Footnotes

[The story of the bird that cleans the teeth of alligators is very nearly true—Pluvianus aegyptius has a symbiotic relationship with crocodiles in parts of Africa, and similar relationships exist throughout the natural world.—A. L., 1998.]

‘Descripcion chorographica de Terreno Rios, Arboles, y Animales de los dilatadisimas Provincias del Gran Chaco, Gualamba, y de los Ritos y Costumbres de la inumerables naciones barbaros é infideles que le habitan. Con un cabal Relacion Historica de lo que en ellos han obrado para conquistarlas algunos Gobernadores y Ministros Reales, y los Misioneros Jesuitas para reduc irlos à la fe del Verdadero Dios.’ Por el Padre Pedro Lozano, de la Compañia de Jesus, Año de 1733. En Cordoba por Joseph Santos Balbas.

This book did not appear in a clandestine manner, for it had: 1. Censura, por C. de Palmas. 2. Licencia de la Religion, por Geronymo de Huróza, Provincial de los Jesuitas de Andalucia. 3. Licencia del Ordinario por el Dr. Don Francisco Miguel Moreno, por mandado del Sr. Provisor Alonso Joseph Gomez de Lara. 4. Aprobacion del Rdo. P. Diego Vasquez. 5. Privelegio de su Majestad por Don Miguel Fernandez Morillo. 6. Fé de Corrector por el Licenciado, Don Manuel Garcia Alesson, Corrector General de su Majestad (who adds in a note, ‘este libro corresponde à su original’). 7. Sumo de Tassa, as follows: ‘Tassaron los señores del Consejo este libro à seis maravedis cada pliego.’

Palma, in the first censura, says that he had read it several times ‘con repetida complacencia’, and that, though it was ‘breve en volumen’ (it has 484 quarto pages), that it was also short in its concise style, kept closely to the rules of history, and was ‘muy copiosa en la doctrina’.

‘(I.H.S.)

‘God preserve your Excellency, say we, the Cabildo, and all the Caciques and Indians, men, women and children of San Luis, as your Excellency is our father. The Corregidor, Santiago Pindo and Don Pantaleon Caynari, in their love for us, have written to us of certain birds which they desire we will send them for the King. . . . We are sorry not to have them to send, inasmuch as they live where God made them, in the forests, and fly far away from us, so that we cannot catch them. Withal we are the vassals of God and of the King, and always desirous to fulfil the wishes of his Minister . . . so we pray to God that that best of birds, the Holy Ghost, may descend upon the King. . . . Furthermore, we desire to say that the Spanish custom is not to our liking—for everyone to take care of himself, instead of helping one another in their daily toil.’

This quaint and touching letter was written originally in Guaraní, and is preserved at Buenos Ayres. ‘That best of birds, the Holy Ghost,’ shows faith grounded, at least, on ornithology, and the whole spirit of the simple document is as pathetic as its unconscious philosophy is true.

Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, in their celebrated ‘Secret Report’ (‘Noticias Secretas de America’): ‘La compañia (de Jesus) atiende a sus fines particularmente con los misioneros que llevan de España; pero con todo eso no se olvida de la conversion de los Indios, ni tiene abandonado este asunto pues aunque van poco adelante en el, que es lo que no se esperimenten en las demas religiones.’

Vargas Machuca, in his most curious and rare ‘Milicia y Descripcion de las Indias’, says, under the heading of ‘Musica del Indio’: ‘Usan sus musicas antiguas en sus regocijos, y son muy tristes en la tonada.’ To-day the Indians of Paraguay have songs known as tristes. The brigadier Don Diego de Alvear, in his ‘Relacion de Misiones’ (Coleccion de Angelis), says that the first to teach the Guaranís European music was a Flemish Jesuit, P. Juan Basco, who had been maestro de capilla to the Archduke Albert.

I have seen them in the then (1873) almost deserted mission of Jesus, buried in the great woods on the shore of the Paraná, dance a strange, half-savage dance outside the ruined church.

On many other occasions the mission Indians performed notable services for the Spanish Government. In 1681, when the French attacked Buenos Ayres, a detachment of two thousand Indians was sent to its assistance. Philip V. himself wrote to the Provincial of Paraguay on this occasion asking him to send troops to the defence of the city.

In 1785 four thousand Guaranís, commanded by Don Baltazar Garcia, were at the second siege of the Colonia del Sacramento. Funes says of them: ‘A juicio de un testigo ocular, no es menos admirable la sangre fria de sus capellanes.’

Ibañez (‘La Republica Jesuitica’), with the noble disregard of consequences so noticeable in most polemical writers, boldly alters this to a million dollars, his object being to prove that the Jesuits exacted exorbitant taxation from the neophytes.

In the Archivo General of Buenos Ayres, legajo ‘Compañia de Jesús’, there is a document referred to by P. Hernandez in his introduction to the work of P. Cardiel (‘Declaracion de la Verdad’), which states that in the year of the expulsion the income of the thirty towns fell a little short of the expenses.

‘El modo de vivir del Padre es, cerrar bien todas las puertas y quedarse el solo, su Mayordomo, y su muchacho. Son ya Indios de edad, y solo estos asisten solo de dia adentro, y á las doce salen afuera, y un viejo es quien cuida de la Porteria, y es quien Sierra la puerta quando descansa el Padre, ó quando sale el Padre á ver su chacara. Y aun entonces van solos, sino es con un Indio de hedad quien los giua y cuida de el caballo y despues de esto á misa y á la tarde al Rosario de Maria Santisima llamandonos con toque de campana, y antes de esto á los muchachos y muchachittas los llama con una campánilla y despues de eso el bueno de el Padre entra ha enseñarles la Doctrina, y el persinarse de el mismo modo, todos los dias de fiesta nos Predica la palabra de Dios, del mismo modo el Santo Sacramento de la Penitencia y de la Communion, en estas cosas se exercitta el bueno del Padre y todas las noches se sierra la porteria y la llave se lleva al aposento del Padre y solo se vuelve á abrir por la mañana quando entra el Sachristan y los cosineros. . . .

‘Los Padres todas las mañanas nos dicen misas, y despues de misa, se van a su aposento y hai cogen un poco de aqua caliente con Yerva y no otra cosa mas; despues de esto sale a la puerta de su aposento y ahai todos los que oyeron misa se arrimen a besarle la mano, y despues de esto sale afuera a ver los Indios si trabajan en los oficios que cada uno tiene, y despues se van a su aposento a resar el oficio divino, en su libro, y para que Dios le ayude en todas sus cosas. A las once de el dia van a comer un poquitto, no á comer mucho solo coge cinco plattitos y solo beve una vez el vino, no llenando un vaso pequeño, y aguardiente nunca lo toman y el vino no lo hai en nuestro pueblo, solo lo traen de la Candelaria segun lo que envia el Padre Superior lo trahen de acia Buenos Aires. . . . Despues que sale de comer y para descansar an poco, y mientras descansa salen fuera los que assisten en la casa del Padre, y los que trabajan dentro en algunas obras y tamvien el Sachristan y el cosinero: todos estos salen fuera y quando no se toca la campana estan serradas las puertas, y solo un viejo es el que cuida de las puertas, y quando vuelvan a tocar la campana, vuelve este a abrirlas para que vuelvan a entrar los que trabajan dentro, y el Padre Coge el Brebiario no a ir a parte ninguna. A la tarde tocan la campanilla paraque se recojan las criatturas, y entre el Padre á ensenarles la doctrina christiana.’

‘Y si alguna vez, que no son muchas, se animan los Españoles a perseguir y castigar los Indios, muchos huyen de la tierra, o se esconden, por no ir a la entrada. . . . Otras (vezes) quando llegan allá, el Enemigo les quitan la Cavallada, dexandolos a pie y se vuelven a casa como pueden.’

This I have seen myself, not thirty years ago, on the frontiers of the Argentine Republic. The popular Argentine poem, ‘La Vuelta de Martin Fierro’, by José Hernandez (Buenos Ayres, 1880), has an illustration showing an expedition against the Indians returning. Some of the men are on foot; others are riding two on the same horse, and officers are animating their men with the flat of their swords.

It is a curious circumstance that in the missions in the Chaco there were negro slaves, though in the Paraguayan missions they were unknown. In the inventory of the town of San Lucas appear the following entries, under the head of ‘Negros Esclavos’:

‘Justo, que sirve de capataz en el campo; será de edad de veinte y siete años, mas ó menos segun su aspecto.’

‘Item, Pedro, será de diez y seis años y es medio fatuo.’

‘Item, José Felix, será de un mes y medio.’

Raynal, also an ex-Jesuit, but a man of far higher character than Ibañez, says (tome iii., lib. 97): ‘This treaty met censure on both sides, the ministers in Lisbon themselves alleging that it was a false policy to sacrifice the Colonia del Sacramento, the clandestine commerce of which amounted to two millions of dollars a year . . . for possessions whose advantages were uncertain and position remote. The outcries were even stronger in Madrid. There they imagined that the Portuguese would soon rule all along the Uruguay . . . and from thence penetrate up the rivers into Tucuman, Chile, and Potosi.’

‘Twa noweltyis that day thai saw,
That forouth in Scotland had bene nane.
Tymmeris for helmys war the tane,
That thaim thoucht thane off gret bewté
And alsua wondyr for to se.
The tothyr, crakys war, off wer,
That thai befor herd neuir er.’
          The Bruce, Booke Fourteene, p. 392.

In the River Plate and Paraguay there were about 400 Jesuits, of whom 300 were priests. The other hundred, according to Ibañez (‘Republica Jesuitica’), were ‘mostly poor devils who were in want of food, and came into the Order for a meal.’ Ibañez rarely spoke the truth, not even when it would have been expedient to do so; and certainly amongst these ‘poor devils’ could not have been included Asperger, the writer on Indian medicines, and other distinguished men who inhabited the Paraguayan missions as lay brothers.