Their quiver is an open sepulchre; they are all mighty men.Jeremiahv. 16.They are cruel and have no mercy, their voice roareth like the sea; and they ride upon horses set in array as men of war.Jeremiahvi. 23.
Their quiver is an open sepulchre; they are all mighty men.
Jeremiahv. 16.
They are cruel and have no mercy, their voice roareth like the sea; and they ride upon horses set in array as men of war.
Jeremiahvi. 23.
Thescene widened, and with it the rapacity and rage for gold in the Spaniards. The possession and the plunder of Mexico only served to whet their appetite for carnage, and for one demon of avarice and cruelty to raise up ten. They had seen enough to convincethem that the continent which they had reached was immense, and Mexico filled their imagination with abundance of wealthy empires to seize upon and devour. Into these very odd Christians, not the slightest atom of Christian feeling or Christian principle ever entered. They were troubled with no remorse for the horrible excesses of crime and ravage which they had committed. The cry of innocent nations that they had plundered, enslaved, and depopulated, and which rose to heaven fearfully against them, never seemed to pierce the proud brutishness of their souls. They had but one idea: that all these swarming nations were revealed to them by Providence for a prey. The Pope had given them up to them; and they had but one feeling,—a fiery, quenchless, rabid lust of gold. That they might enlighten and benefit these nations—that they might establish wise and beneficent relations with them; that they might enrich themselves most innocently and legitimately in the very course of dispensing equivalent advantages, never came across their brains. It was the spirit of the age, coolly says Robertson—but he does not tell us how such came to be its spirit, after a thousand years of the profession of Christianity. We have seen how that came to pass; and we must go on from that time to the present, tracing the dreadful effects of the substitution of Popery for Christian truth and mercy.
Rumours of lands lying to the south came ever and anon upon the eager ears of the Spaniards,—lands still more abundant in gold, and vast in extent. On all hands the locust-armies of Moloch and Mammon were swarming, “seeking whom they might devour:”and amongst these beautiful specimens of the teaching of the infallible and holy Mother Church, were three individuals settled in Panama, who were busily employed in concocting a scheme of discovery and of crime, of blood and rapine, southward; and who were destined to succeed to a marvellous degree. These worthy personages, who were occupied with so commendable and truly Catholic a speculation as that of finding out some peaceful or feeble people whom they might, as a matter of business, fall upon, plunder, and if necessary, assassinate, for their own aggrandizement—were no other than Francis Pizarro, the bastard of a Spanish gentleman, by a very low woman, who had been employed by his father in keeping his hogs till he ran away and enlisted for a soldier; Diego de Almagro, a foundling; and Hernando de Luque, schoolmaster, and priest! a man who, by means which are not related, but may be imagined, had scraped together sufficient money to inspire him with the desire of getting more.
Pizarro was totally uneducated, except in hog-keeping, and the trade of a mercenary. He could not even read; and was just one of the most hardened, unprincipled, crafty, and base wretches which history in its multitudinous pages of crime and villany, has put on record. Almagro was equally daring, but had more honesty of character; and as for Luque, he appears to have been a careful, cunning attender to the main chance. Having clubbed together their little stock of money, and their large one of impudent hardihood, they procured a small vessel and a hundred and twelve men, and Pizarro taking the command, set out in quest of whatever good land fortune and the Pope’sbull might put in their way. For some time their fortune was no better than their object deserved; they were tossed about by tempestuous weather, exposed to great hardships, and discouraged by the prudential policy of the governor of Panama; but at length, in 1526, about seven years after Cortez had entered Mexico, they came in sight of the coast of Peru, and landing at a place called Tumbez, where there was a palace of the Incas, were delighted to find that they were in a beautiful and cultivated country, where the object of their desires—gold, was in wonderful abundance.
Having found the thing they were in quest of—a country to be harried, and having the Pope’s authority to seize on it, they were now in haste to get that of the emperor. The three speculators agreed amongst themselves on the manner in which they would share the country they had in view. Pizarro was to be governor; Almagro, lieutenant-governor; and Luque, having the apostle’s warrant, that he who desires a bishopric, desires a good thing, desiredthat—he was to be bishop of this new country. These preliminaries being agreed upon, Pizarro was sent off to Spain. Here he soon shewed his associates what degree of faith they were to put in him. He procured the governorship for himself, and not being ambitious of a bishopric, he got that for Luque; but poor Almagro was dignified with the office of commandant of the fortress of Tumbez—when such fortress should be raised. Almagro was, as might be expected, no little enraged at this piece of cool villany, especially when he compared it with the titles and the powers which Pizarro had secured to himself, viz.—a country oftwo hundred leagues in extent, in which he was to exercise the supreme authority, both civil and military, with the title of Governor, Adelantado and Captain-general. To appease this natural resentment, the greedy adventurer agreed to surrender the office of Adelantado to Almagro; and having thus parcelled out the poor Peruvians and their country in imagination, they proceeded to do it in reality. But before we follow them to the scene of their operations, let us for a moment pause, and note exactly what was the actual affair which they were thus comfortably proposing to themselves as a means of making their fortunes, and for which they had thus the ready sanction of Pope and Emperor.
Peru,—a splendid country, stretching along the coast of the Pacific from Chili to Quito, a space of fifteen hundred miles. Inland, the mighty Andes lifted their snowy ridges, and at once cooled and diversified this fine country with every variety of scene and temperature. Like Mexico, it had once consisted of a number of petty and savage states, but had been reduced into one compact and well-ordered empire by the Incas, a race of mysterious origin, who had ruled it about four hundred years. The first appearance of this race in Peru is one of the most curious and inexplicable mysteries of American history. Manco Capac and Mama Ocollo, a man and woman of commanding aspects, and clad in garments suitable to the climate, appeared on the banks of the lake Titiaca, declaring that they were the children of the Sun, sent by him, who was the parent of the human race, to comfort and instruct them. They were received by the Peruvians with all the reverence which theirclaims demanded. They taught the men agriculture, and the women spinning and weaving, and other domestic arts. Who these people might be, it is in vain to imagine; but if we are to judge from the nature of their institutions, they must have been of Asiatic origin, and might by some circumstances of which we now can know nothing, be driven across the Pacific to these shores. The worship of the sun, which they introduced; the perfect despotism of the government; the inviolable sanctity of the reigning family, all point to Asia for their origin. They soon, however, raised the Peruvians above all the barbarous nations by whom they were surrounded; and one by one they added these nations to their own kingdom, till Peru had grown into the wide and populous realm that the Spaniards found it. That they had made great progress in the arts of smelting, refining, and working in the precious metals, the immense quantity of gold and silver vessels found by the Spaniards testify. Their agriculture was admirable: they had introduced canals and reservoirs for irrigating the dry and sandy parts of the country; and employed manures with the greatest judgment and effect. They had separated the royal family from the public, it is true, by the very singular constitution of marrying only in the family, but they had given to all the people a common proportion of labour in the lands, and a common benefit in their produce. They had established public couriers, like the Mexicans, and constructed bridges of ropes, formed of the cord-like running plants of the country, and thrown them across the wildest torrents. They had at the time the Spaniards entered the country, two roads running the whole length of thekingdom; one along the mountains, which must have cost incalculable labour, in hewing through rocks and filling up the deepest chasms, the other along the lower country. These roads had at that time no equals in Europe, and are said by the Inca, Garcillasso de la Vega, to have been constructed in the reign of Huana Capac, the father of Atahualpa, the Inca whom they found on the throne. In some of the finest situations, he says that the Indians had cut steps up to the summits of the Andes, and constructed platforms, so that when the Inca was travelling, the bearers of his litter could carry him up with ease, and allow him to enjoy a survey of the splendid views around and below. These were evidences of great advances in civilization, but there were particulars in which they were far more civilized than their invaders, and far more Christian too. Their Incas conquered only to civilize and improve the adjoining states. They were advocates for peace, and the enjoyment of its blessings. They even forbad the fishing for pearls, because, says Garcillasso, they preferred the preservation of their people, rather than the accumulation of wealth, and would not consent to the sufferings which the divers must necessarily undergo. When did the Christians ever shew so much true philanthropy and human feeling?
And these are the people whom Robertson, falling miserably in with the views, or rather, the pretensions of the Spaniards, says, appeared so feeble in intellect as to be incapable of receiving Christianity. The idea is a gross absurdity. What! a people who, like the Mexicans and Peruvians, had cities, temples, palaces, a regular form of government; who cultivatedthe ground, and refined metals, and wrought them into trinkets and vessels, not capable of receiving the simple truths of Christianity which “the wayfaring man though a fool cannot err in?” The Mexicans had introduced their hieroglyphic writing, the Peruvians their quipos, or knotted and coloured cords, by which they made calculations, and transmitted intelligence, and handed down history of facts, yet they could not understand so plain a thing as Christianity! It is the base policy of those who violate the rights of men, always to add to their other injuries that of calumniating their victims as mere brutes in capacity and in the scale of being. By turns, Negroes, Hottentots, and the whole race of the Americans, have been declared incapable of freedom, and of embracing that simple religion which was sent for the good of the whole human family. If such an absurdity needed any refutation, it has had it amply in the reception of this religion by great numbers of all these races: but the fact is, that it would have been a disgrace to the understanding of the American Indians to have embraced the wretched stuff which was presented to them by the Spaniards as Christianity. A wooden cross was presented to the wondering natives, and they were expected instantly to bow down to it, and to acknowledge the pope, a person they had never heard of till that moment, or they were to be instantly cut to pieces, or burnt alive. No pains were taken to explain the beautiful truths of the Christian revelation—those truths, in fact, were lost in the rubbish of papal mummeries, and violent dogmas; and what could the astonished people see in all this but a species of Moloch worship in perfect keeping with the desperate and rapacious character of the invaders? Garcillasso de la Vega, the Inca, tells us that Huana Capac, a prince whose life had more of the elements of true Christianity in it than those of the Spaniards altogether, being full of love and humanity, was accustomed to say, that he was convinced that the sun was not God, because he always went on one track through the heavens,—that he had no liberty to stop, or to turn out of his ordinary way, into the wide fields of space around him; and that it was clear that he was therefore only a servant, obeying a higher power. The Peruvians had, like the Athenians, an unknown god, to whom they had a temple, and whom they called Pachacamac, but as he was invisible and was everywhere, they could not conceive any shape for him, and therefore worshipped him in the secret of their hearts. How ridiculous to say that people who had arrived at such a pitch of reasoning, and at such practice of the beneficent principles of love and humanity which Christianity inculcates, were incapable of embracing doctrines so consonant to their own views and habits.
How lamentable, that a British historian should suffer himself to follow the wretched calumnies of Buffon and De Paw against the Americans, with the examples of Mexico and Peru, and the effects of the Jesuit missions staring him in the face. The Spaniards and Portuguese, as we shall presently see, and as Robertson must have known, soon found that the Indians were delighted to embrace Christianity, even in the imperfect form in which it was presented to them, and by thousands upon thousands exhibited the beauty of Christian habits as strikingly as these Europeans did the most opposite qualities.
But the strangest remark of Robertson is, “that the fatal defect of the Peruvians was their unwarlike character.” Fatal, indeed, their inability to contend with the Europeans proved to them; but what a burlesque on the religion of the Europeans—that thepeacefulcharacter of an innocent people should prove fatal to them only from—the followers of the Prince of Peace!
But the fact is, that the Peruvians as well as the Mexicans were not unwarlike. On the contrary, by their army they had extended and consolidated their empire to a surprising extent. They had vanquished all the nations around them; and it was only the bursting upon them of a new people, with arts so novel and destructive as to confound and paralyse their minds, that they were so readily overcome. A variety of circumstances combined to prostrate the Americans before the Europeans. Those prophecies to which we have alluded, the fire-arms, the horses, the military movements, and the very art of writing, all united their influence to render them totally powerless. The Inca, Garcillasso, says that at the period of Pizarro’s appearance in Peru, many prodigies and omens troubled the public mind, and prepared them to expect some terrible calamity. There was a comet—the tides rose and fell with unusual violence—the moon appeared surrounded by three bands of different colours, which the priests interpreted to portend civil war, and total change of dynasty. He says that the fire-arms, which vomited thunder and lightning, and mysteriously killed at a distance—the neighing and prancing of the war-horses, to people who had never seen creatures larger than a llama, and the artof conveying their thoughts in a bit of paper above all, gave them notions of the spiritual intercourse of these invaders, that it was totally hopeless to contend against. The very cocks, birds which were unknown there before their introduction by the Spaniards, were imagined to pronounce the name of Atahualpa, as they crew in triumph over him, and became called Atahualpas, or Qualpas, after him. He assures us that even after the Spaniards had become entire masters of the country, the Indians on meeting a horseman on the highway, betrayed the utmost perturbation, running backward and forward several times, and often falling on their faces till he was gone past. And he relates an anecdote, which amusing as it is, shews at once what was the effect of the art of writing, and that the humblest natives did not want natural ingenuity even in their deepest simplicity. The steward of Antonio Solar, a gentleman living at a distance from his estate, sent one day by two Indians ten melons to him. With the melons he gave them a letter, and said at the same time—“now mind you don’t eat any of these, for if you do this letter will tell.” The Indians went on their way; but as it was very hot, and the distance four leagues, they sate down to rest, and becoming very thirsty, longed to eat one of the melons. “How unhappy are we that we cannot eat a melon that grows in our master’s ground.”—“Let us do it,” says one—“Ah,” said the other, “but then the letter.”—“Oh,” replied the first speaker, “we can manage that—we will put the letter under a stone, and what it does not see it cannot tell.” The thing was done; the melon eaten, and afterwards another, that they might take inan equal number. Antonio Solar read the letter, looked at the melons, and instantly exclaimed—“But where are the other two?” The confounded Indians declared, that those were all they had received. “Liars,” replied Antonio Solar, “I tell you, the letter says you had ten, and you have eaten two!” It was no use persisting in the falsehood—the frightened Indians ran out of the house, and concluded that the Spaniards were more than mortal, while even their letter watched the Indians, and told all that they did.
Such were the Peruvians; children in simplicity, but possessing abundant ingenuity, and principles of human action far superior to their invaders, and capable of being ripened into something peculiarly excellent and beautiful. Twelve monarchs had reigned over them, and all of them of the same beneficent character. Let us now see how the planters of the Cross conducted themselves amongst them.
For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away:His gold and he were every nation’s prey.—Montgomery.
For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away:His gold and he were every nation’s prey.—Montgomery.
For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away:His gold and he were every nation’s prey.—Montgomery.
For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away:
His gold and he were every nation’s prey.—Montgomery.
Thethree speculators of Panama had made up their band of mercenaries, or what the Scotch very expressively term “rank rievers,” to plunder the Peruvians. These consisted of one hundred and eighty men, thirty of whom were horsemen. These were all they could raise; and these were sufficient, as experience had now testified, to enable them to overrun a vast empire of Americans. Almagro, however, remained behind, to gather more spoilers together as soon as circumstances would permit, and Pizarro took the command of his troop, and landed in the Bay of St. Matthew, in the north of the kingdom. He resolved to conduct his march southward so near to the coast as to keep up the communication with his vessels; and falling upon the peaceable inhabitants, he went on fighting, fording rivers, wading through hot sands, and inflicting so many miseries upon his own followers and the natives, as made him look more like anavenging demon than a man. It is not necessary that we should trace very minutely his route. In the province of Coaque they plundered the people of an immense quantity of gold and silver. From the inhabitants of the island of Puna, he met with a desperate resistance, which cost him six months to subdue, and obliged him to halt at Tumbez, to restore the health of his men. Here he received a reinforcement of troops from Nicaragua, commanded by Sebastian Benalcazor, and Hernando Soto. Having also his brothers, Ferdinand, Juan, and Gonzalo, and his uncle Francisco de Alcantara, with him in this expedition, he pushed forwards towards Caxamalca, destroying and laying waste before him. Fortunately for him, that peace and unity which had continued for four hundred years in Peru, was now broken by two contending monarchs, and as unfortunately for the assertion of Robertson, that the Peruvians were unwarlike, they were at this moment in the very midst of all the fury of a civil war. The late Inca, Huana Capac, had added Quito to the realm, and at his death, had left that province to Atahualpa, his son by the daughter of the conquered king of Quito. His eldest son, who ascended the throne of Peru, demanded homage of Atahualpa or surrender of the throne of Quito; but Atahualpa was too bold and ambitious a prince for that, and the consequence was a civil contest. So engrossed were the combatants in this warfare, that they had no time to watch, much less to oppose, the progress of the Spaniards. Pizarro had, therefore, advanced into the very heart of the kingdom when Atahualpa had vanquished his brother, put him in prison, and taken possession of Peru. Having been solicitedduring the latter part of his march by both parties to espouse their cause, and holding himself in readiness to act as best might suit his interests, he no sooner found Atahualpa in the ascendant, than he immediately avowed himself as his partizan, and declared that he was hastening to his aid. Atahualpa was in no condition to repulse him. He was in the midst of the confusions necessarily existing on the immediate termination of a civil war. His brother, though his captive, was still held by the Peruvians to be their rightful monarch, and it might be of the utmost consequence to his security to gain such extraordinary and fearful allies. The poor Inca had speedy cause to rue the alliance. Pizarro determined, on the very first visit of Atahualpa to him in Caxamalca, to seize him as Cortez had seized on Montezuma. He did not wait to imitate the more artful policy of Cortez, but trusted to the now too well known ascendency of the Spanish arms, to take him without ceremony. He and his followers now saw the amazing wealth of the country, and were impatient to seize it. The capture of the unsuspecting Inca is one of the most singular incidents in the history of the world; a mixture of such naked villany, and impudent mockery of religion, as has scarcely a parallel even in the annals of these Spanish missionaries of the sword—these red-cross knights of plunder. He invited Atahualpa to an interview in Caxamalca, and having drawn up his forces round the square in which he resided, awaited the approach of his victim. The following is Robertson’s relation of the event:—
“Early in the morning the Peruvian camp was all in motion. But as Atahualpa was solicitous to appearwith the greatest splendour and magnificence in his first interview with the strangers, the preparations for this were so tedious, that the day was far advanced before he began his march. Even then, lest the order of the procession should be deranged, he moved so slowly, that the Spaniards became impatient, and apprehensive that some suspicion of their intention might be the cause of this delay. In order to remove this, Pizarro dispatched one of his officers with fresh assurances of his friendly disposition. At length the Inca approached. First of all appeared four hundred men, in an uniform dress, as harbingers to clear the way before him. He himself, sitting on a throne or couch, adorned with plumes of various colours, and almost covered with plates of gold and silver, enriched with precious stones, was carried on the shoulders of his principal attendants. Behind him came some chief officers of his court, carried in the same manner. Several bands of singers and dancers accompanied this cavalcade; and the whole plain was covered with troops, amounting to more than thirty thousand men.
“As the Inca drew near to the Spanish quarters, Father Vincent Valverde, chaplain to the expedition, advanced with a crucifix in one hand and a breviary in the other, and in a Jong discourse explained to him the doctrine of the creation; the fall of Adam; the incarnation, the sufferings, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; the appointment of St. Peter as God’s vicegerent on earth; the transmission of his apostolic power by succession to the Popes; the donation made to the king of Castile by Pope Alexander, of all the regions in the New World. In consequence of allthis, he required Atahualpa to embrace the Christian faith; to acknowledge the supreme jurisdiction of the Pope, and to submit to the king of Castile as his lawful sovereign; promising, if he complied instantly with his requisition, that the Castilian monarch would protect his dominions, and permit him to continue in the exercise of his royal authority; but if he should impiously refuse to obey this summons, he denounced war against him in his master’s name, and threatened him with the most dreadful effect of his vengeance.
“This strange harangue, unfolding deep mysteries, and alluding to unknown facts, of which no powers of eloquence could have conveyed at once a distinct idea to an American, was so lamely translated by an unskilful interpreter, little acquainted with the idiom of the Spanish tongue, and incapable of expressing himself with propriety in the language of the Inca, that its general tenor was altogether incomprehensible to Atahualpa. Some parts of it, of more obvious meaning, filled him with astonishment and indignation. His reply, however, was temperate. He began with observing, that he was lord of the dominions over which he reigned by hereditary succession; and added, that he could not conceive how a foreign priest should pretend to dispose of territories which did not belong to him; that if such a preposterous grant had been made, he, who was the rightful possessor, refused to confirm it. That he had no inclination to renounce the religious institutions established by his ancestors; nor would he forsake the service of the Sun, the immortal divinity whom he and his people revered, in order to worship the God of the Spaniards who was subject to death. That, with respect to other matters contained in this discourse, as he had never heard of them before, and did not understand their meaning, he desired to know where the priest had learned things so extraordinary. “In this book,” answered Valverde, reaching out to him his Breviary. The Inca opened it eagerly, and turning over the leaves, lifted it to his ear. “This,” said he, “is silent; it tells me nothing;” and threw it with disdain to the ground. The enraged monk, running towards his countrymen, cried out, ‘To arms! Christians, to arms! The word of God is insulted; avenge this profanation on these impious dogs!’
“Pizarro, who, during this long conference, had with difficulty restrained his soldiers, eager to seize the rich spoils of which they had now so near a view, immediately gave the signal of assault. At once the martial music struck up, the cannon and muskets began to fire, the horses sallied out fiercely to the charge; the infantry rushed on, sword in hand. The Peruvians, astonished at the suddenness of an attack which they did not expect, and dismayed with the destructive effects of the fire-arms, and the irresistible impression of the cavalry, fled with universal consternation on every side, without attempting either to annoy the enemy or to defend themselves. Pizarro, at the head of his chosen band, advanced directly towards the Inca; and though his nobles crowded round him with officious zeal, and fell in numbers at his feet, while they vied with one another in sacrificing their own lives that they might cover the sacred person of their sovereign, the Spaniards soon penetrated to the royal seat, and Pizarro seizing the Inca by the arm, dragged him to the ground, and carried him as a prisoner to his quarters. The fate of the monarch increased the precipitate flight of his followers. The Spaniards pursued them towards every quarter, and, with deliberate and unrelenting barbarity, continued to slaughter the wretched fugitives, who never once offered to resist. The carnage did not cease till the close of the day.Above four thousand Peruvians were killed. Not a single Spaniard fell, nor was one wounded, but Pizarro himself, whose hand was slightly hurt by one of his own soldiers, while struggling eagerly to lay hold on the Inca.
“The plunder of the field was rich beyond any idea which the Spaniards had yet formed concerning the wealth of Peru, and they were so transported with the value of their acquisition, as well as the greatness of their success, that they passed the night in the extravagant exultation natural to indigent adventurers on such an extraordinary change of fortune.”
Daring, perfidious, and every way extraordinary as this capture of the Inca was, his ransom was still more extraordinary. Observing the insatiable passion of the Spaniards for gold, he offered to fill the room in which he was kept with vessels of gold as high as he could reach. This room was twenty-two feet in length, and sixteen in breadth; and the proposal being immediately agreed to, though never for a moment meant on the part of the Spaniards to be fulfilled, a line was drawn along the walls all round the room to mark the height to which the gold was to rise. Instantly the Inca, in the simple joy of his heart at the hope of a liberty which he was never to enjoy, issued orders to his subjects to bring in the gold; and from day to day the faithful Indians came in laden from allquarters with the vessels of gold. The sight must have been more like a fairy dream, than any earthly reality. The splendid and amazing mass, such as no mortal eyes on any other occasion probably ever witnessed, soon rose to near the stipulated height, and the avarice of the soldiers, and the joy of Atahualpa rose rapidly with it. But the exultation of the Inca received a speedy and cruel blow. He learned that fresh troops of Spaniards had arrived, and that those in whose hands he was, had been tampering with Huascar, his brother, in his prison. Alarmed lest, after all, they should, on proffer of a higher price, liberate his brother, and detain himself, the wretched Inca was driven in desperation to the crime of dooming his brother to death. He issued his order, and it was done. Scarcely was this effected, when the Spaniards, unable to wait for the gold quite reaching the mark, determined to part it; and orders were given to melt the greater portion of it down. They chose the festival of St. James, the patron saint of Spain, as the most suitable to distinguish by this act of national plunder, and proceeded to appropriate the following astonishing sums.—Certain of the richest vessels were set aside first for the crown. Then the fifth claimed by the crown was set apart. Then a hundred thousand pesos, equal to as many pounds sterling, were given to the newly arrived army of Almagro. Then Pizarro and his followers divided amongst them, one million five hundred and twenty-eight thousands five hundred pesos: every horseman obtained above eight thousand, and every footman four!
Imagine the privates of an army of foot soldiers pocketing for prize-money, each four thousand pounds!the troopers each eight thousand! But enormous as this seems, there is no doubt that it would have been vastly more had the natives been as confident in the faith of the Spaniards as they had reason to be of the reverse. The Inca, Garcillasso, and some of the Spanish historians, tell us that on the Spaniards displaying their greedy spirit of plunder, vast quantities of treasure vanished from public view, and never could be discovered again. Amongst these were the celebrated emerald of Manta, which was worshipped as a divinity; was as large as an ostrich egg, and had smaller emeralds offered to it as its children; and the chain of gold made by order of Huana Capac, to surround the square at Cuzco on days of solemn dancing, and was in length seven hundred feet, and of the thickness of a man’s wrist.
The Inca having fulfilled, as far as the impatience of the Spaniards would permit him, his promises, now demanded his freedom. Poor man! his tyrants never intended to give him any other freedom than the freedom of death. They held him merely as a lure, by which to draw all the gold and the power of his kingdom into their hands. But as, after this transaction, they could not hope to play upon him much further, they resolved to dispatch him. The new adventurers who had arrived with Almagro were clamorous for his destruction, because they looked upon him as a puppet in the hands of Pizarro, by which he would draw away gold that might otherwise fall into their hands. The poor Inca too, by an unwitting act, drew this destruction more suddenly on his own head. Struck with admiration at the art of writing, he got a soldier to write the word Dios (God) on his thumb-nail, andshewing it to everybody that came in, saw with surprise that every man knew in a moment the meaning of it. When Pizarro, however, came, he could not read it, and blushed and shewed confusion. Atahualpa saw, with a surprise and contempt which he could not conceal, that Pizarro was more ignorant than his own soldiers; and the base tyrant, stung to the quick with the affront which he might suppose designed, resolved to rid himself of the Inca without delay. For this purpose, he resorted to the mockery of a trial; appointed himself, and his companion in arms, Almagro, the very man who had demanded his death, judges, and employed as interpreter, an Indian named Philippillo, who was notoriously desirous of the Inca’s death, that he might obtain one of his wives. This precious tribunal charged the unfortunate Inca with being illegitimate; with having dethroned and put to death his brother; with being an idolater—the faith of the country; with having a number of concubines—the custom of the country too; with having embezzled the royal treasures, which he had done to satisfy these guests, and for which he ought now to have been free, had these wretches had but the slightest principle of right left in them. On these and similar charges they condemned him to be burnt alive! and sent him instantly to execution, only commuting his sentence into strangling instead of burning, on his agreeing, in his terror and astonishment, to acknowledge the Christian faith! What an idea he must have had of the Christian faith!
The whole career of Pizarro and his comrades, and especially this last unparalleled action, exhibit them as such thoroughly desperado characters—so hardened into every thing fiendly, so utterly destitute of every thing human, that nothing but the most fearful scene of misery and crime could follow whenever they were on the scene; and Peru, indeed, soon was one wide field of horror, confusion, and oppression. The Spaniards had neither faith amongst themselves, nor mercy towards the natives, and therefore an army of wolves fiercely devouring one another, or Pandemonium in its fury can only present an image of Peru under the herds of its first invaders. It is not my province to follow the quarrels of the conquerors further than is necessary to shew their effect on the natives; and therefore I shall now pass rapidly over matters that would fill a volume.
Pizarro set up a son of Atahualpa as Inca, and held him as a puppet in his hands; but the Peruvians set up Manco Capac, brother of Huana; and as if the example of the perfidy of the Spaniards had already communicated itself to the heretofore orderly Peruvians, the general whom Atahualpa had left in Quito, rose and slew the remaining family of his master, and assumed that province to himself. The Spaniards rejoiced in this confusion, in which they were sure to be the gainers. The adventurers who had shared amongst them the riches of the royal room, had now reached Spain with Ferdinand Pizarro at their head, bearing to the court the dazzling share which fell to its lot. Honours were showered on Pizarro and his fellow-marauders,—fresh hosts of harpies set out for this unfortunate land, and Pizarro marching to Cuzco, made tremendous slaughter amongst the Indians, and took possession of that capital and a fresh heap of wealth more enormous than the plunder of Atahualpa’s room. To keep his fellow officers, thus flushed with intoxicating deluges of affluence, in some degree quiet, he encouraged them to undertake different expeditions against the natives. Benalcazar fell on Quito,—Almagro on Chili; but the Peruvians were now driven to desperation, and taking the opportunity of the absence of those forces, they rose, and attacked their oppressors in various quarters. The consequence was what may readily be supposed—after keeping the Spaniards in terror for some time, they were routed and slaughtered by thousands. But no sooner was this over than the Spaniards turned their arms against each other. “Civil discord,” says Robertson, “never raged with a more fell spirit than amongst the Spaniards in Peru. To all the passions which usually envenom contests amongst countrymen, avarice was added, and rendered their enmity more ravenous. Eagerness to seize the valuable forfeitures expected upon the death of every opponent, shut the door against mercy. To be wealthy, was of itself sufficient to expose a man to accusation, or to subject him to punishment. On the slightest suspicions, Pizarro condemned many of the most opulent inhabitants in Peru to death. Carvajal, without seeking for any pretext to justify his cruelty, cut off many more. The number of those who suffered by the hand of the executioner, was not much inferior to what fell in the field; and the greater part was condemned without the formality of any legal trial.”
Providence exhibited a great moral lesson in the fate of these discoverers of the new world. As they shewed no regard to the feelings or the rights of their fellow men, as they outraged and disgraced everyprinciple of the sacred religion which they professed, scarcely one of them but was visited with retributive vengeance even in this life; and many of them fell miserably in the presence of the wretched people they had so ruthlessly abused, and not a few by each other’s hands. We have already shewn the fortunes of Columbus and Cortez; that of Pizarro and his lawless accomplices is still more striking and awful. Almagro, one of the three original speculators of Panama, was the first to pay the debt of his crimes. A daring and rapacious soldier, but far less artful than Pizarro, he had, from the hour that Pizarro deceived him at the Spanish court, and secured honours and commands to himself at his expense, always looked with suspicious eyes upon his proceedings, and sought advancement rather from his own sword than from his old but perfidious comrade. Chili being allotted to him, he claimed the city of Cuzco as his capital;—a bloody war with the Pizarros was the consequence; Almagro was defeated, taken prisoner, and put to death, being strangled in prison and afterwards publicly beheaded. But Pizarro’s own fate was hastened by this of his old comrade. The friends of Almagro rallied round young Almagro his son. They suddenly attacked Pizarro in his house at noon, and on a Sunday; slew his maternal uncle Alcantara, and several of his other friends, and stabbed him mortally in the throat. The younger Almagro was taken in arms against the new governor, Vaca de Castro, and publicly beheaded in Cuzco; five hundred of these adventurers falling in the battle itself, and forty others perishing with him on the scaffold. Gonzalo Pizarro, after maintaining a war against the viceroy Nugnez Vela, defeating andkilling him, was himself defeated by Gasca, and put to death, with Carvajal and some other of the most notorious offenders.
Such were the crimes and the fate of the Spaniards in Peru. Robertson, who relates the deeds of the Spanish adventurers in general with a coolness that is marvellous, thus describes the character of these men.
“The ties of honour, which ought to be held sacred amongst soldiers, and the principle of integrity, interwoven as thoroughly in the Spanish character as in that of any nation, seem to have been equally forgotten. Even the regard for decency, and the sense of shame were totally lost. During their dissensions, there was hardly a Spaniard in Peru who did not abandon the party which he had originally espoused, betray the associates with whom he had united, and violate the engagements under which he had come. The viceroy Nugnez Vela was ruined by the treachery of Cepeda and the other judges of the royal audience, who were bound by the duties of their function to have supported his authority. The chief advisers and companions of Gonzalo Pizarro’s revolt were the first to forsake him, and submit to his enemies. His fleet was given up to Gasca by the man whom he had singled out among his officers to entrust with that important command. On the day that was to decide his fate, an army of veterans, in sight of the enemy, threw down their arms without striking a blow, and deserted a leader who had often led them to victory.... It is only where men are far removed from the seat of government, where the restraints of law and order are little felt; where the prospect of gain is unbounded, and where immense wealth may cover the crimes bywhich it is acquired, that we can find any parallel to the cruelty, the rapaciousness, the perfidy and corruption prevalent amongst the Spaniards in Peru.”
While such was their conduct to each other, we may very well imagine what it was to the unhappy natives. These fine countries, indeed, were given up to universal plunder and violence. The people were everywhere pursued for their wealth, their dwellings ransacked without mercy, and themselves seized on as slaves. As in the West Indian Islands and in Mexico, they were driven to the mines, and tasked without regard to their strength,—and like them, they perished with a rapidity that alarmed even the Court of Spain, and induced them to send out officers to inquire, and to stop this waste of human life. Las Casas again filled Spain with his loud remonstrances, but with no better success. When their viceroys, visitors, and superintendents arrived, and published their ordinances, requiring the Indians to be treated as free subjects, violent outcries and furious remonstrances, similar to what England has in modern times received from the West Indies when she has wished to lighten the chains of the negro, were the immediate result. The oppressors cried out that they should all be ruined,—that they were “robbed of their just rights,” and there was no prospect but of general insurrection, unless they might continue to devour the blood and sinews of the unfortunate Indians. One man, the President Gasca, a simple ecclesiastic, exhibited a union of talents and integrity most remarkable and illustrious amid such general corruption; he went out poor and he returned so, from a country where the temptations to wink at evil were boundless;and he effected a great amount of good in the reduction of civil disorder; but the protection of the Indians was beyond even his power and sagacity, and he left them to their fate.
Onemore march in the bloody track of the Spaniards, and then, thank God! we have done with them—at least, in this hemisphere. In this chapter we shall, however, have a new feature presented. Hitherto we have seen these human ogres ranging through country after country, slaying, plundering, and laying waste, without almost a single arm of power raised to check their violence, or a voice of pity to plead successfully for their victims. The solitary cry of Las Casas, indeed, was heard in Hispaniola; but it was heard in vain. The name of Christianity was made familiar to the natives, but it was to them a terrible name, for it came accompanied by deeds of blood, and lust and infamy. It must have seemed indeed, to them, the revelation of some monstrous Moloch, more horrible, because more widely and indiscriminately destructive than any war-god of their own. How dreadful must have appeared the very rites of this religion of thewhite-men! They baptized thousands upon thousands, and then sent them to the life-in-death of slavery—to the consuming pestilence of the plantation and the mine. We are assured by their own authors, that the moment after they had baptized numbers of these unhappy creatures, they cut their throats that they might prevent all possibility of a relapse, and send them straight to heaven! Against these profanations of the most humane of religions, what adequate power had arisen? What was there to prove that Christianity was really the very opposite in nature to what those wretches, by their deeds, had represented it? Nothing, or next to nothing. The remonstrances and the enactments of the Spanish crown were non-existent to the Indians, for they fell dead before they reached those distant regions where such a tremendous power of avarice and despotism had raised itself in virtual opposition to authority, human or divine. Some of the ecclesiastics, indeed, denounced the violence and injustice of their countrymen; but they were few, and disconnected in their efforts, and abodes; and their assurances that the religion of Christ was in reality merciful and kind, were belied by the daily and hourly deeds of their kindred; and were doubly belied by the lives of the far greater portion of their own order, who yielded to none in unholy license, avarice, and cruelty. How could the Indians be persuaded of its divine power?—for it exhibited no power over nine-tenths of all that they saw professing it. But now there came a new era. There came an order of men who not only displayed the effects of Christian principle in themselves, but who had the sagacity to combine their efforts, till they became sufficiently powerfulto make Christianity practicable, and capable of conferring some of its genuine benefits on its neophytes. These were the Jesuits—an order recent in its origin, but famous above all others for the talent, the ambition and the profound policy of its members. We need not here enter further into its general history, or inquire how far it merited that degree of odium which has attached to it in every quarter of the globe—for in every quarter of the globe it has signalised its spirit of proselytism, and has been expelled with aversion. I shall content myself with stating, that I have formerly ranked its operations in Paraguay and Brazil amongst those of its worst ambition; but more extended inquiry has convinced me that, in this instance, I, in common with others, did them grievous wrong. A patient perusal of Charlevoix’s History of Paraguay, and of the vast mass of evidence brought together by Mr. Southey from the best Spanish authorities in his History of Brazil, must be more than sufficient to exhibit their conduct in these countries as one of the most illustrious examples of Christian devotion—Christian patience—Christian benevolence and disinterested virtue upon record. It gives me the sincerest pleasure, having elsewhere expressed my opinion of the general character of the order, amid the bloody and revolting scenes of Spanish violence in the New World, to point to the Jesuits as the first to stand collectively in the very face of public outrage and the dishonour of the Christian religion, as the friends of that religion and of humanity.
I do not mean to say that they exhibited Christianity in all the splendour of its unadulterated truth;—no, they had enough of the empty forms and legends, andfalse pretences, and false miracles of Rome, about them; but they exhibited one great feature of its spirit—love to the poor and the oppressed, and it was at once acknowledged by them to be divine. I do not mean to say that they adopted the soundest system of policy in their treatment of the Indians; for their besetting sin, the love of power and the pride of intellectual dominance, were but too apparent in it; and this prevented their labours from acquiring that permanence which they otherwise would: but they did this, which was a glorious thing in that age, and in those countries—they showed what Christianity, even in an imperfect form, can accomplish in the civilization of the wildest people. They showed to the outraged Indians, that Christianity was really a blessing where really embraced; and to the Spaniards, that their favourite dogmas of the incapacity of the Indians for the reception of divine truth, and for the patient endurance of labour and civil restraint, were as baseless as their own profession of the Christian faith. They stood up against universal power and rapacity, in defence of the weak, the innocent, and the calumniated; and they had the usual fate of such men—they were the martyrs of their virtue, and deserve the thanks and honourable remembrance of all ages.
In strictly chronological order we should have noticed the Portuguese in Brazil, before following the Spaniards to Paraguay; as Paraguay was not taken possession of by the Spaniards till about twenty years after the Portuguese had seized upon Brazil: but it is of more consequence to us to take a consecutive view of the conduct of the Spaniards in South America, than to take the settlement of different countries in exact order of time. Having with this chapter dismissed the Spaniards, we shall next turn our attention to the Portuguese in the neighbouring regions of Brazil, and then pursue our inquiries into their treatment of the natives in their colonies in the opposite regions of the world.
The Spaniards entered this beautiful country with the same spirit that they had done every other that they had hitherto discovered;—but they found here a different race. They had neither creatures gentle as those of the Lucayo Islands, nor of Peru, nor men so far civilized as these last, nor as the Mexicans to contend with. They did not find the natives of these regions appalled with their wonder, or paralysed with prophecies and superstitious fears; but like the Charaib natives, they were fierce and ferocious—tattooed and disfigured with strange gashes and pouches for stones in their faces; quick in resentment, and desperate cannibals. When Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the Plata in 1515, he landed with a party of his men in order to seize some of the natives; but they killed, roasted, and devoured, both him and his companions. Cabot, who was sent out to form a settlement there ten years afterwards, treated the natives with as little ceremony, and found them as quick to return the insult. Diego Garcia, who soon followed Cabot, came with the intention of carrying offeight hundred slaves to Portugal, which he actually accomplished, putting them and his vessel into the charge of a Portuguese of St. Vincente. Garcia made war on the great tribe of the Guaranies for this purpose, and thus made them hostile to the settlement of the Spaniards. In 1534, the powerful armament of Don Pedro de Mendoza,consisting of eleven ships and eight hundred men, entered the Plata, and laid the foundation of Buenos Ayres. One of his first acts was to murder his deputy-commandant, Juan Osorio; and one of the next to make war on the powerful and vindictive tribe of the Quirandies, who possessed the country round his new settlement: the consequences of which were, that they reduced him to the most horrid state of famine, burnt his town about his ears, and eventually obliged him to set sail homeward, on which voyage he died.
These were proceedings as impolitic as they were wicked, in the attempt to colonize a new, a vast, and a warlike country; but it was the mode which the Spaniards had generally practised. They seemed to despise the natives alike as enemies and as men; and they went on fighting, and destroying, and enslaving, as matters of course. As they were now in a great country, abounding with martial tribes, we must necessarily take a very rapid glance at their proceedings. They advanced up the Paraguay, under the command of Ayolas, whom Mendoza had left in command, and seized on the town of Assumpcion, a place which, from its situation, became afterwards of the highest consequence. This noble country, stretching through no less than twenty degrees of south latitude, and surrounded by the vast mountains of Brazil to the east, of Chili to the west, and of Moxos and Matto Grosso to the north, is singularly watered with some of the noblest rivers in the world, descending from the mountains on all sides, and as they traverse it in all its quarters, fall southward, one after another, into the great central stream, till they finallydebouchein the great estuary of the Plata. Assumpcion, situated atthe junction of the Paraguay and the Pilcomayo, besides the advantages of a direct navigation, was so centrally placed as naturally to be pointed out as a station of great importance in the discovery and settlement of the country.
Ayolas, whom Mendoza had left in command, having subdued several tribes of the natives to the Spanish yoke, set out up the river Paraguay in quest of the great lure of the Spaniards, gold, where he and all his men were cut off by the Indians of the Payagoa tribe. His deputy, Yrala, after sharing his fate, caught two of the Payagoas, tortured and burnt them alive; and then, spite of the fate of their comrades, and only fired by the same news of gold, resolved to follow in the same track; fresh forces in the mean time arriving from Spain, and committing fresh aggressions on the natives along the course of the river. Cabeza de Vaca being appointed Adelantado in the place of Mendoza, arrived at Assumpcion in 1542, and after subduing the two great tribes of the Guaranies and Guaycurus, set off also in the great quest of gold. He sent out expeditions, moreover, in various directions; but Vaca, though he had no scruples in conquering the Indians, was too good for the people about him. He would not suffer them to use the men as slaves, and to carry off the women. So they mutinied against him, and shipped him off for Spain. Yrala was thus again left in power, and to keep his soldiers in exercise, actually marched across the country three hundred and seventy-two leagues, and reached the confines of Peru. Returning from this stupendous march, he next attacked the Indians on the borders of Brazil, and defined the limits of theprovinces of Portugal and Spain. He then divided the land intoRepartimientos, as the Spaniards had done every where else; thus giving the country to the adventurers, and the people upon it as a part of the property. “The settlers,” says Southey, “in the mean time, went on in those habits of lasciviousness and cruelty which characterize the Creoles of every stock whatever. He made little or no attempt to check them, perhaps because he knew that any attempt would be ineffectual, ... perhaps because he thought all was as it should be, ... that the Creator had destined the people of colour to serve those of a whiter complexion, and be at the mercy of their lust and avarice.”
By such men, Yrala, Veyaor who founded Ciudad Real on the Parana, Chaves who founded the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Moxos, and the infamous Zarate, were the name, power, and crimes of the Spaniards spread in Paraguay, when the Jesuits were invited thither from Brazil and Peru in 1586.
This is one of the greatest events in the history of the Spaniards in the New World. With these men they introduced a power, which had it been permitted to proceed, would have speedily put a stop to their cruelties on the natives, and would eventually have civilized all that mighty continent. But the Spaniards were not long in perceiving this, and such a storm of vengeance and abuse was raised, as ultimately broke up one of the most singular institutions that ever existed, and dispersed those holy fathers and their works as a dream.
They were, indeed, received at first with unbounded joy. Those from Peru, says Southey, came fromPotosi; and were received at Salta with incredible joy as though they had been angels from heaven. For although the Spaniards were corrupted by plenty of slaves and women whom they had at command, they, nevertheless, regretted the want of that outward religion, the observance of which was so easily made compatible with every kind of vice. At Santiago de Estero, which was then the capital and episcopal city, triumphal arches were erected; the way was strewn with flowers; the governor, with the soldiers and chief inhabitants went out to meet them, and solemn thanksgiving was celebrated, at which the bishop chanted the Te Deum. At Corduba, they met with five brethren of their order who had arrived from Brazil: Leonardo Armenio, the superior, an Italian; Juan Salernio; Thomas Filds, a Scotchman; Estevam de Grao, and Manoel de Ortiga, both Portuguese. The Jesuits found, wherever the Spaniards had penetrated, the Indians groaning under their oppressions and licentiousness, ready to burst out, and take summary vengeance at the first opportunity; and they were on all sides surrounded by tribes of others in a state of hostile irritation, regarding the Spaniards as the most perfidious as well as powerful enemies, from whom nothing was to be hoped, and against whom every advantage was to be seized. Yet amongst these fierce tribes, the Jesuits boldly advanced, trusting to that principle which ought always to have been acted upon by those calling themselves Christians, that where no evil is intended evil will seldom be received. It is wonderful how successful this system was in their hands. With his breviary in his hand, and a cross of six feet high, which served him for a staff, the Jesuit missionary setout to penetrate into some new region. He was accompanied by a few converted Indians who might act as guides and interpreters. They took with them a stock of maize as provision in the wilderness, where the bows of the Indians did not supply them with game; for they carefully avoided carrying fire-arms, lest they should excite alarm or suspicion. They thus encountered all the difficulties of a wild country; climbing mountains, and cutting their way through pathless woods with axes; and at night, if they reached no human habitation, they made fires to keep off the wild beasts, and reposed beneath the forest trees. When they arrived amongst the tribes they sought, they explained through their interpreters, that they came thus and threw themselves into their power, to prove to them that they were their friends; to teach them the arts, and to endow them with the advantages of the Europeans. In some cases they had to suffer for the villanies of their countrymen—the natives being too much exasperated by their wrongs to be able to conceive that some fresh experiment of evil towards them was not concealed under this peaceful shew. But, in the far greater number of cases, their success was marvellous. They speedily inspired the Indians with confidence in their good intentions towards them; for the natives of every country yet discovered, have been found as quick in recognizing their friends as they have been in resenting the injuries of their enemies. The following anecdote given by Charlevoix, is peculiarly indicative of their manner of proceeding.—Father Monroy, with a lay-brother Jesuit, called Juan de Toledo, had at length reached the Omaguacas, whose cacique Piltipicon had once been baptized, but,owing to the treatment of the Spaniards, had renounced their religion, and pursued them with every possible evil; massacred their priests; burnt their churches; and ravaged their settlements. Father Monroy was told that certain and instant death would be the consequence of his appearing before Piltipicon; but armed with all that confidence which Jesus Christ has so much recommended to the preachers of his gospel, he entered the house of the terrible cacique, and thus addressed him: “The good which I desire you, has made me despise the terrors of almost certain death; but you cannot expect much honour in taking away the life of a naked man. If, contrary to my expectation, you will consent to listen to me, all the advantage of our conversation will be yours; whereas, if I die by your hands, an immortal crown in heaven will be my reward.” Piltipicon was so amazed, or rather softened by the missionary’s boldness, that he immediately offered him some of the beer brewed from maize, which the Omaguacas use; and not only granted his request to proceed further up his country, but furnished him with provisions for the journey. The end of it was, that Piltipicon made peace with the Spaniards, and ultimately embraced Christianity, with all his people.
The Jesuits, once admitted by the Indians, soon convinced them that they could have no end in view but their good; and the resistance which they made to the attempts of the Spaniards to enslave them, gave them such a fame amongst all the surrounding nations as was most favourable to the progress of their plans. When they had acquired an influence over a tribe, they soon prevailed upon them to come into their settlements, which they calledReductions, and where they gradually accustomed them to the order and comforts of civilized life. These Reductions were principally situated in Guayra, on the Parana, and in the tract of country between the Parana and the Uruguay, the great river which, descending from the mountains of Rio Grande, runs southward parallel with the Parana, and debouches in the Plata. In process of time they had established thirty of these Reductions in La Plata and Paraguay, thirteen of them being in the diocese of the Assumpcion, besides those amongst the Chiquitos and other nations. In the centre of every mission was the Reduction, and in the centre of the Reduction was a square, which the church faced, and likewise the arsenal, in which all the arms and ammunition were laid up. In this square the Indians were exercised every week, for there were in every town two companies of militia, the officers of which had handsome uniforms laced with gold and silver, which, however, they only wore on those occasions, or when they took the field. At each corner of the square was a cross, and in the centre an image of the Virgin. They had a large house on the right-hand of the church for the Jesuits, and near it the public workshops. On the left-hand of the church was the public burial-ground and the widows’ house. Every necessary trade was taught, and the boys were taken to the public workshops and instructed in such trades as they chose. To every family was given a house, and a piece of ground sufficient to supply it with all necessaries. Oxen were supplied from the common stock for cultivating it, and while this family was capable of doing the necessary work, this land never was taken away. Besides this private property, there were two larger portions, called Tupamba, or God’s Possession, to which all the community contributed the necessary labour, and raised provisions for the aged, sick, widows, and orphans, and income for the public service, and the payment of the national tribute. The boys were employed in weeding, keeping the roads in order, and various other offices. They went to work with the music of flutes and in procession. The girls were employed in gathering cotton, and driving birds from the fields. Every one had his or her proper avocation, and officers were appointed to superintend every different department, and to see that all was going on well in shops and in fields. They had, however, their days and hours of relaxation. They were taught singing, music, and dancing, under certain regulations. On holidays, the men played at various games, shot at marks, played with balls of elastic gum, or went out hunting and fishing. Every kind of art that was innocent or ornamental was practised. They cast bells, and carved and gilded with great elegance. The women, beside their other domestic duties, made pottery, and spun and wove cotton for garments. The Jesuits exported large quantities of the Caa, or Paraguay tea, and introduced valuable improvements in the mode of its preparation.
Such were some of the regulations which the Jesuits had established in these settlements; and notwithstanding the regular system of employment kept up, the natives flocked into them in such numbers, that it required all the ingenuity of the fathers to accommodate them all. The largest of their Reductions contained as many as eight thousand inhabitants; the smallest fifteen hundred; the average was about three thousand. To preserve that purity of morals which was inculcated, it was found necessary to obtain a royal mandate, that no Spaniard should enter these Reductions except when going to the bishop or superior. “And one thing,” says Charlevoix, “greatly to their honour, was universally allowed by all the Europeans settled in South America: the converted Indians inhabiting them, no longer exhibited traces of their former proneness to vengeance, cruelty, and the grosser vices. They were no longer, in any respect, the same men they formerly were. The most cordial love and affection for each other, and charity for all men, delighted all who visited them, the infidels especially, whom their behaviour served to inspire with the most favourable opinion of the Christian religion.” “It is,” he adds, “no ways surprising that God should work such wonders in such pure souls; nor that those very Indians, to whom some learned doctors would not allow reason enough to be received into the bosom of the church, should be at this day one of its greatest ornaments, and perhaps the most precious portion of the flock of Christ.”
There is nothing more wonderful in all the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, than that this beautiful scene of innocence and happiness should have been suffered to be broken in upon by the wolves of avarice and violence, and all dispersed as a morning dream. But the Jesuits, by their advocacy and civilization of these poor people, had raised up against them three hostile powers,—the Spaniards—the man-hunters of Santo Paulo—and political demagogues.The Spaniards soon hated them for standing between them and their victims. They hated them for presuming to tell them that they had no right to enslave, to debauch, to exterminate them. They hated them because they would not suffer them to be given up to them as property—mere live stock—beasts of labour, in their Encomiendas. They regarded them as robbing them of just so much property, and as setting a bad example to the other Indians who were already enslaved, or were yet to be so. They hated them because their refusing them entrance into their Reductions was a standing and perpetual reproof of the licentiousness of their lives. They foresaw that if this system became universal, the very pillars of their indolent and debased existence would be thrown down: “for,” says Charlevoix, “the Spaniards here think it beneath them to exercise any manual employment. Those even who are but just landed from Spain, put every stitch they have brought with them upon their backs, and set up for gentlemen, above serving in any menial capacity.”
Whoever, therefore, sought to seize upon any unauthorized power in the colony, began to flatter these lazy people, by representing the Jesuits as their greatest enemies, who were seeking to undermine their fortunes, and deprive them of the services of the Indians. Such men were, Cardenas the bishop of Assumpcion, and Antequera;—Cardenas, entering irregularly into his office in 1640, and Antequera who was sent as judge to Assumpcion in 1721, more than eighty years afterwards, and who seized on the government itself. Both attacked the Jesuits as the surest means of winning the popular favour. They knewthe jealousy with which their civilization of the Indians was regarded, and they had only to thunder accusations in the public ears calculated to foment that jealousy, in order to secure the favour of the people. Accordingly, these ambitious, intriguing, and turbulent persons, made not only South America, but Europe itself ring with alarms of the Jesuits. They contended that they were ruining the growing fortunes of the Spanish states,—that they were aiming at an independent power, and were training the Indians for the purpose of effecting it. They talked loudly of wealthy mines, which the Jesuits worked while they kept their location strictly secret. These mines could never be found. They represented that they dwelt in wealthy cities, adorned with the most magnificent churches and palaces, and lived in a condition the most sensual with the Indians. These calumnies, only too well relished by the lazy and rapacious Spaniards, did not fail of their effect—the Jesuits were attacked in their Reductions, harassed in a variety of modes, and eventually driven out of the country; where circumstances connected with the less worthy members of their order in Europe, added their fatal influence to the odium already existing here. But of that anon.
During their existence in this country, the greatest curse and scourge of their Reductions were the Paulistas, or Man-hunters, of Santo Paulo in Brazil. These people were a colony of Mamelucoes, or descendants of Portuguese and Indians; and a more dreadful set of men are not upon record. Their great business was to hunt for mines, and for Indians. For this purpose they ranged through theinterior, sometimes in large troops, armed and capable of reducing a strong town, at others, they were scattered into smaller parties prowling through the woods, and pouncing on all that fell into their clutches. They were fierce, savage, and merciless. They seemed to take a wild delight in the destruction of human settlements, and in the blaze of human abodes. They maintained themselves in the wilds by hunting, fishing, the plunder of the natives; and when that failed, they could subsist on the pine-nuts, and the flour prepared from the carob, or locust-tree, termed by them war-meal.
Their abominable practices had been vehemently denounced by the Jesuits of Santo Paulo, and in consequence they became bitter enemies of the order. One of their favourite stratagems, was to appear in small parties, led by commanders in the habits of Jesuits, in those places which they knew the Jesuits frequented in the hopes of making proselytes. The first thing they did there, was to erect crosses. They next made little presents to the Indians they met; distributed remedies amongst the sick; and as they were masters of the Guarani language, exhorted them to embrace the Christian religion, of which they explained to them in a few words, the principal articles. When they had, by these arts, assembled a great number of them, they proposed to them to remove to some more convenient spot, where they assured them they should want for nothing. Most of these poor creatures permitted themselves to be thus led by these wolves in sheep’s clothing, till the traitors, dropping the mask, began to tie them, cutting the throats of those who endeavoured to escape, and carried the restinto slavery. Some, however, escaped from time to time, and alarmed the whole country. This scheme served two purposes; it for a time procured them great numbers of Indians, and it cast an odium on the Jesuits, to whom it was attributed, which long operated against them. But it was not long that these base miscreants were contented with this mischief. It struck them, that the Reductions of the Jesuits in Guayra, a province adjoining their own, might be made an easy prey; and would furnish them with a rich booty of human flesh at a little cost of labour. They accordingly soon fell upon them, and the relation of the miseries and desolation inflicted on these peaceful and flourishing settlements, as given by Charlevoix, is heart-rending. Nine hundred Mamelucoes, accompanied by two thousand Indians, under one of their most famous commanders Anthony Rasposo, broke into Guayra, and beset the reduction of St. Anthony, which was under the care of Father Mola. They put to the sword all the Indians that attempted to resist; butchered, even at the foot of the altar, such as fled there for refuge; loaded the principal men with chains, and plundered the church. Some of them having entered the missionary’s house, in hopes of a rich booty, finding nothing but a threadbare soutane and a few tattered shirts, told the Indians they must be very foolish to take for masters, strangers who came into their country because they had not wherewith to live in their own; that they would be much happier in Brazil, where they would want for nothing, and would not be obliged to maintain their pastors.
These were, no doubt, fine speeches to be made topeople loaded with chains, and whose relatives and countrymen had been but that instant butchered before their eyes. Father Mola in vain threw himself at the commander’s feet; represented to him the innocence and simplicity of these poor Indians; conjured him by all that was most sacred, to set bounds to the fury of the soldiers; and at last, threatened them with the indignation of heaven: but these savages answered him, that it was enough to be baptized again to be admitted into heaven, and that they would make their way into it though God himself should oppose their entrance.11They carried away into slavery two thousand five hundred Indians.
Some of the prisoners escaped, and returned to join Father Mola and such of their brethren as had fled to the woods. The father, they found amid the ruins of his Reduction sunk in the deepest sorrow. However, he roused himself and persuaded them to retire with him to the Reduction of the Incarnation. The Reductions of St. Michael and of Jesus-Maria, were speedily treated in the same manner; and they set out for Santo Paulo, driving their victims before them as so many cattle. Nine months the march continued. The merciless wretches urged them forward till numbers fell by the way, worn out with fatigue and famine. The first who gave way were sick women and aged persons; who begged in vain that their husbands, wives, or children, might remain with them in their dying hours. All that could be forced on by goading and blows, were, and when they fell, they were left to perish by the wild beasts. Two Jesuit fathers, Mansilla and Maceta, however, followed their unhappy people, imploring more gentleness towards the failing, and comforting the dying. When Father Maceta first beheld his people chained like galley slaves, he could not contain himself. He ran up to embrace them, in spite of the cocked muskets, with which he was threatened, and volleys of blows poured upon him at every step. Seeing in the throng the cazique Guiravara and his wife chained together, he ran up to the cazique, who before his conversion had used Father Maceta very cruelly, and kissing his chain, told him that he was overjoyed to be able to shew him that he entertained no resentment of his ill usage, and would risk his life to procure his liberty. He procured both their freedom, and that of several other Indians, on promise of a ransom. Thus these noble men followed their captive people through the whole dreadful journey, administering every comfort and hope of final liberation in their power; and their services and sympathy, we may well imagine, were sufficiently needed, for out of the whole number of captives collected in Guayra, fifteen hundred only arrived in life at Santo Paulo.