Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

C >> Cunninghame Graham >> A Vanished Arcadia,




So Alvar Nunez*1* tells us in his Commentaries that at the hour
of the Ave Maria ten or twelve of the `factious' entered his house
where he lay ill in bed, all shouting `Liberty!' and to prove
they were all good patriots one Jaime Resquin put a bent crossbow to his side,
and forced him to get out of bed, and took him off to prison
amid a crowd all shouting `Liberty!' The friends of liberty
(upon the other side) attempted a rescue, but the patriots*2* were too strong.
So the unpatriotic Governor was thrown, heavily ironed, into a cell,
out of which to make room they let a murderer who was awaiting death.
`He' (Alvar Nunez grimly remarks) `made haste to take my cloak,
and then set off down the street at once, calling out "Liberty!"'
That everything should be in order, the patriots confiscated
all the Governor's goods and took his papers, publishing a proclamation
that they did so because he was a tyrant. Unluckily, the Indians
have not left us any commentaries, or it would be curious to learn
what they thought as to the tyranny of Alvar Nunez. Most probably
they thought as the Indians of the Jesuit missions thought
at the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay, as is set forth
in the curious memorial addressed in 1768 by the people
of the Mission of San Luis to the Governor of Buenos Ayres,
praying that the Jesuits might be suffered to remain instead of the friars,
who had been sent to replace them against the people's will.*3*
Having got the Governor into prison, the patriots had to elect another chief,
and the choice naturally `fell' upon Domingo de Irala, who, having been
interim Governor, had never ceased intriguing from the first.
He promptly put his friends in office, after the fashion of all Governors,
whether they enter office to the cry of `Liberty' or not.
The friends of Alvar Nunez, in the usual Spanish fashion
(long sanctified by use and wont), declared themselves in opposition --
that is, they roamed about the land, proving by theft and murder
that their love of liberty was just as strong as that of those in power.
Things shortly came to such a pass that no one could leave his house by night.
The marauding Guaycurus burnt all the suburbs, and threatened
to attack the town. Nunez himself was guarded day and night
by four men armed with daggers in a close prison. As he says himself,
his prison was not `fitting for his health,' for day and night
he had to keep a candle burning to see to read, and the grass grew
underneath his bed, whilst for the sake of `health' he had
a pair of first-rate fetters on his feet. For his chief gaoler
they procured one Hernando de Sosa, whom Nunez had put in gaol
for striking an Indian chief. A guard watched constantly at the prison gate,
but, still, in spite of this he managed to communicate almost uninterruptedly
with his friends outside. His method was certainly ingenious.
His food was brought to him by an Indian girl, whom, so great
was the fear of the patriots that he should write to the King,
they made walk naked into the prison, carrying the dishes,
and with her head shaved. Notwithstanding this, she managed to bring
a piece of paper hidden between her toes. The party of Liberty,
suspecting that Nunez was communicating with his friends,
procured an Indian youth to make love to the girl and learn the secret.
This he failed to do, owing, perhaps, to his love-making
being wanting in conviction on account of her shaved head.
At last Irala and his friends determined to send the Governor a prisoner
to Spain, taking care, of course, to despatch a messenger beforehand
to distort the facts and prejudice the King. The friends of Nunez, however,
managed to secrete a box of papers, stating the true facts, on board the ship.
At dead of night a band of harquebusiers dragged him from his bed
(after a captivity of eleven months), as he says, `almost with the candle
in his hand' -- i.e., in a dying state. As he left the prison,
he fell upon his knees and thanked God for having let him once more
feel the air of heaven, and then in a loud voice exclaimed:
`I name as my successor Captain Juan de Salazar de Espinosa.'
At this one Garci Vargas rushed at him with a knife, and told him
to recall his words or he would kill him instantly. This he was stopped
from doing, and Nunez was hurried to the ship and chained securely
to a beam. On board the vessel, he says, they tried to poison him;
but this seems doubtful, as there was nothing on earth
to prevent their doing so had they been so inclined.
Still, as a prudent man he took the precaution to provide
some oil and a piece of unicorn (`pedazo de unicornio'),
with which he tried the food. Unicorns he could not have seen in Paraguay,
nor yet in Florida, and he does not explain how he became so luckily equipped.

--
*1* `Comentarios de Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca', contained in Barcia's
`Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales'.
*2* The `patriots' are always those of the prevailing party in a State.
*3* `(I.H.S.)

`God preserve your Excellency, say we, the Cabildo,
and all the Caciques and Indians, men, women and children of San Luis,
as your Excellency is our father. The Corregidor,
Santiago Pindo and Don Pantaleon Caynari, in their love for us,
have written to us of certain birds which they desire we will send them
for the King. . . . We are sorry not to have them to send,
inasmuch as they live where God made them, in the forests,
and fly far away from us, so that we cannot catch them.
Withal we are the vassals of God and of the King, and always desirous
to fulfil the wishes of his Minister . . . so we pray to God
that that best of birds, the Holy Ghost, may descend upon the King. . . .
Furthermore, we desire to say that the Spanish custom
is not to our liking -- for everyone to take care of himself,
instead of helping one another in their daily toil.'

This quaint and touching letter was written originally in Guarani,
and is preserved at Buenos Ayres. `That best of birds,
the Holy Ghost,' shows faith grounded, at least, on ornithology,
and the whole spirit of the simple document is as pathetic
as its unconscious philosophy is true.
--

None the less, of all the discoverers of America he is the man of least
imaginative power -- that is, in matters appertaining to natural history --
so one must conclude he had his piece of unicorn from Spain,
where he most probably had bought it from some dealer in necessaries
for travellers to the New World.

After a stormy voyage he arrived in Spain to find his accusers
just before him. With truly Eastern justice, both accusers and accused
were put in gaol, a custom worthy of adoption in other lands.
Nunez was soon released on bail, and, his accusers having all died,
in eight years' time he was triumphantly acquitted of all the charges brought
against him. To prove, however, that Justice is and always has been blind,
the King never restored him to his government in Paraguay, and,
as Nunez says, forgot to repay him what he had expended in his service.*
With Alvar Nunez was lost the only chance of liberal treatment
to the Indians, for from his time the governors, instead of being
men of the world above the petty spite of party differences,
were chosen either from officers who, having served in the frontier wars,
quite naturally looked on the Indians as enemies, or were appointed
by intriguing Ministers at Court. From the death of Alvar Nunez
to the inauguration of the missions by the Jesuits,
no one arose to take the Indians' side, and it may be
that had his policy prevailed there would have been an Indian population left
in the mission territory of Paraguay; for had the civil governors
co-operated with the Jesuits, the dispersion of the Indians,
which took place at the expulsion of the Jesuits, had not occurred.

--
* Guevara, `Historia del Paraguay' (printed in `La Coleccion de Angelis',
Buenos Aires, 1836), book vi., p. 108, says of Alvar Nunez:
`Merecia estatua por su rectitud, justicia y Christiandad.' And in
another place Guevara says: `La Florida lo cautivo/ con inhumanidad;
La Asuncion lo aprisiono/ con infamia; pero en una y otro parte
fue ejemplar de moderacion . . . recto, prudente y de sano corazon.'
Alvar Nunez died holding the office of `Oidor de la Audiencia de Sevilla',
according to P. del Techo (`Historia del Paraguay');
or as a member of the Consejo de Indias, according to Charlevoix.
--

Thus was Domingo Martinez de Irala left in sole command in Paraguay.
He naturally had all to gain by not communicating with Spain.
Had he done so, the part he played in reference to Alvar Nunez
must have been known. He had, however, certain good qualities,
courage in abundance, Herculean strength and great endurance,
and the power of making himself obeyed. But he had to justify himself
to Spain for his position, and the surest way to do so
was to discover gold-mines. So, naming Francisco de Mendoza
his lieutenant, he started up the Paraguay, taking with him
three hundred and fifty soldiers and two thousand Guaranis.
After many hardships, he reached the frontiers of Peru,
only to find the country already conquered from the Pacific side,
and to be met by the messengers of the wise President, La Gasca,
who told him to return, and named one Diego Centeno Governor of Paraguay
instead of him. Centeno died before he could assume the governorship,
so it seemed that fate determined that Irala was to continue in command.

After a year and a half he returned to Paraguay, having found
no gold or riches, but bringing many thousand Indians as slaves.
It is important to remember that Irala, who was remarkable
for his relatively kind treatment of the Indians, on this occasion
led so many of them captive. On arriving at Asuncion he found
a rebellion going on, as not infrequently occurred when a Spanish Governor
left his domains. His lieutenant, Mendoza, had been killed
by one Diego de Abreu. After quieting matters in Asuncion,
he despatched Nuflo de Chaves (one of his captains) to found a town
on the higher waters of the Paraguay.

Like many other captains of those days, the idea of Chaves was to make himself
quite independent of authority; so, striking into the interior,
he founded the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia.
After many adventures he was killed by an Indian, who struck him with a club
whilst he was sitting eating without his helmet.

Irala died at the little village of Ita in 1557, and was buried
in the cathedral at Asuncion, which he was building at the time.
With him expired the generation of the conquering soldiers of fortune,
who, schooled in the wars of Italy, brought to America
some of the virtues and all the vices of the Old World.
After him began the reign of the half-caste Spaniards who were
the progenitors of the modern occupants of the Spanish-American republics.
At Irala's death the usual feuds, which have for the last three hundred years
disgraced every part of Spanish America, began. Into them it is unnecessary
to enter, for with Irala died almost the only Governor of Paraguay
who showed the smallest capacity to make himself obeyed.

True indeed that Arias de Saavedra, a native of Paraguay
and Lieutenant-Governor under Ramirez de Velasco, the Governor of Tucuman,
displayed some traces of ability and of intelligence. He it was
who first appealed to Spain for missionaries to convert the Indians.

Whilst Alvar Nunez and Irala, with Nuflo de Chaves and the other captains,
had been conquering and building towns, the Jesuits had been
preaching in the wilderness and gathering together the Indian tribes.
Not ten years after the foundation of their Order,* or about 1550,
they had landed at San Salvador de Bahia in Brazil.

--
* Acquaviva was General of the Order at this time; he was a man
of marked ability and great energy.
--

In 1554, in the district of Guayra, on the upper waters of the Parana,
and above the cataract, the towns of Ontiveros, Ciudad Real, and Villa Rica,
had been founded by Don Ruy Diaz de Melgarejo.

In 1586 Fathers Alfonso Barcena and Angulo left the town of Santa Maria
de las Charcas (Bolivia) at the request of Francisco Vitoria,
Bishop of Santiago, who had appealed for missionaries to the Society of Jesus.
They reached the province of Guayra, and began their labours.
Shortly afterwards they were joined by Fathers Estezan Grao,
Juan Solano, and Thomas Fields; Solano and Fields had already visited
some of the wandering tribes upon the Rio Vermejo in the Chaco.

In 1593 others arrived, as Juan Romero, Gaspar de Monroy,
and Marcelino Lorenzana. Shortly after this they founded
the college in Asuncion. Then Fathers Ortega and Vellarnao penetrated
into the mountains of the Chiriguanas, and began to preach the Gospel
to the Indians.

In 1602 Acquaviva, seeing the necessity of common action,
called all the scattered Jesuits of Paraguay and the river Plate
to a conference at Salta to deliberate as to their future policy.* In 1605
Father Diego Torres was named Provincial of the Jesuits of Paraguay and Chile,
thus proving both the paucity of Jesuits in South America at the time,
and the little idea the General in Rome had of the immensity of the countries
he was dealing with.

--
* Before this date the Jesuits in Paraguay had been under
the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishops of Peru.
--

Torres arrived in Lima with fifteen priests, and almost at the same time
some others arrived at Buenos Ayres; both parties proceeded to Paraguay.
Already the Jesuits found themselves a prey to calumny.

Both in Tucuman and Paraguay they were expected to lend themselves
to the enslavement of the Indians. In Chile Father Valdivia
was expelled from Santiago, and took refuge at Tucuman. There he found
the condition of affairs so intolerable that he went to Madrid
to solicit the protection of the King, Philip III., for his Indian subjects.

In 1608 Philip issued his royal letters patent to the Society of Jesus
for the conversion of the Indians in the province of Guayra.

The Bishop and the Governor, Arias de Saavedra (himself a Paraguayan
by birth), offered no objection, and the scheme of colonization
was agreed upon at once.

Thus the Jesuits obtained their first official status in America.

Fathers Simon Maceta and Jose Cataldino (both Italians)
left Asuncion on October 10, 1609, and arrived in February, 1610,
on the banks of the river Paranapane.*

--
* Paranapane = the White Parana, or, according to others,
the Parana without fish.
--

There they met the Indians amongst whom Fields and Ortega
had begun to labour, and there they founded the Reduction* of Loreto,
the first permanent establishment instituted by the Jesuits
amongst the Guaranis. Thus, in the woods of Paraguay,
upon a tributary of the Parana but little known even to-day,
did the Society of Jesus lay the first foundation of their famous missions.
But little more than fifty years from the foundation of their Order,
thus had they penetrated to what was then, and is perchance to-day,
after their missions all are ruined, one of the remotest corners of the world.

--
* Reduction (`reduccion') was the Spanish name for a missionary establishment.
--

There they built up the system with which their name is linked for ever
-- the system which for two hundred years was able to hold together
wandering Indian tribes, restless as Arabs, suspicious above
every other race of men -- and which to-day has disappeared,
leaving nothing of a like nature in all the world.




Chapter II

Early days of the missions -- New settlements founded --
Relations of Jesuits with Indians and Spanish colonists --
Destruction of missions by the Mamelucos -- Father Maceta --
Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya -- His work and influence --
Retreat of the Jesuits down the Parana



It does not seem doubtful but that the work done by Fathers Ortega and Filds*
had borne some fruit. Perhaps not quite after the fashion
that the Jesuits believed; but when Maceta and Cataldino
arrived at Guayra and founded the Reduction of Loreto,
their success at first was of a nature that almost justified
the epithet `miraculous', an epithet which indeed all men apply
to any enterprise of theirs which meets success. Almost from
the first inception of the missions, the Jesuits found themselves
in the strange position of, though being hated by the Spanish settlers,
yet recurred to as mediators when any of the wild tribes
proved too powerful for the Spanish arms. Thus, far from cities,
far from even such elementary civilization as Paraguay should show,
almost upon the edge of the great cataract of the Parana,
the Jesuits founded their first reduction; to which the Indians flocked
in such numbers that a second was soon necessary, to which they gave
the name of San Ignacio, in memory of the founder of their rule.

--
* Some of the Spanish writers refer to Filds as Padre Tom Filds.
His real name was Fields, and he was a Scotchman.
--

For the first few years all went well with the Jesuits. The Indians,
happy to escape the persecutions of the Spaniards on the one hand,
and the incursions of the Paulistas* on the other, flocked to the reductions,
mission after mission was soon formed, and the wild Indians
gathered up into townships and taught the arts of peace.
But though the Guaranis at first entered into the Jesuit reductions
as a refuge against their persecutors, the Portuguese and Spaniards,
soon, as was only natural to men accustomed to a wild forest life,
they found the Jesuit discipline too irksome, and often fled
back to the woods. Then the poor priest, left without his flock,
had to take up the trail of the flying neophytes, follow them
to the recesses of the forests, and persuade them to come back.

--
* The Paulistas were the inhabitants of the Portuguese (now Brazilian)
town of Sao Paulo. Azara, who hated the Jesuits (his brother,
Don Nicolas de Azara, having been concerned in their expulsion),
says that fear of the Paulistas contributed to the success of the Jesuits
with the Indians. Dean Funes (`Historia del Paraguay', etc.)
says just as reasonably that it was fear of the Spanish settlers.
--

As a means to secure the confidence of the Indians, the Jesuits
found themselves obliged to communicate as rarely as possible
with the Spanish settlements. Thus, from the first the policy of isolation,
which was one of the chief charges brought against the Order in later years,
was of necessity begun.* Voltaire, no lover of religious Orders,
says of the Jesuits:** `When in 1768 the missions of Paraguay
left the hands of the Jesuits, they had arrived at perhaps
the highest degree of civilization to which it is possible
to conduct a young people, and certainly at a far superior state
than that which existed in the rest of the new hemisphere.
The laws were respected there, morals were pure, a happy brotherhood
united every heart, all the useful arts were in a flourishing state,
and even some of the more agreeable sciences; plenty was universal.'

--
* There was, however, a royal Order (`cedula real') which applied
to all America, which especially prohibited Spaniards from living
in the Indian towns, and, moreover, provided that even for purposes of trade
no Spaniard should remain for more than three days in an Indian town.
** `Histoire Politique et Philosophique des Indes', vol. i., p. 289
(Gene\ve, 1780).
--

It is, however, to be remembered that Voltaire wrote as a philosopher,
and not as an economist, and that his statement most probably
would be traversed by those who see advancement rather
in material improvement than in moral happiness, for without doubt,
in Lima and in Mexico upon the whole, society must have made
amongst the Spanish and Spanish-descended citizens greater advances
than in the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay. In some respects
their almost inaccessible situation close to the cataract of the Parana
was favourable to the early Jesuits, and in quick succession
the villages of Loreto, San Francisco Xavier, San Jose, San Ignacio,
San Pedro, and others of less importance, were founded, containing in all
about forty thousand souls.*

--
* Cretineau Joly, `Histoire Religieuse, Politique et Litte/raire
de la Compagnie de Je/sus', vol. iii., cap. v., p. 322 (Paris, 1846).
--

So in the Jesuit reductions of the province of Guayra
was first begun the system of treating the Indians kindly,
and standing between them and the Spanish settlers,
which made the Company of Jesus so hated afterwards in Paraguay.
Little by little their influence grew, so that when, in 1614,
Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya arrived, he found that there were already
one hundred and nineteen Jesuits in Guayra and in Paraguay.
Of all the Jesuits who, during the long period of their labours,
appeared in Paraguay, he was the most remarkable; one of the most learned men
of the age in which he lived, he yet united in himself
the qualities of a man of action to those of scholar and of missionary.
Without his presence most likely not a tenth part of the Indians
would have escaped after the destruction of the missions of Guayra
in 1630 and 1631 at the hands of the half-civilized hordes
known as Paulistas or Mamalucos, who from the city of San Paulo
carried fire and sword amongst the Guaranis.

It is easy to understand that the Spanish colonists,
who had looked on all the Indians as slaves, were rendered furious
by the advent of the Jesuits, who treated them as men.

To-day the European colonist in Africa labours less to enslave
than to exterminate the natives; but if a body of clergy of any sect
having the abnegation and disregard of consequences of the Jesuits of old
should arise, fancy the fury that would be evoked if they insisted
that it were as truly murder to slay a black man as it is to kill a man
whose skin is white. Most fortunately, our clergy of to-day,
especially those of the various churches militant in Uganda, think otherwise,
and hold that Christ was the first inventor of the `colour-line'.

At the first settlement of South America great semi-feudal fiefs
called `encomiendas' were granted to the conquerors. One of the conditions
of their tenure was that the `encomenderos' (the owners of the fiefs)
`should see to the religious education of the Indians'.
Much the same kind of thing as to enjoin kindness and Christian forbearance
upon the directors of a modern Chartered Company. But, in addition
to the `encomiendas', two other systems were in vogue called
`yanaconas' and `mitayos', which were in fact designed to reduce the Indians
to the condition of mere slaves.

Herrera* says that the `"yanaconas" were men destined from birth
to perpetual slavery and captivity, and in their clothing, treatment,
and the conditions of their toil, were differently treated from free men.'

--
* `Historia General de los hechos de los Castellanos
en las Islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano', decad. v., lib. iv., cap. xl.
--

In Paraguay these `yanaconas' were known as `Indios Originarios',
and generally were descendants of Indians conquered in war; they, too,
were in a condition of serfdom. They lived in the house of the `encomendero',
and could not be sold, and the `encomendero' was (in theory) obliged
not only to feed and clothe them, but to instruct them in religious truths.
In order to see that these conditions were duly carried out, visitors were
sent each year to hear what mutually the `encomenderos' and the Indians
had to say.

Herrera*1* describes the Indians under the `mitayo' system
by the name of `mitayos tindarunas', explaining that the word `tindaruna'
signifies `forced labour'. The chiefs had to provide
a certain number of them every year to work in mines and manufactories,
and so well was the labour in the mines known to be fatal,
that the Indians upon being drawn for service disposed of all their property,
and not infrequently divorced their wives. The `mitayos' were
at the beginning Indians who had not fought against the Spaniards,
but had submitted to their rule. They were grouped in townships
composed of portions of a tribe under a chief to whom the Spaniards gave
the position of Alcalde. In the towns thus formed only the men
between eighteen and fifty were liable to be drawn for service in the mines;
originally their term of service was for only two months in the year,
and for the remaining ten months they were in theory as free
as were the Spanish settlers. By 1612 the abuses of their system
had so diminished the number of the Indians that Don Francisco de Alfaro
was named by the Spanish Government to report upon it,
and to reform abuses where he found it possible. His report declared
that the Guaranis and Guaycurus should not be made slaves of,
and it abolished in their favour the forced labour which they had
previously endured. The European settlers in Asuncion thought
that this was owing to the influence of the Jesuits, and therefore
they expelled them from the town. Recalled to Santiago,
they founded there a college, and those who remained in Paraguay
pushed on the mission-work. Brabo*2* points out that
the first twenty reductions founded by the Company of Jesus were settled
in the first twenty years from their first appearance in the land,*3*
and that from the foundation of the Mission of St. George
(the last established of the first twenty towns) to that of San Joaquim,
in the wild forests of the Taruma, they employed a hundred and twelve years.
In the interval they chiefly occupied themselves in the consolidation
of their first settlements, and in various unsuccessful attempts
to institute similar reductions amongst the Indians of the Chaco
across the Paraguay.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.