Chapter I (1)

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.’