Part 2

To the government of Buenos-Ayres belong the cities of Santa Fé and Corrientes; the one on the east, and the other on the west shore of the Parana. The former is the handsomest and most opulent. From its trade in divers articles, and from its countless herds of cattle, it amasses wealth to a great amount. In former years, it was almost razed to the ground, and thus reduced to solitude, by the barbarous Abipones, Mocobios, Tobas, and Charruas. The more valuable and remoter estates were entirely destroyed; slaughters were committed, in the very market-place, at mid-day; and it was provided by law, that no one should enter the church, unless armed with a musket. But after we had founded the colonies of S. Xavier, S. Jeronymo, Concepcion, S. Pedro, and S. Pablo, this city began to take breath, and, flourishing again, returned the security it had previously received. Before, behind, and on both sides, it is bounded by rivers, which, when they overflow, threaten destruction to the inhabitants, but are, at other times, extremely beneficial to them.

Its latitude is 31° 46´. From Buenos-Ayres, its distance is reputed to be an hundred leagues.

The other city, which the Spaniards call De las Siete Corrientes, takes its name from seven points of the rock jutting out into the Parana, against which the current breaks with great violence, and flowing on very rapidly, carries down ships, coming up the stream, unless in full sail under a strong wind. A row-boat, in the passage of the river, must make many windings to avoid the rapidity of the current, as I have often experienced: for hard upon the city, the great river Paraguay flows into the still greater river Parana, the one changing its course, and the other its name. For the Parana, rolling on from east to west, when joined to the Paraguay, hurries down in a southerly direction with it. The Paraguay loses its name for that of the Parana after its junction with that river. It is inconceivable with what a mass of water these conjoint streams roll proudly down in one mighty channel. If you did not see the banks, you might fancy it a sea. This place, in name alone a city, and unworthy of the name, is chiefly composed of mud-hovels, with roofs of palm-leaves. The inhabitants are remarkable for their beauty, fascinated by which, many of the Europeans are entangled in marriages, which they repent for the rest of their lives. The women destroy themselves with labour, weaving, and exquisitely embroidering garments, which they call ponchos. The men are naturally agile, lively, and expert in horsemanship; but, from their indolence and love of ease, are oppressed with poverty, when they might abound in every thing, if they but knew how to improve the fertility of the soil, and the advantages of the river. The Abipones, who had long afflicted the neighbourhood with slaughter and rapine, being at length subdued, and settled in the new colony of St. Ferdinand, the inhabitants revived after they had entertained thoughts of deserting the city, and the use of the fields and woods, on the other side of the river, was restored them. These last, being stocked with noble trees, afford excellent materials for building ships and waggons. The fields supply pasturage for cattle of various kinds. The inhabitants derive considerable profits from these sources; gains which the daily fear of assailing savages deprived them of. The lat. of the city is 27° 43´, its long. 318° 57´.

In the jurisdiction of the Governour of Buenos-Ayres, are also thirty Guarany towns, on or near the banks of the Parana, the Uruguay, and the Paraguay. By geographers they are called Doctrines, or the land of Missions; but the ignorant or malicious style them, in their books, the kingdom of the Jesuits, a republic rebellious to the Catholic King, painting them in the blackest colours which envy and unbridled calumny can suggest. Let me be excused, if to manifest the falsehood of their calumnies, I mention the following facts:—That the Jesuit missionaries have ever left Europe at the expense of the Catholic King, for the purpose of founding new colonies, and preserving the old—that they are supported by an annual stipend from the royal purse—that the Guaranies pay yearly tribute to the King—that a century before as many thousands as were appointed, fought in the royal camps without any stipend, whenever they were called upon by the royal governour—that the parishes are visited by the Bishops as often as seems good—that the Bishops are honourably received, and splendidly entertained, it may be for many weeks—that the castles of Buenos-Ayres and Monte-Video were built under the direction, indeed, of the Spaniards, but by the labour of the Guaranies—that the royal army consists chiefly of the Guaranies, under our authority, which were ruled by a few Spaniards, as the body by the soul, in every undertaking against the warlike savages, against the Portugueze and their town of Nova Colonia, so often attacked and taken, or against the insurgents of the city of Concepcion. The Guaranies were governed by the Jesuits, to whose care they were intrusted by the Catholic kings, not as slaves by their masters, but as children by their parents; and these towns were conducted in a manner precisely conformable to the royal laws.

By the labours of nearly two centuries, the Guaranies, formerly wandering cannibals and obstinate enemies to the Spaniards, have been reduced to civilization, to religion, and to the sceptre of the Catholic King. With what labour, what expense of lives the Jesuits have effected this—how infinitely these thirty towns surpass the other American tribes in the number of their inhabitants, in Christian morality, in the splendour of their churches, in their prompt loyalty, in mechanical skill, in arts, and in military activity, you may learn from the letters every where published of the kings, the royal governours, and the Spanish bishops; from the works of Doctor D. Francisco Xarque, Dean of Albarrazin, an eye-witness, of the learned Abbot Antonio Muratori, and an anonymous Englishman, whose book was translated from English into German, at Hamburgh, in the year 1768. This work gave me great pleasure, though it sometimes made me smile, especially where the author says, "We Europeans doat when we blame the Jesuits of Paraguay. It were better to deliberate how we may bring about in Europe, what they effect among the Guarany Indians without violence and without money. In their towns, each labours for all, and all for each. Without needing to buy or sell, every one possesses the necessaries of a comfortable subsistence, victuals, lodging, medicine, and education. Money wanting, all is wanting, say the Europeans; the Guaranies, on the other hand, though destitute of gold and silver, though unacquainted with any kind of money, daily experience the truth of the aphorism, _Dii laboribus omnia vendunt_, God gives every thing to labour. Proportioning the task to their age, their sex, and their strength, they are always employed, never oppressed with labour. Of luxuries they are ignorant, superfluity they know not, yet are happier in their contentment than the wealthiest in their opulence. He is not prosperous to whom much abounds, but whom little suffices. The Jesuit priests are curates not of the souls, but of the bodies of the Guaranies." Being in subjection only to the Catholic King and the royal governours, not in dreaded slavery amongst private Spaniards, like the other Indians, the towns increase wonderfully every year in population under our care, and fresh towns were now and then added to the old ones. In the year 1732, 141,252 inhabitants were reckoned in the thirty colonies of the Guaranies; but the small-pox breaking out soon after, cut off thirty thousand of them. Some time after it returned again, but in a milder form, and eleven thousand only were its victims. The measles, likewise, so fatal to Americans, made repeated ravages to a frightful extent. I write from experience in both, for in my office of priest, I attended the sick of the small-pox and measles, day and night, for many months. Famine, also, arising from the continued drought and consequent density of the land, filled the tombs with Guaranies. Add to these, the victims of war in the royal camps, where five, and sometimes six thousand men were detained. In 1767, when we bade America farewell, there were about an hundred thousand numbered in these towns. M. Louis Antoine de Bougainville, in his work entitled _Voyage autour du Monde_, printed at Neufchatel, in the year 1772, must be read with caution. He loads the Jesuits with egregious praises, but by and bye relates a thousand things as contrary to truth as dishonourable to us and the Guarany colonies. _Pessimum inimicorum genus laudantes_, says Tacitus, in the life of Agricola. I would not, however, willingly believe that an author, the distinguished favourite of Mars, of Neptune, and, unless I am deceived, of all the Muses, is to be classed with these knaves. True it is, he wrote falsely concerning us and the Guaranies; but rather deceived by the narrations of others, than through envy or malice. He never even saw the Guarany towns from a distance. I wish he had seen them! he would have painted the Indians and their missionaries in fairer colours. A little while, and but a little while, he remained in Buenos-Ayres, the port and threshold of Paraguay. There he drew the very worst notions, from the very worst sources, and gave them to Europe as the undoubted truth. Alas! alas! the friendliest well-wisher could not then, without danger, advocate our cause. The rising, not the setting sun is praised by the multitude, and such was then our fate. A Spaniard of no despicable authority has opened his mind in these words: "If every thing else which M. de Bougainville has written on the other provinces be as false as what he has said concerning Paraguay, let his history be carried to the spice shop to wrap pepper; yea, to a meaner office."

As for Paraguay being the kingdom of the Jesuits, it is the dream—the stupid fiction of Bernardo Ybañez, a Spaniard, twice expelled from our society. It would be endless to mention all whose vile detractions have calumniated the towns and the missionaries of the Guaranies. To refute them, I oppose the histories of Father Nicolas del Techo; _La Conquista Espiritual_ of Father Antonio Ruiz de Montoya; the history of Father Pedro de Lozano; the familiar epistles of Father Antonio Sepp to his brother; the French original of Father Francis Xavier Charlevoix, (for the German translation is wretchedly mutilated and corrupted); the annual accounts of Paraguay, printed at Rome; and the letters of Philip the Fifth—his two epistles to the Jesuit missionaries of Paraguay, dated from the palace of Buen-retiro, the 28th of December, 1743; the letter, printed with them, of the illustrious Joseph de Peralta, bishop of Buenos-Ayres, in which, himself an eye-witness, he acquaints the same Philip with the state of the Guarany colonies. These important documents translated into Latin, and published in 1745, are every where on sale:—from a perusal of them you may learn, that the Guaranies are not only obedient to the Catholic King, but especially prompt in their repulsion of his enemies, exceeding the other American nations in the extent of their services. The sedition of the Guaranies dwelling near the banks of the Uruguay, may perhaps be objected; but what was the cause? Exasperation against the royal decrees, which delivered up seven of the finest towns of Paraguay to the Portugueze, and obliged thirty thousand of their inhabitants to migrate into solitude, or seek a precarious livelihood among the other colonies. Long and vigorously did the Indians oppose the mandate, not through hatred of the king, but love of their country. What! do we think the Spaniards, French, or Germans would act otherwise, if compelled by the command of their sovereigns to relinquish their native land to enemies? For dear to every one is his country; particularly so to the Americans. Hence, though no one can approve the repugnance of the Indians of the Uruguay, who does not think it, in some measure, worthy of excuse and pardon? They erred in understanding, rather than in will; for their loyalty to the Catholic King was sound and lively. No eloquence of the missionaries could induce them to believe themselves condemned by their good king, to a perpetual and miserable exile from their native soil, in favour of the Portugueze, their enemies. "In nothing," (said they in their letters to Joseph Andonaegui, the royal governour,) "in nothing have we or our ancestors sinned against our monarch—never have we injured the Spanish colonies: how then shall we, unoffending subjects, believe ourselves sentenced to exile by the will of our gracious sovereign? Our grandfathers, great grandfathers, and in like manner all our brothers have frequently fought under the royal banners against the Portugueze—frequently against the armies of the savages. Who shall count the number of those our countrymen who have fallen in battle, or in the repeated sieges of Colonia? We, the survivors, still bear about us scars, monuments of our loyalty and courage. To extend the limits of the Spanish domains, to defend them against invaders, has ever been our first desire; nor have we spared our lives in its accomplishment. Would the Catholic King have these our deserts repaid with the most grievous punishments—with the loss of our country, our handsome churches, our houses, fields, and spacious farms? It exceeds belief. But if this be really true, what can we ever deem incredible? In the letters of Philip the Fifth, (which were read to us at his command, from the pulpits of our churches,) we were instructed never to allow the Portugueze to approach our territories—that they and theirs were our bitterest enemies. Now they cry out to us, day and night, that the monarch wills our ceding to the Portugueze those noble, those spacious tracts of land, which nature, which God, which the Spanish sovereign himself had yielded us; and which we have cultivated for upwards of a century with the sweat of our brows. Who shall persuade us that Ferdinand, so dutiful a son, will command what Philip, his excellent father, had so often forbidden? But if, indeed, these enmities be changed into friendship, (for both times and disposition do often change,) and the Spaniards be desirous of gratifying the Portugueze, let them grant them the spacious plains void of inhabitants and of colonies, with our free leave. What! shall we give up our towns to the Portugueze, by whose ancestors so many thousands of our countrymen have been either slain, or forced into cruel slavery in Brazil?—We can neither suffer nor believe it. When, embracing Christianity, we swore allegiance to God and the Catholic King, the priests and royal governours with one voice promised us the friendship and protection of the king: now, though guilty of no crime, and deserving every good return for our services, we are constrained to expatriate, a punishment most grievous, and almost intolerable. What man in his senses will believe the faith of the Spaniards, so versatile in the performance of promises—their friendship so slippery and unsound?" To this effect wrote the Indian chiefs to the royal governour, who, being a well-wisher both to the king and the Indians, when he saw their letter, could hardly refrain from tears; but suppressing pity through military obedience, he never ceased urging the execution of the royal decree to the utmost of his power, and threatening those who refused to obey it with all extremities.

There were, (who could believe it?) among the herd of Spaniards, men of so hardened a conscience as to whisper in the ears of the Indians, that the king had never enjoined the delivery of their towns, but that the Jesuits had sold them to the Portugueze. Such convincing proofs, however, had the fathers given of their good-will towards the Guaranies, that the pestilent falsehood never gained credit; some suspicions, however, were engrafted in the minds of the least wise. Many of the missionaries, who urged the migration with more fervour than prudence, had nearly been slain by the Indians in the phrenzy of their patriotism. Father Bernardo Nusdorfer, superior, as it is called, of the Guarany towns, and conspicuous for the magistracies he had held, for his venerable age, his thorough knowledge of the Indian tongue, and lastly, for his authority and favour with the people, visited the seven cities, exhorted them again and again, with every kind of argument, to respect the injunction of the Catholic King, and thought he had prevailed; but as the Indians are of a versatile and unsteady disposition, when the time for executing the decree arrived, unmindful alike of their promises and intentions they would not endure even the mention of the migration. When the Jesuit, Father Ludovico Altamirano, was sent in the king's name from Spain to Portugal, to hasten the delivery of the towns, the Indians would not acknowledge him as a Jesuit or a Spaniard, because they saw him differ in dress and diet. They even dared to pronounce him a Portugueze disguised in the habit of our order. Terrified at a report that the Indians were approaching him in the city of St. Thomas, he consulted his safety by flying in the night, and soon after I found him, to my great amusement, in the city of Santa Fé, out of danger, and hastening to the Abiponian colonies. Had the Indians shown as much alacrity in yielding to our admonitions, as the Jesuits evinced in endeavouring to inculcate obedience into their wavering minds, the business would have been happily effected without disturbance or delay; but we seldom gained attention, much less compliance. The public supplications in the market-place, undertaken for the purpose of persuading their minds, in which a priest of our order, crowned with thorns, in a mournful voice exhorted the by-standers, with threats and groans, to proceed with the emigration; these supplications had so good an effect, that the major part promised conformity: nor did the matter end in words. A journey was undertaken by the missionaries the next day, to mark out the limits of the new towns; but the remembrance of their birth-place soon after recurring, it was broken off.

Meantime, it being reported that Gomez Freyre de Andrade, governour of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, and the author of all these calamities, had entered their territories with his forces, to arms was the immediate cry, and each being forced along by the common impulse, the united body rolled onwards like a mighty river; you would have thought there was a second Hannibal at the gates. Thus, while the Guaranies repelled force by force, in defence of their churches and fire-sides, they are proclaimed rebels—worthier, in fact, of pity than of punishment; for maddened by their rooted hatred of the Portugueze and the love of their country, they were hurried blindly on wherever their passions impelled them. To shake off the Spanish yoke—to injure the neighbouring colonies of the Spaniards, never so much as entered their thoughts: their ancient love towards their monarch still burnt in their breasts, but it was not powerful enough to extinguish the innate love of their country.

Who, then, can wonder that the weak-minded Indian left no stone unturned, to avoid his expulsion from a land he could not fail to love,—a land pleasant in its situation, salubrious in its climate, wide in extent, the envy of the Spanish cities for its churches and other edifices, adorned with woods, with rivers, and with plains of the greatest fertility, and lastly, well stored with all the necessaries of subsistence? Joachim de la Viana, governor of Monte-Video, sent forward with a detachment of cavalry to explore the country, having leaped from his horse on the summit of an eminence, and examined through a telescope the city of S. Miguel, (a place inhabited by seven thousand Indians, and famous for its magnificent churches and famous row of buildings,) in his astonishment at the size of the place, exclaimed to the horsemen about him,—"Surely our people at Madrid are out of their senses, to deliver up to Portugal this town, which is second to none in Paraguay." This he said, though a strenuous favourer of the Portugueze, whose party he embraced to ingratiate himself with Barbara, Queen of Spain. The six other towns—those of S. Juan, S. Lewis, S. Nicholas, S. Borgia, and S. Lawrence, were also eminent for the number of their inhabitants and the beauty of their churches, though neither of them was fortified with wall, ditch, palisadoes, or even a gate.

To defend these, the inhabitants of the Uruguay assembled on all sides. Rude and undisciplined, and without a general even tolerably versed in military knowledge, they entered the unequal lists, the ridicule rather than the terror of an European army. No time, no place was left them undisturbed by fear and anxiety, as often as they were assailed by the equestrian spearmen. This was repeatedly mentioned in Gomez Freyre's journals, addressed to the Portugueze commissioners of the demarcation. On both sides the war consisted of long marches and skirmishes, attended with various success; and thus it ended, more noise having been made by both parties than blood spilt. This, however, is agreed on all hands—that the Europeans could never have penetrated to these seven towns, had all the Guarany towns come to the aid of the Uruguayans. But those who dwelt on the banks of the Parana were happily restrained from leaguing with the insurgents, by the exertions of the Jesuits. Judge from this what opinion must be formed by those who have impudently stigmatized us as the authors of the sedition, and the leaders of the rebels. Their books are as many as they are dangerous: for although they allege nothing but falsehoods, yet, with specious arguments, and pretended testimony, they seek to extort that credit which would be exploded by all Europe, were the characters of their witnesses as well known to others as to ourselves.

And now, gentle reader, a word in your ear! If the Guarany insurgents were indeed encouraged by the Jesuits, could they not have effected more against the royal forces? Destitute of the counsels and presence of the Fathers, they did their business stupidly and unprosperously; a circumstance mightily advantageous, both to the Spaniards and Portugueze, whose victory was owing to the bungling management of their opponents. About the beginning of the disturbances, one Joseph, Corregidor of S. Miguel, was elected general of their forces against the Portugueze. This Joseph, an active and courageous man, behaved like a good soldier but an execrable general, for he was as ignorant of military tactics as I am of the black art. On his falling in a chance skirmish, Nicholas Neengirù, many years Corregidor of the city of Concepçion, succeeded. Under his conduct the war was poorly carried on; and the affairs of the Uruguayans gradually declining, the seven towns were delivered up to the royal forces. But, reader, when you utter the name of Nicholas Neengirù, uncover your head and bend your knee, or rather, if you know all, burst into laughter. This is that celebrated Nicholas Neengirù whom the Europeans called King of Paraguay, whilst Paraguay itself had not an inkling of the matter. At the very time when the feigned majesty of the King of Paraguay employed every mouth and press in Europe, I saw this Nicholas Neengirù, with naked feet, and garments after the Indian fashion, sometimes driving cattle before the shambles, sometimes chopping wood in the market-place; and when I considered him and his occupation, could hardly refrain from laughter.