fixes the number
at two hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand.

Veloso de Oliveira puts it at eight hundred thousand;
and later statisticians range between one million five hundred thousand
and seven to eight hundred thousand.

The numbers given of Indians by the Spanish conquerors are almost always
grossly overstated, from the wish they not unnaturally had
to magnify the importance of their conquests and to enhance their exploits
in the eyes of those for whom they wrote.

Struck by the tractable character of the Guaranis, Mendoza began
to build a fort on August 15, 1537 (which is the day of the Assumption),
and the name he gave to his fort was Asuncion, which afterwards became
the capital of Paraguay.

Espinosa returned to Corpus Christi, and afterwards to Buenos Ayres,
where a small force had still remained. This force,
tired of the ceaseless battles with the Querandis, or Pampa Indians,
embarked for Asuncion.

Irala, after waiting for many months at Fort Olimpo, returned to Asuncion,
where he found Ruiz de Galan acting as Governor. A dispute at once arose
between them, and Irala, after having been imprisoned, was allowed to return
to Fort Olimpo. Here he found the Payagua Indians in rebellion,
and in the battle which ensued he is reported to have slain seven of them
with his own hand.* He still maintained a fitful search for Juan de Ayolas,
but without success.

--
* Few modern `conquerors' in Africa seem to have engaged in personal combat
with the natives. Even of Mr. Rhodes it is not set down
that he has killed many Matabele with his own hands. Times change,
not always for the bettering of things.
--

Galan returned to Buenos Ayres, and, stopping at Corpus Christi,
took occasion to fall upon the friendly and unsuspecting Timbu Indians
and massacre a quantity of them. Why he did so is quite uncertain,
for the Timbues had been in the habit of supplying the fort of Corpus Christi
with provisions; it may be that the quality of the provisions was inferior,
but neither Ruiz Diaz nor Schmidel informs us on the point.
Galan, after his `victory', re-embarked for Buenos Ayres,
leaving Antonio de Mendoza in command with a hundred men.

One day, when about the half of the force was hunting,
the Indians fell upon it and cut it off to the last man;
but for the opportune arrival of two vessels the fort would have
been destroyed. However, many Spaniards were slain, and Antonio de Mendoza
amongst them.

After this battle, in which Santiago* is said to have appeared
on the top of the principal tower of the fort dressed in white
with a drawn sword in his hand, Galan and Espinosa returned to Asuncion,
taking with them the remainder of the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres.
At Asuncion they found that Irala had again returned
without having discovered traces of Ayolas. Irala was elected Governor
under a clause in the royal letters patent which provided
for the case of Ayolas not returning. His first act was to order
the complete evacuation of Buenos Ayres. An Italian vessel, which was
going to Peru with colonists, having been driven into the river Plate,
united with the remains of the colonists at Buenos Ayres and proceeded
to Asuncion.

--
* Santiago, as in duty bound, usually appeared whenever Spaniards
were hard pressed. Few writers had the courage of Bernal Diaz,
who of a similar appearance said: `But I, sinner that I was,
was not worthy to see him; whom I did see and recognise
was Francisco de Morla on his chestnut horse' (Bernal Diaz,
`Historia de la Conquista de Nueva Espan~a', cap. xxxiv., p. 141;
Madrid, 1795).
--

Curiously enough, the remnants of several expeditions thus joined
to found the first permanent city in the territories of the river Plate;
not at Buenos Ayres, but a thousand miles away in the interior of the country,
where it seemed little probable that their attempt would prove successful.

To preside over the heterogeneous elements of which Asuncion was composed,
Domingo Martinez de Irala was chosen. He was a Biscayan,
a member of that ancient race which neither Romans nor Moors were ever able
to subdue. Nothing is known about his antecedents. Not improbably
he was a son of one of the innumerable small gentlemen with whom
the Basque provinces used to swarm. Almost every house in the little towns
even to-day has its coat of arms over the door. Every inhabitant
claimed to be a nobleman, and in the reign of Charles V. they furnished
many soldiers of repute in the wars of Europe and America.

The system of Irala was to conciliate rather than subdue the natives.
Isolated from help of every kind, the length of the voyage from Spain
precluding all idea of speedy succour in a rebellion, it was the only course
he could pursue.

From the very first he encouraged the soldiers to marry women of the country,
thus creating ties which bound them to the land.

Two Franciscan friars* set about at once to learn the language
and preach to the people. They also seem to have endeavoured
to reduce the Guarani language to writing. So, from several circumstances,
the early history of Paraguay was very different from that of every other
Spanish possession in America. To all the others Spanish women
seem to have gone in greater or in smaller numbers. To Paraguay,
at the foundation of Asuncion, it seems that hardly any women went.

--
* Thus it will be seen that the Franciscans were at work in the country
long before the arrival of the Jesuits. It may be on this account
that they became such bitter enemies of the later comers.
--

So there a different state of society arose to that, for example,
in Chile or in Mexico. In both those countries few Spaniards ever married
native women. Those who did so were either members of the highest class
-- who sometimes, but rarely, married Indian women of position
from motives of policy -- or else the lowest class of Spaniards;
in this case, after a generation, their children became
practically Indians. In Paraguay it was quite the contrary,
and the grandchildren of Indian mothers and Spanish fathers
were almost reckoned Spaniards, and the next generation always so.

Washburne, in his `History of Paraguay' (p. 32, cap. i., vol. i.),
points out the contrast between the effects of the treatment meted out
by Penn to the Indians in Pennsylvania and that by Irala in Paraguay.
Where, he asks, are the Indian tribes with whom the celebrated Quaker treated?
In Paraguay, on the other hand, at least in the time when Washburne
was Minister from the United States to Lopez (from 1861 to 1868),
the few remaining Paraguayans of the upper class were almost all descended
from the intermarriages of the followers of Irala with the natives.

The tyranny of Lopez, and the effects of the disastrous war
with Brazil and the Argentine Republic, have almost extirpated
every Paraguayan (of the old stock) with the least pretensions
to white descent.

Ruiz Diaz de Guzman, speaking of the mixed race in Paraguay and Buenos Ayres,
says:

`They are generally good soldiers, of great spirit and valour,
expert in the use of arms, especially in that of the musquet,
so much so that, when they go on long journeys, they are accustomed
to live on the game which they kill with it. It is common for them
to kill birds on the wing, and he is accounted unfit for a soldier
who cannot bring down a pigeon. They are such excellent horsemen
that there is no one who is not able to tame and ride an unbroken colt.

`The women generally are virtuous, beautiful, and of a gentle disposition.'

If the inhabitants of Paraguay and the river Plate of those days
were good marksmen, it is more than can be said of the Gauchos
of the Argentine provinces and the Paraguayans of twenty years ago.
Without military training, so far from being able to bring down a pigeon
on the wing, few could hit the trunk of a tree at fifty paces.
The usual method of shooting used to be to cram as much ammunition
into the gun as the hand would contain, and then, looking carefully away
from the object aimed at, to close both eyes and pull the trigger.
Accuracy of aim was not so much considered as loudness of report.
As regards their powers of riding, they are still unchanged;
and as to the virtue of their women, virtue is so largely
a matter of convention that it is generally wisest to leave
such matters uncommented on, as it is so easy not to understand
the conventions of the people of whom one writes.

Whilst Irala was conciliating the Guaranis in Paraguay, Charles V. had
not forgotten that the new settlement of Buenos Ayres had been abandoned.
After much search, he selected Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
to be the new Governor; and, as Alvar Nunez was perhaps
the most remarkable of all the Spanish `conquistadores' of the New World,
it may not be out of place to give some facts of his career,
as his policy in regard to the Indians was almost that of the Jesuits
in after-times.

As he himself informs us in his Commentaries,* his `father was that
Pedro de Vera who won Canaria,' and his mother `Dona Teresa Cabeza de Vaca,
a noble lady of Jerez de la Frontera.' After the Spanish fashion of the time,
he used the names of both his parents.

--
* `Comentarios de Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca'. Published by
Don Andres Gonzalez Barcia in his collection of `Early Historians
of the Indies' (Madrid, 1749).
--

In 1529 he sailed with the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez
to Apalache in Florida, was shipwrecked, tried to regain
the Spanish settlements in boats, and then cast by a storm absolutely naked,
and with only three companions, upon an unknown land. Taken by the Indians,
he was made a slave, then rose to be a pedlar, then a doctor,
and finally a chief, held sacred for his mysterious powers.
At last he made his way on foot into the territory of New Spain,
not as a captive, but as the leader of several hundred Indians,
who followed him and did his bidding as if he had been born their chief.
Rambling about for months, but always followed by his Indians,
he at length encountered a Spanish horse-soldier, and, accosting him,
found he had almost forgotten Spanish during his ten years' sojourn
with the Indians. His first entreaty, when he found Spanish
gradually returning to him, was to the Spaniards not to harass
his Indian following. Then he besought the Indians themselves
to cease their nomad life and cultivate the soil. In neither case
was he successful, as the Spaniards, like all other Europeans,
held Indians little removed from dogs. And for the Indians,
the few remaining are as much attached to their old wandering life as in
the days of the discovery of the New World. In all that Alvar Nunez writes,
he shows a grandeur of soul and spirit far different from the writings,
not only of the conquerors of the New World, but of the conquerors of Africa
of to-day. For him no bragging of his exploits.*1* All that he says
he sets down modestly and with excuses (as every now and then,
`Me pesa hablar de mis trabajos'), and as befits a gentleman.
Lastly, he leaves the reader (when describing his captivity in Florida),
by telling him quite quietly and without comment that God was pleased to save
from all these perils himself, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes,
and that the fourth was a negro called Estevanico, a native of Azimur.
But, not contented with his ten years' captivity, after three years at home
he entered into a certain `asiento'*2* and `capitulacion'*3* with the King
to sail at his own charges with an expedition to succour
Don Pedro de Mendoza, who was hard pressed by famine and the Indians
at Buenos Ayres. He agreed to furnish eight thousand ducats,
horses, arms, men, and provisions at his own expense, upon condition
that he was made Governor and Adelantado of the Rio de la Plata,
and General both of its armies and its fleets.

--
*1* It must be allowed, however, that in their writings
few of the Spanish `conquistadores' of America bragged much.
They mostly gave the credit of all their doings to the God of Battles.
The boasting has been reserved for the conquerors of Africa
in our own time.
*2* `Asiento' is a contract. The contract which Charles V.,
at the well-meant but unfortunate instigation of Las Casas,
made with the Genoese to supply negroes for America
is known as `El Asiento de los Negros'.
*3* In the `capitulacion' made by Alvar Nunez with the King
occurs the celebrated clause, `Que no pasasen procuradores ni abogados
a las Indias', i.e., that neither solicitors nor barristers should go
to the Indies. It is unfortunate it was not held to stringently,
as in Paraguay, at least, the Reptilia were already well represented.
--

Upon November 2, 1537, he embarked at Cadiz with his fleet,
consisting of a caravel and two full-rigged ships. All went well
up to the Cape de Verdes. On nearing the equator, it occurred
to the `Maestro del Agua' to examine his stock of water,
and, out of one hundred pipes which had been put aboard, he found
but three remaining, and from these the thirty horses and four hundred men
who were on board all had to drink. Seeing the greatness of the necessity,
the Governor -- for Alvar Nunez almost always speaks of himself
in the third person -- gave orders that the fleet should make for land.
`Three days,' he says in his Commentaries, `we sailed in search of it';
and on the fourth, just before sunrise, occurred a very notable affair,
and, as it is not altogether `fuera de proposito', I set it down,
and it is this -- `that, going towards the land, the ships had almost touched
on some sharp rocks we had not seen.' Then, as now, I take it,
vigilance was not a noticeable quality in Spanish sailors.
Just as the vessels were almost on the rocks, `a cricket commenced to sing,
which cricket a sick soldier had put into the ship at Cadiz, being anxious
to hear its music, and for the two months which our navigation had endured
no one had heard it, whereat the soldier was much enraged;
and as on that morning it felt the land [`sintio la tierra'],
it commenced to sing, and its music wakened all the people of the ship,
who saw the cliffs, which were distant almost a crossbow-shot
from where we were, so we cast out anchors and saved the ship,
and it is certain that if the cricket had not sung all of us,
four hundred soldiers and thirty horses, had been lost.' Some of the crew
accepted the occurrence as a miracle from God; but Nunez himself
is silent on that head, being a better observer of natural history
than a theologian. But `from there, and sailing more than a hundred leagues
along the coast, the cricket every evening gave us his music,
and thus with it we arrived at a little port beyond Cape Frio,
where the Adelantado landed and unfurled his flag, and took possession
for His Majesty.' The expedition disembarked at Santa Catalina in Brazil.
`There the Governor landed his men and twenty-six of the horses
which had escaped the sea, all that remained of forty-six embarked in Spain.'
The `odium theologicum' gave the Governor some work at once.
Two friars -- Fray Bernardo de Armenta and Fray Alonso Lebron, Franciscans --
had burnt the houses of some Indians, who had retaliated
in the heathen fashion by slaughtering two Christians.
The `people being scandalized', the Governor sent for the friars,
admonished them, and told them to restrain their zeal.
This was the first false step he made, and set all friars and priests
throughout America against him. Hearing at Santa Catalina
that Buenos Ayres was almost abandoned, and that the inhabitants had founded
the town of Asuncion del Paraguay, Alvar determined to march thither by land,
and send his ship into the river Plate and up the Paraguay.
The two Franciscan friars he told to remain and `indoctrinate' the Indians.
This they refused to do, saying they wished to reside amongst
the Spaniards in Asuncion. Had they been Jesuits, it is ten to one
they had remained and spent their lives `indoctrinating',
for the Jesuits alone of all the religious Orders were ever ready
to take every risk.

Upon his march the Governor, contrary to all good policy and precedent,
ordered that nothing should be taken from the Indians without due payment
being made. To insure this being done, he paid for all provisions himself,
and served them out to the soldiery. This made him as unpopular
with his soldiers as his dealings with the two Franciscans had made him
amongst the friars. Surely he might have known that Pizarro, Cortes,
Almagro, and the rest, were men who never paid for anything.
Still, he persisted in his conduct to the end, and so brought ruin on himself.
The Indians seemed to appreciate his method, for he says that `when the news
was spread abroad of the good treatment the Governor gave to all,
they came to meet the army decked with flowers and bringing provisions
in great abundance.' It was, he also says, `a thing to see
how frightened the Indians were of the horses, and how they brought them food,
chickens and honey to keep them quiet and in good humour,
and they asked the Governor to tell the horses not to hurt them.'

After passing the river Iguazu, he sent the two friars ahead
to collect provisions, and `when the Governor arrived the Indians had
no more to give.'*

--
* This is perhaps the first account of the levying of the tithe
in the New World.
--

So having started from the coast upon November 2, 1541, he arrived at Asuncion
on March 2, 1542, having accomplished a march of more than two thousand miles
with but the loss of a single man and without the slaughter
of a single Indian. Hardly had he arrived at Asuncion before he found himself
embroiled on every side. The Indians were in full rebellion,
the settlement of Buenos Ayres almost in ruins, and the officers
appointed by the King to collect the royal dues all hostile to him to a man.

After having consulted with the clergy to find if they thought it lawful
to attack the Guaycurus who had assailed the newly-founded town,
he received the opinion `that it was not only lawful, but expedient.'
Therefore he sent off an expedition against them, to which was joined a priest
to require the Guaycurus to become Christians and to acknowledge
the King of Spain. The propositions, not unnaturally,
did not seem reasonable to the Indians, who most likely
were unaware of the benefits which Christianity confers,
and probably heard for the first time of the King of Spain.
The Governor, who seems to have doubted of the humanity of the clergy,
called another council, which confirmed the previous opinion.
Strangely enough, this seems to have surprised him, for he probably
did not reflect that the clergy would not have to fight themselves,
and that the first blood ever spilt on earth was on account
of a religious difference.

Just before the expedition started it was found that the two Franciscan friars
who had come with him from Santa Catalina could not be found.
It then appeared they had started back to the coast
accompanied by a bevy of Indian damsels, thirty-five in all.
They were followed and brought back, and then explained
that they were on their way to Spain to complain against the Governor.
The five-and-thirty dusky catechumens remained without an explanation,
and the people were once more `scandalized'. The Governor then started out
against the Guaycurus. Only those who know the Chaco,
or western bank of the river Paraguay, can form the least idea of what
such an expedition must have been. Even to-day in the Chaco
the change since the beginning of the world can be but slight.
As a steamer slips along the bank, nothing for miles and miles is seen
but swamp, intersected with backwaters,*1* in which lie alligators,
electric eels, and stinging rays. Far as the eye can reach
are swamps, swamps, and more swamps, a sea of waving pampa-grass.
After the swamps thickets of tacuaras (canes), forests of thorny trees,
chanares, nandubay, jacarandas, urundey, talas, and quebrachos,
each one hard enough to split an axe, some, like the black canela,
almost like iron; the inhabitants ferocious and intractable as when
the Governor himself first saw them; the climate heavy and humid, the air dank
with vinchucas*2* and mosquitoes and the little black infernal midget
called the jejen; no roads, no paths, no landmarks, but here and there
at intervals of many leagues a clearing in the forest
where some straggling settlement exists, more rarely still
the walls of a deserted Jesuit mission-house or church. Ostriches and deer,
tigers,*3* capibaras and tapirs, and now and then a herd of cattle
as wild as buffaloes, are seen. Sometimes an Indian with his lance
sits motionless upon his horse to watch the vessel pass --
a sentinel to guard the wilderness from encroachments from without.
So Alvar Nunez, as he tells us in his Commentaries, started with
four hundred men and with one thousand friendly Indians,
all well armed and painted, and with plates of metal on their heads
to reflect the sun, and so strike terror to their enemies.
To save the horses they were put on board,*4* whilst the Indians
marched along the bank, keeping up with the ships. Horses at that time
in Paraguay and in Peru often were worth one thousand crowns of gold,
though Azara tells us that in the last century in Buenos Ayres
you could often buy a good horse for two needles, so cheap had they become.
Then, as at present, time was of no account in Paraguay, so almost every day
they landed the horses to keep them in condition and to chase
the ostriches and deer.

--
*1* These backwaters are known in Guarani by the name of `aguapey'.
*2* The vinchuca is a kind of flying bug common in Paraguay.
Its shape is triangular, its colour gray, and its odour noxious.
It is one of the Hemiptera, and its so-called scientific appellation
is `Conorhinus gigas'.
*3* R. B. Cunninghame Graham writes elsewhere: "All over South America
the jaguar is called a tiger (tigre)." -- A. L., 1998.
*4* Azara, in his `Historia del Paraguay', etc., tells us that in 1551
Domingo de Irala at Asuncion bought a fine black horse
for five thousand gold crowns. He bound himself to pay for him
out of the proceeds of his first conquest.
--

Just the kind of army that a thinking man would like to march with;
not too much to eat, but, still, a pleasant feeling of marching
to spread religion and to make one's fortune, with but the solitary
unpleasant feature to the soldier -- the system of payment for provisions
which the Governor prescribed. All was new and strange; the world was
relatively young. Each night the Governor religiously wrote up his diary,
now chronicling the death of some good horse, or of an Indian,
or commenting upon the fruits, the fish, the animals, the trees,
and `all the other things of God which differ from those in the Castiles.'
Occasionally a fight took place with Guasarapos or with Pagayuas,
but nothing of much account (`de mucha monta'); always the tales of gold-mines
to be met with further on. Eventually the expedition came to a point
not far from where is now the town of Corumba. There Alvar Nunez founded
a town to which he gave the name of Reyes, which has long fallen into decay.
He also sent two captains to explore and search for gold,
waiting two or three months for their return, and suffering from
a quartan ague which confined him to his bed; then, having failed to find
the talked-of gold-mines, he set his face again towards Asuncion.
Just before starting he gave the final blow to his waning popularity.
Some of his followers, having taken Indian girls, had hidden them
on board the ships; this, when he knew it, Nunez at once forbade,
and, sending for the fathers of the girls, restored their children to them.
`With this,' he says, `the natives were much pleased, but the Spaniards
rendered angry and desperate, and for this cause they hated me.'
Nothing more natural, and for the same cause the Spanish Paraguayans
hated the Jesuits who carried out the policy which the wise Governor began.

On April 8, 1543, the Governor returned to Asuncion,
worn out and ill with ague. There he found all confusion. Domingo de Irala,
a clever, ambitious Biscayan soldier who had been interim Governor
before Nunez had arrived, had worked upon the people,
saying that Nunez wished to take away their property.
As their chief property was in Indians whom they had enslaved,
this rendered Nunez most unpopular, and the same kind of allegations
were laid against him as were laid against the Jesuits
when in their turn they denounced slavery in Paraguay.
All the complaints were in the name of liberty, as generally is the case
when tyranny or villainy of any sort is to be done.

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