Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

C >> Cunninghame Graham >> A Vanished Arcadia,




--
*1* `Historia General de los hechos de los Castellanos en
las Islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano', decad. v., lib. x., cap. lxxx.
*2* `Inventarios de los bienes hallados a/ la Expulsion de los Jesuitas'
(Madrid, 1872).
*3* The Franciscans had already five or six settlements.
--

But whilst the Jesuits were settling their reductions
in the province of Guayra and those upon the Parana and Uruguay,
a nest of hawks looked at their neophytes as pigeons
ready fattening for their use. Almost eight hundred miles away,
at the city of San Paulo de Piritinanga, in Brazil, a strange society
had come into existence by degrees. Peopled at first
by Portuguese and Dutch adventurers and malefactors, it had become
a nest of pirates and a home for all the desperadoes of Brazil and Paraguay.
This engaging population, being in want of wives whereby
to propagate their virtues, took to themselves Indians and negresses,
and bred a race worse ten times than were themselves,
as often happens both in the cases of Mulattos and Mestizos in America.
Under the name of Mamelucos* (given to them no one knows why)
they soon became the terror of the land. Equally at home on horseback,
in canoes upon the rivers, or in schooners on the sea,
excellent marksmen and courageous fighters, they subsisted chiefly
by procuring Indians as slaves for the plantations in Brazil.
In a short time they exhausted all the Indians near San Paulo,
and were forced to search far in the depths of the unknown interior.
Little by little, following the course of the great rivers in their canoes,
they reached the Jesuit settlements upon the upper waters of the Parana,
where they burned the towns and the churches, made captives of the converts,
and killed the priests. Montoya relates that a Jesuit,
having clasped an Indian in his arms to save him, was deluged with his blood,
a Mameluco having crept up behind him and plunged his lance into the Indian
behind the Jesuit's back. The Mameluco, on being, as Montoya says,
`reprehended' by the Jesuit, dogmatically remarked, `I shall be saved
in spite of God, for to be saved a man has only to believe,'**
a remark which showed him clearly an honest opponent of the Jesuits,
as they insisted greatly on the doctrine of good works.

--
* The word in Brazil is used to designate a half-breed, but the etymology
seems unknown.
** `Me he de salvar a pesar de Dios, porque para salvarse el hombre
no ha menester mas que creer' (Ruiz Montoya, `Conquista Espiritual').
Montoya adds with a touch of humour quite in Cervantes' vein:
`Este, sabe ya por experiencia la falsedad de su doctrina,
porque le mataron de tres balazos, sin confesion.'
--

Ruiz Montoya and others tell us that the plan of action of the Paulistas
was either to attack the Jesuit reductions on Sunday, when the sheep
were gathered in the fold listening to Mass, surround the church,
murder the priest, and carry off the neophytes as slaves; or else,
disguised as Jesuits, enter a mission, gain the confidence of the Indians,
and then communicate with their soldiers, who were waiting in the woods.
But not content with this, it seems, so often did they practise singing Mass
to pass as Jesuits, that on returning to San Paulo, in their orgies,
their great diversion was to masquerade as priests. So that the rascals
not only profited by their villainy, but extracted much amusement
from their wicked deeds.* This, in Montoya's opinion, was even more damnable
than the actual crime. And so no doubt it was, and we in England,
by having made our vice as dull as virtue is in other lands,
have gone some way towards morality, for vice and virtue,
both deprived of humour, become not so far separated
as some virtuous dull folk may think.

--
* The Mamelucos sometimes pushed their forays right through Paraguay
into the district of the Moxos, and Padre Patricio Fernandez,
in his curious `Relacion de los Indios Chiquitos' (Madrid, 1726),
relates their adventures in that far-distant district,
and the conflicts which the Indians, led by their priests and helped
by the Spanish settlers, sustained.
--

Quite naturally, these redoubtable land and river pirates
saw in the Jesuit reductions upon the Paranapane, and generally
throughout the district of Guayra, merely an opportunity of capturing
more Indians than usual at a haul. In 1629 they first appeared
before the Mission of San Antonio and destroyed it utterly,
burning the church and houses, and driving off the Indians to sell as slaves.
San Miguel and Jesus-Maria shortly suffered the same fate. In Concepcion
Padre Salazar was regularly besieged, and he and all the people reduced
to eating dogs, cats, rats, mice, and even snakes. At the last moment,
when about to surrender, Father Cataldino, hastily arming some Indians with
any rude weapons at his command, marched on the place and raised the siege.
A worthy member of the Church militant this exploring, fighting,
intrepid Italian priest, and one the Company of Jesus should honour,
for to him, perhaps as much as to any of these first explorers
of the Upper Parana, is credit due.

But still the Mamelucos ran their course, destroying town after town,
so that in the short space of a year (1630-31) they destroyed partially
the reductions of San Francisco Xavier, San Jose, San Pedro,
and La Concepcion; and the two first founded, San Ignacio and Loreto,
were ruined utterly. The wretched Indians, to whom by law
the Jesuits were forbidden to serve out firearms, stood no chance
against the well-trained Paulistas, with their horses, guns, and bloodhounds,
assisted as they were by troops of savage Indians who discharged
poisoned arrows from blowpipes and from bows. Small wonder that,
as Montoya, Charlevoix, Lahier,*1* and Filiberto Monero*2* all agree,
despair took hold of them, so that in many instances
they cursed the Jesuits and fled back to the woods. When one reflects
that many of the Indian tribes looked upon baptism as a poison,*3*
it is not strange that they should have associated effect with cause,
and set down all their sufferings to the influence of the malignant rite
to which the Jesuits had subjected them. The isolated Jesuits
ran considerable risk from their own sheep, and Padre Mola,
after the ruin of San Antonio, was suspected by them of being in league
with the Paulistas, and had to flee for safety to another town;
and as a touch of comedy is seldom wanting to make things bitterer
to those in misfortune, a troop of savage Indians, having arrived
to attack the Reduction of San Antonio, and finding it already burning,
instantly thought poor Padre Mola had been the instigator,
and, starting on his trail, almost surprised him before he reached a refuge
from their patriotic rage.

--
*1* Lahier (Francisci) S. I., `Annae Paraguarie, Annor. 1635, et duor. sequ.'
*2* `Relazioni della Provincia del Paraguai'.
*3* Brabo.
--

Thus in the greater world reformers of all sorts have not infrequently
in times of scarcity and danger been taken by their proteges
for the authors of their trials and stoned, whilst the smug Government
which caused the ruin, well bolstered up in the affection of its `taxables',
chuckled, serenely confident in the unending folly of mankind.
Most certainly the Jesuits struggled to do their duty to their neophytes
in what they thought they saw was right. On foot and unattended
Fathers Maceta and Mansilla followed the fifteen thousand captives to Brazil,
confessing those who fell upon the road before they died,
and instant in supplication to the Paulistas for the prisoners' release.
Father Maceta especially behaved heroically, carrying the chains of those
who could hardly drag themselves along, himself half dead
with hunger and his constant toil. Especially he strove to effect
the release of a captive chief called Guiravera, who had been
one of his bitterest enemies, and strove so hard that a Paulista captain,
either touched by his zeal or wearied with his pleading,
released the chief, his wife and family, and six of the Indians of his tribe.
The chief returned to become the Jesuits' best friend,
and the two priests on foot followed the captives' train.
What they endured on foot without provisions, tortured by insects,
and in danger from wild beasts, as well as constant perils from the Paulistas,
who now and then pricked them with lances or fired pistols over their heads
to frighten them away, none but those who have journeyed
in the forests of that forgotten corner of the world can estimate.
I see them in their torn and sun-browned cassocks struggling through
the `esteros'*1* in water to the knees, falling and rising oft,
after the fashion of the supposititious Christian on life's way;
pushing along through forest paths across which darted humming-birds,
now coming on a dying man and kneeling by his side, now gathering
the berries of the guavirami*2* to eat upon the road, and then again
catching sight of a jaguar as it slunk beside the trail, and all the time
convinced that all their efforts, like the efforts of most of those
who strive, would be in vain. So stumbling through the woods,
crossing the rivers on inflated ox-skins, baked by the sun
upon the open plains, at length the Jesuits reached San Paulo,
where they had a college, and without resting set at once to work.
In season (and what in cases of the kind is ten times more important),
out of season, they besought, pleaded, and preached, and finding
as little grace from the Paulista chiefs as a transgressor against
some fiery dogma would find from a sour-faced North British dogmatist,
they started for Rio de Janeiro to see the Council-General of Brazil.
There they were told that the right person to address
was the Captain-General of the colony, who had his residence in Bahia,
five or six hundred miles away. Not the least daunted, they set out,
and found Don Diego Luis Oliveira more or less friendly, but as usual
fearful of giving offence to those who had a vested interest in the trade.
Then the two Jesuits, hearing that another invasion of the Paulistas
was expected in Guayra, started back on their long journey
through the woods, over the plains, across the mountain ranges,
and through the dank `esteros' which lay between them and their missions
on the Parana. The Captain-General seems to have been roused
to a sense of the position by their words, for on his annual visitation
at San Paulo he spoke in public to the colonists against their slave raids,
when a shot fired from the meeting ended his speech.*3* The inhabitants
then signified to him that, sooner than give up what seemed to them
a justifiable and honest means of life, they would be debaptized.
How they proposed to debaptize themselves is not related,
but perhaps after the fashion of the Guaranis -- by sand, hot water,
and scraping with a shell; though why the tongue should be thus scarified
seems doubtful, for no sect of Christians that is known
exacts that people at that sacrament should put out their tongues,
and even baptism does little or nothing to increase the power of scandal
inherent both in those who have been and those who never were baptized.

--
*1* An `estero' is a tract of country covered by water
to the depth of two or three feet. The bottom is usually hard,
but it is full of holes and hummocks. High pampa grass and reeds
not infrequently obscure the view, and clouds of insects
make life miserable. If the tract extends to more than a day's journey,
the night passed on a dry hummock, holding one's horse and listening
without a fire to the wild beasts, is likely to remain
present to one in after-life, especially if alone; the only things
that seem to link one to humanity are one's horse and the familiar stars.
Perhaps that is why Capella has always seemed to me in some sort
my own property.
*2* This curious berry, about the size of a large damson,
grows on a little shrub in sandy and rocky soils.
It has a thick yellow rind and several large seeds,
and the property of being icy cold in the hottest weather --
a true traveller's joy. Dr. de Bourgade de la Dardye,
in his excellent book on Paraguay (the English edition
published in London in 1892), thinks it is either a eugenia or a myrtus.
*3* Charlevoix, vol. i., liv. vii., p. 384.
--

About this time (1630) the poor Jesuits were much tormented
by the return to paganism of their Indians, and most especially
by a hideous dwarf who set himself up as a god, and found
a host of worshippers. Good Father Charlevoix thinks
that `ce petit-monstre',* despairing of being thought a man, had no resource
but to give out he was a god, and remarks that, as even more hideous gods
have been adored, it is not surprising that the Indians took him at his word.
When stripped of the somewhat strange phraseology of the simple Jesuit,
there is nothing really shocking in the incident. People in general,
in making gods, endue them with their own least admirable attributes,
and logically these poor Indians but followed out the general scheme.

--
* Ibid., liv. vii., p. 359.
--

But in the midst of heresies and dwarf-gods, with the Paulistas
almost always in the field, a man arose who was to lead
the Jesuits and their neophytes out of Guayra and settle them
securely below the cataract in the Misiones of Paraguay.
Born probably late in the sixteenth century in Spain,
Antonio Ruiz de Montoya was amongst the first of the Jesuit Fathers
who came to Paraguay. In 1612 we find him recently arrived from Spain;*1*
sent up to the province of Guayra to the assistance of Fathers
Maceta and Cataldino. For thirty years,*2* as he himself informs us
in his book, he remained in Paraguay, and in his own pathetic words
he tells us how most of his life was spent. `I have lived,' he says,
`all through the period of thirty years in Paraguay, as in the desert
searching for wild beasts -- that is, for savage Indians --
crossing wild countries, traversing mountain chains, in order
to find Indians and bring them to the true sheepfold of the Holy Church
and to the service of His Majesty.*3* With my companions I established
thirteen reductions or townships in the wilds, and this I did
with great anxiety, in hunger, nakedness, and frequent peril of my life.
And all these years I passed far from my brother Spaniards have made me
almost a rustic and ignorant of the polished language of the Court.'
Travelling as he did continually, few knew the country
from Guayra to Yapeyu*4* so well as he; he tells us that
for `all travelling equipment' he took a hammock, and a little mandioca flour,
that he usually travelled on foot with either sandals or bare feet,
and that for eight or nine years he never once tasted bread.

--
*1* Charlevoix, `Histoire du Paraguay', vol. lvi., p. 285.
*2* `Conquista Espiritual del Paraguay', Ruiz de Montoya,
introductory chapter.
*3* This may either mean to the service of God or to the service of the King
(Philip III.), for in the time of Montoya `Majesty' was used in addressing
both the King of Spain and the King of Heaven.
*4* Yapeyu, or Reyes, was the southernmost of the Jesuit reductions.
It was situated upon the Uruguay in what is now
the Argentine province of Entre Rios.
--

About the year 1611-12 we find him charged with a mission
to the Provincial at Asuncion to disabuse him of a report
which had been carried there that the Jesuits of Guayra
were garnering in no fruit from all their labours in the wilds.
The rumour had been so much repeated that the superiors in Asuncion
were on the point of calling back the missionaries and giving up all hope.
Montoya, accompanied by six Indians, set out upon the journey,
which by land to-day is enough to appal the boldest traveller.
Walking along, he found himself about the middle of his way alone,
his Indians having loitered in the rear. Night caught him in the forests,
and a storm came on. He passed the night at the foot of a large tree,
hungry and wet, and, waking in the morning, found himself
so crippled with arthritic pains as to be obliged to continue his journey
on his hands and knees. Alone and helpless, he dragged himself to a place
called Maracayu, and, failing to obtain a canoe, went on another league,
and there lay down to die, his leg being swelled enormously
with the rheumatic pains. Then, as he says himself, he prayed to San Ignacio,
telling him that from a sentiment of obedience he had set out upon
the journey through the waste. Nothing could have been better,
for the saint (who must have seen him all the time), flattered, perhaps,
that his own chief virtue had been the cause of so much pain,
promptly healed him and restored his leg to its usual size,
and Montoya went on his way rejoicing to Asuncion. The Provincial
heard and was disabused, but was unable to send a single man to help,
and poor Montoya set off again back to Guayra alone, having gained nothing
but his sufferings on the road.

Again, in 1614, we find him in Asuncion combating calumnies
spread by the Spanish settlers against the Jesuits.
In the same year (as he informs us*) he was witness
in the Reduction of Loreto of a strange circumstance.
`An Indian,' he says, `of intelligence and pious conduct called me
to administer the last Sacraments, and to confess him before he died,
and this I did. As there seemed little hope of his recovery,
and pressing business called me away, I quitted him after having given orders
for his burial. He died in a short time -- at least, all those
who were with him had no doubt of this; on my return I found the man
whom I had charged to stay beside the Indian till his death
preparing for his funeral. Toward mid-day they came to tell me
that the dead man had come to life, and wished to speak to me. I ran there,
and found him with a cheerful face in the middle of a crowd of Indians.
I asked him what had happened since I last saw him, and he answered me
that the instant that I quitted him his soul had taken its departure
from his body; then, at a point which he thought near to his hammock,
a devil had appeared, who said to him, "You are my prey,"
and that he answered it could not be, for he had confessed himself
to the best of his ability, and had received the holy Viaticum
before his death; that the devil had sustained that his confession
had been incomplete, and that he had forgotten to confess
that twice he had been drunk, to which he answered that it was an oversight,
and he hoped that God would not remember it. Then, on the devil sustaining
that he had committed a sacrilege, St. Peter had appeared, followed by angels,
and driven off the fiend. I asked him how he had known St. Peter,
and he replied by describing him, though he had never seen
an image of the saint. "The saint," he said, "covered me with his mantle,
and I felt myself instantly carried through the air. First I perceived
a lovely landscape, and further on a great city, from which
a shining light appeared. Then the Apostle and the angels stopped,
and the first said to me, `This is the city of the Lord;
we live here with Him, but the time of your entry is not yet.
It is written that your soul shall once more join your body,
and in three days you must appear in church.' Then all was dark,
and in an instant I woke up alive and well."

--
* `Conquista Espiritual', p. 22.
--

`I,' says Montoya, `understood by the last words of St. Peter
that the man had to die in three days, and I asked what he thought himself.
"I think," said he, "that next Sunday they will carry my body to the church,
and I am certain that I only returned to life in order to exhort
my relatives and my friends to listen to your instructions." . . .
When Sunday came he made his general confession,* admitted the two sins
the devil had reproached him with, exhorted all to live a Christian life,
and a few moments afterwards quietly gave up the ghost.'

--
* This time, it is to be hoped, without omissions.
--

This is the sole occasion on which Padre Ruiz Montoya even remotely
touches the field of miracles, as he in general relies
upon himself, his knowledge of the world, and on his patience,
which must have been almost North British in its quality,
if he acted up to his own favourite maxim of `by returning thanks for injuries
is how wise men conduct their business.'*

--
* `Dando gracias por agravios negocian los hombres sabios.'
--

In 1623 we find him praying Father Cataldino to let him accompany
the expedition to Itiranbaru, a mountain wooded to the summit,
in which lived several wild tribes. There he so worked upon the Indians
as to establish them in a reduction under the title of St. Francis Xavier,*
and left the mountain, which had been a haunt of savages,
as Padre del Techo says in his curious work on Paraguay,
`all at the service of the Lord.'

--
* Soon afterwards ruined by the Paulistas.
--

In 1623, whilst preaching, he was suddenly assailed by hostile Indians,
and seven of his Indians pierced with arrows at his feet.
Undoubtedly, he must have been killed had not an Indian
taken his hat and cloak, and run into the middle of the enemy
to distract the fire. In the confusion both the heroic Indian and Montoya
managed to escape, the latter getting into a canoe which, fortunately,
was ready at the river-side. But in the midst of all his occupations
he had time to study natural history in the spirit of the time,
as the following description clearly shows: `Amongst the other
rarities of the land is an amphibious animal. . . . It is like a sheep,
with but the difference that its teeth and nails are like a tiger's,
which animal it equals in ferocity. The Indians never look on it
without terror, and when it sallies from the marshes where it lives
(which it does ordinarily in troops), they have no other chance of escape
but to climb up a tree, and even then sometimes are not in safety,
for this terrible creature sometimes uproots the tree, or sometimes
stays on guard until the Indian falls into its jaws.' Thus far Montoya;
but Charlevoix informs us that, `en langue Guaranie', it is known as the `ao',
and rather tamely adds, `When one of these animals is slain,
the people make a jacket of its skin.'

Again, Montoya tells us of the horse on which the venerable Padre Roque
used to ride, which, when he died, refused all food, and wept perpetually,
two streams of water running from its eyes. It never allowed an Indian
to mount it after its master's death, and finally expired,
close to his grave, of grief. A kindly, scholarly, intrepid priest,
well skilled in knowledge of the world, and not without
some tincture of studies in science, as the above-related anecdotes
reveal to us. No doubt the Indians loved him far and wide,
and his superiors stood in some little awe of him, as those in office
often do of their subordinates when they show that capacity for action
which is a sure bar to advancement either in Church or State.

In 1627 Montoya was made head of the missions in Guayra,
which opened up to him the opportunity of showing what kind of man he was.
In this year the Spaniards of Villa Rica, the nearest town in Paraguay
to the reductions in Guayra, sent out an expedition to chastize some Indians
who had insulted a chief called Tayaoba, whom Montoya had baptized.
This was the pretext for the expedition, but Montoya knew well
that the real object was to hunt for slaves. He brought before the Governor
the edict of the King of Spain forbidding any war to be made upon the Indians
without sufficient cause. All was in vain, and the expedition
left Villa Rica and plunged into the wilds. Montoya, sore against
the Governor's desire, went with the expedition, taking with him
Padre Salazar and some well-armed Indians. It was lucky for the Spaniards
that he was there, for on the second day a flight of arrows
burst from a wood and wounded many of them. The captain of the expedition
ordered a retreat, which, situated as they were, exposed on all sides
to the fire of an enemy whom they could not see, must have proved fatal.
Montoya counselled throwing up earthworks before some huts
which stood upon the edge of the woods in which the Indians were;
this done, he sent a messenger to Villa Rica for reinforcements.
Even behind the earthworks the Spaniards were hard pressed;
no one could show himself without being pierced by an arrow.
The number of the Indians daily increased, till on the third day
they numbered about four thousand, and seemed likely to advance upon the huts.
The Spanish captain ordered a rally, and the neophytes wished to decamp,
taking Montoya with them, and then gain the shelter of the woods.
This he would not allow, and, charging with the soldiers,
put the Indians to flight. The Spaniards, far from being grateful
for their lives, seeing their hopes of making prisoners had vanished,
wished to lay hands upon the Indians whom Montoya had brought,
and who had fought beside them in the recent fray. Hearing that
in the morning the Spanish soldiers would attack his neophytes,
Montoya sent them off by night, and in the morning, when the Spanish captain
found him and the other priest alone, he said, `Thinking you had no other use
for the Indians, I advised them to return.' The captain had the grace
to say nothing but, `Then, you gave them good advice, my father.'
The two priests waited patiently till the soldiers had retired,
and then sent for their Indians and quietly went home. Thus it appears
that at necessity Padre Montoya was a true son of San Ignacio.

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