Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

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--
*1* `Conquista Espiritual', p. 48.
*2* `Rigoroso examen' (`Conquista Espiritual').
*3* In all the books and pamphlets I have searched about the Jesuits
in Paraguay, both friendly and unfriendly to the Order,
I have never found a charge of personal unchastity advanced
against a Jesuit. In regard to the other religious Orders
it is far otherwise.
*4* Azara, `Descripcion e Historia del Paraguay', tomo i., p. 40:
`En las inmediaciones del Salto hay proporcion para tomar
las medidas geometricas que se quiera y metiendose por el bosque
se puede reconocer lo inferior del Salto, bien que para este
es menester desnudare totalmente porque llueve mucho.'
*5* Azara records (book i.) the Indian fable that no living thing
could exist near the cataract. Though this is of course untrue,
yet in most Paraguayan forests near water, game is both scarce
and hard to find.
--

Each Indian had to take his bundle on his back; even the children
carried bundles in proportion to their strength. The missionaries carried
what was held most sacred, as altar-plate and images of saints.
In front a band of men armed with machetes (cane-knives)
opened the way through the dense woods and pathless jungle of the bank;
and as they marched along, Montoya says they sang hymns
which the Jesuits had taught them, and at the sound of them
fugitives who had been hiding in the woods came out and joined
their march. Especially those from the out-station of Tayaoba
joined them; their priest, Pedro de Espinosa, had met his death
`with a good chance of his eternal welfare,' as Montoya says.*
But after the second day the hymns no longer sounded through the woods,
nor did they play upon the harps and other instruments,
whose strings being all broken and the wood unglued,
`they left them on the rocks, being too sad to look at them.'
All through the weary journey Montoya seems never once to have despaired,
and sets down in his book the adventures of each separate day,
never forgetting to chronicle anything strange or pathetic
as it occurred to him. On the fourth day he sent off Fathers Diego,
Nicolas Hennerio, and Mansilla into the province of Itatines
to found a mission there, acting upon orders which had just reached him
from the Provincial of the Order shortly before he had started from Guayra.
They took with them `bells, images, and everything suitable
for the foundation of a mission'; but the first two were martyred
by the wild Indians, and the third just fled in time to save his life.
It took the fugitive Indians eight weary days of marching
to reach the lower end of the cataract, where once again
the Parana was navigable. On their arrival they hoped to find
provisions and more boats; but none were there, their own stores
were almost done, and the people too exhausted to march on.
Fever broke out, and many of them died; and others, lost in the forests,
without a guide, wandered about till death released them from their march.
A weaker man than Padre Montoya might have despaired of ever issuing
from the woods. However, he set the Indians to work to make canoes,
and others** to cultivate patches of maize for food, working himself
alternately with axe and hoe to give example to the neophytes.
Others, again, cut down the enormous canes, which in that region
grew to fifty feet in height, to make them into rafts.

--
* `Con buenas prendas de su salud eterna' (`Conquista Espiritual').
** Fathers Suarez, Contreras, and Espinosa were Montoya's lieutenants
in this memorable retreat. It is difficult to give the palm
to the energy and courage of the four priests, or to
the resignation and faith of the immense multitude of Indians
who were saved by them.
--

So, after a considerable time, all was in readiness for a new start,
and luckily provisions from the reductions on the Parana arrived.
So they embarked again, and on the journey a raft in which
a woman and two children were sitting upset, to Montoya's agony,
as he knew that `in that river there are fish that the people call culebras,*
which have been seen to swallow men entire, and throw them out again
with all their bones broken as if it had been done with stones.'
He says: `I confess I suffered infinitely, and, turning my eyes to heaven,
I blamed my sins as having been the cause of so much misery,
and said, "O Lord, is it possible that for this Thou hast brought
these people out of their country, that my eyes should endure
the spectacle of so much misery, and my heart break at so much suffering,
and then to let them die devoured by savage fish!"' As the good man
was praying, the Indian woman's head appeared above the water,
and Montoya himself, aided by Indians, drew her and the children
in safety to the land. But his trials were not at an end,
for many of the hastily constructed rafts and canoes sank before his eyes,
and the mortality of Indians was great. Eventually they found
a temporary refuge in the Reduction of the Nativity upon the Acaray,
and at Santa Maria la Mayor upon the Iguazu. Then famine raged,
and the arrival of so many people increased the scarcity,
so that six hundred of the new arrivals died in one reduction,
and five hundred in the next. At last the scarcity became so great
that the poor Indians had to roam about the forests to gather fruit,
and many of them died in the recesses of the woods.

--
* `Culebra' is the Spanish for a serpent. These fish may have been waterboas,
or, again, as seems probable by their digestive powers,
some kind of hypothetical fish not yet catalogued.
--

Seeing no hopes of saving the remainder, Montoya led them further on
to the banks of a little river called the Jubaburrus,*
and there he once again founded two reductions, which he named
Loreto and San Ignacio, after the two the Mamelucos had destroyed.
He bought ten thousand head of cattle out of the money the King allowed
to the Jesuits of Guayra, and from the sale of some few objects
saved from the general destruction of the towns, and settled down his Indians,
who in Guayra had been all agriculturists, to a pastoral life.
Thus did he bring successfully nearly twelve thousand people
a distance of about five hundred miles through desert country,
and down a river broken in all its course by rapids,
landing them far from their enemies in a safe haven at the last.
Most commonly the world forgets or never knows its greatest men,
while its lard-headed fools, who in their lives perhaps have been
the toys of fortune, sleep in their honoured graves, their memory
living in the page of history, preserved like grapes in aspic
by writers suet-headed as themselves. But though this Hegira
was the most stirring episode of Montoya's life, he yet had work to do,
and in the province of diplomacy rendered as great, or even greater,
services to the Indians, whom he loved better than himself,
as in the memorable journey when he led them down the Parana.

--
* The name of this river seems to have passed through the machine
of some medieval typewriter, for it is like no name in any language,
and Montoya knew Guarani well, having written much in that language.
--




Chapter III

Spain and Portugal in South America -- Enmity between
Brazilians and Argentines -- Expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay --
Struggles with the natives -- Father Mendoza killed --
Death of Father Montoya



In the province of Guayra the Spaniards who had looked with disfavour
on the Jesuits, and had enslaved the Indians when they were able,
were in sore straits. The Mamelucos, finding no more Indians to enslave,
fell on the two towns of Villa Rica and Ciudad Real, destroyed them utterly,
and forced the inhabitants to flee for refuge into Paraguay.
Thus Guayra went the way of Matto Grosso and several other
provinces of Spain, and became Portuguese. Strangely enough,
most of these losses happened when Spain and Portugal were joined
under one crown. At home the Spaniards and the Portuguese,
however much they detested one another, were forced to keep the peace.
In America they were always at war, which ended invariably
to the detriment of Spain.* The strife begun by the Papal Bull of 1493,
in which Pope Alexander VI. divided the territories
discovered and to be discovered between Portugal and Spain, went on,
till bit by bit Spain was stripped of the provinces of Matto Grosso,
Rio Grande, and Guayra, and found herself drawn into the numerous disputes
about the Colonia del Sacramento, which cost so much blood
to both contending Powers. Perhaps the most curious and interesting
incident of the long struggle was the Three Years' War,
which began in 1750, after the marriage of Ferdinand VI. of Spain
with Dona Barbara of Portugal. By the treaty entered into at this marriage,
seven of the most flourishing of the missions situated
on the left bank of the Uruguay were ceded to Portugal
in exchange for La Colonia del Sacramento on the river Plate.
The towns resisted change of sovereignty, as Portugal to them
was typified by the Paulistas, their most inveterate enemies.
The Marquis de Valdelirios in his curious despatches touches much
upon this war, but perhaps the best account is to be found
in the curious memoir of the Irish Jesuit Father, Tadeo Hennis,**
who was the backbone of the resisting Guaranis.

--
* Even so late as the year 1777, in which the last treaty of boundaries
was signed at San Ildefonso, Portugal was the gainer, though not so greatly
as by the former treaties of 1681 and 1750.
** `Efemerides o Diario de la Guerra de los Guaranies', por P. Tadeo Hennis.
This journal has, I think, never been published in its entirety,
but portions of it are to be found in the collection of documents,
Bulls, despatches, etc., published at Madrid in 1768
under the title of `Causa Jesuitica de Portugal'. The author of this book
calls Hennis a German, but his name, Thadeus Ennis (as it is often spelt),
and his love of fighting look un-Germanic. Portions of the diary
are also to be found in the work of Bernardo Ibanez de Echegarray,
entitled `Histoire du Paraguay sous les Je/suites' (Amsterdam, 1780).
Either the original or an old manuscript copy exists
in the archives of Simancas, where I have seen, but unfortunately
did not examine, it. A portion of the work is also included
in the `Coleccion de Angelis' (Buenos Ayres, 1836).
--

The ancient enmity of the two nations has been continued in their descendants,
the Brazilians and the Argentines and Uruguayans, and little by little
Brazil is absorbing all the northern portion of the Republic of Uruguay.
After the retreat under Montoya down the Parana, the Jesuit missions,
especially in Paraguay and what is now the province of Corrientes,
for some time enjoyed a period of peace and of repose, and the strange
policy of the Jesuits was developed, and township after township arose
amongst the Guaranis (1630-31). But there was still no rest
for Ruiz Montoya, who was of those who rest but in the grave. In 1632,
at the instance of the Governor and magistrates of the township of Jerez,
Montoya sent Fathers Jean Ranconier and Mansilla to the north of Paraguay
to found a mission amongst the Itatines, a forest-dwelling tribe.
Their territory was marshy and the climate bad, and woods of indiarubber-trees
covered all the land. Fathers del Techo and Charlevoix
both speak of the `rebounding balls' with which they played,
which, thrown upon the ground, start up again as if they were filled with air.
This is, perhaps, one of the first times that indiarubber is mentioned,
though in some places Jean de Lery* seems to indicate he was acquainted
with its use.

--
* `Histoire d'un Voyage faict en la Terre du Bre/sil'.
--

The Jesuits found that to make progress was not easy with these Indians,
who willingly enough listened to their preaching, but refused to alter
their social habits, to which the Jesuits ascribe the fact that even then
their numbers were diminishing. Like most of the Indians of America,
they were polygamists, which custom in their race operates differently to
polygamy amongst the negroes: for whereas they seem to increase and thrive,
the Indians even at the conquest often tended to become extinct.
When a headman amongst the Itatines died, a number of his followers
jumped down precipices to accompany him upon his journey to a better world.
This custom and polygamy gave much trouble to the Jesuits,
but their most admirable patience and knowledge of mankind helped them
to overcome them by degrees. All was about to flourish in the mission,
when one Acosta, a Brazilian priest, appeared. Perhaps he was in league
with the Paulistas, or perhaps was jealous of the Jesuits, for he tried hard
to lead a number of the Indians to San Paulo to show them (as he said)
how they should follow the true law of God.*

--
* The way of the neophyte even to-day is hard, so many priests
of different jarring sects disputing for his soul as hotly as if
it were a preference stock which they had private intimation
was just about to rise.
--

The Itatines, either suspecting that Acosta's true law was false,
or tired of his preaching, rose and killed him; but the effect was bad,
and there grew up amongst those infidels a coldness even towards
the Jesuits themselves. Had it not been for two miraculous events
which happened opportunely, as such things should happen
if they are to be turned to good account, much harm might have been done.
A chief, having cursed a priest, was seized at once with a malignant ulcer
in the throat, which shortly killed him. The Itatines did not apparently
think anything of the influence of the unhealthy climate in which they lived,
and set the occurrence down to the act of God.

But more was still to come. Another chief having so far forgotten himself
as to jeer at a priest, a thunderbolt fell so close to him
that he was knocked senseless, and lay as dead. These two events confirmed
the Jesuits' power, and things began to flourish in their four new missions.
But the Great Power, so careful of the individual effort of His priests,
seems to have been most unaccountably remiss of their success considered
as a whole. In the same year (1632) the Mamelucos appeared and ruined
all the four missions, so that the efforts of the Jesuits and the miracles
were lost.

In 1633 the first skirmish took place between the Bishop of Paraguay
and the Jesuits. This skirmish little by little grew into a war,
kept up for more than a hundred years, and ended finally
in the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay. The Governor,
Don Luis de Cespedes, having called upon the Indians of the Jesuit missions
for personal service, a proceeding quite against both
the King's orders and the Papal Bulls, the Bishop thought the moment
opportune to press for tithes. This, too, was equally forbidden
both by a Bull and by an order of the Council of the Indies. Padre Romero
went to Asuncion and displayed his Bulls and his orders of the Council,
and the Governor withdrew his claims. The Bishop, after some opposition,
withdrew likewise, and the Provincial of the Order arrived at Asuncion,
bringing with him an order from the King signifying that
the Indians of the reductions were to be left entirely to the Jesuits.
So for the present the Jesuits scored a victory, though in the future
it was to cost them dear. But the Governor of Paraguay
having returned apparently to his design of exacting personal service
from the Indians of the missions, the Provincial checkmated him
with a royal order from Philip IV. The order was addressed
to the Viceroy of Peru, the fourth Count of Chinchon. The missive,
dated at Madrid in 1633, condemned in the strongest terms
all personal service (that is, forced labour) amongst the Indians,
not only of the Jesuit missions, but of Peru and Mexico.
With a touching confidence in his own powers, and absolute right Divine,
the well-meaning King added to his orders a paragraph commanding
all to be done as he had ordered within six months. Strange to find
Philip IV., whom Velasquez has immortalized and shown us as he sat upon
his horse ineffable, so far away from the Museo del Prado, where alone
he ever seems really to have lived. But foolish Governors and Bishops
were not the Jesuits' worst enemies in Paraguay. In 1634 the Provincial,
Father Boroa, was shipwrecked in a voyage up the Uruguay, and only saved
by the devotion of his neophytes.

Sometimes the cruel treatment of the natives by the Spanish settlers
was avenged upon the Jesuits. This was the case with a band of Guapalaches,
who, coming on Father Espinosa in a wood, attacked and massacred
him and all his Indians, and, having cut his body into pieces,
left it for the wild beasts to eat. Upon another occasion Father Mendoza
fell into an ambuscade, from which he might have escaped had not his horse
sunk in a miry stream. Long he defended himself with an Indian shield,
but at length was stretched upon the ground and left for dead.
During the night he revived, and dragged himself up to some rocks;
but the Indians in the morning, following up his trail, came on him
praying in a loud voice. They told him that he served a blind God,
or at best a powerless God, as He did nothing to defend His servant;
then, after torturing him cruelly, they despatched him,
and, taking out his heart, said: `Let us see if his soul
will take the road to heaven.' These savages do not seem to have been
genuinely interested in finding out what became of the soul
after the dissolution of the body, for they sat down and made
a hearty meal of two young Indians who accompanied the unlucky priest.
But they had heard their victim say that when he baptized them
it purified their souls, and the last words of Father Mendoza had been
to recommend his soul to God. I often wonder if the Christians of to-day,
their creed so firmly fixed by the martyrdoms of simple folk,
who held their faith without perhaps much reasoning on it,
know what they owe to men like Father Christopher Mendoza,
slain by the Indians in the Paraguayan woods. Your ancient martyr,
fallen out of fashion and forgotten by the Christians of to-day,
should have his homage done to him, if only by the chance writer,
who in his studies for some subject of no interest to the general world
comes on his trail of blood; for martyrdom, no matter how obscure,
forgotten by the people of the faith for which the martyr suffered,
is a slur not only on the faithful, but on the faith itself. In 1636 occurred
the second invasion of the Paulistas, which induced Father Montoya,
accompanied by Father Diaz Tano, to go to Europe to seek protection
for the Indians both from the King of Spain and from the Pope.

The Mamelucos burst into the province of Tape,* and,
as the mission of Jesus-Maria (one of the few left undestroyed
at the former invasion) was most exposed, Father Romero asked
permission of the Governor of the River Plate** to make some trenches
to defend the place. The Governor consented, but the storm burst
on the mission before the defences were in a fit state to defend.
The mission priests Antonio Bernal and Juan Cardenas were in the front ranks
encouraging the Indians, and both were badly wounded. Fathers Mola and Romero
went about ministering to the wounded, but escaped themselves. At last,
the Mamelucos having set fire to the church, capitulation became inevitable,
and the chief part of the Indians were led away in chains.
The same fate would have overtaken the mission of San Cristobal,
where father Romero had retreated with some fugitives from Jesus-Maria,
had not the people and their priest retreated hastily upon
the mission of Santa Ana. But even there they were not long in safety,
and had to undertake another perilous journey down the river Iguai.
Here a party of passing Mamelucos fell into an ambuscade,
and were hewn in pieces, presumably before the Lord. The Mamelucos
pushed their advance so far that Father Montoya had given orders
that all the missions of that province should be burned. The inhabitants,
who trusted him quite blindly, were just about to begin to burn their houses,
when an order from the Provincial stopped them from doing so till he himself
appeared upon the scene. He arrived, and, gathering up the scattered Indians
as far as he was able, left them for safety in some of the missions
which had not been destroyed, and set off himself to ask for help
from the Governor of Paraguay.

--
* This province was sometimes called Guayra, and sometimes La Provincia
de Vera, Vera being the family name of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.
Its position, etc., may be determined by reference to
the curious volume of maps published at Madrid by Don Francisco Javier Brabo
in 1872.
** That a mission could be so undefended as to need trenches,
that a Jesuit should ask leave to make such elementary defences,
even in the face of imminent danger, seems to prove that the Jesuits
at least in 1636 had no intention of defying the sovereign power,
as was so often alleged against them.
--

Finding no help either from him or from the Governor of the River Plate,
he went to Corrientes, and was received almost with contumely.
Then, desperate, he equipped an army of the mission Indians,
and advanced to fight the Mamelucos; but they had retreated into Brazil,
and were beyond his reach. Seeing that nothing was to be hoped
from the Spanish Governors, he sent a box of papers in a ship
going to Portugal, and laid his case before the Council of the Indies.
Montoya and Charlevoix relate that the box was thrown into the sea near Lisbon
by some enemy of the Jesuits, but providentially was washed up by the tide,
and, being found miraculously, was taken to the King of Spain.
Whether this happened as it is written, who shall say? But, in distress,
when have good men (before the time of the encyclopaedists)
been without a miracle to sustain their cause? In the next year (1637)
Father Montoya and Tano started upon their mission to Europe,
and a new field was opened to Montoya in which to show his talents
on the Indians' behalf.

Whilst Father Montoya was in Spain, the Provincial appointed Father Alfaro
to take his place. He fell on troublous times, for the Mamelucos
were preparing to attack the three remaining missions
in the province of Guayra.* As they were not defensible,
it was agreed to evacuate them, and to retreat into the provinces
upon the Uruguay. When they were just about to start from Santa Teresa,
where the inhabitants of the other missions had been collected,
the Mamelucos appeared just before Christmas. The Indians were driven off
as slaves, and the Mamelucos, with their usual sense of humour,
attended Mass as penitents on Christmas Day, with candles in their hands,
and listened to the sermon in an edifying way. The priest reproached them
for their cruelty, and they, after listening devoutly, gave him
the liberty of two choir boys, and quietly left the church.

--
* San Joaquin, Santa Teresa, Santa Ana.
--

At length the Jesuits, rendered desperate by the perils to which
the mission Indians were exposed, armed several bands of Indians and attacked
the Mamelucos. But, as was to be expected, the half-armed Indians
were always worsted by the well-armed and disciplined Paulista bands,
and then the Jesuits took the supreme resolve to evacuate Guayra entirely,
and place the Indians in safety between the rivers Parana and Uruguay.

Formed into three great companies, the Indians started on their second exodus.
Although the difficulties were less than in the voyage down the Parana,
still, to march several thousand Indians just emerged from savagery,
accompanied by their women and children, and charged with
all their possessions, through a wild country, where they were exposed
to the attack of a well-armed enemy upon the way, was not an easy task.
Father Christobal Arenas formed them into three divisions,
leading the first himself; but the Provincial seems to have done
most of the organizing, for Charlevoix says that `to his courage, prudence,
and inalterable kindness,' the success was due.*

--
* `Histoire du Paraguay', liv. ix., p. 446.
--

Courage and prudence and inalterable kindness are the three virtues
which have most moved the world; perhaps the last has been most efficacious,
and one would hope that in the future it would be the only one
of the whole three required.

Twelve thousand Indians, not counting women and children,
were thus led into a territory* between the rivers Uruguay and Parana,
rich, fertile, and, as the distance between the rivers
is not above some five-and-twenty miles, defended in some measure,
and easily rendered almost impregnable.

--
* This territory is now the Argentine province of Misiones.
--

No one can see the heart of man, and, even if God sees it,
He never tells us what is there, so that we are obliged to judge of actions
as we find them, and leave the search for motives to omniscients.
On the face of it, the Jesuits, both those who led the Indians
down the Parana and those who headed them in this migration
to the Mesopotamia between the Uruguay and Parana, were not impelled
by thought of gain; and if a Jesuit must of necessity have some dark scheme
behind the smallest action of his life, these men concealed it so deep down
within their souls that all the researches of their keenest enemies
have not been able to throw light on it. But, even settled
in their new homes, the Indians were defenceless against the Mamelucos,
as it was a state maxim of the Spanish court that the Indians
should never be allowed the use of guns. This was a wise enough precaution,
without doubt, for the Indians of the Encomiendas, who lived
amongst the Spaniards and owed them personal services;
but arms for the Indians of the missions were a necessity of life.
Therefore, before he started for Madrid, the Provincial impressed upon Montoya
to approach the Council of the Indies and the King, and represent to them
that it was impossible to guarantee the existence of the reductions
against the Mamelucos unless the Indians were allowed to provide themselves
with arms. So Father Montoya, though he was charged to press
for various reforms, was most especially impressed upon this point.
He was to tell the King that the Indians were not to be allowed
to keep their arms themselves, but that they would be kept by the Jesuits,
and served out to the Indians in case of an attack; then, that the arms
would not cost a penny to the treasury, but be all paid out of the alms
collected for the purpose by the Company; lastly, and this was
a true stroke of Jesuit policy, that, to instruct the Indians how to shoot,
they would bring from Chile certain Jesuits who in the world had served
as soldiers. One sees them brought from the frontiers of Araucania,
and from the outposts of the trans-Andean towns, half sacristan,
half sergeant, instant in prayer, and yet with a look about them
like a serious bull terrier -- a fitting kind of priest for a frontier town,
and such as could alone be found amongst the Jesuits.

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