Early history—State of the country—Indian races—Characteristics of the
different tribes—Dobrizhoffer’s book—Various expeditions—Sebastian Cabot—Don
Pedro de Mendoza—Alvar Nuñez—His expedition and its results—Other leaders and
preachers—Founding of the first mission of the Society of Jesus
With the exception of the French Revolution, perhaps no event caused so much
general controversy at the end of the eighteenth century as the expulsion of
the Jesuits from Spain and Portugal and their colonial possessions. As no
definite charges were ever brought, at least in Spain, against the members of
the Company of Jesus (King Charles III. having kept the reasons ocultas y
reservadas and the proofs privilegiados), curiosity is to some
extent not satisfied as to the real reason of their expulsion from the Spanish
possessions in America.
It is almost impossible to understand nowadays the feelings which possessed the
average man in regard to the Jesuits from the middle of the last century till a
relatively short time ago. All the really great work done by the Society of
Jesus seemed to have been forgotten, and every vulgar fable which it was
possible to invent to their prejudice found ready acceptance upon every side.
Nothing was too absurd to be believed. From the calumnies of the Jansenists to
the follies of Eugène Sue the mass of accusation, invective, and innuendo kept
on increasing in intensity. Indiscriminate abuse and unreasoning hatred, mixed
with fear, seem to have possessed all minds. Even Pascal confesses (in a
postscript to the ninth Provincial Letter) that ‘after having written my letter
I read the works of Fathers Barry and Binet.’ If such a man as Pascal could be
so grossly unfair as to write a criticism on works which he had not read, what
can be expected from the non-judicial and uncritical public which takes all
upon trust?
From Japan to the interior of Bolivia there is scarcely a country in which the
Jesuits have not laboured assiduously, and in which they have not shed their
blood freely without hope of reward, yet it would require much time and a
lengthy catalogue to enumerate the list of satirical and calumnious works which
have appeared against them in almost every language in Europe. Of these,
perhaps the most celebrated is the well-known ‘Monarquia de los Solipsos’,[5] by Padre Melchior Inshoffer, an ex-Jesuit, who
describes the company in the worst possible terms. It is interesting chiefly on
account of the portraits of well-known people of the time (1615 to 1648), as
Pope Clement VIII., Francisco Suarez, Claudio Aquaviva, and others, veiled
under easily distinguishable pseudonyms. The object of the writer, as the title
indicates, is to show that the Jesuits endeavoured to turn all to their own
profit. In this, if it was the case, they do not seem to have been greatly
different from every other associated body of men, whether lay or clerical. The
celebrated Spanish proverb, ‘Jesuita y se ahorca, cuenta le hace’, meaning,
Even if a Jesuit is hung he gets some good out of it, may just as well be
applied to members of other learned professions as to the Jesuits.
The world has rarely persecuted any body of men conspicuous by its poverty, or
if it has done so has rarely persecuted them for long. The Inquisition of
Spain, violent against the wealthy Jews and comfortable Moriscos, took little
notice of the Gipsies; but, then, ‘Pobre como cuerpo de Gitano’ was and is a
common saying in Spain.
As in the case of the Templars, persecution only began against the Jesuits when
it became worth while to persecute them. Ignatius Loyola, Francisco Xavier, and
Diego Lainez, as long as they confined themselves to preaching and to teaching,
were safe enough. Even the annals of theological strife, bloodthirsty and
discreditable to humanity as they are, contain few examples of persecutors such
as Calvin or Torquemada, to whom, ruthless as they were in their savage and
narrow malignity and zeal for what they thought the truth, no suspicion of
venal motives is attributed.
Of the Jesuits’ intrigues, adventures, rise and fall in Europe, much may be
said in attack or in extenuation; but it is not the intention of the present
work to deal with this aspect of the question. It was in Spanish America, and
especially in Paraguay and Bolivia, where the policy of the Company in regard
to savage nations was most fully developed, as it was only the Jesuits who ever
succeeded in reclaiming any large number of the nomad or semi-nomad tribes of
those countries.
Many excellent works in French, and the celebrated ‘Christianismo Felice nel
Paraguay’ of the Abbate Muratori in Italian, certainly exist. But neither
Father Charlevoix, the French historian of the missions, nor Muratori was ever
in Paraguay, and both their books contain the faults and mistakes of men,
however excellent and well intentioned, writing of countries of which they were
personally ignorant. Both give a good account of the customs and regimen of the
missions, but both seem to have believed too readily fabulous accounts of the
flora and fauna of Paraguay.[6] The fact of having
listened too readily to a fable about an unknown animal in no way detracts from
the general veracity of an author of the beginning of the eighteenth century,
for in all other respects except natural history Charlevoix keeps within the
bounds of probability, though of course as a Jesuit he holds a brief for the
doings of the Company in Paraguay. Muratori is more rarely led into
extravagances, but is concerned in the main with the religious side of the
Jesuits, as the title of his book indicates.
Many other French writers, as Raynal, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, have treated
of Paraguay under Jesuit rule, but their writings are founded on hearsay
evidence. A German, Father Dobrizhoffer, stands alone.[7] His delightful ‘History of the Abipones, an Equestrian
People of Paraguay’, is perhaps the most charming book dealing with the
subject. A simple and easy style, a keen habit of observation, long
acquaintance with the country, a zeal for the conversion of the infidel, not
only to Christianity, but to a more comfortable mode of life, to which he adds
a faith sufficient to move the Cordillera of the Andes, but at the same time
restricted by a common-sense and veracity not always observable in religious
writers, render Dobrizhoffer a personal friend after the perusal of his
writings.
English is singularly barren in regard to the Jesuits in Paraguay. Father
Falconer, an English Jesuit, has left a curious and interesting book (printed
at Hereford in 1774), but he treats exclusively of what is now the province of
Buenos Ayres, the Falkland Islands, and of Patagonia. As an Englishman and a
Jesuit (a somewhat rare combination in the eighteenth century), and as one who
doubtless knew many of the Paraguayan priests, his testimony would have been
most important, especially as he was a man of great information, much
education, an intrepid traveller, and, moreover, only entered the Company of
Jesus at a comparatively advanced age.
It is in Spanish, or in Latin by Spanish authors, that the greater portion of
the contemporary histories and accounts are to be found.[8] Literatures, like other things, have their times of
fashion. At one time a knowledge of Spanish was as requisite as some tincture
of French is at present, and almost as universal. Men from Germany, England,
and Holland who met in a foreign country communicated in that language. In the
early portion of the century Ticknor, Prescott, and Washington Irving rendered
Spanish literature fashionable to some degree.
Later the historical researches of Sir William Stirling Maxwell drew some
attention to it. To-day hardly any literature of Europe is so little studied in
England. Still leaving apart the purely literary treasures of the language, it
is in Spanish, and almost alone in Spanish, that the early history of America
is to be found.
After the struggle for independence which finished about 1825, some interest
was excited in the Spanish-American countries, stimulated by the writings of
Humboldt; but when it became apparent that on the whole those countries could
never be occupied by Northern Europeans, interest in them died out except for
purposes connected with the Stock Exchange. Yet there is a charm which attaches
to them which attaches to no other countries in the world. It was there that
one of the greatest dramas, and certainly the greatest adventure in which the
human race has engaged, took place. What Africa has been for the last twenty
years, Spanish America was three hundred years ago, the difference being that,
whereas modern adventure in Africa goes on under full observation, and deals in
the main with absolutely uncivilized peoples, the conquest of South America was
invested with all the charm of novelty, and brought the conquerors into contact
with at least two peoples almost as advanced in most of the arts of
civilization as they were themselves.
When first Sebastian Cabot and Solis ascended the Paraná, they found that the
Guaranís of Paraguay had extended in no instance to the western shore of either
of those rivers. The western banks were inhabited then, as now, by the
wandering Indians of the still not entirely explored territory of the Gran
Chaco. Chaco[9] is a Quichua Indian word meaning
‘hunting’ or ‘hunting-ground’, and it is said that after the conquest of Peru
the Indian tribes which had been recently subjugated by the Incas took refuge
in this huge domain of forest and of swamp.
Be that as it may, the Chaco Indians of to-day, comprising the remnants of the
Lulis, Tobas, Lenguas, Mocobiós, and others, are almost as savage as when first
we hear of them in the pages of Alvar Nuñez and Hulderico Schmidel. These
tribes the Jesuits on many occasions attempted to civilize, but almost entirely
without success, as the long record of the martyrdom of Jesuit missionaries in
the Chaco proves, as well as the gradual abandonment of their missions there,
towards the second half of the eighteenth century.
Certain it is that at various places in the Chaco, in the quaint old maps the
Jesuits have left us, one reads ‘Mission de Santa Cruz de los Vilelas’,
‘Mission de la Concepcion de los Frontones’, and others; but much more
frequently their maps are studded with crosses, and some such legend as ‘Hic
occisi sunt PP. Antonius Salinus et Petrus Ortiz Zarate’.[10] It was only when the Jesuits encountered the more
peaceful Guaranís that they met with real success.
What was the nature of their success, how durable it was, what were the reasons
which caused the expulsion of the order from America, and especially from
Paraguay, and what has been the result upon the remainder of the Indians, it is
my object to endeavour to explain.
A long residence in the river Plate, together with two visits to Paraguay, in
one of which I saw almost all the remnants of the Paraguayan missions and a few
of those situated in the province of Corrientes, and in the Brazilian province
of Rio Grande do Sul, have given me some personal acquaintance with the
subject.[11]
The actual condition of the rich district of Misiones (Paraguay) at the time I
visited it, shortly after the conclusion of the great war between Paraguay and
Brazil in 1870, does not enable me to speak with authority on the condition of
communities, the guiding spirits of which were expelled as far back as the year
1767. The actual buildings of the missions, the churches in a dismantled state,
have indeed survived; in many instances the tall date-palms the Jesuits planted
still wave over them. Generally the college was occupied by the Indian Alcalde,
who came out to meet the visitor on a horse if he possessed one, with as much
silver about the bridle and stirrups as he could afford, clothed in white, with
a cloak of red baize, a large jipi-japa hat, and silver spurs buckled on
his naked feet. If he had never left the mission, he talked with wonder and
respect of the times of the Jesuits, and at the oracion knelt down to
pray wherever the sound of the angelus might catch him. His children before
bedtime knelt all in a row to ask his blessing. If he had been to Asuncion, he
probably remarked that the people under those accursed priests were naught but
animals and slaves, and launched into some disquisition he had heard in the
solitary café which Asuncion then boasted. In the latter case, after much of
the rights of man and the duties of hospitality, he generally presented you
with a heavy bill for Indian corn and pindo[12]
which your horse had eaten. In the former, usually he bade you go with God,
and, if you spoke of payment, said: ‘Well, send me a book of Hours when you get
to Asuncion.’
Of Indians, hardly any were left to judge of, for in the villages in which,
according to the reports furnished to Bucareli, the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres at
the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits, the population numbered in the thirty
towns of the missions one hundred and twenty thousand,[13] a population of at most twenty thousand was to be
found. On every side the powerful vegetation had covered up the fields. On
ruined church and chapel, and on broken tower, the lianas climbed as if on
trees, creeping up the belfries, and throwing great masses of scarlet and
purple flowers out of the apertures where once were hung the bells. In the
thick jungles a few half-wild cattle still were to be found. The vast
estancias, where once the Jesuits branded two and three thousand calves
a year, and from whence thousands of mules went forth to Chile and Bolivia,
were all neglected. Horses were scarce and poor, crops few and indifferent, and
the plantations made by the Jesuits of the tree (Ilex Paraguayensis)
from which is made the yerba maté, were all destroyed.
In the vast forests, stretching to the Salto de Guayrá, a few scattered tribes,
known as Caaguas, roamed through the thickets, or encamped upon the streams. In
the thirty towns, once full of life and stir, in every one of which there was a
church, finer, as an old Spanish writer says, than any in Buenos Ayres, there
was naught but desolation and despair. The Indians either had returned into the
woods, been killed in the ceaseless revolutionary wars, or had been absorbed
into the Gaucho populations of Corrientes, Rio Grande, Entre Rios, and of Santa
Fé.
It may be that all Indian races are destined to disappear if they come into
contact with Europeans; certainly, experience would seem to confirm the
supposition. The policy of the Jesuits, however, was based on isolation of
their missions, and how this might have worked is matter at least for
speculation. It was on account of the isolation which they practised that it
was possible for the extravagant calumnies which were circulated as to their
rule and riches to gain belief. It was on account of isolation that the first
conflicts arose betwixt them and the authorities, both clerical and lay. That
the Jesuits were more highly esteemed than the other religious orders in
Spanish America in the seventeenth century, the saying current in those days,
‘Los demas van á uña, los Jesuitas á una’—i.e., The others get all they
can, but the Jesuits have one aim (the conversion of the Indians)—seems to
show.
It is not my purpose to deal with the probable reasons which induced their
expulsion in Europe. Suffice it to say that, whatever crimes or misdemeanours
they were guilty of, they were never called on to answer before any tribunals,
and that in many instances they were treated, especially in Portugal, with
great cruelty and injustice.
The burning, at the age of eighty, of the unfortunate Malagrida in Lisbon under
the auspices of Pombal, for a book which it seems improbable he could have
written in prison at so great an age, and which, moreover, was never brought
into court, only supposed extracts from it being read, may serve as an example.
In order clearly to understand the position of the Jesuits in America, and
especially in Paraguay and Bolivia, it is necessary to glance briefly at the
history of the first conquest of the river Plate.
The discovery of America opened up to Europe, and especially to Spain,
opportunities for expansion of national territory and individual advancement
which no epoch, either before or since, has equalled. From a cluster of small
States, struggling for existence against a powerful enemy on their own soil, in
a few years Spain became the greatest empire of the world. The result was that
a spirit of adventure and a desire to grow rich speedily possessed all classes.
In addition to this, every Spaniard in America during the first few years of
the conquest seemed to consider himself, to some extent, not only as a
conqueror, but also as a missionary.
Now, missionaries and conquerors are men, on the whole, more imbued with their
own importance and sanctity, and less disposed to consider consequences, than
almost any other classes of mankind. The conjunction of the two in one disposed
the conquistadores of America to imagine that, no matter how cruel or
outrageous their treatment of the Indians was, they atoned for all by the
introduction of what they considered the blessing of the knowledge of the true
faith. It will be seen at once that, if one can determine with accuracy which
of the many ‘faiths’ preached about the world is actually the true faith, a man
who is in possession of it is acting properly in endeavouring to diffuse it.
The meanest soldier in the various armies which left Spain to conquer America
seems to have had no doubt about the matter.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who, as he himself relates, came to America at the
age of eighteen, and therefore could have had little previous opportunity of
studying theology, and who, moreover, was unfitted to do so by the want of
knowledge of Latin, to which he himself confesses, yet at the end of his
history of the conquest of Mexico, one of the most interesting books ever
written, has the following passage:
‘But it is to be noted that, after God, it was we, the real conquerors, who
discovered them [the Indians] and conquered them; and from the first we took
away their idols, and taught them our holy doctrine, and to us is due the
reward and credit of it all, before any other people, even though they be
churchmen: for when the beginning is good, the middle and ending is good, which
the curious [i.e., attentive] reader may see in the Christian polity and
justice which we showed them in New Spain.
‘And I will leave the matter, and tell the other benefits which, after God, by
our agency, came to the natives of New Spain.’[14]
One would imagine, on reading the above extract, Bernal Diaz had never killed
an Indian in his life, and that he had sacrificed his prospects in coming to
Mexico solely to introduce ‘a Christian polity and justice’ amongst the
inhabitants. Yet he was no hypocrite, but a stout sagacious soldier, even
kindly, according to his lights, and with a love of animals uncommon in a
Spaniard, for he has preserved the names and qualities of all the horses and
mares which came over in the fleet from the Havana with Cortes.[15] The phrase, despues de Dios (after God) occurs
repeatedly in the writings of almost all the conquistadores of America.
Having, after God, conquered America, the first action of the conquerors was to
set about making their fortunes. In those countries which produced gold and
silver, as Mexico and Peru, they worked the mines by the labour of the Indians,
the cruelties and hardships being so great that, in a letter of Philip II. to
the Come de Chinchon, the Viceroy of Peru, dated Madrid, April 30, 1639,
written fifty years after the discovery, he says: ‘These Indians flee, become
ill, and die, and have begun to diminish greatly in number, and they will be
finished soon unless an efficient remedy is provided shortly.’
In Paraguay there were no mines, but there were other methods of extracting
money from the Indians. At the first conquest Paraguay was not the little
country bounded on the west by the Paraguay, on the south by the Paraná, on the
north by the Aquidaban, and on the east by Sierra of Mbaracavu, as it is at
present. On the contrary, it embraced almost all that immense territory known
to-day as the Argentine Confederation, some of the Republic of Uruguay, and a
great portion of Brazil, embracing much of the provinces of Misiones, Rio
Grande do Sul, Paraná, and Matto Grosso, as well as Paraguay itself. How the
little country, twelve hundred miles from the sea, came to give its name to
such an enormous territory, and to have the seat of government at Asuncion,
demands some explanation. Peru and Chile were discovered and occupied some time
before the eastern side of South America. Their riches naturally drew great
attention to them; but the voyage, first to Cartagena de Indias, and then
across the isthmus, and the re-embarkation again on the Pacific, were both
costly and arduous. It had been the ambition of all explorers to discover some
river which would lead from the Atlantic to the mines of Peru and what is now
Bolivia, then known as Alta Peru. Of course, this might have been achieved by
ascending the Amazon, especially after the adventurous descent of it by
Orellana, of which Fray Gaspar de Carbajal has left so curious a description;
but, whether on account of the distance or for some other reason, it never
seems to have been attempted.
In 1526 Sebastian Cabot left Spain with three small vessels and a caravel for
the object of reaching the Moluccas or Spice Islands. It was his purpose to
reach them through the Straits of Magellan. Being compelled by want of supplies
to abandon his route, he entered a broad estuary, and ascended it under the
impression that he had discovered another channel to the Pacific. He soon found
his mistake, and began to explore the surrounding country. Fifteen years
before, with the same object, Juan de Solis had entered the same estuary. On
the island of Martin Garcia he was killed by a Chana Indian, and his expedition
returned home. Hearing that there was much silver at the head-waters, he had
called it the Rio de la Plata. If we take the head-waters of the river Plate to
be situated in Bolivia, there certainly was much silver there; but Cabot was
unaware that the head-waters were above two thousand miles from the estuary,
and he was not destined to come near them. He did go as far as a point on the
river Caracara, in what is now the province of Santa Fé, and there he built a
fort which he named Espiritu Santo, the first Spanish settlement in that part
of America. Whilst at Espiritu Santo, several exploring parties were sent to
scour the country. One of them, under a soldier of the name of Cesar, never
returned. Tradition, always eager to make up to history for its want of
interest, asserted that after marching for years they reached a city. Perhaps
it was the mystic Trapalanda of which the Gauchos used to discourse at night
when seated round a fire of bones upon the pampa. Perhaps some other, for
enchanted cities and Eldorados were plentiful in those days in America,
alternating with occasional empires, as that of Puytita, near the Laguna de los
Xarayes, Manoa, and the Ciudad de los Cesares, supposed to be situated near
Arauco in the Chilian Andes. However, one of the party actually returned after
years, and related his adventures to Ruy Diaz de Guzman,[16] the first historian of Paraguay. Thus it was that the
stream of adventurers was ever seeking for a channel to the mines of Peru from
the Atlantic coast. Cabot appears to have ascended the Paraná to the island of
Apipé, and then, returning, entered the river Paraguay. Having ascended past
what is now Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, Cabot encountered Indians from
the north who told him of the mines in Peru and in Bolivia, probably unaware
that Cabot knew of them already. At this point, encouraged by what he heard, he
gave the name of Rio de la Plata to what had previously been known either as La
Mar Dulce or El Rio de Solis. Like most names which are wrongly given, it
remained to testify to the want of knowledge of the giver. Four years after,
Cabot returned to Spain, having failed to attract attention to his discoveries.
In the face of the wealth which was pouring in from the Peruvian mines, another
expedition started for the river Plate. Its General—for in Spain the title was
used indifferently by land and sea—was Don Pedro de Mendoza, a gentleman of
Guadix in Almeria, and a member of the household of Charles V.
Don Pedro had seen service in the Italian wars, and seems to have been a man of
character and bravery, but wanting in the discretion and the necessary tact
essential in the founder of a colony. In 1534 the expedition started,
unfortunate almost from the first. In a ‘certain island’, as the historian of
the expedition, Hulderico Schmidel, a German or Flemish soldier, calls Rio
Janeiro, a dispute occurred between Don Pedro and his second in command, Juan
de Osorio. At a court-martial held upon Osorio, Don Pedro appears to have let
fall some remarks which Juan de Ayolas, the Alguazil Mayor (Chief Constable),
seems to have taken up as an order for instant execution. This he performed
upon the spot, plunging his dagger repeatedly into Osorio, or, as Hulderico
Schmidel has it, ‘sewing him up with cuts’ (cosiendole à puñaladas).
This murder or execution—for who shall tell when murder finishes and its legal
counterpart begins?—rendered Don Pedro very unpopular with all the fleet; for,
as Schmidel has it in his history,[17] ‘the soldiers
loved Osorio.’ To be loved by the soldiers was the only chance a Spanish
officer had in those times of holding his own. Both Schmidel and Bernal Diaz
del Castillo, who had both been common soldiers, and who, curiously, both wrote
histories, lose no occasion of vilifying officers who used the soldiers hardly.
It is true that Bernal Diaz (who, unlike Schmidel, was a man of genius) does so
with some discretion, and always apparently with reason. Schmidel, on the other
hand, seems to have considered that any officer who interfered between the
soldiers and the Indians was a tyrant, and hence his denunciation of Alvar
Nuñez, under whom he served.
In 1535 the expedition entered the river Plate. Here Mendoza, with his usual
want of judgment, pitched upon what is now the site of Buenos Ayres as the spot
on which to found his colony. It would be difficult to select a more
inconvenient place in which to found a town. The site of Buenos Ayres is almost
level with the waters of the river Plate, which there are shallow—so shallow
that large vessels could not approach nearer than ten to fifteen miles. Without
a harbour, the anchorage was exposed to the full fury of the south-west gales,
known as ‘pamperos’. However, if the site was bad the air was good; at least,
it seems so, for a captain of the expedition exclaimed on landing, ‘Que buenos
aires son estos!’ and hence the name. Here every sort of evil chance came on
the newborn colony. The Pampa Indians, whom the historian Schmidel seems to
have only known by their Guaraní name of Querandis, at first were friendly.
After a little while they ceased to bring provisions, and the General sent out
an expedition to compel them under his brother, Don Diego de Mendoza. It does
not seem to have occurred to Don Pedro de Mendoza that, had the cacique
of the Querandis landed in Spain, no one would have brought him provisions for
a single day without receiving payment. However, Don Pedro[18] had come to America to introduce civilization and
Christianity, and therefore, knowing, like Bernal Diaz and the other
conquerors, his own moral worth, was justly indignant that after a day or two
the Indians refused him more supplies. In the encounter which took place
between the Spaniards and the Indians, Don Diego de Mendoza was slain, and with
him several others. Here for the first time we hear of the bolas, or three
stones united, like a Manxman’s legs, with strips of hide, with which, as
Hulderico Schmidel tells us, the Indians caught the horses by the legs and
threw them down. After this foretaste of European justice, the Indians besieged
the newly-built town and brought it to great straits, so much so that, after
three men had been hung for stealing a horse, in the morning it was discovered
they had been cut down and eaten. In this desperate state Don Pedro despatched
Juan de Ayolas to get supplies. He, having obtained some maize from the Timbu
Indians, returned, leaving a hundred of his men in a little fort, called Corpus
Christi, close to Espiritu Santo, the fort which Cabot had constructed. The
friendliness of the Timbus induced Don Pedro to abandon Buenos Ayres and move
to Corpus Christi. There he repaired with about five hundred men, all who
remained of the two thousand six hundred and thirty with which he sailed from
Cadiz. The horses he abandoned on the pampa; there they became the ancestors of
the innumerable herds which at one time overspread the Argentine Republic from
the Chaco to Patagonia, and whose descendants to this day stock the
estancias of that country.[19]
From Corpus Christi Juan de Ayolas was sent out to explore the river, and try
to find the long-sought-for waterway to the Peruvian mines. He never reached
Peru, and Corpus Christi never saw him return. Mendoza waited a year, and then
returned to Spain, leaving his garrison with provisions for a year, the bread[20] ‘at the rate of (á razon de) a pound a day, and
if they wanted more to get it for themselves.’ On the passage home he died
insane. The pious were of opinion that it was a judgment on him for the murder
of Don Juan Osorio. Before he embarked, Don Pedro had despatched a relative,
Gonzalo de Mendoza, to Spain to bring provisions and recruits. Gonzalo, having
obtained provisions in Brazil, returned to Corpus Christi; thence in company
with Salazar de Espinosa he headed an expedition up the river in search of Juan
de Ayolas, who had been appointed successor to Don Pedro. With them went
Domingo Martinez de Irala, a man destined to play a great part in the conquest
of Paraguay.
The expedition went up the Paraguay to a place near Fort Olimpo (21° long.,
58° lat.) about a hundred leagues above Asuncion. Here they sent out
exploring parties in all directions to seek Ayolas, but without success. Irala
remained with one hundred men at Fort Olimpo. Gonzalo de Mendoza on his return,
being attracted by the sight of a fine site for a town, landed, and on the
fifteenth day of August, 1537, founded Asuncion. Here the Spaniards first met
the Guaranís, who were destined in after-years to be the converts of the
Jesuits, and be assembled by them in their famous missions.
‘At the discovery of America,’ says Felix de Azara in his ‘Descripcion y
Historia del Paraguay’, ‘the Guaranís were spread from the Guianas to the
shores of the river Plate, and occupied all the islands of the Paraná extending
up to latitude 20° on the Paraguay, but without crossing either that river
or the river Plate.’ They had also a few towns in the province of Chiquitos,
and the nation of the Chiriguanás was an offshoot from them. In Brazil they
were soon all either rendered slaves or so crossed with the African negro that
the pure race has been almost entirely lost, though the language remains under
the name of the Lingoa Geral, and many words from it have been introduced into
Portuguese spoken by the Brazilians, as capim, grass; caipira,
half-caste, etc. In fact, so great is the number of these words, idioms,
phrases, and terms of speech derived from Guaraní, that Dr. Baptista de
Almeida, in his preface to his grammar published at Rio Janeiro (1879),
computes that there are more words derived from Guaraní than even from Arabic
in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil.[21] The Guaranís in
Brazil were known either as Tupis, from the word tupy,[22] savage, or Tupinambás, from tupynambá,
literally, the savage or indigenous men.
Jean de Lery, the well-known Huguenot pastor and friend of Calvin, passed a
year on the coast of Brazil about 1558, having accompanied the expedition of
the famous Villegagnau. In his book (‘Histoire d’un Voyage faict en la Terre du
Brezil’) he always refers to the Indians as Toupinaubaoults, and has preserved
many curious details of them before they had had much contact with Europeans.
He appears to have had a considerable acquaintance with the language, and has
left some curious conversations en langage sauvage et Français, in which
he gives some grammatical rules. The language of conversation is almost
identical with that of Paraguay, though some words are used which are either
peculiar to the Tupis or obsolete in Paraguay to-day. His account of their
customs tallies with that of the various Spanish writers and explorers who have
written on the subject. Tobacco, which seems to have been known under the name
of ‘nicotiane’ to Lery, he finds in Brazil under the name of ‘petun’, the same
name by which it is called in Paraguay at present. He believed that ‘petun’ and
‘nicotiane’ were two different plants, but the only reason he adduces for his
belief is that ‘nicotiane’ was brought in his time from Florida, which, as he
observes, is more than a thousand leagues from ‘Nostre Terre du Brezil’. His
experience of savages was the same as that of Azara, and almost all early
travellers, for he says: ‘Nos Toupinambaoults reçoivent fort humainement les
estrangers amis qui les vont visiter.’[23] Lery,
however, seemed to think that, in spite of their pacific inclination, it was
not prudent to put too much power in their hands, for he remarks: ‘Au reste
parcequ’ils chargeyent, et remplisseyent leurs mousquets jusques au bout . . .
nous leurs baillions moitié (i.e., la poudre) de charbon broyé.’ This
may have been a wise precaution, but he omits to state if the charbon
broyé was bailli at the same price as good powder. According to
Azara, who takes his facts partly from the contemporary writers—Schmidel, Alvar
Nuñez, Ruy Diaz de Guzman, and Barco de la Centenera—the Guaranís were divided
into numerous tribes, as Imbeguas, Caracaras, Tembues, Colistines, and many
others. These tribes, though apparently of a common origin, never united, but
each lived separately under its own chief. Their towns were generally either
close to or in the middle of forests, or at the edge of rivers where there is
wood. They all cultivated pumpkins, beans, maize, mani (ground nuts), sweet
potatoes, and mandioca; but they lived largely by the chase, and ate much wild
honey. Diaz in his ‘Argentina’ (lib. i., chap. i.) makes them cannibals. Azara
believes this to have been untrue, as no traditions of cannibalism were current
amongst the Guaranís in his time, i.e., in 1789-1801. Liberal as Azara
was, and careful observer of what he saw himself, I am disposed to believe the
testimony of so many eye-witnesses of the customs of the primitive Guaranís,
though none of them had the advantage enjoyed by Azara of living three hundred
years after the conquest. It may be, of course, that the powers of observation
were not so well developed in mankind in the beginning of the sixteenth as at
the end of the eighteenth century, but this point I leave to those whose
business it is to prove that the human mind is in a progressive state. However,
Father Montoya, in his ‘Conquista Espiritual del Paraguay’, affirms most
positively that they used to eat their prisoners taken in war.’[24]
Their general characteristics seem to have been much the same as those of other
Indians of America. For instance, they kept their hair and teeth to an extreme
old age, their sight was keen, they seldom looked you in the face whilst
speaking, and their disposition was cold and reserved. The tone of their voices
was low, so low that, as Azara says: ‘La voz nunca es gruesa ni sonora, y
hablan siempre muy bajo, sin gritar aun para quejarse si los matan; de manera
que, si camina uno diez pasos delante, no le llama el que le necesita, sino que
va á alcanzarle.’ This I have myself observed when travelling with Indians,
even on horseback.
There was one characteristic of the Guaranís in which they differed greatly
from most of the Indian tribes in their vicinity, as the Indians of the Chaco
and the Pampas, for all historians alike agree that they were most unwarlike.
It is from this characteristic that the Jesuits were able to make such a
complete conquest of them, for, notwithstanding all their efforts, they never
really succeeded in permanently establishing themselves amongst any of the
tribes in the Chaco or upon the Pampas.
The name Guaraní is variously derived. Pedro de Angelis, in his ‘Coleccion de
Obras y Documentos’, derives it from gua, paint, and ni, sign of
the plural, making the signification of the word ‘painted ones’ or ‘painted
men’. Demersay, in his ‘Histoire du Paraguay’,[25]
thinks it probable that the word is an alteration of the word guaranai,
i.e., numerous. Barco de la Centenera[26]
(‘Argentina’, book i., canto i.) says the word means ‘hornet’, and was applied
on account of their savageness. Be that as it may, it is certain that the
Guaranís did not at the time of the conquest, and do not now, apply the word to
themselves, except when talking Spanish or to a foreigner. The word abá,
Indian or man, is how they speak of their people, and to the language they
apply the word Abanêe.
In the same way the word ‘Paraguay’ is variously derived from a corruption of
the word ‘Payaguá’ (the name of an Indian tribe), and y, the Guaraní
word for water, meaning river of the Payaguas. Others, again, derive it from a
Guaraní word meaning ‘crown’, and y, water, and make it the crowned
river, either from the palm-trees which crown its banks or the feather crowns
which the Indians wore at the first conquest. Others, again, derive it from a
bird called paraquá (Ortolida paraqua). Again, Angelis, in his work
‘Serie de los Señores Gobernadores del Paraguay’ (lib. ii., p. 187), derives it
from Paraguá, the name of a celebrated Indian chief at the time of the
conquest. What is certain is that y is the Guaraní for water, and this
is something in a derivation. Y is perhaps as hard to pronounce as the
Gaelic luogh, a calf, the nasal gh in Arabic, or the Kaffir
clicks, having both a guttural and a nasal aspiration.[27] It is rarely attempted with success by foreigners,
even when long resident in the country. Though Paraguay was so completely the
country of the Jesuits in after-times, they were not the first religious Order
to go there. Almost in every instance the ecclesiastics who accompanied the
first conquerors of America were Franciscans. The Jesuits are said to have sent
two priests to Bahia in Brazil ten years after their Order was founded, but
both in Brazil and Paraguay the Franciscans were before them in point of time.
San Francisco Solano, the first ecclesiastic who rose to much note as a
missionary, and who made his celebrated journey through the Chaco in 1588-89
from Peru to Paraguay, was a Franciscan.[28] Thus, the
Franciscans had the honour of having the first American saint in their ranks.
It is noteworthy, though, that he was recalled from Paraguay by his superiors,
who seem to have had no very exalted opinion of him.
Charlevoix remarks (‘History of Paraguay’) ‘that it seems as if Providence, in
granting him miraculous powers, had forgotten the other necessary steps to make
them effective.’ That he really had these powers seems strange, but San
Francisco Solano narrates of himself that, in passing through the Chaco, he
learned the languages of several of the tribes, and ‘preached to them in their
own tongues of the birth, death, and transfiguration of Christ, the mysteries
of the Trinity, Transubstantiation, and Atonement; that he explained to them
the symbols of the Church, the Papal succession from St. Peter downwards, and
that he catechized the Indians by thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands,
and that they came in tears and penitence to acknowledge their belief.’
Of course, to-day it is difficult to controvert these statements, even if
inclined to do so; but the languages spoken by the Chaco Indians are amongst
the most difficult to learn of any spoken by the human race, so much so that
Father Dobrizhoffer, in his ‘History of the Abipones’, says ‘that the sounds
produced by the Indians of the Chaco resembled nothing human, so do they
sneeze, and stutter, and cough.’ In such a language the Athanasian Creed itself
would be puzzling to a neophyte.
He also says that several of the Jesuits who had laboured for years amongst the
Indians could never master their dialects, and when they preached the Indians
received their words with shouts of laughter. This the good priest attributed
to the presence of a ‘mocking devil’ who possessed them. It may be that the
mocking devil was but a sense of humour, the possession of which, even amongst
good Christians, has been known to give offence.
But be this as it may, San Francisco de Solano remained two years at Asuncion,
though whilst he lived there his powers of speech (according to the Jesuits)
seem to have been diminished, and he held no communication with the Indians in
their own languages. It may be that, like St. Paul, he preferred to speak, when
not with Indians, five words with his understanding rather than ten thousand in
an unknown tongue.
At the time of the first conquest Paraguay was almost entirely peopled by the
Guaraní race.[29] It does not appear that their number
was ever very great, perhaps not exceeding a million in the whole country. From
the writings of Montoya, Guevara, Lozano, and the other missionaries of the
time, it is certain that they had attained to no very high degree of
civilization, though they were certainly more advanced than their neighbours in
the Gran Chaco. It is most probable that they had not a single stone-built
town, or even a house, or that such a thing existed south of New Granada, to
the eastward of the Andes, for we may take the description in Schmidel’s
‘History of the Casa del Gran Moxo’[30] either as a
mistake or as a story which he had heard from some Peruvian Indian of the
palaces of the Incas. At any rate, no remains of stone-built houses, still less
of palaces, are known to have been found in Brazil or Paraguay.
To-day all the Guaranís who are still unconquered live in the impenetrable
forests of the North of Paraguay or in the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso.
Their limits to the south extend to near the ruined missions of Jesus and
Trinidad. By preference, they seem to dwell about the sources of the Igatimí,
an affluent of the Paraná, and in the chain of mountains known either as San
Jose or Mbaracayú. The Paraguayans generally refer to them as Monteses
(dwellers in the woods), and sometimes as Caaguás. They present almost the same
characteristics as they did at the discovery of the country, and wander in the
woods as the Jesuits describe them as doing three hundred years ago. Olive in
colour, rather thickly set, of medium height, thin beards, and generally little
hair upon the body, their type has remained unchanged. The difference in
stature amongst the Guaranís is less noticeable than amongst Europeans. Their
language is poorer than the Guaraní spoken by the Paraguayans, and the
pronunciation both more nasal and guttural. Their numerals only extend to four,
as was the case at the time of the discovery.[31]
Like their forefathers, they seldom unite in large numbers, and pay little
honour or obedience to their chiefs, who differ in no respect, either in arms,
dress, or position, from the ordinary tribesmen.
In Brazil they are confined to the southern portion of the province of San
Paulo, and are called by the Brazilians Bugres—that is, slaves. A more
unfitting name it would have been impossible to hit upon, as all efforts to
civilize them have proved abortive, and to-day they still range the forests,
attacking small parties of travellers, and burning isolated farm-houses. The
Brazilians assert that they are cannibals, but little is known positively as to
this. What has altered them so entirely from the original Guaranís of the time
of the conquest, who were so easily subdued, it is hard to conjecture. One
thing is certain: that the example given them by the Christian settlers has
evidently not been such as to induce them to leave their wild life and enter
into the bonds of civilization.
Diaz, in the ‘Argentina’, thinks the Caribs of the West Indies were Guaranís,
and the Jesuits often refer to them under that name.[32]
This point would be easily set at rest by examining if any Guaraní words remain
in the dialect of the Caribs of the Mosquito coast. As to their relative
numbers at the time of the foundation of the missions, it is most difficult to
judge. At no one time does the population of the thirty towns seem to have
exceeded one hundred and thirty thousand.
D’Orbigny in his ‘L’Homme Américain’, estimates the Guaranís of Brazil at one
hundred and fifty thousand.
Humboldt cites two hundred and sixty-nine thousand as the probable number of
Indians of every kind in the Brazilian Empire.
The Viscount de Itabayana (a Brazilian writer) fixes the number at two hundred
and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand.
Veloso de Oliveira puts it at eight hundred thousand; and later statisticians
range between one million five hundred thousand and seven to eight hundred
thousand.
The numbers given of Indians by the Spanish conquerors are almost always
grossly overstated, from the wish they not unnaturally had to magnify the
importance of their conquests and to enhance their exploits in the eyes of
those for whom they wrote.
Struck by the tractable character of the Guaranís, Mendoza began to build a
fort on August 15, 1537 (which is the day of the Assumption), and the name he
gave to his fort was Asuncion, which afterwards became the capital of Paraguay.
Espinosa returned to Corpus Christi, and afterwards to Buenos Ayres, where a
small force had still remained. This force, tired of the ceaseless battles with
the Querandis, or Pampa Indians, embarked for Asuncion.
Irala, after waiting for many months at Fort Olimpo, returned to Asuncion,
where he found Ruiz de Galan acting as Governor. A dispute at once arose
between them, and Irala, after having been imprisoned, was allowed to return to
Fort Olimpo. Here he found the Payaguá Indians in rebellion, and in the battle
which ensued he is reported to have slain seven of them with his own hand.[33] He still maintained a fitful search for Juan de
Ayolas, but without success.
Galan returned to Buenos Ayres, and, stopping at Corpus Christi, took occasion
to fall upon the friendly and unsuspecting Timbú Indians and massacre a
quantity of them. Why he did so is quite uncertain, for the Timbues had been in
the habit of supplying the fort of Corpus Christi with provisions; it may be
that the quality of the provisions was inferior, but neither Ruiz Diaz nor
Schmidel informs us on the point. Galan, after his ‘victory’, re-embarked for
Buenos Ayres, leaving Antonio de Mendoza in command with a hundred men.
One day, when about the half of the force was hunting, the Indians fell upon it
and cut it off to the last man; but for the opportune arrival of two vessels
the fort would have been destroyed. However, many Spaniards were slain, and
Antonio de Mendoza amongst them.
After this battle, in which Santiago[34] is said to have
appeared on the top of the principal tower of the fort dressed in white with a
drawn sword in his hand, Galan and Espinosa returned to Asuncion, taking with
them the remainder of the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres. At Asuncion they found
that Irala had again returned without having discovered traces of Ayolas. Irala
was elected Governor under a clause in the royal letters patent which provided
for the case of Ayolas not returning. His first act was to order the complete
evacuation of Buenos Ayres. An Italian vessel, which was going to Peru with
colonists, having been driven into the river Plate, united with the remains of
the colonists at Buenos Ayres and proceeded to Asuncion.
Curiously enough, the remnants of several expeditions thus joined to found the
first permanent city in the territories of the river Plate; not at Buenos
Ayres, but a thousand miles away in the interior of the country, where it
seemed little probable that their attempt would prove successful.
To preside over the heterogeneous elements of which Asuncion was composed,
Domingo Martinez de Irala was chosen. He was a Biscayan, a member of that
ancient race which neither Romans nor Moors were ever able to subdue. Nothing
is known about his antecedents. Not improbably he was a son of one of the
innumerable small gentlemen with whom the Basque provinces used to swarm.
Almost every house in the little towns even to-day has its coat of arms over
the door. Every inhabitant claimed to be a nobleman, and in the reign of
Charles V. they furnished many soldiers of repute in the wars of Europe and
America.
The system of Irala was to conciliate rather than subdue the natives. Isolated
from help of every kind, the length of the voyage from Spain precluding all
idea of speedy succour in a rebellion, it was the only course he could pursue.
From the very first he encouraged the soldiers to marry women of the country,
thus creating ties which bound them to the land.
Two Franciscan friars[35] set about at once to learn the
language and preach to the people. They also seem to have endeavoured to reduce
the Guaraní language to writing. So, from several circumstances, the early
history of Paraguay was very different from that of every other Spanish
possession in America. To all the others Spanish women seem to have gone in
greater or in smaller numbers. To Paraguay, at the foundation of Asuncion, it
seems that hardly any women went.
So there a different state of society arose to that, for example, in Chile or
in Mexico. In both those countries few Spaniards ever married native women.
Those who did so were either members of the highest class—who sometimes, but
rarely, married Indian women of position from motives of policy—or else the
lowest class of Spaniards; in this case, after a generation, their children
became practically Indians. In Paraguay it was quite the contrary, and the
grandchildren of Indian mothers and Spanish fathers were almost reckoned
Spaniards, and the next generation always so.
Washburne, in his ‘History of Paraguay’ (p. 32, cap. i., vol. i.), points out
the contrast between the effects of the treatment meted out by Penn to the
Indians in Pennsylvania and that by Irala in Paraguay. Where, he asks, are the
Indian tribes with whom the celebrated Quaker treated? In Paraguay, on the
other hand, at least in the time when Washburne was Minister from the United
States to Lopez (from 1861 to 1868), the few remaining Paraguayans of the upper
class were almost all descended from the intermarriages of the followers of
Irala with the natives.
The tyranny of Lopez, and the effects of the disastrous war with Brazil and the
Argentine Republic, have almost extirpated every Paraguayan (of the old stock)
with the least pretensions to white descent.
Ruiz Diaz de Guzman, speaking of the mixed race in Paraguay and Buenos Ayres,
says:
‘They are generally good soldiers, of great spirit and valour, expert in the
use of arms, especially in that of the musquet, so much so that, when they go
on long journeys, they are accustomed to live on the game which they kill with
it. It is common for them to kill birds on the wing, and he is accounted unfit
for a soldier who cannot bring down a pigeon. They are such excellent horsemen
that there is no one who is not able to tame and ride an unbroken colt.
‘The women generally are virtuous, beautiful, and of a gentle disposition.’
If the inhabitants of Paraguay and the river Plate of those days were good
marksmen, it is more than can be said of the Gauchos of the Argentine provinces
and the Paraguayans of twenty years ago. Without military training, so far from
being able to bring down a pigeon on the wing, few could hit the trunk of a
tree at fifty paces. The usual method of shooting used to be to cram as much
ammunition into the gun as the hand would contain, and then, looking carefully
away from the object aimed at, to close both eyes and pull the trigger.
Accuracy of aim was not so much considered as loudness of report. As regards
their powers of riding, they are still unchanged; and as to the virtue of their
women, virtue is so largely a matter of convention that it is generally wisest
to leave such matters uncommented on, as it is so easy not to understand the
conventions of the people of whom one writes.
Whilst Irala was conciliating the Guaranís in Paraguay, Charles V. had not
forgotten that the new settlement of Buenos Ayres had been abandoned. After
much search, he selected Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca to be the new Governor;
and, as Alvar Nuñez was perhaps the most remarkable of all the Spanish
conquistadores of the New World, it may not be out of place to give some
facts of his career, as his policy in regard to the Indians was almost that of
the Jesuits in after-times.
As he himself informs us in his Commentaries,[36] his
‘father was that Pedro de Vera who won Canaria,’ and his mother ‘Doña Teresa
Cabeza de Vaca, a noble lady of Jerez de la Frontera.’ After the Spanish
fashion of the time, he used the names of both his parents.
In 1529 he sailed with the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez to
Apalache in Florida, was shipwrecked, tried to regain the Spanish settlements
in boats, and then cast by a storm absolutely naked, and with only three
companions, upon an unknown land. Taken by the Indians, he was made a slave,
then rose to be a pedlar, then a doctor, and finally a chief, held sacred for
his mysterious powers. At last he made his way on foot into the territory of
New Spain, not as a captive, but as the leader of several hundred Indians, who
followed him and did his bidding as if he had been born their chief. Rambling
about for months, but always followed by his Indians, he at length encountered
a Spanish horse-soldier, and, accosting him, found he had almost forgotten
Spanish during his ten years’ sojourn with the Indians. His first entreaty,
when he found Spanish gradually returning to him, was to the Spaniards not to
harass his Indian following. Then he besought the Indians themselves to cease
their nomad life and cultivate the soil. In neither case was he successful, as
the Spaniards, like all other Europeans, held Indians little removed from dogs.
And for the Indians, the few remaining are as much attached to their old
wandering life as in the days of the discovery of the New World. In all that
Alvar Nuñez writes, he shows a grandeur of soul and spirit far different from
the writings, not only of the conquerors of the New World, but of the
conquerors of Africa of to-day. For him no bragging of his exploits.[37] All that he says he sets down modestly and with
excuses (as every now and then, ‘Me pesa hablar de mis trabajos’), and as
befits a gentleman. Lastly, he leaves the reader (when describing his captivity
in Florida), by telling him quite quietly and without comment that God was
pleased to save from all these perils himself, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado,
Andres Dorantes, and that the fourth was a negro called Estevanico, a native of
Azimur. But, not contented with his ten years’ captivity, after three years at
home he entered into a certain asiento[38] and
capitulacion[39] with the King to sail at his own
charges with an expedition to succour Don Pedro de Mendoza, who was hard
pressed by famine and the Indians at Buenos Ayres. He agreed to furnish eight
thousand ducats, horses, arms, men, and provisions at his own expense, upon
condition that he was made Governor and Adelantado of the Rio de la Plata, and
General both of its armies and its fleets.
Upon November 2, 1537, he embarked at Cadiz with his fleet, consisting of a
caravel and two full-rigged ships. All went well up to the Cape de Verdes. On
nearing the equator, it occurred to the ‘Maestro del Agua’ to examine his stock
of water, and, out of one hundred pipes which had been put aboard, he found but
three remaining, and from these the thirty horses and four hundred men who were
on board all had to drink. Seeing the greatness of the necessity, the
Governor—for Alvar Nuñez almost always speaks of himself in the third
person—gave orders that the fleet should make for land. ‘Three days,’ he says
in his Commentaries, ‘we sailed in search of it’; and on the fourth, just
before sunrise, occurred a very notable affair, and, as it is not altogether
fuera de proposito, I set it down, and it is this—‘that, going towards
the land, the ships had almost touched on some sharp rocks we had not seen.’
Then, as now, I take it, vigilance was not a noticeable quality in Spanish
sailors. Just as the vessels were almost on the rocks, ‘a cricket commenced to
sing, which cricket a sick soldier had put into the ship at Cadiz, being
anxious to hear its music, and for the two months which our navigation had
endured no one had heard it, whereat the soldier was much enraged; and as on
that morning it felt the land [sintio la tierra], it commenced to sing,
and its music wakened all the people of the ship, who saw the cliffs, which
were distant almost a crossbow-shot from where we were, so we cast out anchors
and saved the ship, and it is certain that if the cricket had not sung all of
us, four hundred soldiers and thirty horses, had been lost.’ Some of the crew
accepted the occurrence as a miracle from God; but Nuñez himself is silent on
that head, being a better observer of natural history than a theologian. But
‘from there, and sailing more than a hundred leagues along the coast, the
cricket every evening gave us his music, and thus with it we arrived at a
little port beyond Cape Frio, where the Adelantado landed and unfurled his
flag, and took possession for His Majesty.’ The expedition disembarked at Santa
Catalina in Brazil. ‘There the Governor landed his men and twenty-six of the
horses which had escaped the sea, all that remained of forty-six embarked in
Spain.’ The odium theologicum gave the Governor some work at once. Two
friars—Fray Bernardo de Armenta and Fray Alonso Lebron, Franciscans—had burnt
the houses of some Indians, who had retaliated in the heathen fashion by
slaughtering two Christians. The ‘people being scandalized’, the Governor sent
for the friars, admonished them, and told them to restrain their zeal. This was
the first false step he made, and set all friars and priests throughout America
against him. Hearing at Santa Catalina that Buenos Ayres was almost abandoned,
and that the inhabitants had founded the town of Asuncion del Paraguay, Alvar
determined to march thither by land, and send his ship into the river Plate and
up the Paraguay. The two Franciscan friars he told to remain and ‘indoctrinate’
the Indians. This they refused to do, saying they wished to reside amongst the
Spaniards in Asuncion. Had they been Jesuits, it is ten to one they had
remained and spent their lives ‘indoctrinating’, for the Jesuits alone of all
the religious Orders were ever ready to take every risk.
Upon his march the Governor, contrary to all good policy and precedent, ordered
that nothing should be taken from the Indians without due payment being made.
To insure this being done, he paid for all provisions himself, and served them
out to the soldiery. This made him as unpopular with his soldiers as his
dealings with the two Franciscans had made him amongst the friars. Surely he
might have known that Pizarro, Cortes, Almagro, and the rest, were men who
never paid for anything. Still, he persisted in his conduct to the end, and so
brought ruin on himself. The Indians seemed to appreciate his method, for he
says that ‘when the news was spread abroad of the good treatment the Governor
gave to all, they came to meet the army decked with flowers and bringing
provisions in great abundance.’ It was, he also says, ‘a thing to see how
frightened the Indians were of the horses, and how they brought them food,
chickens and honey to keep them quiet and in good humour, and they asked the
Governor to tell the horses not to hurt them.’
After passing the river Iguazú, he sent the two friars ahead to collect
provisions, and ‘when the Governor arrived the Indians had no more to give.’[40]
So having started from the coast upon November 2, 1541, he arrived at Asuncion
on March 2, 1542, having accomplished a march of more than two thousand miles
with but the loss of a single man and without the slaughter of a single Indian.
Hardly had he arrived at Asuncion before he found himself embroiled on every
side. The Indians were in full rebellion, the settlement of Buenos Ayres almost
in ruins, and the officers appointed by the King to collect the royal dues all
hostile to him to a man.
After having consulted with the clergy to find if they thought it lawful to
attack the Guaycurús who had assailed the newly-founded town, he received the
opinion ‘that it was not only lawful, but expedient.’ Therefore he sent off an
expedition against them, to which was joined a priest to require the Guaycurús
to become Christians and to acknowledge the King of Spain. The propositions,
not unnaturally, did not seem reasonable to the Indians, who most likely were
unaware of the benefits which Christianity confers, and probably heard for the
first time of the King of Spain. The Governor, who seems to have doubted of the
humanity of the clergy, called another council, which confirmed the previous
opinion. Strangely enough, this seems to have surprised him, for he probably
did not reflect that the clergy would not have to fight themselves, and that
the first blood ever spilt on earth was on account of a religious difference.
Just before the expedition started it was found that the two Franciscan friars
who had come with him from Santa Catalina could not be found. It then appeared
they had started back to the coast accompanied by a bevy of Indian damsels,
thirty-five in all. They were followed and brought back, and then explained
that they were on their way to Spain to complain against the Governor. The
five-and-thirty dusky catechumens remained without an explanation, and the
people were once more ‘scandalized’. The Governor then started out against the
Guaycurús. Only those who know the Chaco, or western bank of the river
Paraguay, can form the least idea of what such an expedition must have been.
Even to-day in the Chaco the change since the beginning of the world can be but
slight. As a steamer slips along the bank, nothing for miles and miles is seen
but swamp, intersected with backwaters,[41] in which lie
alligators, electric eels, and stinging rays. Far as the eye can reach are
swamps, swamps, and more swamps, a sea of waving pampa-grass. After the swamps
thickets of tacuaras (canes), forests of thorny trees, chañares, ñandubay,
jacarandas, urundey, talas, and quebrachos, each one hard enough to split an
axe, some, like the black canela, almost like iron; the inhabitants ferocious
and intractable as when the Governor himself first saw them; the climate heavy
and humid, the air dank with vinchucas[42] and
mosquitoes and the little black infernal midget called the jejen; no roads, no
paths, no landmarks, but here and there at intervals of many leagues a clearing
in the forest where some straggling settlement exists, more rarely still the
walls of a deserted Jesuit mission-house or church. Ostriches and deer,
tigers,[43] capibaras and tapirs, and now and then a
herd of cattle as wild as buffaloes, are seen. Sometimes an Indian with his
lance sits motionless upon his horse to watch the vessel pass—a sentinel to
guard the wilderness from encroachments from without. So Alvar Nuñez, as he
tells us in his Commentaries, started with four hundred men and with one
thousand friendly Indians, all well armed and painted, and with plates of metal
on their heads to reflect the sun, and so strike terror to their enemies. To
save the horses they were put on board,[44] whilst the
Indians marched along the bank, keeping up with the ships. Horses at that time
in Paraguay and in Peru often were worth one thousand crowns of gold, though
Azara tells us that in the last century in Buenos Ayres you could often buy a
good horse for two needles, so cheap had they become. Then, as at present, time
was of no account in Paraguay, so almost every day they landed the horses to
keep them in condition and to chase the ostriches and deer.
Just the kind of army that a thinking man would like to march with; not too
much to eat, but, still, a pleasant feeling of marching to spread religion and
to make one’s fortune, with but the solitary unpleasant feature to the
soldier—the system of payment for provisions which the Governor prescribed. All
was new and strange; the world was relatively young. Each night the Governor
religiously wrote up his diary, now chronicling the death of some good horse,
or of an Indian, or commenting upon the fruits, the fish, the animals, the
trees, and ‘all the other things of God which differ from those in the
Castiles.’ Occasionally a fight took place with Guasarapos or with Pagayuás,
but nothing of much account (de mucha monta); always the tales of
gold-mines to be met with further on. Eventually the expedition came to a point
not far from where is now the town of Corumbá. There Alvar Nuñez founded a town
to which he gave the name of Reyes, which has long fallen into decay. He also
sent two captains to explore and search for gold, waiting two or three months
for their return, and suffering from a quartan ague which confined him to his
bed; then, having failed to find the talked-of gold-mines, he set his face
again towards Asuncion. Just before starting he gave the final blow to his
waning popularity. Some of his followers, having taken Indian girls, had hidden
them on board the ships; this, when he knew it, Nuñez at once forbade, and,
sending for the fathers of the girls, restored their children to them. ‘With
this,’ he says, ‘the natives were much pleased, but the Spaniards rendered
angry and desperate, and for this cause they hated me.’ Nothing more natural,
and for the same cause the Spanish Paraguayans hated the Jesuits who carried
out the policy which the wise Governor began.
On April 8, 1543, the Governor returned to Asuncion, worn out and ill with
ague. There he found all confusion. Domingo de Irala, a clever, ambitious
Biscayan soldier who had been interim Governor before Nuñez had arrived, had
worked upon the people, saying that Nuñez wished to take away their property.
As their chief property was in Indians whom they had enslaved, this rendered
Nuñez most unpopular, and the same kind of allegations were laid against him as
were laid against the Jesuits when in their turn they denounced slavery in
Paraguay. All the complaints were in the name of liberty, as generally is the
case when tyranny or villainy of any sort is to be done.
So Alvar Nuñez[45] tells us in his Commentaries that at
the hour of the Ave Maria ten or twelve of the ‘factious’ entered his house
where he lay ill in bed, all shouting ‘Liberty!’ and to prove they were all
good patriots one Jaime Resquin put a bent crossbow to his side, and forced him
to get out of bed, and took him off to prison amid a crowd all shouting
‘Liberty!’ The friends of liberty (upon the other side) attempted a rescue, but
the patriots[46] were too strong. So the unpatriotic
Governor was thrown, heavily ironed, into a cell, out of which to make room
they let a murderer who was awaiting death. ‘He’ (Alvar Nuñez grimly remarks)
‘made haste to take my cloak, and then set off down the street at once, calling
out “Liberty!”’ That everything should be in order, the patriots confiscated
all the Governor’s goods and took his papers, publishing a proclamation that
they did so because he was a tyrant. Unluckily, the Indians have not left us
any commentaries, or it would be curious to learn what they thought as to the
tyranny of Alvar Nuñez. Most probably they thought as the Indians of the Jesuit
missions thought at the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay, as is set forth
in the curious memorial addressed in 1768 by the people of the Mission of San
Luis to the Governor of Buenos Ayres, praying that the Jesuits might be
suffered to remain instead of the friars, who had been sent to replace them
against the people’s will.[47] Having got the Governor
into prison, the patriots had to elect another chief, and the choice naturally
‘fell’ upon Domingo de Irala, who, having been interim Governor, had never
ceased intriguing from the first. He promptly put his friends in office, after
the fashion of all Governors, whether they enter office to the cry of ‘Liberty’
or not. The friends of Alvar Nuñez, in the usual Spanish fashion (long
sanctified by use and wont), declared themselves in opposition—that is, they
roamed about the land, proving by theft and murder that their love of liberty
was just as strong as that of those in power. Things shortly came to such a
pass that no one could leave his house by night. The marauding Guaycurús burnt
all the suburbs, and threatened to attack the town. Nuñez himself was guarded
day and night by four men armed with daggers in a close prison. As he says
himself, his prison was not ‘fitting for his health,’ for day and night he had
to keep a candle burning to see to read, and the grass grew underneath his bed,
whilst for the sake of ‘health’ he had a pair of first-rate fetters on his
feet. For his chief gaoler they procured one Hernando de Sosa, whom Nuñez had
put in gaol for striking an Indian chief. A guard watched constantly at the
prison gate, but, still, in spite of this he managed to communicate almost
uninterruptedly with his friends outside. His method was certainly ingenious.
His food was brought to him by an Indian girl, whom, so great was the fear of
the patriots that he should write to the King, they made walk naked into the
prison, carrying the dishes, and with her head shaved. Notwithstanding this,
she managed to bring a piece of paper hidden between her toes. The party of
Liberty, suspecting that Nuñez was communicating with his friends, procured an
Indian youth to make love to the girl and learn the secret. This he failed to
do, owing, perhaps, to his love-making being wanting in conviction on account
of her shaved head. At last Irala and his friends determined to send the
Governor a prisoner to Spain, taking care, of course, to despatch a messenger
beforehand to distort the facts and prejudice the King. The friends of Nuñez,
however, managed to secrete a box of papers, stating the true facts, on board
the ship. At dead of night a band of harquebusiers dragged him from his bed
(after a captivity of eleven months), as he says, ‘almost with the candle in
his hand’—i.e., in a dying state. As he left the prison, he fell upon
his knees and thanked God for having let him once more feel the air of heaven,
and then in a loud voice exclaimed: ‘I name as my successor Captain Juan de
Salazar de Espinosa.’ At this one Garci Vargas rushed at him with a knife, and
told him to recall his words or he would kill him instantly. This he was
stopped from doing, and Nuñez was hurried to the ship and chained securely to a
beam. On board the vessel, he says, they tried to poison him; but this seems
doubtful, as there was nothing on earth to prevent their doing so had they been
so inclined. Still, as a prudent man he took the precaution to provide some oil
and a piece of unicorn (pedazo de unicornio), with which he tried the
food. Unicorns he could not have seen in Paraguay, nor yet in Florida, and he
does not explain how he became so luckily equipped.
None the less, of all the discoverers of America he is the man of least
imaginative power—that is, in matters appertaining to natural history—so one
must conclude he had his piece of unicorn from Spain, where he most probably
had bought it from some dealer in necessaries for travellers to the New World.
After a stormy voyage he arrived in Spain to find his accusers just before him.
With truly Eastern justice, both accusers and accused were put in gaol, a
custom worthy of adoption in other lands. Nuñez was soon released on bail, and,
his accusers having all died, in eight years’ time he was triumphantly
acquitted of all the charges brought against him. To prove, however, that
Justice is and always has been blind, the King never restored him to his
government in Paraguay, and, as Nuñez says, forgot to repay him what he had
expended in his service.[48] With Alvar Nuñez was lost
the only chance of liberal treatment to the Indians, for from his time the
governors, instead of being men of the world above the petty spite of party
differences, were chosen either from officers who, having served in the
frontier wars, quite naturally looked on the Indians as enemies, or were
appointed by intriguing Ministers at Court. From the death of Alvar Nuñez to
the inauguration of the missions by the Jesuits, no one arose to take the
Indians’ side, and it may be that had his policy prevailed there would have
been an Indian population left in the mission territory of Paraguay; for had
the civil governors co-operated with the Jesuits, the dispersion of the
Indians, which took place at the expulsion of the Jesuits, had not occurred.
Thus was Domingo Martinez de Irala left in sole command in Paraguay. He
naturally had all to gain by not communicating with Spain. Had he done so, the
part he played in reference to Alvar Nuñez must have been known. He had,
however, certain good qualities, courage in abundance, Herculean strength and
great endurance, and the power of making himself obeyed. But he had to justify
himself to Spain for his position, and the surest way to do so was to discover
gold-mines. So, naming Francisco de Mendoza his lieutenant, he started up the
Paraguay, taking with him three hundred and fifty soldiers and two thousand
Guaranís. After many hardships, he reached the frontiers of Peru, only to find
the country already conquered from the Pacific side, and to be met by the
messengers of the wise President, La Gasca, who told him to return, and named
one Diego Centeno Governor of Paraguay instead of him. Centeno died before he
could assume the governorship, so it seemed that fate determined that Irala was
to continue in command.
After a year and a half he returned to Paraguay, having found no gold or
riches, but bringing many thousand Indians as slaves. It is important to
remember that Irala, who was remarkable for his relatively kind treatment of
the Indians, on this occasion led so many of them captive. On arriving at
Asuncion he found a rebellion going on, as not infrequently occurred when a
Spanish Governor left his domains. His lieutenant, Mendoza, had been killed by
one Diego de Abreu. After quieting matters in Asuncion, he despatched Nuflo de
Chaves (one of his captains) to found a town on the higher waters of the
Paraguay.
Like many other captains of those days, the idea of Chaves was to make himself
quite independent of authority; so, striking into the interior, he founded the
town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. After many adventures he was killed
by an Indian, who struck him with a club whilst he was sitting eating without
his helmet.
Irala died at the little village of Itá in 1557, and was buried in the
cathedral at Asuncion, which he was building at the time. With him expired the
generation of the conquering soldiers of fortune, who, schooled in the wars of
Italy, brought to America some of the virtues and all the vices of the Old
World. After him began the reign of the half-caste Spaniards who were the
progenitors of the modern occupants of the Spanish-American republics. At
Irala’s death the usual feuds, which have for the last three hundred years
disgraced every part of Spanish America, began. Into them it is unnecessary to
enter, for with Irala died almost the only Governor of Paraguay who showed the
smallest capacity to make himself obeyed.
True indeed that Arias de Saavedra, a native of Paraguay and
Lieutenant-Governor under Ramirez de Velasco, the Governor of Tucuman,
displayed some traces of ability and of intelligence. He it was who first
appealed to Spain for missionaries to convert the Indians.
Whilst Alvar Nuñez and Irala, with Nuflo de Chaves and the other captains, had
been conquering and building towns, the Jesuits had been preaching in the
wilderness and gathering together the Indian tribes. Not ten years after the
foundation of their Order,[49] or about 1550, they had
landed at San Salvador de Bahia in Brazil.
In 1554, in the district of Guayrá, on the upper waters of the Paraná, and
above the cataract, the towns of Ontiveros, Ciudad Real, and Villa Rica, had
been founded by Don Ruy Diaz de Melgarejo.
In 1586 Fathers Alfonso Barcena and Angulo left the town of Santa Maria de las
Charcas (Bolivia) at the request of Francisco Vitoria, Bishop of Santiago, who
had appealed for missionaries to the Society of Jesus. They reached the
province of Guayrá, and began their labours. Shortly afterwards they were
joined by Fathers Estezan Grao, Juan Solano, and Thomas Fields; Solano and
Fields had already visited some of the wandering tribes upon the Rio Vermejo in
the Chaco.
In 1593 others arrived, as Juan Romero, Gaspar de Monroy, and Marcelino
Lorenzana. Shortly after this they founded the college in Asuncion. Then
Fathers Ortega and Vellarnao penetrated into the mountains of the Chiriguanás,
and began to preach the Gospel to the Indians.
In 1602 Acquaviva, seeing the necessity of common action, called all the
scattered Jesuits of Paraguay and the river Plate to a conference at Salta to
deliberate as to their future policy.[50] In 1605 Father
Diego Torres was named Provincial of the Jesuits of Paraguay and Chile, thus
proving both the paucity of Jesuits in South America at the time, and the
little idea the General in Rome had of the immensity of the countries he was
dealing with.
Torres arrived in Lima with fifteen priests, and almost at the same time some
others arrived at Buenos Ayres; both parties proceeded to Paraguay. Already the
Jesuits found themselves a prey to calumny.
Both in Tucuman and Paraguay they were expected to lend themselves to the
enslavement of the Indians. In Chile Father Valdivia was expelled from
Santiago, and took refuge at Tucuman. There he found the condition of affairs
so intolerable that he went to Madrid to solicit the protection of the King,
Philip III., for his Indian subjects.
In 1608 Philip issued his royal letters patent to the Society of Jesus for the
conversion of the Indians in the province of Guayrá.
The Bishop and the Governor, Arias de Saavedra (himself a Paraguayan by birth),
offered no objection, and the scheme of colonization was agreed upon at once.
Thus the Jesuits obtained their first official status in America.
Fathers Simon Maceta and José Cataldino (both Italians) left Asuncion on
October 10, 1609, and arrived in February, 1610, on the banks of the river
Paranapané.[51]
There they met the Indians amongst whom Fields and Ortega had begun to labour,
and there they founded the Reduction[52] of Loreto, the
first permanent establishment instituted by the Jesuits amongst the Guaranís.
Thus, in the woods of Paraguay, upon a tributary of the Paraná but little known
even to-day, did the Society of Jesus lay the first foundation of their famous
missions. But little more than fifty years from the foundation of their Order,
thus had they penetrated to what was then, and is perchance to-day, after their
missions all are ruined, one of the remotest corners of the world.
There they built up the system with which their name is linked for ever—the
system which for two hundred years was able to hold together wandering Indian
tribes, restless as Arabs, suspicious above every other race of men—and which
to-day has disappeared, leaving nothing of a like nature in all the world.
