The South American Republics. Thomas Cleland Dawson
Paulistas were animated by motives, some good, some bad. Primarily they wished to capture slaves. They hated the Jesuits and had themselves suffered from the latter's system of segregating the aborigines. Only a few decades before, their fathers had destroyed the Jesuit missions near São Paulo, and they were determined not to permit themselves to be hemmed in and crowded out by Indians ruled and protected by Jesuits. They believed in the doctrine of "Brazil for the White Brazilians," and they regarded the Jesuits and their neophytes as natural enemies and fair prey. The sentiment of nationality also animated them. As descendants of Portuguese they hated the Spaniards and their rule. Their allegiance to the Spanish dynasty that had usurped the crown of Portugal sat lightly. The Jesuits came by way of Asuncion, their communications were with the Spanish authorities, and most of them were Spaniards. The Paulistas, as Portuguese, viewed with alarm a rapid spread of Spanish ecclesiastics up the Paraná valley, which threatened soon to reach their own neighbourhood. Avarice, love of adventure, race pride, patriotism, hatred of priestly domination, all co-operated to push them on to undertaking these memorable expeditions.
The great extension of the Jesuits over the northern and eastern regions of the Paraná valley occurred during the period when Hernandarias was the dominant figure of the Plate. Creole though he was, this remarkable man was a friend to the Indian and to the missionary work of the Jesuits. His aid and encouragement in 1609 were essential to the latter's success, for he might easily have nullified the effect of the royal permission to evangelise Guayrá, a formal document that would have been of little value against the delays and excuses of an unwilling governor aided by the jealous people. After his first term as governor at Buenos Aires, the Spanish government determined to put a stop to the more flagrant of the abuses practised against the savages and created the office of "Protector of the Indians." Hernandarias was named to fill it, and carried out his instructions in a moderate spirit. He understood the country and the situation of the colony well, and did not undertake to abolish Indian slavery. In that tropical climate the whites will not labour in the fields so long as there are Indians who can be forced to work, and the Spaniards still regarded the Indian as little better than an animal.
On the other hand, Hernandarias was too intelligent not to see that there must be restraints on the cruelties and exactions of the Creoles if the Indians of Paraguay were to be saved from the extermination that had been the fate of the Haytians a century before. The outcome was, that though a new code of laws was promulgated by the impracticable Spanish king, which forbade any further enslavement of the aborigines, its provisions were largely disregarded. At the same time, however, the Indians acquired a legal status, and their condition was gradually improved until it became not much worse than that of the contemporaneous European peasantry. The Jesuits were guaranteed against interference and allowed to go out into the remoter wilderness and give to the yet unslaved inhabitants the invaluable protection of membership in their missions.
In 1619 the natural and commercial division between Paraguay proper and the rest of the province was officially recognised. The region between the Paraguay and the Paraná rivers was made a separate province, directly dependent upon the Viceroy at Lima and the Audiencia at Charcas in Bolivia. It included officially the Jesuit missions south-east of the Paraná as well as the present territory of Paraguay.
When the Paulistas began their terrible attacks on the Guayrá missions in 1629, the governor of Paraguay refused to send any assistance to the Jesuits. The latter charged him with a corrupt understanding with the invaders, by which he was to share in the profits of the slaves sold. The Order had agreed with the Spanish government not to put any arms into the hands of the Indians, so the latter were defenceless against the Paulistas, who attacked musket in hand. The Creoles and Spaniards in Asuncion resented more and more the presence and power of the Jesuits, and viewed with ill-concealed satisfaction the misfortunes that now overwhelmed the priests. The governor, in declining to send help, was only carrying out the wishes of the people around him. Had the number of whites in Paraguay not been so very small the Jesuits might have been expelled as they were in São Paulo.
CHAPTER II
THE JESUIT REPUBLIC AND COLONIAL PARAGUAY
We have no accounts of the Jesuit missions in Guayrá, or of the tragedy of their destruction, except those that were written by the Fathers themselves. These are filled with manifest exaggerations and marred by omissions which we have few means of correcting. Nevertheless, the bold outlines of a story that for bravery, pathos, and devotion rivals any ever told are clear and indisputable. Within such a short period as twenty years the Jesuits had not succeeded in training the Guayrá Indians to any very high degree of civilisation. They complain that the Indians were still prone to return to the worship of their devils. Nevertheless, the massive walls of churches which have survived the devastation wrought by three centuries of tropical rains bear witness that the Jesuits had gathered together a multitude of people and had taught them a measure of skilled labour.
Of the completeness of the victory of the Paulistas there is no doubt. Within three years, tens of thousands of Indians were carried off to São Paulo, and hardly a town was left standing in the province of Guayrá. Father Montoya, chief Jesuit, has left an account of the Hegira which he led down the river. Though he is silent as to the part he took himself, it is hard to read his pages and not give him a place among the world's great heroes. Twelve thousand Indians of every sex and age assembled on the Paranapanema with the few belongings which they had been able to bring from the homes that they were forced to abandon. The Paulistas were daily expected to return, and the only hope of escape was to float down the river and get beyond the Grand Cataract of the Paraná. The journey to the beginning of the falls was made without any great losses; there the difficulties began. Ninety miles of falls and rapids intervene between navigable water above and below the Grand Cataract. Across the river valley extends a mountain chain with slopes rugged and covered with dense vegetation. The river divides into various channels, and the sides of the gorges are clothed in cane-brakes and tangled forests through which a path had to be cut with machetes. These poor Jesuits and their thousands of scared, patient Indians had no boats awaiting them at the foot of the falls, so they had to continue their dreary passage through the gorges and cane-brakes, where wild Indians lay in ambush with poisoned arrows, until at last a place was reached where canoes could be built. Still they struggled on, the indomitable Jesuits taking every precaution. Though out of immediate danger from the Paulistas when they had passed the cataract, the Spaniards on the right bank below were hardly less to be feared. They were waiting on the shore of the Paraná for news of the fugitives in order to pounce on them and make a rich haul of slaves. The provisions were exhausted, but the Jesuits dared not apply for help to the Creoles. Fever broke out and, sick and starving, the devoted Jesuits and their uncomplaining followers worked away on their boats and rafts. At last they got them ready, and, slipping past the Spanish settlements in the night, they finally reached some small Jesuit missions near the mouth of the Iguassú, five hundred miles from their starting-point.
The Jesuits resolved to evacuate Guayrá completely and to build up their power anew in the country between the Paraná and the Uruguay. Within the next few years they had occupied the country that is now the Argentine Territory of the missions. This tract lay directly across the Paraná, from that part of Paraguay proper in which the Jesuits were most powerful, to the other side of the Uruguay, where was a fertile territory which proved an excellent field for the extension of the settlement. Before many years these missions stretched in a broad band from the centre of Paraguay three hundred miles to the south-east; they dominated southern Paraguay and half the present Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul with the country that lies between, while their towns lined both banks of the Upper Uruguay and the Middle Paraná, cutting off the Creoles from extending their settlements up either of these great rivers.
Now that the priests had concentrated their forces