[231]Guazu= ‘great’ in Guaraní. It is frequent in place-names both in Paraguay and Corrientes.[232]Dean Funes, vol. ii., cap. xii., p. 372, says of Zavala: ‘Por caracter era manso, pero usó algunas veces de severidad, porque sabia que para servir bien a los hombres es preciso de cuando en cuando tener valor de desagradarlos. . . . La pobreza en que murio despues de tantos años de mando, es una prueba clasica de que no estaba contagiado con esa commun flaqueza de los que gobieran en America.’[233]In the long and interesting letter of Jaime Aguilar, the provincial of the Jesuits in Paraguay, to the King of Spain (Philip V., 1737), occurs the following passage:‘Y si alguna vez, que no son muchas, se animan los Españoles a perseguir y castigar los Indios, muchos huyen de la tierra, o se esconden, por no ir a la entrada. . . . Otras (vezes) quando llegan allá, el Enemigo les quitan la Cavallada, dexandolos a pie y se vuelven a casa como pueden.’This I have seen myself, not thirty years ago, on the frontiers of the Argentine Republic. The popular Argentine poem, ‘La Vuelta de Martin Fierro’, by José Hernandez (Buenos Ayres, 1880), has an illustration showing an expedition against the Indians returning. Some of the men are on foot; others are riding two on the same horse, and officers are animating their men with the flat of their swords.[234]‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 125.[235]Brabo, ‘Inventarios’, p. ix.[236]Francisco Xavier Brabo, ‘Inventarios de los bienes hallados á la expulsion de los Jesuitas’ (Madrid, 1872).[237]The lists of cannons, guns, and arms of all kinds in the inventories of the Chaco towns, preserved by Brabo, serve to show not only the dangers to which the Jesuits were exposed, but also how thoroughly the Jesuits understood the fickle nature of those with whom they lived.[238]Another priest, the list of whose effects Brabo has preserved in his ‘Inventarios’, had a book called ‘El Alivio de Tristes’. Even a Protestant may be excused for hoping that it merited its title.[239]Cretineau Joly, tome v., chap. ii., p. 95. Your moral force is excellent in a civilized country; but your modern missionary usually prefers something more in accordance with the spirit of the times.[240]The total number of cattle was 78,171, as against 698,353 in the towns of the Guaranís. See Brabo, ‘Inventarios de los bienes hallados á la expulsion de los Jesuitas’, Appendix, p. 668.[241]‘History of the Abipones’, from the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, London, 1822.It is a curious circumstance that in the missions in the Chaco there were negro slaves, though in the Paraguayan missions they were unknown. In the inventory of the town of San Lucas appear the following entries, under the head of ‘Negros Esclavos’:‘Justo, que sirve de capataz en el campo; será de edad de veinte y siete años, mas ó menos segun su aspecto.’‘Item, Pedro, será de diez y seis años y es medio fatuo.’‘Item, José Felix, será de un mes y medio.’[242]Though 1747 was the date of the final founding of these reductions, as early as 1697 about four hundred Indians were discovered in the woods of the Taruma by Fathers Robles and Ximenes, and established in the mission of Nuestra Señora de Fe; but in the year 1721 they all returned to the woods, a famine and an outbreak of the small-pox having frightened them. After being again established in a mission, and again having left it, in 1746, they were established definitely at San Joaquin.[243]Dobrizhoffer calls the Tobatines by the name of Itatines. Charlevoix and others refer to them as Tobatines.[244]‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 54.[245]In 1873, when I visited the outskirts of this forest, the conditions were similar to those which Dobrizhoffer describes, with the addition that the depopulation of the country, owing to the recent long war, had allowed the tigers to multiply to an extraordinary degree, and my guide and myself, after feeding our horses, had to sleep alternately, the waker holding the two horses hobbled and bridled.[246]The whole operation of collecting and preparing the leaves of theIlex Paraguayensis, to make theyerba-maté, was most curious. Bands of men used to sally out for a six-months’ expedition, either by land with bullock-waggons, or up one of the rivers in flat-bottomed boats, which were poled along against the rapid current by crews of six to twelve men. Arrived at theyerbal, as the forest was called, they built shelters, after the fashion of those in use amongst the larger of the anthropoid apes. Some roamed the woods in search of the proper trees, the boughs of which they cut down with machetes, whilst others remained and built a large shed of canes called abarbacoa. On this shed were laid the bundles of boughs brought from the woods, and a large fire was lighted underneath. During forty-eight hours (if I remember rightly) the toasting went on; then, when sufficiently dry, the leaves were stripped from the twigs, and placed on a sort of open space of hard clay, something like a Spanish threshing-floor. On this they were pounded fine, and the powder rammed into raw-hide bags. This concluded the operations, and theyerbawas then ready for the ‘higgling of the market’.[247]Traduttore traditore, as the proverb says.[248]Charlevoix says, in his ‘Histoire de la Nouvelle France’, speaking of the Indians in general: ‘L’expérience a fait voir qu’il étoit plus à propos de les laisser dans leur simplicité et dans leur ignorance, que les sauvages peuvent être des bons Chrétiens sans rien prendre de notre politesse et de notre façon de vivre, ou du moins qu’il falloit laisser faire au tems pour les tirer de leur grossièreté, qui ne les empêche pas de vivre dans une grande innocence, d’avoir beaucoup de modestie, et de servir Dieu avec une piété et une ferveur, que les rendent très propres aux plus sublimes opérations de la grâce.’ Had more people thought with Charlevoix, and not been too anxious to draw savages incontrovertibly to our ‘politesse’ (sic) and ‘façon’, and left more to time (‘au tems’), how much misery might have been saved, and how many interesting peoples preserved! For, in spite of the domination of the Anglo-Saxon race, it might have been wise to leave other types, if only to remind us of our superiority.[249]Hell not infrequently seems to have struck the Indians as a joke, for Charlevoix relates that when the first missionaries expatiated on its flames to the Chirignanós, they said, ‘If there is fire in hell, we could soon get enough water to put it out.’ This answer scandalized the good priest, who could not foresee that the flames of Tophet would be extinguished without the necessity of any other waters than those of indifference.[250]‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 74.[251]Padre del Techo, in his ‘History of Paraguay’, says of the wood Indians that ‘they died like plants which, grown in the shade, will not bear the sun.’[252]San Joaquin, San Estanislao, and Belen.[253]Notably those of Azara.[254]‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 15.[255]As that of Philip V., from the palace of Buen Retiro, December 28, 1743, and his two letters to the Jesuits of Paraguay. Also the previous edict obtained by Montoya from Philip II., and by the various additions on the same head made from time to time to the code known as ‘The Laws of the Indies’.[256]Since the discovery of America the Spaniards and the Portuguese had been in constant rivalry throughout the south-eastern portion. Their frontier, between what are now Brazil and Argentina, had never been defined. In 1494 King John II. of Castile concluded a treaty signed at Tordesillas with the King of Portugal, placing the dividing-line between the countries two hundred leagues more to the westward than that of the famous Bull of Pope Alexander VI. (May 4, 1493), which placed it at one hundred leagues west of Cape Verd, cutting the world in two from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole. From the signing of the treaty of Tordesillas trouble began in South America between the Powers, as by that treaty a portion of Brazil came into the power of Portugal.[257]These were the towns of San Angel, San Nicolas, San Luis, San Lorenzo, San Miguel, San Juan, and San Borja.[258]According to the 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia (in the article titled “Reductions of Paraguay”) this treaty, signed in secret on 15 January 1750, was a deliberate assault on the Jesuit Order by the Ministers of Spain and Portugal, the latter of whom, Pombal, is said to have been responsible also for the false and libelous ‘Histoire de Nicolas I., Roy du Paraguai et Empereur des Mamalus’ (referred to in this chapter) which was distributed throughout Europe as another attack on the Jesuits. As anyone familiar with the situation could see that the Indians would not be happy about the treaty’s requirement to abandon their homes, it was a well-calculated, though detestable, move.—A. L., 1998.[259]Most of the dates of the events subsequent to the cession of the seven reductions on the Uruguay are taken from ‘La Causa Jesuitica de Portugal’ (Madrid, 1768), written by Ibañez, a great enemy of the Jesuits. In it is also an account of the events in Paraguay between 1750 and 1756, called ‘Relacion de la Guerra que sustentaron los Jesuitas contra las tropas Españolas y Portuguesas en el Uruguay y Paraná’. No proof has ever been brought forward that the Jesuits as a body ever incited the revolt of the Indians, though undoubtedly Father Tadeo Ennis, a hot-headed priest, stirred up his own particular reduction to resist. It does not seem likely that the Jesuits could have thought it possible to wage a successful war against Spain and Portugal. The dates taken from Ibañez tally with original letters from the Marques de Valdelirios, the Spanish boundary commissioner, and others, which are preserved in the Spanish national archives at Simancas.[260]Vide‘Exc. por los cartas que recibi con los avisos, y llegada del P. Altamirano, entiendo acabará de persuadirse a que los Padres de la Campañia son los sublevados, sino los quitan de las aldeas sus Santos Padres (como ellos los llaman) no experimentarán mas que rebeliones insolencias y desprecios. . . .’—Letter quoted by Ibañez (‘Causa Jesuitica’), and also preserved at Simancas.[261]The Marques de Valdelirios, writing to Don José de Carvajal from Monte Video, June 28, 1752 (Simancas, Legajo 7,447), says: ‘Estoy cierto de que los padres estan ya en la persuasion de que el tratado no se ha de dejar de executar.’ This being so, it was evident that the Marquis, at the date of writing, was of opinion that the Jesuits were not going to oppose the execution of the treaty, as he goes on to say: ‘Y es credible que con este desengaño trabajan seriamente en la mudanza de sus pueblos.’[262]The instructions were prepared in 1768 by Bucareli for the guidance of Don Juan Joseph de Vertiz, his interim successor in the government of the River Plate, and were delivered to him in 1770 when Bucareli returned to Spain. They are printed by Brabo in his ‘Coleccion de Documentos relativos á la Expulsion de los Jesuitas’, Madrid, 1872, p. 320.[263]‘Oficiales mecanicos’.[264]This refers to the same subject, and prohibits any Spaniard from settling in an Indian town in any part of America.[265]Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc., tome iii., p. 45.[266]Dean Funes says ‘una difusa memoria’; but, then, even though friendly, churchmen and cats rarely forego a scratch. The proverb has it, ‘Palabras de santo, uñas de gato’.[267]Though Ibañez (‘Republica Jesuitica’, tome i., cap. i.) says: ‘This treaty caused entire satisfaction to all the world except the English, who feared their commerce would suffer by it (i.e., by the closing of the Colonia del Sacramento as an entry for smuggled goods), and the Jesuits.’Raynal, also an ex-Jesuit, but a man of far higher character than Ibañez, says (tome iii., lib. 97): ‘This treaty met censure on both sides, the ministers in Lisbon themselves alleging that it was a false policy to sacrifice the Colonia del Sacramento, the clandestine commerce of which amounted to two millions of dollars a year . . . for possessions whose advantages were uncertain and position remote. The outcries were even stronger in Madrid. There they imagined that the Portuguese would soon rule all along the Uruguay . . . and from thence penetrate up the rivers into Tucuman, Chile, and Potosi.’[268]Quoting the Pope who advised St. Augustine on his first mission visit to England, to convert the natives to Christianity, to go slowly.[269]D. Martin de Echaria, Don Rafael de Menedo, and Don Marcos de Lauazabel.[270]From a letter preserved at Simancas (Legajo 7,447), written by P. Diego Palacios to P. Luiz de Altamirano, dated San Miguel, June 20, 1752, it appears that there were in the territory of the seven towns plantations ofyerbatrees, cotton, and valuable woods.[271]Archivo de Simancas, Legajo 7,378, folio 17—a long and curious letter.[272]‘Stroner’ may have been ‘Stoner’, in which case he must have been an Englishman. There were few English names amongst the Paraguayan Jesuits, if one except Juan Bruno de Yorca (John Brown of York), Padre Esmid (Smith), the supposititious ‘Stoner’, and the doubtful Taddeo Ennis, who, though said to be a Bohemian, was not impossibly a Milesian.[273]Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay’, etc., book v., p. 52.[274]They also said, in a memorial presented to the Marquis of Valdelirios by the Provincial Barreda, preserved at Simancas (Legajo 7,447), ‘That they had voluntarily made themselves vassals of the King of Spain—despues de Christianarnos, nos hizimos voluntariamente vasallos de nuestro Catholico Rey de España para que amparandonos con su poder fomentase nuestra devota Christiandad.’ It was not likely, therefore, that they would voluntarily become subject to the Portuguese, their most bitter persecutors.[275]José Barreda, the Father Provincial of the missions, in a curious letter under date of August 2nd, 1753, tells the Marquis of Valdelirios that he fears not only that the 30,000 Indians resident in the seven towns may rebel, but that they may be joined by the Indians of the other reductions, and that it is possible they may all apostatize and return to the woods. Brabo, in the notes to his ‘Atlas de Cartas Geograficas de los Paises de la America Meridianal’ (Madrid, 1872), gives a synopsis of this letter, which formed part of his collection, and contained the greatest quantity of interesting papers on the Jesuits in Paraguay and Bolivia which has ever been brought together. In 1872, after publishing his ‘Atlas’, his ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, and his ‘Inventarios’, he presented his papers (more than 30,000 in number) to the Archivo Historico Nacional of Madrid. There they remain, and form a rich mine for dogged scholars who have not passed their youth on horseback with the lazo in their hands.[276]Archivo de Simancas, Legajo 7,378, folio 146.[277]Ibid.: ‘Que toda la polvora que tengan los curas y misioneros se queme o se inutilize y pierda hechandola al rio, y que en los pueblos donde se fabrica, cese luego este labor.’[278]In another letter, also preserved at Simancas, and dated at Yapeyu, he complains bitterly of his own suffering on the journey: ‘Me moli tanto con el traqueo violento del carreton que no he podido volver sobre mi.’ The roads to the missions seem to have been as bad as those which produced the historical exclamation, ‘O dura tellus Hispaniæ!’ It is certainly the case that Ibañez, in his ‘Republica Jesuitica’ (Madrid, 1768), gives a very different version of the doings of Altamirano; for he says that Rafael de Cordoba, Altamirano’s secretary, ‘embarked in a schooner calledLa Reala great quantity of guns and lead for balls, packing them all in boxes, which, he said, were full of objects of a pious nature. . . . This,’ says Ibañez, ‘was told me by the master of the schoonerJosé el Ingles, a man worthy of credence.’ This is pleasing to one’s national pride, but, still, one seems to want a little better authority even than that of ‘Bardolph, the Englishman’.[279]Dean Funes, book v., cap. iii., p. 54.[280]In a most curious letter (preserved at Simancas, Legajo 7,447), the mayor and council of the reduction of San Juan write to Altamirano upbraiding him with being their enemy, and tell him that ‘St. Michael sent by God showed their poor grandfathers (sus pobres abuelos) where to plant a cross, and afterwards to march due south from the cross and they would find a holy father of the Company.’ This, of course, turned out as the saint had foretold, and after a long day’s march they encountered the Jesuit and became Christians.[281]This account seems to have been lost, and a careful search has not disinterred it from the Maelstrom of Simancas, that prison-house of so many documents, without whose aid so much of Spanish history cannot be written.[282]His ‘Efemerides’, or Journal, printed and mutilated by Ibañez in his ‘Republica de Paraguay’, gives the best account of the brief ‘war’ which has come down to us; it is supplemented by the ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’ of Father Cardiel, which deals with the misstatements of Ibañez and others against the Jesuits. In regard to his own share in the war, Padre Ennis says: ‘Atque in exercitas curatorem, spiritualem medicum secum ire postulat.’[283]‘Se puso las botas’.[284]Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, Buenos Ayres, etc., book v., cap. iv., p. 58.[285]Luckily Ibañez (‘Republica Jesuitica de Paraguay’) has not corrected the many faults of spelling and Latinity into which Padre Ennis fell. Those, though left in from malice, as Ibañez was a bitter enemy of the Jesuits, serve to present the man in his habit as he wrote. However, Ibañez has so much mutilated the text of the journal that occasionally the sense is left obscure.[286]‘Hoc itaque nuncio læti altero ac incensi . . . Sacramento expiationis et pane fortim roborati’ (Ennis, ‘Efemerides’).[287]Cardiel, in his ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 426, says: ‘Lo mismo es 28,000 mil Indios que igual numero de muchachos.’[288]‘Nec tamen resipiscebat et Divinam Nemesim quamquam clare experiebatur pro causâ Societatis.’[289]‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 404.[290]In fact, they much resembled those ‘crakys of warre’ which, with the ‘tymmeris for helmys’, Barbour, in the ‘Bruce’, takes notice of as the two noteworthy events of a battle that he chronicles:‘Twa noweltyis that day thai saw,That forouth in Scotland had bene nane.Tymmeris for helmys war the tane,That thaim thoucht thane off gret bewtéAnd alsua wondyr for to se.The tothyr, crakys war, off wer,That thai befor herd neuir er.’The Bruce, Booke Fourteene, p. 392.[291]This was in an action in the year 1756.[292]‘Miente de la cruz a la fecha’.[293]The Mamalucos, or Paulistas, were, of course, the bitterest enemies of everything Paraguayan, so that a King had as well been styled of ‘Iceland and of Paraguay’.[294]If this assumes to be Sâo Paulo de Piritinanga in Brazil, it is not unlikely one of the few books published there in the eighteenth century, if not the only one. Happy is the city of one book, especially when that work has nothing of a theological character in it, even though it lies fromla cruz á la fecha.[295]‘Account of the Abipones’, vol. i., p. 32.[296]The only man the Indians produced who showed any aptitude as a leader was a chief called Sepe Tyaragu. At his death in action in 1756 Nicolas Ñeenguiru succeeded to his post.[297]Milvago Chimango.[298]Polyhorus tharus. In relation to the word ‘tharus’, which figures as a sort of scientific (or doggerel) cognomen to this bird, Mr. W. H. Hudson once pointed out to me that, like some other ‘scientific facts’, it originated in a mistake. The Pampa Indian name of the bird is ‘traré’. Molina (Don Juan Ignacio), in his ‘History of Chile’, happened to spell the word ‘tharé’, instead of ‘traré’, and then proceeded to make a dog-Latin form of it. Thus the bird has received its present scientific name.[299]Cardiel, ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 430: ‘. . . llego alli despues de la fuga y desamparo de los pueblos . . . saco a los dos Padres que estaban muy afligidos por la soledad y alboroto.’[300]In a letter (Archivo de Simancas, Legajo 7,378, folio 128), Valdelirios, writing to the governor of Buenos Ayres, Don José de Caravajal y Lancastre, says: ‘Inagotables son los recursos de los Padres para que se dilate y no se ratifique el tratado. . . .’ But he gives no proof except that they had sent petitions to the King—surely a very constitutional thing for them to do.[301]The letter was written originally in Guaraní, and a certified translation of it exists at Simancas, Legajo 7,385, folio 13.[302]Altamirano.[303]Don Pedro Cevallos, Governor of Buenos Ayres, who was in Paraguay in 1755, sent there to fight the troops of King Nicolas, found, as he himself says, ‘no King, and no troops, but a few half-armed Indians.’ Writing to the King, he says: ‘Los Jesuitas son utiles en el Paraguay.’[304]The figures in Chapter VII. serve to show that in Paraguay, at least, they were not exactly millionaires. In Mexico, Palafox, the saintly Bishop of Puebla, had set about all kinds of stories as to their riches, but Geronimo Terenichi, an ecclesiastic sent to Mexico to examine into the question of the Jesuits and their wealth, after a year of residence, expressly says ‘they were very poor, and laden with debt’ (‘eran muy pobres y estaban cargados de deudas’): ‘Coleccion de los articulos de la Esperanza, sobre la Historia del Reinado de Carlos III.’, p. 435. Madrid, 1859.[305]They were expressly proclaimed to be ‘ocultas y reservadas’. Carlos III., in defence of his ‘occult’ and ‘reserved’ reasons, said, ‘mis razones, solo Dios y yo debemos conocerlas’ (‘Reinado de Carlos III.’, vol. iii., p. 120. Ferrer del Rio, Madrid, 1856). No doubt Carlos III. satisfied his conscience with this dictum, but it is permissible to doubt whether the power alluded to in such a cousin-like manner by the King was equally satisfied.[306]This celebrated tumult, generally known in Spain as ‘el Motin de Aranjuez’, and sometimes as ‘el Motin de Esquilace’, occurred on Palm Sunday, 1766. The ostensible reason was an edict of the King (Charles III.) prohibiting the use of long cloaks and broad-brimmed hats, which had been for long popular in Spain. The tumult assumed such formidable dimensions that the Walloon Guards were unable to quell it, but two friars, Padre Osma and Padre Cueva, in some manner were able to stem the confusion. The King and the court were so much disturbed that they quitted Madrid and went to Aranjuez. There is no proof that the Jesuits had any hand at all in the affair.[307]Ferrer del Rio, in his history of the reign of Charles III.[308]Such, at least, several of his letters to the Pope, Clement XII., would seem to indicate. It is not impossible that the strenuous opposition which the Jesuits gave to the Inquisition may have had something to do with their expulsion. Some of them went great lengths in their attacks. P. Antonio Vieyra, the celebrated Portuguese Jesuit, in his ‘Relaçaõ Exactissima, Instructiva, Curioza, Verdadeira, Noticioza do Procedimento das Inquiziçois de Portugal’ (Em Veneza, 1750), is almost as severe as Protestant writers have been against the Inquisition. Particularly does he inveigh against the prison system of the Holy Office (pp. 3-5, chap. i.). In the last chapter (p. 154), Vieyra calls Saavedra, the founder of the Portuguese Inquisition, a tyrant, and in recounting his deeds calls himtyranno, cruel, falsario, herege, andladram(a thief), and finishes by asserting that the tribunal invented by such a man ‘had its roots in hell’, and that ‘its ministers could not go to heaven’.[309]His full name was Don Francisco de Paula Bucareli y Ursua.[310]Brabo (‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc.) says of him, ‘speaking of the petty jealousies and intrigues which the decree of expulsion evoked: ‘En medio de tantas contrariedades, crimenes y miserias destaca serena la figura de Bucareli, no solo llevando a cabo con incansable celo su cometido, si no atendiendo a suplir en la organizacion religiosa, intelectual y civil los numerosos vacios que dejaba la falta del absorbente y decisivo influjo jesuitico.’[311]‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc., vol. iii., cap. viii., p. 119.[312]Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., vol. iii., cap. viii.[313]‘Tambien en algunos pueblos hay unas escopetas inglesas muy largas con sus horquillas si se quieren usar de ellas no son muy pesadas y tienen buen alcance’ (Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc., vol. iii., cap. viii.).[314]There were in the year 1759 throughout the world 271 Jesuit missions, 1,542 religious houses, 61 cattle farms, 340 residences, 171 seminaries, 1,542 churches, and 22,589 Jesuits, whereof 11,293 were priests. Of the above houses, missions, and churches, the greater portion were in America (Ferrer del Rio, ‘Historia del Reinado de Carlos III.’, Madrid, 1856).In the River Plate and Paraguay there were about 400 Jesuits, of whom 300 were priests. The other hundred, according to Ibañez (‘Republica Jesuitica’), were ‘mostly poor devils who were in want of food, and came into the Order for a meal.’ Ibañez rarely spoke the truth, not even when it would have been expedient to do so; and certainly amongst these ‘poor devils’ could not have been included Asperger, the writer on Indian medicines, and other distinguished men who inhabited the Paraguayan missions as lay brothers.[315]Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., vol. iii., book v., cap. ix.[316]The fine library was dispersed, and many priceless MSS. treating of the discovery and conquest, and of expeditions by the Jesuits amongst tribes of Indians now extinct, were lost. Nothing seems to have been preserved except matter which the dispersers thought might prove incriminating to the Jesuits. It is a well-known principle to judge and condemn a man, and then to search for evidence against him. The books were kept in a place known as La Granja de Santa Catalina, and a man of letters, Dr. Don Antonio Aldao, was charged to catalogue and remit them to the capital. Dean Funes says (book v., cap. ix., p. 156) that he complied with his instructions (‘verificóla felizmente y con arreglo a sus instrucciones’), but, anyhow, most of the books were lost. It is a common phrase amongst doctors, ‘The operation was entirely successful, but the patient unfortunately succumbed.’ Amongst the books was the celebrated ‘Monita Secreta’, used by Ibañez in his charges (after the expulsion) against the Jesuits.[317]Dean Funes (‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, vol. iii., cap. viii.) seems to have gauged the feelings of the Governor when he says: ‘Temblo de susto Bucareli considerando en riesgo una conquista, que debia aumentar su gloria y su fortuna.’ ‘Su fortuna’ is delicious, and shows your true conqueror’s melancholy.[318]The Tebicuari forms the northern boundary between the territory of Misiones and the rest of Paraguay. It is a large river, and in my time (1872-1875) was bridgeless, and had to be crossed in canoes, whilst the horses swam, or were towed behind the canoes with ropes.[319]Yapeyú was the largest of all the missions. The name signifies a chisel in Guaraní.[320]Bucareli, in a letter to El Conde de Aranda (Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos relativos á la Expulsion de los Jesuitas’, Madrid, 1872), says in reference to the perils by which he imagined himself surrounded: ‘El misero diminuto estado de la tropa, por el atraso de sus pagas y la falta que encontré de caudales en estas cajas, era una urgencia que me atormentaba.’[321]This war, undertaken by a fool (Lopez) against enormous odds, served to show what a people even when in the wrong, and in a bad cause, can do when it believes itself to be fighting for national liberty. As a matter of fact, Paraguayan liberty was not threatened for an instant, and Lopez declared war against both Brazil and the Argentine Republic out of mere ambition to be a second Napoleon. His solitary qualifications for the character were that, like his prototype, he was fat and loved women. The war commenced in 1865 and finished in 1870, and left the country almost a desert. So lonely was it, that I have often in those days seen tigers calmly walk across a road in mid-day, and a shout or a pistol-shot but little quickened their movements.[322]Capillawas the name given in Paraguay to some of the smaller villages which had a chapel, the chapel (capilla) being more important than the houses.[323]El V. P. José Pignatelli, in his ‘La Compañia de Jesus en su Extincion y Restablecimento’, says that the Paraguayan Jesuits were all sent to Faenza.[324]‘Carta del Gobernador de Buenos Ayres (Bucareli) al Comte de Aranda’. Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos Relativos a la Expulsion de los Jesuitos’, p. 8, Madrid, 1872: ‘Les hice vestir a la Española asistiendolos y tratandolos de modo que conozcan la mejora de su suerte. . . .’[325]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc., p. 101. The letter is headed ‘I. H. T., Ore Rey Nitu Don Carlos Tercero’.[326]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc., p. 185.[327]Ceremonies, no doubt, have their uses in enslaving mankind. A courtier once said to a Spanish King, ‘Your Majesty is but a ceremony yourself.’[328]Letter to Aranda: Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, p. 196: ‘Y las mujeres en tal extremo, que es impossible demostralo sin faltar a la modestia.’[329]‘Semejantes tiranias’.[330]P. 222: ‘Y teniendo presente que por lo que mira a este punto resulta de los informes que solo hablan estos Indios su idioma natural, pero que no es prohibicion de los PP. Jesuitos, sino por el amor que tienen a su nativo lenguage pues en cada uno de los pueblos han establecido esculas de leer y escriber en lengua española, y que por este motivo se encuentra un numero grande de Indios muy habiles en escribir (dos de ellos etan copiando hora esto que yo escribo y de mejor letra que la mia).’ Also pp. 223-225, etc.[331]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc., p. 200.[332]‘Y sobre todo, fuera de la America y libre de Secretaria y Consejo de Indias.’ Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc.: Letter of Bucareli to Aranda, p. 231.[333]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc., p. 280.[334]The alcaldes of Indian villages usually have a long cane with a silver head, like those formerly carried by footmen, as a badge of their office. In remote places I have seen them, with their canes in their hands, a battered tall hat upon their heads, a linen jacket and trousers, and barefooted, riding on an ox, and thought that they served to maintain the majesty of the law quite as well as if they had had stuff gowns, horsehair wigs, and had been seated on a sack of wool.[335]Vol. iii., book v., cap. viii., p. 130 (‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc.): ‘Los Caciques y corregidores que acompañaban a Bucareli, habian sido alhagados por todos los artificios de sugestion. Esto á la verdad, no era mas que coronar las victimas, que se destinaban al sacrificio.’[336]Chapter IX.[337]Brabo, p. 304.[338]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, p. 320: ‘Y porque estoy informado que muchos Indios de los que se habian ausentado con las tropas Portuguesas, y que han residido por gran tiempo en el Rio Pardo, Viamont, y otras partes se han restituido a sus pueblos, ciudaran . . . de que todos estos con sus families seran traslados a los mas interiores o distantes de aquellas fronteras por no ser conveniente se mantengan en ellas o sus inmediaciones, y asi en lo sucesivo lo ejecutaran . . . con los Indios que se restituyan, sin dejar alguno, para evitar todo motivo de communicacion que puede ser muy prejudicial.’[339]‘No conviene dejarles una entera libertad, que seria por extremo fatal y prejudicial á sus intereses pues la astucia y sagacidad de los españoles triumfaria facilemente de su rudeza.’[340]Brabo, ‘Bucareli’s Instructions’, p. 327: ‘Que el commercio de los españoles ha de ser libre.’[341]The Paraguayan Jesuits were allowed to take away all their personal property, and it appears that they did so.[342]Cayetano Ibarguen had only two, P. Lorenzo Balda three, and so on (Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, p. 388).[343]So late as 1818 Rengger, in his ‘Essai Historique sur la Révolution du Paraguay’, etc., talks of arriving in Buenos Ayres ‘après un court trajet de soixante jours.’ From thence to Corrientes he took seven weeks, but does not say if the passage was considered short or long.[344]Funes, ‘Ensayo Critico de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc.; Don Feliz de Azara, ‘Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay’, etc.; and also ‘Memorias sobre el estado rural del Rio de la Plata en 1801’.[345]‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, vol. i., book ii., p. 341.[346]Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., book v., cap. viii., p. 133.[347]Brabo, ‘Inventarios’, Appendix, p. 669.[348]Demersay (‘Histoire du Paraguay’), writing in 1847, says of the mission of La Cruz he saw a few trees still standing in a miserable state.[349]Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., book vi., cap. viii., p. 395.[350]Hudson, ‘Naturalist in La Plata’.
[231]Guazu= ‘great’ in Guaraní. It is frequent in place-names both in Paraguay and Corrientes.
[232]Dean Funes, vol. ii., cap. xii., p. 372, says of Zavala: ‘Por caracter era manso, pero usó algunas veces de severidad, porque sabia que para servir bien a los hombres es preciso de cuando en cuando tener valor de desagradarlos. . . . La pobreza en que murio despues de tantos años de mando, es una prueba clasica de que no estaba contagiado con esa commun flaqueza de los que gobieran en America.’
[233]In the long and interesting letter of Jaime Aguilar, the provincial of the Jesuits in Paraguay, to the King of Spain (Philip V., 1737), occurs the following passage:
‘Y si alguna vez, que no son muchas, se animan los Españoles a perseguir y castigar los Indios, muchos huyen de la tierra, o se esconden, por no ir a la entrada. . . . Otras (vezes) quando llegan allá, el Enemigo les quitan la Cavallada, dexandolos a pie y se vuelven a casa como pueden.’
This I have seen myself, not thirty years ago, on the frontiers of the Argentine Republic. The popular Argentine poem, ‘La Vuelta de Martin Fierro’, by José Hernandez (Buenos Ayres, 1880), has an illustration showing an expedition against the Indians returning. Some of the men are on foot; others are riding two on the same horse, and officers are animating their men with the flat of their swords.
[234]‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 125.
[235]Brabo, ‘Inventarios’, p. ix.
[236]Francisco Xavier Brabo, ‘Inventarios de los bienes hallados á la expulsion de los Jesuitas’ (Madrid, 1872).
[237]The lists of cannons, guns, and arms of all kinds in the inventories of the Chaco towns, preserved by Brabo, serve to show not only the dangers to which the Jesuits were exposed, but also how thoroughly the Jesuits understood the fickle nature of those with whom they lived.
[238]Another priest, the list of whose effects Brabo has preserved in his ‘Inventarios’, had a book called ‘El Alivio de Tristes’. Even a Protestant may be excused for hoping that it merited its title.
[239]Cretineau Joly, tome v., chap. ii., p. 95. Your moral force is excellent in a civilized country; but your modern missionary usually prefers something more in accordance with the spirit of the times.
[240]The total number of cattle was 78,171, as against 698,353 in the towns of the Guaranís. See Brabo, ‘Inventarios de los bienes hallados á la expulsion de los Jesuitas’, Appendix, p. 668.
[241]‘History of the Abipones’, from the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, London, 1822.
It is a curious circumstance that in the missions in the Chaco there were negro slaves, though in the Paraguayan missions they were unknown. In the inventory of the town of San Lucas appear the following entries, under the head of ‘Negros Esclavos’:
‘Justo, que sirve de capataz en el campo; será de edad de veinte y siete años, mas ó menos segun su aspecto.’
‘Item, Pedro, será de diez y seis años y es medio fatuo.’
‘Item, José Felix, será de un mes y medio.’
[242]Though 1747 was the date of the final founding of these reductions, as early as 1697 about four hundred Indians were discovered in the woods of the Taruma by Fathers Robles and Ximenes, and established in the mission of Nuestra Señora de Fe; but in the year 1721 they all returned to the woods, a famine and an outbreak of the small-pox having frightened them. After being again established in a mission, and again having left it, in 1746, they were established definitely at San Joaquin.
[243]Dobrizhoffer calls the Tobatines by the name of Itatines. Charlevoix and others refer to them as Tobatines.
[244]‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 54.
[245]In 1873, when I visited the outskirts of this forest, the conditions were similar to those which Dobrizhoffer describes, with the addition that the depopulation of the country, owing to the recent long war, had allowed the tigers to multiply to an extraordinary degree, and my guide and myself, after feeding our horses, had to sleep alternately, the waker holding the two horses hobbled and bridled.
[246]The whole operation of collecting and preparing the leaves of theIlex Paraguayensis, to make theyerba-maté, was most curious. Bands of men used to sally out for a six-months’ expedition, either by land with bullock-waggons, or up one of the rivers in flat-bottomed boats, which were poled along against the rapid current by crews of six to twelve men. Arrived at theyerbal, as the forest was called, they built shelters, after the fashion of those in use amongst the larger of the anthropoid apes. Some roamed the woods in search of the proper trees, the boughs of which they cut down with machetes, whilst others remained and built a large shed of canes called abarbacoa. On this shed were laid the bundles of boughs brought from the woods, and a large fire was lighted underneath. During forty-eight hours (if I remember rightly) the toasting went on; then, when sufficiently dry, the leaves were stripped from the twigs, and placed on a sort of open space of hard clay, something like a Spanish threshing-floor. On this they were pounded fine, and the powder rammed into raw-hide bags. This concluded the operations, and theyerbawas then ready for the ‘higgling of the market’.
[247]Traduttore traditore, as the proverb says.
[248]Charlevoix says, in his ‘Histoire de la Nouvelle France’, speaking of the Indians in general: ‘L’expérience a fait voir qu’il étoit plus à propos de les laisser dans leur simplicité et dans leur ignorance, que les sauvages peuvent être des bons Chrétiens sans rien prendre de notre politesse et de notre façon de vivre, ou du moins qu’il falloit laisser faire au tems pour les tirer de leur grossièreté, qui ne les empêche pas de vivre dans une grande innocence, d’avoir beaucoup de modestie, et de servir Dieu avec une piété et une ferveur, que les rendent très propres aux plus sublimes opérations de la grâce.’ Had more people thought with Charlevoix, and not been too anxious to draw savages incontrovertibly to our ‘politesse’ (sic) and ‘façon’, and left more to time (‘au tems’), how much misery might have been saved, and how many interesting peoples preserved! For, in spite of the domination of the Anglo-Saxon race, it might have been wise to leave other types, if only to remind us of our superiority.
[249]Hell not infrequently seems to have struck the Indians as a joke, for Charlevoix relates that when the first missionaries expatiated on its flames to the Chirignanós, they said, ‘If there is fire in hell, we could soon get enough water to put it out.’ This answer scandalized the good priest, who could not foresee that the flames of Tophet would be extinguished without the necessity of any other waters than those of indifference.
[250]‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 74.
[251]Padre del Techo, in his ‘History of Paraguay’, says of the wood Indians that ‘they died like plants which, grown in the shade, will not bear the sun.’
[252]San Joaquin, San Estanislao, and Belen.
[253]Notably those of Azara.
[254]‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 15.
[255]As that of Philip V., from the palace of Buen Retiro, December 28, 1743, and his two letters to the Jesuits of Paraguay. Also the previous edict obtained by Montoya from Philip II., and by the various additions on the same head made from time to time to the code known as ‘The Laws of the Indies’.
[256]Since the discovery of America the Spaniards and the Portuguese had been in constant rivalry throughout the south-eastern portion. Their frontier, between what are now Brazil and Argentina, had never been defined. In 1494 King John II. of Castile concluded a treaty signed at Tordesillas with the King of Portugal, placing the dividing-line between the countries two hundred leagues more to the westward than that of the famous Bull of Pope Alexander VI. (May 4, 1493), which placed it at one hundred leagues west of Cape Verd, cutting the world in two from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole. From the signing of the treaty of Tordesillas trouble began in South America between the Powers, as by that treaty a portion of Brazil came into the power of Portugal.
[257]These were the towns of San Angel, San Nicolas, San Luis, San Lorenzo, San Miguel, San Juan, and San Borja.
[258]According to the 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia (in the article titled “Reductions of Paraguay”) this treaty, signed in secret on 15 January 1750, was a deliberate assault on the Jesuit Order by the Ministers of Spain and Portugal, the latter of whom, Pombal, is said to have been responsible also for the false and libelous ‘Histoire de Nicolas I., Roy du Paraguai et Empereur des Mamalus’ (referred to in this chapter) which was distributed throughout Europe as another attack on the Jesuits. As anyone familiar with the situation could see that the Indians would not be happy about the treaty’s requirement to abandon their homes, it was a well-calculated, though detestable, move.—A. L., 1998.
[259]Most of the dates of the events subsequent to the cession of the seven reductions on the Uruguay are taken from ‘La Causa Jesuitica de Portugal’ (Madrid, 1768), written by Ibañez, a great enemy of the Jesuits. In it is also an account of the events in Paraguay between 1750 and 1756, called ‘Relacion de la Guerra que sustentaron los Jesuitas contra las tropas Españolas y Portuguesas en el Uruguay y Paraná’. No proof has ever been brought forward that the Jesuits as a body ever incited the revolt of the Indians, though undoubtedly Father Tadeo Ennis, a hot-headed priest, stirred up his own particular reduction to resist. It does not seem likely that the Jesuits could have thought it possible to wage a successful war against Spain and Portugal. The dates taken from Ibañez tally with original letters from the Marques de Valdelirios, the Spanish boundary commissioner, and others, which are preserved in the Spanish national archives at Simancas.
[260]Vide‘Exc. por los cartas que recibi con los avisos, y llegada del P. Altamirano, entiendo acabará de persuadirse a que los Padres de la Campañia son los sublevados, sino los quitan de las aldeas sus Santos Padres (como ellos los llaman) no experimentarán mas que rebeliones insolencias y desprecios. . . .’—Letter quoted by Ibañez (‘Causa Jesuitica’), and also preserved at Simancas.
[261]The Marques de Valdelirios, writing to Don José de Carvajal from Monte Video, June 28, 1752 (Simancas, Legajo 7,447), says: ‘Estoy cierto de que los padres estan ya en la persuasion de que el tratado no se ha de dejar de executar.’ This being so, it was evident that the Marquis, at the date of writing, was of opinion that the Jesuits were not going to oppose the execution of the treaty, as he goes on to say: ‘Y es credible que con este desengaño trabajan seriamente en la mudanza de sus pueblos.’
[262]The instructions were prepared in 1768 by Bucareli for the guidance of Don Juan Joseph de Vertiz, his interim successor in the government of the River Plate, and were delivered to him in 1770 when Bucareli returned to Spain. They are printed by Brabo in his ‘Coleccion de Documentos relativos á la Expulsion de los Jesuitas’, Madrid, 1872, p. 320.
[263]‘Oficiales mecanicos’.
[264]This refers to the same subject, and prohibits any Spaniard from settling in an Indian town in any part of America.
[265]Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc., tome iii., p. 45.
[266]Dean Funes says ‘una difusa memoria’; but, then, even though friendly, churchmen and cats rarely forego a scratch. The proverb has it, ‘Palabras de santo, uñas de gato’.
[267]Though Ibañez (‘Republica Jesuitica’, tome i., cap. i.) says: ‘This treaty caused entire satisfaction to all the world except the English, who feared their commerce would suffer by it (i.e., by the closing of the Colonia del Sacramento as an entry for smuggled goods), and the Jesuits.’
Raynal, also an ex-Jesuit, but a man of far higher character than Ibañez, says (tome iii., lib. 97): ‘This treaty met censure on both sides, the ministers in Lisbon themselves alleging that it was a false policy to sacrifice the Colonia del Sacramento, the clandestine commerce of which amounted to two millions of dollars a year . . . for possessions whose advantages were uncertain and position remote. The outcries were even stronger in Madrid. There they imagined that the Portuguese would soon rule all along the Uruguay . . . and from thence penetrate up the rivers into Tucuman, Chile, and Potosi.’
[268]Quoting the Pope who advised St. Augustine on his first mission visit to England, to convert the natives to Christianity, to go slowly.
[269]D. Martin de Echaria, Don Rafael de Menedo, and Don Marcos de Lauazabel.
[270]From a letter preserved at Simancas (Legajo 7,447), written by P. Diego Palacios to P. Luiz de Altamirano, dated San Miguel, June 20, 1752, it appears that there were in the territory of the seven towns plantations ofyerbatrees, cotton, and valuable woods.
[271]Archivo de Simancas, Legajo 7,378, folio 17—a long and curious letter.
[272]‘Stroner’ may have been ‘Stoner’, in which case he must have been an Englishman. There were few English names amongst the Paraguayan Jesuits, if one except Juan Bruno de Yorca (John Brown of York), Padre Esmid (Smith), the supposititious ‘Stoner’, and the doubtful Taddeo Ennis, who, though said to be a Bohemian, was not impossibly a Milesian.
[273]Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay’, etc., book v., p. 52.
[274]They also said, in a memorial presented to the Marquis of Valdelirios by the Provincial Barreda, preserved at Simancas (Legajo 7,447), ‘That they had voluntarily made themselves vassals of the King of Spain—despues de Christianarnos, nos hizimos voluntariamente vasallos de nuestro Catholico Rey de España para que amparandonos con su poder fomentase nuestra devota Christiandad.’ It was not likely, therefore, that they would voluntarily become subject to the Portuguese, their most bitter persecutors.
[275]José Barreda, the Father Provincial of the missions, in a curious letter under date of August 2nd, 1753, tells the Marquis of Valdelirios that he fears not only that the 30,000 Indians resident in the seven towns may rebel, but that they may be joined by the Indians of the other reductions, and that it is possible they may all apostatize and return to the woods. Brabo, in the notes to his ‘Atlas de Cartas Geograficas de los Paises de la America Meridianal’ (Madrid, 1872), gives a synopsis of this letter, which formed part of his collection, and contained the greatest quantity of interesting papers on the Jesuits in Paraguay and Bolivia which has ever been brought together. In 1872, after publishing his ‘Atlas’, his ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, and his ‘Inventarios’, he presented his papers (more than 30,000 in number) to the Archivo Historico Nacional of Madrid. There they remain, and form a rich mine for dogged scholars who have not passed their youth on horseback with the lazo in their hands.
[276]Archivo de Simancas, Legajo 7,378, folio 146.
[277]Ibid.: ‘Que toda la polvora que tengan los curas y misioneros se queme o se inutilize y pierda hechandola al rio, y que en los pueblos donde se fabrica, cese luego este labor.’
[278]In another letter, also preserved at Simancas, and dated at Yapeyu, he complains bitterly of his own suffering on the journey: ‘Me moli tanto con el traqueo violento del carreton que no he podido volver sobre mi.’ The roads to the missions seem to have been as bad as those which produced the historical exclamation, ‘O dura tellus Hispaniæ!’ It is certainly the case that Ibañez, in his ‘Republica Jesuitica’ (Madrid, 1768), gives a very different version of the doings of Altamirano; for he says that Rafael de Cordoba, Altamirano’s secretary, ‘embarked in a schooner calledLa Reala great quantity of guns and lead for balls, packing them all in boxes, which, he said, were full of objects of a pious nature. . . . This,’ says Ibañez, ‘was told me by the master of the schoonerJosé el Ingles, a man worthy of credence.’ This is pleasing to one’s national pride, but, still, one seems to want a little better authority even than that of ‘Bardolph, the Englishman’.
[279]Dean Funes, book v., cap. iii., p. 54.
[280]In a most curious letter (preserved at Simancas, Legajo 7,447), the mayor and council of the reduction of San Juan write to Altamirano upbraiding him with being their enemy, and tell him that ‘St. Michael sent by God showed their poor grandfathers (sus pobres abuelos) where to plant a cross, and afterwards to march due south from the cross and they would find a holy father of the Company.’ This, of course, turned out as the saint had foretold, and after a long day’s march they encountered the Jesuit and became Christians.
[281]This account seems to have been lost, and a careful search has not disinterred it from the Maelstrom of Simancas, that prison-house of so many documents, without whose aid so much of Spanish history cannot be written.
[282]His ‘Efemerides’, or Journal, printed and mutilated by Ibañez in his ‘Republica de Paraguay’, gives the best account of the brief ‘war’ which has come down to us; it is supplemented by the ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’ of Father Cardiel, which deals with the misstatements of Ibañez and others against the Jesuits. In regard to his own share in the war, Padre Ennis says: ‘Atque in exercitas curatorem, spiritualem medicum secum ire postulat.’
[283]‘Se puso las botas’.
[284]Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, Buenos Ayres, etc., book v., cap. iv., p. 58.
[285]Luckily Ibañez (‘Republica Jesuitica de Paraguay’) has not corrected the many faults of spelling and Latinity into which Padre Ennis fell. Those, though left in from malice, as Ibañez was a bitter enemy of the Jesuits, serve to present the man in his habit as he wrote. However, Ibañez has so much mutilated the text of the journal that occasionally the sense is left obscure.
[286]‘Hoc itaque nuncio læti altero ac incensi . . . Sacramento expiationis et pane fortim roborati’ (Ennis, ‘Efemerides’).
[287]Cardiel, in his ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 426, says: ‘Lo mismo es 28,000 mil Indios que igual numero de muchachos.’
[288]‘Nec tamen resipiscebat et Divinam Nemesim quamquam clare experiebatur pro causâ Societatis.’
[289]‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 404.
[290]In fact, they much resembled those ‘crakys of warre’ which, with the ‘tymmeris for helmys’, Barbour, in the ‘Bruce’, takes notice of as the two noteworthy events of a battle that he chronicles:
‘Twa noweltyis that day thai saw,That forouth in Scotland had bene nane.Tymmeris for helmys war the tane,That thaim thoucht thane off gret bewtéAnd alsua wondyr for to se.The tothyr, crakys war, off wer,That thai befor herd neuir er.’The Bruce, Booke Fourteene, p. 392.
[291]This was in an action in the year 1756.
[292]‘Miente de la cruz a la fecha’.
[293]The Mamalucos, or Paulistas, were, of course, the bitterest enemies of everything Paraguayan, so that a King had as well been styled of ‘Iceland and of Paraguay’.
[294]If this assumes to be Sâo Paulo de Piritinanga in Brazil, it is not unlikely one of the few books published there in the eighteenth century, if not the only one. Happy is the city of one book, especially when that work has nothing of a theological character in it, even though it lies fromla cruz á la fecha.
[295]‘Account of the Abipones’, vol. i., p. 32.
[296]The only man the Indians produced who showed any aptitude as a leader was a chief called Sepe Tyaragu. At his death in action in 1756 Nicolas Ñeenguiru succeeded to his post.
[297]Milvago Chimango.
[298]Polyhorus tharus. In relation to the word ‘tharus’, which figures as a sort of scientific (or doggerel) cognomen to this bird, Mr. W. H. Hudson once pointed out to me that, like some other ‘scientific facts’, it originated in a mistake. The Pampa Indian name of the bird is ‘traré’. Molina (Don Juan Ignacio), in his ‘History of Chile’, happened to spell the word ‘tharé’, instead of ‘traré’, and then proceeded to make a dog-Latin form of it. Thus the bird has received its present scientific name.
[299]Cardiel, ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 430: ‘. . . llego alli despues de la fuga y desamparo de los pueblos . . . saco a los dos Padres que estaban muy afligidos por la soledad y alboroto.’
[300]In a letter (Archivo de Simancas, Legajo 7,378, folio 128), Valdelirios, writing to the governor of Buenos Ayres, Don José de Caravajal y Lancastre, says: ‘Inagotables son los recursos de los Padres para que se dilate y no se ratifique el tratado. . . .’ But he gives no proof except that they had sent petitions to the King—surely a very constitutional thing for them to do.
[301]The letter was written originally in Guaraní, and a certified translation of it exists at Simancas, Legajo 7,385, folio 13.
[302]Altamirano.
[303]Don Pedro Cevallos, Governor of Buenos Ayres, who was in Paraguay in 1755, sent there to fight the troops of King Nicolas, found, as he himself says, ‘no King, and no troops, but a few half-armed Indians.’ Writing to the King, he says: ‘Los Jesuitas son utiles en el Paraguay.’
[304]The figures in Chapter VII. serve to show that in Paraguay, at least, they were not exactly millionaires. In Mexico, Palafox, the saintly Bishop of Puebla, had set about all kinds of stories as to their riches, but Geronimo Terenichi, an ecclesiastic sent to Mexico to examine into the question of the Jesuits and their wealth, after a year of residence, expressly says ‘they were very poor, and laden with debt’ (‘eran muy pobres y estaban cargados de deudas’): ‘Coleccion de los articulos de la Esperanza, sobre la Historia del Reinado de Carlos III.’, p. 435. Madrid, 1859.
[305]They were expressly proclaimed to be ‘ocultas y reservadas’. Carlos III., in defence of his ‘occult’ and ‘reserved’ reasons, said, ‘mis razones, solo Dios y yo debemos conocerlas’ (‘Reinado de Carlos III.’, vol. iii., p. 120. Ferrer del Rio, Madrid, 1856). No doubt Carlos III. satisfied his conscience with this dictum, but it is permissible to doubt whether the power alluded to in such a cousin-like manner by the King was equally satisfied.
[306]This celebrated tumult, generally known in Spain as ‘el Motin de Aranjuez’, and sometimes as ‘el Motin de Esquilace’, occurred on Palm Sunday, 1766. The ostensible reason was an edict of the King (Charles III.) prohibiting the use of long cloaks and broad-brimmed hats, which had been for long popular in Spain. The tumult assumed such formidable dimensions that the Walloon Guards were unable to quell it, but two friars, Padre Osma and Padre Cueva, in some manner were able to stem the confusion. The King and the court were so much disturbed that they quitted Madrid and went to Aranjuez. There is no proof that the Jesuits had any hand at all in the affair.
[307]Ferrer del Rio, in his history of the reign of Charles III.
[308]Such, at least, several of his letters to the Pope, Clement XII., would seem to indicate. It is not impossible that the strenuous opposition which the Jesuits gave to the Inquisition may have had something to do with their expulsion. Some of them went great lengths in their attacks. P. Antonio Vieyra, the celebrated Portuguese Jesuit, in his ‘Relaçaõ Exactissima, Instructiva, Curioza, Verdadeira, Noticioza do Procedimento das Inquiziçois de Portugal’ (Em Veneza, 1750), is almost as severe as Protestant writers have been against the Inquisition. Particularly does he inveigh against the prison system of the Holy Office (pp. 3-5, chap. i.). In the last chapter (p. 154), Vieyra calls Saavedra, the founder of the Portuguese Inquisition, a tyrant, and in recounting his deeds calls himtyranno, cruel, falsario, herege, andladram(a thief), and finishes by asserting that the tribunal invented by such a man ‘had its roots in hell’, and that ‘its ministers could not go to heaven’.
[309]His full name was Don Francisco de Paula Bucareli y Ursua.
[310]Brabo (‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc.) says of him, ‘speaking of the petty jealousies and intrigues which the decree of expulsion evoked: ‘En medio de tantas contrariedades, crimenes y miserias destaca serena la figura de Bucareli, no solo llevando a cabo con incansable celo su cometido, si no atendiendo a suplir en la organizacion religiosa, intelectual y civil los numerosos vacios que dejaba la falta del absorbente y decisivo influjo jesuitico.’
[311]‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc., vol. iii., cap. viii., p. 119.
[312]Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., vol. iii., cap. viii.
[313]‘Tambien en algunos pueblos hay unas escopetas inglesas muy largas con sus horquillas si se quieren usar de ellas no son muy pesadas y tienen buen alcance’ (Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc., vol. iii., cap. viii.).
[314]There were in the year 1759 throughout the world 271 Jesuit missions, 1,542 religious houses, 61 cattle farms, 340 residences, 171 seminaries, 1,542 churches, and 22,589 Jesuits, whereof 11,293 were priests. Of the above houses, missions, and churches, the greater portion were in America (Ferrer del Rio, ‘Historia del Reinado de Carlos III.’, Madrid, 1856).
In the River Plate and Paraguay there were about 400 Jesuits, of whom 300 were priests. The other hundred, according to Ibañez (‘Republica Jesuitica’), were ‘mostly poor devils who were in want of food, and came into the Order for a meal.’ Ibañez rarely spoke the truth, not even when it would have been expedient to do so; and certainly amongst these ‘poor devils’ could not have been included Asperger, the writer on Indian medicines, and other distinguished men who inhabited the Paraguayan missions as lay brothers.
[315]Dean Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., vol. iii., book v., cap. ix.
[316]The fine library was dispersed, and many priceless MSS. treating of the discovery and conquest, and of expeditions by the Jesuits amongst tribes of Indians now extinct, were lost. Nothing seems to have been preserved except matter which the dispersers thought might prove incriminating to the Jesuits. It is a well-known principle to judge and condemn a man, and then to search for evidence against him. The books were kept in a place known as La Granja de Santa Catalina, and a man of letters, Dr. Don Antonio Aldao, was charged to catalogue and remit them to the capital. Dean Funes says (book v., cap. ix., p. 156) that he complied with his instructions (‘verificóla felizmente y con arreglo a sus instrucciones’), but, anyhow, most of the books were lost. It is a common phrase amongst doctors, ‘The operation was entirely successful, but the patient unfortunately succumbed.’ Amongst the books was the celebrated ‘Monita Secreta’, used by Ibañez in his charges (after the expulsion) against the Jesuits.
[317]Dean Funes (‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, vol. iii., cap. viii.) seems to have gauged the feelings of the Governor when he says: ‘Temblo de susto Bucareli considerando en riesgo una conquista, que debia aumentar su gloria y su fortuna.’ ‘Su fortuna’ is delicious, and shows your true conqueror’s melancholy.
[318]The Tebicuari forms the northern boundary between the territory of Misiones and the rest of Paraguay. It is a large river, and in my time (1872-1875) was bridgeless, and had to be crossed in canoes, whilst the horses swam, or were towed behind the canoes with ropes.
[319]Yapeyú was the largest of all the missions. The name signifies a chisel in Guaraní.
[320]Bucareli, in a letter to El Conde de Aranda (Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos relativos á la Expulsion de los Jesuitas’, Madrid, 1872), says in reference to the perils by which he imagined himself surrounded: ‘El misero diminuto estado de la tropa, por el atraso de sus pagas y la falta que encontré de caudales en estas cajas, era una urgencia que me atormentaba.’
[321]This war, undertaken by a fool (Lopez) against enormous odds, served to show what a people even when in the wrong, and in a bad cause, can do when it believes itself to be fighting for national liberty. As a matter of fact, Paraguayan liberty was not threatened for an instant, and Lopez declared war against both Brazil and the Argentine Republic out of mere ambition to be a second Napoleon. His solitary qualifications for the character were that, like his prototype, he was fat and loved women. The war commenced in 1865 and finished in 1870, and left the country almost a desert. So lonely was it, that I have often in those days seen tigers calmly walk across a road in mid-day, and a shout or a pistol-shot but little quickened their movements.
[322]Capillawas the name given in Paraguay to some of the smaller villages which had a chapel, the chapel (capilla) being more important than the houses.
[323]El V. P. José Pignatelli, in his ‘La Compañia de Jesus en su Extincion y Restablecimento’, says that the Paraguayan Jesuits were all sent to Faenza.
[324]‘Carta del Gobernador de Buenos Ayres (Bucareli) al Comte de Aranda’. Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos Relativos a la Expulsion de los Jesuitos’, p. 8, Madrid, 1872: ‘Les hice vestir a la Española asistiendolos y tratandolos de modo que conozcan la mejora de su suerte. . . .’
[325]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc., p. 101. The letter is headed ‘I. H. T., Ore Rey Nitu Don Carlos Tercero’.
[326]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc., p. 185.
[327]Ceremonies, no doubt, have their uses in enslaving mankind. A courtier once said to a Spanish King, ‘Your Majesty is but a ceremony yourself.’
[328]Letter to Aranda: Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, p. 196: ‘Y las mujeres en tal extremo, que es impossible demostralo sin faltar a la modestia.’
[329]‘Semejantes tiranias’.
[330]P. 222: ‘Y teniendo presente que por lo que mira a este punto resulta de los informes que solo hablan estos Indios su idioma natural, pero que no es prohibicion de los PP. Jesuitos, sino por el amor que tienen a su nativo lenguage pues en cada uno de los pueblos han establecido esculas de leer y escriber en lengua española, y que por este motivo se encuentra un numero grande de Indios muy habiles en escribir (dos de ellos etan copiando hora esto que yo escribo y de mejor letra que la mia).’ Also pp. 223-225, etc.
[331]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc., p. 200.
[332]‘Y sobre todo, fuera de la America y libre de Secretaria y Consejo de Indias.’ Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc.: Letter of Bucareli to Aranda, p. 231.
[333]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc., p. 280.
[334]The alcaldes of Indian villages usually have a long cane with a silver head, like those formerly carried by footmen, as a badge of their office. In remote places I have seen them, with their canes in their hands, a battered tall hat upon their heads, a linen jacket and trousers, and barefooted, riding on an ox, and thought that they served to maintain the majesty of the law quite as well as if they had had stuff gowns, horsehair wigs, and had been seated on a sack of wool.
[335]Vol. iii., book v., cap. viii., p. 130 (‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc.): ‘Los Caciques y corregidores que acompañaban a Bucareli, habian sido alhagados por todos los artificios de sugestion. Esto á la verdad, no era mas que coronar las victimas, que se destinaban al sacrificio.’
[336]Chapter IX.
[337]Brabo, p. 304.
[338]Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, p. 320: ‘Y porque estoy informado que muchos Indios de los que se habian ausentado con las tropas Portuguesas, y que han residido por gran tiempo en el Rio Pardo, Viamont, y otras partes se han restituido a sus pueblos, ciudaran . . . de que todos estos con sus families seran traslados a los mas interiores o distantes de aquellas fronteras por no ser conveniente se mantengan en ellas o sus inmediaciones, y asi en lo sucesivo lo ejecutaran . . . con los Indios que se restituyan, sin dejar alguno, para evitar todo motivo de communicacion que puede ser muy prejudicial.’
[339]‘No conviene dejarles una entera libertad, que seria por extremo fatal y prejudicial á sus intereses pues la astucia y sagacidad de los españoles triumfaria facilemente de su rudeza.’
[340]Brabo, ‘Bucareli’s Instructions’, p. 327: ‘Que el commercio de los españoles ha de ser libre.’
[341]The Paraguayan Jesuits were allowed to take away all their personal property, and it appears that they did so.
[342]Cayetano Ibarguen had only two, P. Lorenzo Balda three, and so on (Brabo, ‘Coleccion de Documentos’, p. 388).
[343]So late as 1818 Rengger, in his ‘Essai Historique sur la Révolution du Paraguay’, etc., talks of arriving in Buenos Ayres ‘après un court trajet de soixante jours.’ From thence to Corrientes he took seven weeks, but does not say if the passage was considered short or long.
[344]Funes, ‘Ensayo Critico de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc.; Don Feliz de Azara, ‘Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay’, etc.; and also ‘Memorias sobre el estado rural del Rio de la Plata en 1801’.
[345]‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, vol. i., book ii., p. 341.
[346]Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., book v., cap. viii., p. 133.
[347]Brabo, ‘Inventarios’, Appendix, p. 669.
[348]Demersay (‘Histoire du Paraguay’), writing in 1847, says of the mission of La Cruz he saw a few trees still standing in a miserable state.
[349]Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., book vi., cap. viii., p. 395.
[350]Hudson, ‘Naturalist in La Plata’.