YVJ & 
 
 Price 
 
 6 1-4 Cents . 
 
 CATHOLIC 
 
 MISSIONARY 
 
 THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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SHANDY M’GHIRE, 
 
 TRICKS UPON TRAVELLERS 
 
 A Story of the North of Ireland, 
 
 BY PAUL PEPPERG11ASS, ESQ. 
 
 In 1 volume 16rno. in half cloth binding, 50 cents; 
 full cloth, gilt backs, 75 cents. 
 
 “ Shandy M’Guire” is emphatically a “Story of the North of 
 Ireland.” The plot is mainly laid in the heart of the county 
 Donegal, and the characteristic life of that remote region is beau¬ 
 tifully portrayed. The fair and the fighting, the gauger and the 
 illicit still—the Orangemen and Ribbonmen—the grasping agent 
 and the suffering cottager—<he Priest of the People, and the pro¬ 
 selyting Minister of the Established Church, are all successfully 
 and strikingly portrayed. 
 
 The New-York Truth -Teller says:—“Through all, and above 
 all, is a tone of pure, healthful religious feeling, not often found 
 in tales of Irish Life, since those of Barrow and Gerold Griffin.” 
 
 The Boston Post, says:—“This is a tale of the oppressions of 
 Ireland, told by an Irishman and a Catholic. As a mere literary 
 work, it has power, pathos, and rural semblance. Some of the 
 scenes are as naturally and vividly done as the best of the O'Hara 
 Tales, or the most intense of the Stories of Carlelon. We know 
 of no American writer of note that could produce, the equal of 
 ‘Shandy M’Guire,’ so full of glowing pictures of Irish life and 
 character, painted by a man of ability, and a warm sympathizer 
 for the suffering and outraged.” 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 The London Tablet says:—“The story is amusing and contains 
 instructions even for statesmen, if they have but the heart to un¬ 
 derstand what political institutions can do in the way of good 
 and eviL” 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 « 
 
 https://archive.org/details/catholicmissionaOOunse 
 
THE CATHOLIC MISSIONARY. 
 
 THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 Before our Blessed Lord left Ilis Apostles 
 and was taken up into lieaven, He addressed 
 this solemn charge to them: “Go ye into the 
 whole world and preach the Gospel to every 
 creatureand we see in the Acts of the Apos¬ 
 tles how faithfully they obeyed this command, 
 how diligent they were in going about from 
 one country to another, “ preaching the Gospel 
 in all the cities.” 
 
 What the Apostles began, their successors 
 continued; from that day to this, the work of 
 conversion has steadily and constantly gone on 
 in every age; not a century, not a half century 
 has passed away, in which some addition has 
 not been made to the fold of Christ; in which 
 some nation, or a part of some nation, has not 
 for the first time heard the glad tidings of the 
 
 3 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 Gospel. And the work has not ended yet; at 
 this very moment priests and bishops, succes¬ 
 sors of the Apostles, are carrying the light of 
 Christian truth and holiness into dark heathen 
 countries, where it has never yet been seen, or 
 if for a moment seen, has been soon violently 
 extinguished. 
 
 I have seen and conversed with several of 
 these zealous missionaries myself; one in par¬ 
 ticular was a bishop who had spent nineteen 
 years among the heathens of China, and had 
 brought many hundreds of the poor ignorant 
 natives of that country to the knowledge of 
 Christ, and the salvation of their immortal 
 souls. He told me that, of seventeen priests 
 who went out with him to undertake this 
 work in 1830, he was now the only survivor; 
 most of the others had suffered martyrdom; 
 and the few who had not been put to death 
 expressly on account of their religion, had yet 
 died prematurely in consequence of the exces¬ 
 sive fatigues and labors which they had to un¬ 
 dergo. This bishop had himself suffered again 
 and again all kinds of cruelties, and gone 
 through innumerable dangers in the execution 
 of his holy and charitable mission; he had 
 been placed in a great jar or cask, and buried 
 
 4 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 alive in a garden for four-and-twenty hours, as 
 the only means of being concealed from his 
 persecutors; he had had his arm broken more 
 than once, as a punishment inflicted by order 
 of the heathen magistrates; besides many other 
 things which I cannot now mention; yet, when 
 I saw him last year, he was just returning with 
 undiminished zeal to his appointed post, there 
 to fulfil our Lord’s command to be “ a witness 
 unto Him even to the uttermost part of the 
 earth.” 
 
 The labors and sufferings of apostolic men 
 like these cannot fail to be of the deepest in¬ 
 terest to every Christian who has any love for 
 the religion which he professes, any love for 
 the souls of his fellow-creatures, any love for 
 the Son of God who laid down His life on the 
 cross that He might redeem mankind. We 
 propose, therefore, from time to time, to lay 
 before our readers some sketches of the Cath¬ 
 olic Missionary, whether in ancient or in mod¬ 
 ern days, whether in our own or in foreign 
 lands, whether laboring for the conversion of 
 heretics or heathens; in a word, we propose to 
 show you, in a series of pictures taken from 
 different ages and different countries, how faith¬ 
 fully the Church has always fulfilled this in- 
 
 5 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 junction of her Divine Head, “ Going there¬ 
 fore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in 
 the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all 
 things whatsoever I have commanded you;” 
 and at the same time how faithfully that Di¬ 
 vine Head has fulfilled the gracious promise 
 which He vouchsafed to annex to the com¬ 
 mand, “ Behold, I am with you all days, even 
 to the consummation of the world.” 
 
 Our first picture shall be taken from a part 
 of the great continent of America ; and a few 
 words about the early history of that country 
 are perhaps necessary, that you may be able 
 justly to appreciate the labors of those mission¬ 
 aries whom we are about to introduce to you. 
 
 America was discovered, that is, was first 
 made known to the Europeans, about 350 
 years ago. The people who at that time in¬ 
 habited it were most of them savages, and all 
 of them were heathen; I mean, by savages, 
 that they knew nothing of the arts of civilized 
 life; they built no houses, wore no clothes, 
 lived on what they could get by hunting and 
 fishing, and on wild fruits and roots, which 
 they dug up from the earth; in their disposi¬ 
 tions, however, they were not otherwise than 
 6 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 gentle and kind; those at least who inhabited 
 the island where the Europeans first landed; 
 and when they saw the ships in which these 
 strangers had come, and the strangers them¬ 
 selves clothed in garments such as they had 
 never before seen, and armed too with spears 
 and swords of glittering steel, they could not 
 imagine that they were human beings like 
 themselves, but thought they belonged to some 
 superior race, and had come down from the 
 skies, or risen out of the great sea. At first 
 they were very much frightened too, and ran 
 away; but when they found that the Spaniards 
 (for it was from that part of Europe that the 
 strangers had come) did them no harm, they 
 came back again, and treated them with great 
 respect and confidence. Sad the Spaniards 
 always continued to behave towards these poor 
 simple savages in the same kind manner in 
 which they began, the labor of a Christian 
 priest amongst them might have been an easy 
 and delightful task; for seeing the great supe¬ 
 riority of the Spaniards over themselves in 
 every thing that concerned this world, they 
 might naturally have been disposed to listen 
 with a very friendly ear to all that they had 
 to tell them about another world, which they 
 
 7 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 could not see, but which was to come after the 
 life of this world was ended. And, in fact, the 
 first of the inhabitants with whom they had to 
 do, a few whom they carried back with them 
 into Spain, were very soon converted and made 
 Christians. For Christopher Columbus, who 
 was at the head of the expedition by which 
 America was discovered, was a religious-mind¬ 
 ed man; and the Queen of Spain, who had 
 sent him out, was very anxious to do all she 
 could to assist in spreading the knowledge of 
 the Christian faith. Columbus and all his 
 crew had approached the holy Sacraments in a 
 very solemn way before starting on their dan¬ 
 gerous voyage; when first they saw the land 
 which they had been so long looking for, they 
 all sang the Te Deum, as a hymn of thanks¬ 
 giving to Almighty God for having granted 
 them the desire of their hearts, and having de¬ 
 livered them from so many and great dangers; 
 and when they actually set foot on shore, -at 
 the same time that they planted the royal 
 standard of Spain, to declare that they took 
 possession of the country in the name of their 
 earthly sovereign, they also erected a crucifix, 
 to declare that they meant to add it to Christ’s 
 
 kingdom upon earth; that they claimed it for 
 8 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 the King of kings and Lord of lords; and, as 
 an earnest of their intention, they called the 
 island San Salvador, or the island of the Holy 
 Savionr. And the next island which they 
 discovered they dedicated to our Blessed Lady, 
 under the title of her Conception. Alas, that 
 an undertaking, whose beginnings were so 
 Christian, should have been afterwards carried 
 on by such unchristian means; that so fair a 
 promise should have been soon so woefully 
 marred 
 
 Columbus left about forty men in a fort 
 which he built for them in one of the islands, 
 charged them to obey their commander, not to 
 quarrel amongst themselves, and above all, not 
 to give offence to the natives; and then he set 
 sail for Spain, to carry the news of his wonder¬ 
 ful discovery. He soon came back again, 
 bringing with him those few natives whom he 
 had carried away, and who had been duly in¬ 
 structed in the Christian faith and baptized, 
 and also a small band of zealous priests, who 
 had voluntarily offered themselves to under¬ 
 take the great work of converting the people. 
 Perhaps these missionaries had formed to them¬ 
 selves a very glowing picture of the rich har¬ 
 vest of souls which awaited them in this new 
 
 9 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 •world; the first-fruits had already been gather 
 ed, and stood there before them a pattern of 
 simplicity and gentleness; if their countrymen 
 generally were of the same dispositions, what 
 might they not expect as the reward of their 
 labors? But if such were their hopes, they 
 were soon bitterly disappointed. When they 
 arrived at the station where the forty Spaniards 
 had been left, they found the fort entirely 
 demolished; and the tattered garments and 
 broken weapons which lay scattered about in 
 the neighborhood, too plainly showed what had 
 been the unhappy fate of the garrison. The 
 natives too did not come forward to meet them 
 as friends, but fled from them as enemies. At 
 last one of the principal inhabitants came and 
 told them what had happened, and how this 
 sad change had been brought about. After 
 the departure of Columbus, the soldiers who 
 had been left behind did not even pretend to 
 obey the officer whom he had set over them, 
 at least only a few remained .steadfast in their 
 obedience; the rest behaved just as they pleas¬ 
 ed, and by degrees began to rob and plunder, 
 and use violence towards the natives with the 
 most brutal licentiousness. The consequences 
 soon followed that might naturally have been 
 10 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 expected; and thus, through the sins of man, 
 this fair field for Christian hope and the ex¬ 
 ercise of Christian zeal was struck with a deadly 
 blight almost as soon as it was discovered. 
 
 I need not go on with every particular of 
 this history as minutely as I have begun it; 
 telling you how one island was discovered after 
 another; and then the mainland of America, 
 first one part of it and then another, and what 
 happened to the natives in every place; all 
 this would take us too long; and besides, I am 
 afraid it would be only the same sad story told 
 over and over again. I will just take the his¬ 
 tory of this one island, the island of St. Do¬ 
 mingo, as a specimen, which will give you a 
 fair idea of what happened elsewhere also. 
 
 Gold and silver and precious stones were 
 found in different parts of it in great abund¬ 
 ance ; and when this news was carried to Spain, 
 numbers of persons hurried off to a country 
 which held out to them such brilliant hopes 
 of speedily heaping together a large fortune. 
 They came out expressly to get money; and 
 like most persons who make this the great ob¬ 
 ject of their lives, they were not very scrupu¬ 
 lous as to the means they employed for getting 
 
 it. Many of them were men of bad characters 
 
 u 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 and abandoned lives, even in their own coun¬ 
 try ; and when they found themselves at such 
 a distance from home and in such new circum¬ 
 stances, with no power close at hand sufficiently 
 strong to check or punish them, and at the 
 same time with most abundant means of in¬ 
 dulging their passions all around them, it is 
 impossible to describe the horrid excesses of 
 which they were guilty. And besides these 
 enormities on the part of individuals, the desire 
 of gaining gold, and of gaining it as speedily 
 as possible, led even the governors themselves 
 to sanction a cruel and unjust measure, by 
 which the natives were in the end absolutely 
 destroyed. The precious metals could not be 
 obtained, at least not in any considerable quan¬ 
 tity, without the labor of digging for them in 
 mines. The natives had never taken the 
 trouble to do this; they did not value gold as 
 highly as the Europeans did; they only used 
 it for making ornaments; and all the gold 
 which they collected had been picked up in 
 the beds of rivers, or found in some other ac¬ 
 cidental way. Moreover, the natives were by 
 no means an industrious, hardworking people; 
 they were not so strong or so well able to en¬ 
 dure fatigue as the Europeans; and they had 
 12 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 never been used to it. Nevertheless the Span¬ 
 iards obliged them to dig, and perform other 
 hard tasks, which were quite beyond their 
 strength; and because they would not do this 
 willingly and for wages, as men hire them¬ 
 selves to be day-laborers, or to be miners, or 
 to perform any other servile work nowa¬ 
 days in England or in any other civilized 
 country, therefore the Spaniards declared that 
 all the natives were their slaves; they said that 
 they had conquered the country, and that the 
 inhabitants must do whatever they command¬ 
 ed : if they would not do it of their own free 
 will, they should be made to do it. You can 
 easily imagine what dreadful misery was thus 
 brought upon the poor unoffending people; 
 some even put themselves to death rather than 
 suffer such cruel tyranny, and hundreds and 
 thousands sunk under the severity of the tasks 
 that were laid on them. During the first fifteen 
 years, their numbers were diminished from a 
 million to sixty thousand; that is, only one 
 out of every seventeen survived; and at the 
 end of five years more, only fourteen thousand 
 even of these survivors remained, that is, three 
 out of every four had died from some cause or 
 other. The}' - tried indeed more than once to 
 
 13 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 get rid of tlieir masters, and to drive them out 
 of the country; but what could be done by a 
 set of poor naked savages against men who 
 had fire-arms and other weapons at their com¬ 
 mand, and were many of them well-trained 
 soldiers besides? Of course the natives were 
 always conquered; and then their lot only be¬ 
 came the worse for having offered any resist¬ 
 ance to it. At last, as many as survived were 
 sold by auction to the highest bidder, removed 
 from the places where they had always lived, 
 and carried off to other distant spots, wherever 
 their new masters might choose; and in a very 
 few years there was but one small village, hid¬ 
 den among the hills, in which there were any 
 of them left. 
 
 All this while the Christian priests, who 
 were themselves also Spaniards, were lifting 
 up their voices against these, cruel practices, as 
 contrary to natural justice and to the revealed 
 law of God; but the love of gold so possessed 
 the hearts of the people that they refused to 
 listen to any remonstrance; they even made a 
 formal complaint against a Dominican preacher 
 for having dared publicly to denounce what 
 they were doing. Of course his superiors re¬ 
 fused to remove or to blame him on this ac- 
 
 14 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 count; on the contrary, they highly applauded 
 him for his faithfulness and courage in preach¬ 
 ing such necessary but such unwelcome doc¬ 
 trines. This, however, is a part of the story 
 on which I may have an opportunity of talking 
 to you more at length another time. At pres¬ 
 ent I am anxious to impress upon your minds 
 this one fact, that the Indians—for this is the 
 name by which the natives have always been 
 called, though they were not really Indians— 
 were so cruelly treated by the Spanish settlers, 
 that they hated them with the most intense 
 hatred of which human nature is capable. I 
 have already told you that the Indians were by 
 nature quite gentle and even timid; but the 
 treatment which they received first roused them 
 to a perfect fury, and afterwards, when they 
 discovered that all resistance was useless and 
 only increased their miseries, they settled down 
 into a silent, sullen, but most bitter hatred. I 
 will tell you an anecdote which will serve to 
 give you some idea of the state of feeling en¬ 
 tertained by these poor people towards their 
 masters, and from which you can picture to 
 yourself the difficulty which the missionary 
 must have had to contend against when he at¬ 
 tempted to convert them to Christianity. One 
 
 15 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 of their chiefs, who liad endeavored to prevent 
 the Spaniards from landing in one of the prin¬ 
 cipal islands, was taken prisoner in battle, and, 
 on a most false and unjust pretext, was con¬ 
 demned to be burned alive. A priest was at 
 the place, and exerted himself very much to 
 convert the unhappy man before his execution, 
 that so death might be to him the beginning 
 of a happy eternity. After listening for some 
 time to the glowing description which was 
 given to him of the never-ending joys of 
 heaven, of its infinite and everlasting happi¬ 
 ness, he suddenly interrupted the preacher with 
 this one simple question: “In this happy place 
 of which you speak, are there any Spaniards ?” 
 “Yes,” said the priest; “ but not those that are 
 bad; only the good and deserving.” “There 
 is not one,” replied the poor ignorant savage, 
 “that is not vile and wicked; I will never 
 consent to go to a place where I shall run the 
 risk of meeting with any of that accursed race.” 
 
 But it is time that we should proceed to the 
 more immediate subject of our history, the 
 Jesuits in Paraguay. On the eastern coast of 
 South America—a part of the New World 
 some thousands of miles to the south of the 
 
 islands we have hitherto been speaking of, but 
 
 16 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 inhabited, like them, by tribes of heathen sav¬ 
 ages—there is an immense river, which the 
 Spaniards called Rio de la Plata, or the River 
 of Silver, because the people there brought 
 them a great quantity of silver, and they 
 fancied, therefore, that there must be rich 
 mines somewhere in the neighborhood. The 
 captain of the vessel which first entered this 
 river, in the year 1516, ventured to go on 
 shore with some of his crew, being invited to 
 do so by apparent demonstrations of kindness 
 on the part of the Indians whom they saw 
 along the banks. No sooner had they landed, 
 however, than they were cruelly put to death, 
 their bodies cut in pieces, roasted, and eaten, 
 within sight of the vessel which they had left, 
 but which was utterly unable to render any 
 assistance. Something of the same kind hap¬ 
 pened to the next persons who dared to land 
 on this inhospitable coast; but twenty years 
 later, (that is, in the year 1536,) a Venetian ad¬ 
 venturer, who had been employed at one time 
 by some English merchants at Bristol, but who 
 was now in the pay of the Spanish govern¬ 
 ment, managed to effect a landing and establish 
 a settlement there, which was able to maintain 
 its footing. 
 
 17 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY". 
 
 W e need not trace the civil history of this 
 settlement through all its various fortunes; it 
 is only necessary for our purpose that we 
 should know something, of its moral and reli¬ 
 gious character, as bearing on the civilization 
 and conversion of the savages among whom it 
 was planted: and in this respect I am afraid 
 that it bore but too close a resemblance to the 
 other settlements that have been already men¬ 
 tioned. There was the same greediness after 
 gain, the same violence and robbery, the same 
 cruel oppression, as you have heard of else¬ 
 where, and therefore we need not repeat it; 
 and this, together with the great scarcity Of 
 priests, (barely sufficient to attend to the Span¬ 
 iards alone,) entirely prevented any real pro¬ 
 gress in the great work of evangelizing the 
 natives. As early as the year 1547, the chief 
 city of the province had been made a bishop’s 
 see, but the person who was first appointed to 
 fill it never took possession. It was not until 
 nine years later that a Christian bishop really 
 began to direct in person the spiritual laborers 
 in this portion of Christ’s vineyard; and both 
 he and his successors, as well as the other 
 bishops settled in different parts of the coun¬ 
 try, continually applied to the kings of Spain, 
 18 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 and to the council wlio were appointed to man¬ 
 age all that concerned the Indies, for an addi¬ 
 tional supply of clergy to assist them in the 
 discharge of their duty. At last, in the year 
 1586, the bishop invited one of the great reli¬ 
 gious orders of Europe to send help for this 
 purpose; the bishop himself was a Dominican, 
 but the missionaries whom he invited were 
 Jesuits, an order whose founder had been born 
 about the time that Christopher Columbus 
 began to discover the new world, and which, 
 from the extraordinary success that had at¬ 
 tended their labors during the last thirty years 
 in’ Brazil, Peru, and other parts of South 
 America, were supposed to have received from 
 Heaven a special mission and a particular 
 grace to win the savage tribes to the kingdom 
 of Christ. 
 
 The Jesuits obeyed the bishop’s invitation, 
 and were at first well received by the settlers, 
 who offered to build them a college, and to 
 assist them in many other ways; for they 
 wanted persons who could educate their chil¬ 
 dren, and they knew that the Jesuits had a 
 great reputation for learning and zeal, and for 
 skill in teaching; so they gave them a very 
 hearty welcome, and were really glad to see 
 
 19 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 them. But this did not last long; for one of 
 the first things the missionaries did was to 
 protest against the cruel treatment of the In¬ 
 dians, and to insist that they should be dealt 
 with more gently and kindly. This turned 
 the settlers against them at once, and they 
 were now as anxious to get rid of them as they 
 had at first been thankful to receive them. 
 The Jesuits were poor men, without money of 
 their own, but depending for their daily bread 
 on the voluntary alms of those for whose 
 spiritual good they had come so far; so the 
 Spaniards thought they should soon be able to 
 make them more reasonable, as they said, by 
 withholding the necessary assistance; they 
 thought they should soon starve them into 
 obedience and conformity to their wishes. 
 “ Surely the Jesuits would never be so foolish 
 as to take up the cause of a set of poor, wild, 
 ignorant, and senseless savages, when by so 
 doing they would offend all the rich and pow¬ 
 erful European merchants, and so run the risk 
 of being driven away, or even starved to death 
 themselves.” But these greedy and unscrupu¬ 
 lous men reckoned without their host; and 
 though they succeeded in hindering for a time 
 the good work which the missionaries were in- 
 
 20 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 tended to accomplish, they could not do more 
 than this. It was necessary that one of them 
 should go back to Madrid to lay the matter 
 before the king and to obtain his sanction: not 
 that they wanted him 'to render them active 
 assistance either with money or any thing else, 
 but only that he should prevent the Spaniards 
 from interfering with them, and using actual 
 violence to prevent the execution of the plan 
 which they proposed. As the king really 
 wished to do what was right, and as the pro¬ 
 posed plan involved no outlay of money, no 
 fitting out of ships to take the missionaries, no 
 colonists to accompany them, no payment of 
 troops to protect them, and no allotments of 
 land to support them when there, it was not 
 difficult to get this promise of protection from 
 the government; and thus armed, the Jesuits 
 returned to the scene of their labors, A few 
 had already gone before among those natives 
 who lived nearest to the settlements, and who 
 were principally employed in tilling the ground 
 for their foreign masters, The savages listened 
 to them with gladness, as having been their 
 only friends among the Europeans, and as hav¬ 
 ing done their utmost to lighten the heavy 
 
 yoke under which they groaned; still they 
 
 21 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 had only succeeded in baptizing some dying 
 infants, and instructing a few of the better 
 disposed amongst the adults. Now, therefore, 
 it was determined to attempt the work of con¬ 
 version on a much larger scale; to go to a dis¬ 
 tance from any of the towns or villages, and to 
 see what could be done with those natives who 
 had never suffered from European cruelty, and 
 were not in danger of being discouraged from 
 embracing Christianity in the first place, or 
 from practising it afterwards, by the wicked 
 lives of those by whom it was professed. 
 
 This was truly a great and noble scheme, 
 but it was also beset with immense and innu¬ 
 merable difficulties. For how was Christianity 
 to be introduced amongst men who were dis¬ 
 persed like wild beasts, buried in the thickest 
 forests, or lying hid in dens and in caves of the 
 earth; men who led a wandering life, never 
 fixed in any one place, but roaming about 
 wherever they could find the means of subsist¬ 
 ence, continually at war with one another, and 
 many of them so fierce and cruel as to delight 
 in torturing their prisoners to death, and then 
 feasting on their flesh ? Surely the conversion 
 of such as these might almost seem a hopeless 
 
 task ; and the patient, untiring zeal of those by 
 22 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 whom it was accomplished must deserve to be 
 reckoned, as even Protestant writers do not 
 hesitate to acknowledge, amongst the most 
 wonderful and interesting events in the history 
 of mankind. 
 
 The Jesuit Fathers then set out two and 
 two, like the disciples of our Lord, with little 
 more than a staff and a prayer-book, accom¬ 
 panied by some of the native Indians who had 
 been already converted, and who were to act 
 as interpreters; and by these simple means 
 they attempted the execution of this vast en¬ 
 terprise. They began by pointing out to the 
 savages the numerous inconveniences of their 
 present mode of life, whether they considered 
 the precarious nature of their maintenance, 
 the discomfort of their dwelling-houses, or their 
 defenceless condition in the frequent wars in 
 which they were engaged; and they invited 
 them to come and live together in some settled 
 spot, to build houses, and to cultivate the 
 ground. The savages were induced to lend a 
 willing ear to these representations, partly be¬ 
 cause they themselves could recognize the rea¬ 
 sonableness of what was said, partly because the 
 report they had heard of these black-robes, as 
 they soon learned to call the Jesuit Fathers, was 
 
 23 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 such as to give them confidence in their sin¬ 
 cerity and their kind and charitable intentions. 
 Doubtless thus to have obtained the good-will 
 of the natives was of most important service 
 to them towards the success of their underta¬ 
 king ; still, what remained to be accomplished 
 was no light task; it required the utmost care 
 and diligence, and incessant watchfulness, to 
 bring the work to perfection, and with but un¬ 
 certain hopes of reaping any fruit from it after 
 all. For, first, the poor natives had never been 
 used to habits of steady perseverance; labor 
 was irksome to them, and the temptations to 
 idleness very great; and secondly, not only 
 was their character unstable and easily given 
 to change, but their understanding also was 
 very limited; so much so indeed, that at first 
 it was almost a matter of doubt whether they 
 could ever be made to understand the mys¬ 
 teries of the Christian faith sufficiently to en¬ 
 able them to become partakers of the holy 
 Sacraments. 
 
 Then, again, besides these difficulties and dis¬ 
 couragements from within, they were also ex¬ 
 posed to many and very serious dangers from 
 without. After some of their new settlements 
 had been established for a few years, and had 
 
 24 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 grown to a considerable size, they attracted the 
 attention of certain brigands—half Indians, 
 half Europeans—who occupied a part of the 
 country by themselves, and lived entirely by 
 plunder. These men cast their eyes on the 
 increasing villages, and thought they furnished 
 a most favorable opportunity for adding to the 
 number of their slaves; they therefore broke 
 in upon them from time to time, and killed, or 
 carried away prisoners, several thousands of 
 the inhabitants. In this way they entirely de¬ 
 stroyed ten or twelve of the most flourishing 
 Christian colonies, until at last the missionaries 
 found it necessary to transplant all who re¬ 
 mained—men, women, and children, young 
 and old, strong and infirm—to transplant them 
 all to some more distant and safer place. It 
 was necessary to abandon all the fruits of their 
 past labors, and to travel over rocks and moun¬ 
 tains and rivers, perhaps for several weeks to¬ 
 gether, over a space of four or five hundred 
 miles, until they could find another more 
 secure resting-place suited to their purpose. 
 
 Indeed, there is scarcely a danger mentioned 
 by St. Paul in his second letter to his Corinth¬ 
 ian converts as having happened to himself, 
 which may not be exactly repeated concerning 
 
 25 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 these apostolic men, who were trying to con¬ 
 vert the Indians. No one can doubt that they 
 were “in journeying often.” One of them, 
 writing an account of his own labors in this 
 particular in a private letter addressed to a 
 friend, reckons up the journeys that he had 
 made in a period of eight years, and the total 
 amounts to no less than ten thousand miles. 
 And the reader must remember that these 
 journeys were not made, as in modern days, 
 with the advantage of steam-engines and rail¬ 
 roads, not even with the ordinary ‘advantages 
 of a highway and some kind of conveyance; 
 most commonly they were performed where 
 there was no road at all, and where not even 
 a beast of burden could pass. Sometimes it 
 was necessary to travel above a hundred miles 
 with a hatchet in their hands to cut a passage 
 through the forests before they could reach the 
 dwelling-places of those they went to find; 
 sometimes they had to wade through bogs and 
 fens, to cross deep and rapid rivers, and to 
 climb up steep and craggy mountains, with 
 nothing but the bare ground or a wretched 
 mat on which to rest their weary limbs at 
 night. They were also “ in perils of waters 
 
 for the rivers and lakes they had to cross were 
 26 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 often full of rapids and currents which they 
 were not aware of, and which exposed them to 
 great dangers. Moreover, nothing was more 
 common in that country, than for the rivers 
 suddenly to swell and overflow to such a de¬ 
 gree as almost instantaneously to convert whole 
 plains into one vast sea. One day, as a Jesuit 
 Father with his catechist and seven or eight 
 Indians, (some of whom had been baptized and 
 others were only catechumens,) were crossing a 
 plain somewhere between the rivers Paraguay 
 and Parana, they .were suddenly overtaken by 
 one of these extraordinary inundations. For 
 a while they waded along up to their waists in 
 water, but were soon forced to have recourse 
 to the highest trees they could find, as the only 
 means of saving their lives. In this situation 
 they remained for more than twenty-four hours, 
 amid a frightful storm of rain and thunder and 
 lightning. By and by, in the middle of the 
 night, the missionary perceived, by means of 
 the bright flashes of lightning that continually 
 lit up the heavens, one of his Indians, who had 
 taken refuge in a distant tree, swimming to¬ 
 wards him and crying out, as soon as he was 
 near enough to be heard, that three catechu¬ 
 mens and three Christians were on the point 
 
 27 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 of dying, and most earnestly requested his 
 assistance. Upon this, the good Father first 
 attended to the wants of the catechist who was 
 on the same tree with himself, and fastened 
 him securely to one of the upper branches, for 
 he was well-nigh exhausted, and then jumped 
 into the water to follow the Indian who had 
 come to call him. At last he reached the 
 catechumens, baptized them as they lay cling¬ 
 ing to the branches, from which they presently 
 fell and -were drowned; then he hastened to 
 the three neophytes, and two of these also were 
 drowned a few minutes later; after which, he 
 again swam back to his own tree. “ In perils 
 from the Gentiles” of course they were ; when¬ 
 ever they met with a troop of native Indians, 
 they generally found them armed, and ready 
 to kill them, without even hearing a word of 
 their message; and this lot actually befell many 
 of their number. They even presented them¬ 
 selves knowingly and wilfully before a whole 
 army of enemies, trusting that God would so 
 bless the words that they should speak, as to 
 soften their hearts and dispose them to receive 
 the Gospel; or at other times, they would pen¬ 
 etrate alone and unarmed into the presence of 
 
 a cacique , or chief, whom they knew to enter- 
 28 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 tain tlie most bitter hatred of the Christian 
 name, to have murdered many of their priests, 
 and frequently to have plundered their settle¬ 
 ments. They were also “ in perils from their 
 own nation;” the Spaniards were among the 
 worst enemies they had; not only by reason 
 of the strong prejudice which their bad ex¬ 
 ample had raised against Christians and Eu¬ 
 ropeans generally, but also in many other 
 ways by which they strove to hinder or to 
 mar their work. “Labor and painfulness, 
 hunger and thirst, and fastings often,” they 
 could not escape from; for how were such 
 things to be guarded against in their long and 
 difficult expeditions ? At the best of times, a 
 handful of Indian corn, or something equally 
 poor and simple, was their most luxurious 
 food; but it often happened that even their 
 little store of this was finished long before they 
 had arrived at their journey’s end; and then 
 the travellers had no other food but such wild 
 roots and fruits as they could manage to find. 
 We read that they were sometimes forced to 
 suck the dew off the leaves to quench their 
 thirst, and even to squeeze a handful of damp 
 earth against their lips, for the sake of extract¬ 
 ing, if possible, a drop of water with which to 
 
 29 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 moisten their tongue and allay the thirst that 
 tormented them under the excessive heats of a 
 burning sun. 
 
 I will give you the details of one of their 
 expeditions somewhat at length, that you may 
 be able to judge of the difficulties they were 
 exposed to, and of the perseverance which they 
 showed in overcoming them. A Jesuit Father 
 set out, accompanied by one hundred Indians, 
 who were already instructed and baptized, to 
 convert a savage tribe that lived at a consider¬ 
 able distance. A very long and violent storm, 
 which came on soon after they had started, 
 rough gusts of wind and overflowing of all the 
 rivers, hindered them so much in their pro¬ 
 gress, that in nineteen days they had only ad¬ 
 vanced about forty miles. Then they came to 
 a very thick forest, through which they had to 
 cut their road. The priest led the way with a 
 hatchet in his hand, working as hard as any 
 of them, encouraging the others both by word 
 and example, fetching water for them to drink, 
 and serving them in a thousand other ways. 
 It was a long and painful task; for whole 
 clouds of venomous flies or gnats, called mos¬ 
 quitoes, attacked them by day and night; and 
 the forest was about thirty miles in depth, so 
 
 30 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 that it took them nearly three weeks to trav¬ 
 erse it. At last they came to the other side; 
 but by this time their provisions were exhausted, 
 and they were obliged to go home again. The 
 next year this zealous priest set out again; and 
 this time they reached farther than before; but 
 in the end they narrowly escaped being all 
 drowned. Whilst they were cutting through 
 a second forest, the waters of a neighboring 
 river rose and overflowed, so that it was as 
 much as they could do to return to the place 
 from whence they had come. His resolution, 
 however, was not broken even by this second 
 disappointment: in the following year he once 
 more set out on the same expedition; and now 
 he succeeded in reaching the first village of the 
 tribe he had so long been seeking; and as they 
 seemed to show the most promising disposi¬ 
 tions, he hoped that he was at length about to 
 receive the fruit of his many labors. It hap¬ 
 pened that he was very shortly afterwards ap¬ 
 pointed to some post of authority in his order, 
 so that he was obliged to go away to another 
 place. Another Father, however, immediately 
 succeeded him, and was received with every 
 possible sign of friendship and joy. The con¬ 
 version of the whole nation seemed already 
 
 31 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 begun, and the Father had gone off the dis¬ 
 tance of a few days’ journey, to look for a 
 fitting place in which to establish this new 
 settlement, when suddenly the natives threw 
 off the mask, and treacherously murdered those 
 of his companions whom he had left behind. 
 
 Nor must you think that this was a solitary 
 instance, and that nothing at all like it ever 
 happened in other parts of that wild country; 
 on the contrary, I could tell you of some of 
 these missionaries who had been gladly wel¬ 
 comed by the savages, and even used by them 
 as a protection against the settlers, or against 
 other savages with whom they were at war, 
 yet were afterwards betrayed and murdered 
 by them; of others who sank under the fa¬ 
 tigue and hardships of their long expeditions, 
 —on one occasion alone, sixteen of their com¬ 
 panions perished in the course of a nine 
 months’ journey;—of more than twenty who 
 were martyred in one way or another, in dif¬ 
 ferent parts of this same province; in a word, 
 it is scarcely possible to name any labor or 
 suffering which belongs to the life of a mis¬ 
 sionary, that was not joyfully endured by 
 these zealous servants of the Church, in order 
 that they might convert the Indians. It is 
 
 32 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 time, however, that I should now show you 
 something of the fruits of those labors, some¬ 
 thing that may be looked upon as a proof of 
 the presence of Christ’s blessing upon them 
 according to His own promise, “ Behold, I am 
 with you all days, even to the consummation 
 of the world.” 
 
 It has been already mentioned that the 
 Fathers began by persuading as many of the 
 natives as they could to leave off their roving 
 way of life, and to come together into one 
 place, there to build houses, to cultivate the 
 ground, and to form a regular community, and 
 that their earliest attempts in this matter were 
 much forwarded by the good report which had 
 gone abroad concerning them in consequence 
 of the opposition they had made to the cruelties 
 and oppression practised by the other Euro¬ 
 pean settlers. I must reserve to another occa¬ 
 sion a more detailed account of the manner in 
 which these settlements were both begun and 
 multiplied, as also of their internal constitution, 
 their civil and military government, and va¬ 
 rious other interesting details; at present we 
 are only concerned with them in their religious 
 character, as containing vast numbers of per¬ 
 sons who were converted by the preaching 
 
 33 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 of Catholic missionaries, from heathenism to 
 Christianity. For this was the result of the 
 admirable plan which the Jesuits adopted, as 
 indeed it had also been the great end which 
 from the first they had always had in view: 
 “Our design is,” said one of themselves, “first 
 to labor to make these Indians men, that so 
 we may be the better able afterwards to make 
 them Christians;” and their efforts were so 
 abundantly rewarded, that when the settle¬ 
 ments were in their highest state of perfection, 
 it is computed that they contained about 
 800,000 souls, every one of whom had been 
 duly baptized and instructed in the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 The means by which this extraordinary re¬ 
 sult was brought about were as simple as they 
 were effectual. As soon as a few hundred In¬ 
 dians had been persuaded to settle down any¬ 
 where, the Fathers caused a church to be built 
 in the most central spot of the settlement. 
 This church was made entirely of wood, but 
 on a large and lofty scale, so as to be mani¬ 
 festly the most important building in the place, 
 all the surrounding houses being of the height 
 of one story only. The children belonging to 
 the few families thus assembled were usually 
 
 34 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 baptized at once, and so brought up, like other 
 Christian children, from their earliest infancy 
 in the practice of their holy religion, and in¬ 
 structed in all its doctrines. With the adults, 
 however, they proceeded, of course, in a dif¬ 
 ferent manner; these they did not venture 
 to baptize until they were satisfied by long 
 and careful preparation that they would re¬ 
 ceive the Sacrament with proper dispositions; 
 and it was some time before they began to say 
 Mass and to administer the Sacraments in the 
 presence of the people. For to bring men 
 who were utterly void of the first principles of 
 humanity, the only business of whose lives it 
 had heretofore been to satisfy their brutish 
 appetites, and whose understandings had been 
 debased by the long-continued indulgence of 
 their passions, sometimes also by the most 
 grovelling superstitions,—to bring such men 
 as these to comprehend the sublime mysteries 
 of the Christian faith, and to bind themselves 
 to the observance of its moral obligations, was 
 a difficult and truly an apostolic work. 
 
 But truly, also, those to whom it was in¬ 
 trusted were animated with an apostolic zeal; 
 and the same God who “ added to the Church 
 about 3000 souls in one day” after the first 
 
 35 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 sermon of St. Peter in Jerusalem, was equally 
 present with these children of St. Ignatius in 
 South America, and added thousands upon 
 thousands to the true fold, by means of their 
 preaching. By degrees they gained first one 
 and then another, the children often being the 
 instructors of their parents, and the converted 
 adults persuading and reclaiming their breth¬ 
 ren. Every year, as soon as the rainy season 
 was ended, and the waters, with which a great 
 part of the country were wont to be flooded 
 at those times, had gone down, many of these 
 zealous converts would set out on an expedi¬ 
 tion to distant hills and forests, to see if they 
 could not induce natives from other tribes to 
 come and join them. There was often quite a 
 rivalry between different parties of these con¬ 
 verts as to which would bring back the largest 
 number of savages; and it was not at all un¬ 
 usual to see them returning with several hun¬ 
 dreds in their train. These were received with 
 the greatest gladness by the rest of the settlers, 
 invited to partake of their hospitality, had 
 houses and food provided for them; and hav¬ 
 ing been duly instructed and baptized, them¬ 
 selves in process of time became missionaries 
 in their turn, and went out in quest of others. 
 
 36 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 In this way a settlement, which began with a 
 few hundreds, increased by and by to several 
 thousands, until they were obliged to separate 
 perhaps, and form a second or even a third' 
 settlement elsewhere. At other times, one of 
 the two priests belonging to a settlement, (for 
 there were generally two in each,) would set 
 out with a few of the most earnest and best- 
 instructed of his converts to carry the Gospel 
 to a distant tribe. As soon as they had 
 reached the tribe, they used to enter boldly 
 into the midst of them, often carrying a cru¬ 
 cifix or a picture of our Blessed Lady before 
 them, and chanting the Litanies, exactly as we 
 read that St. Augustine and his companions 
 did, when they went over to convert the Pa¬ 
 gan Anglo-Saxons: then, if either the priest 
 or any of the natives he had brought with 
 him understood the language of the tribe 
 they had met with, he would immediately 
 begin and preach the Gospel to them. But if, 
 as not unfrequently happened, neither the 
 priest nor any of his companions could speak 
 the language, he would point to his crucifix or 
 picture, and by means of signs explain to them 
 in the best way he could that he was come to 
 announce to them a new religion, whereof 
 
 37 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 these were the symbols, and which should 
 make them happy both in this world and in 
 the next. He would make them small pres¬ 
 ents of beads or other trifles, of little value in 
 themselves, but which the natives prized 
 highly; and having thereby gained their good¬ 
 will, he would at last persuade the chief to 
 send two or three of his subjects along with 
 him, that so they might learn his language, 
 and be able to return with him again the fol¬ 
 lowing year to act as interpreters. Many 
 tribes were thus converted to the faith, and 
 became Christian settlements; or if the tribe 
 was small, and surrounded by others of a more 
 savage disposition, which refused to be con¬ 
 verted, the whole tribe would sometimes leave 
 their ancient homes and join the nearest settle¬ 
 ment already established. 
 
 It only remains that we should inquire 
 whether the conversion of these tribes was 
 real as well as nominal; whether these thou¬ 
 sands and tens of thousands of savages became 
 Christians in deed as well as in name. For a 
 suspicion might arise in the minds of some of 
 our readers, that to bring them to an outward 
 profession of the faith was no such hard task; 
 that is, that though there might have been dif- 
 
 38 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 Acuities in the way of persuading them, in the 
 first place, to come and try this new mode of 
 life, yet that the moment they could be pre¬ 
 vailed upon to do this, they could not fail to 
 be so struck by its many advantages as to be 
 induced to adopt it themselves; that the pro¬ 
 fession of Christianity, therefore, might have 
 been received only as' a part and parcel of this 
 happier and more comfortable way of living, a 
 necessary condition without which it was not 
 possible to obtain all the superior advantages 
 of civilization, but not as binding them in any 
 way to a change of conduct, or imposing upon 
 them any form of religious belief. 
 
 Such a suspicion, I say, might naturally 
 suggest itself to the reader’s mind; neverthe¬ 
 less it is clear from the testimony both of eye¬ 
 witnesses and of facts, that in truth the people 
 really did become Christians in heart and in 
 practice no less than in profession; nay more, 
 that they became very patterns of Christian 
 virtue. The modesty and recollection of their 
 behavior in church was such as to astonish 
 even the missionaries themselves: when they 
 recited the act of contrition, with which the 
 preachers always concluded their sermons, the 
 church rang again with their sobs and sighs; 
 
 39 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 when they approached the sacrament of pen¬ 
 ance, though the faults they had to accuse 
 themselves of were often so slight that they 
 were scarcely sufficient matter for absolution, 
 yet they could not confess them without shed¬ 
 ding torrents of tears. If at any time they 
 suffered themselves to be overcome by tempt¬ 
 ation, so as to fall into any greater sin, they 
 would immediately leave the business they 
 were engaged in, whatever it might be, and 
 run to the priest to confess their fault and to 
 wash away its guilt in the sacrament of pen¬ 
 ance. If the fault they had committed was 
 public, so that they had given scandal by it, 
 they gladly performed public penance, that 
 they might make what reparation they were 
 able, and that the contagion of bad example 
 might not spread among the flock. It often 
 happened on these occasions, that others, who 
 had committed the same fault in private as 
 they now saw punished in public, used to come 
 forward of their own accord, publicly accuse 
 themselves, and beg to be allowed to suffer the 
 same penance. This reminds us of what we 
 read of the early Church; and indeed every 
 body who visited these settlements, and had 
 an opportunity of examining them at all 
 
 40 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 closely, was always struck with the resem¬ 
 blance which they bore to the manners and 
 customs of the first Christians. One of the 
 missionaries themselves, writing to a friend, 
 says, “ There is no suffering we would not 
 voluntarily undergo for these poor Indians; 
 for we are eye-witnesses of their docility, of 
 the ardent love which they have for all that 
 concerns the service of God, and of their exact 
 obedience to all the commandments of the law 
 of Christ. They no longer know what it is to 
 indulge in fraud, theft, revenge, drunkenness, 
 impurity, and all those other vices which were 
 formerly so deeply rooted among them. I 
 confidently assure you, and have no fear that 
 any one will accuse me of exaggeration, that 
 these men, once abandoned to the grossest 
 vices, present to our eyes (now that they are 
 become Christians) the innocence and the holi¬ 
 ness of the first believers.” “I have often 
 visited the Jesuits’ missions in Paraguay,” 
 says the Bishop of Buenos Ayres, (a religious 
 of the order of the Holy Trinity, instituted for 
 the redemption of captives,) writing to the 
 king of Spain; “and in all those numerous 
 towns, composed of Indians naturally given to 
 all manner of vice, there reigns so much inno- 
 
 41 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 cence, that I do not believe a single mortal 
 sin is committed in them; the extraordinary 
 watchfulness of their pastors prevents the com¬ 
 mission of even the slightest faults.” “ The 
 union and the charity which prevails among 
 these Christians is perfect,” writes a Capuchin 
 priest who had spent three or four weeks in a 
 very large settlement numbering 30,000 In¬ 
 dians, under the direction of four Jesuit 
 Fathers; “they spend their whole time in 
 prayer, and in labor to provide for their fam¬ 
 ilies. All approach the holy sacraments every 
 month, and many of them every week. Some, 
 inspired by a special grace, aim at evangelical 
 perfection; and even those who are not guided 
 by the Holy Spirit to this degree of perfection, 
 yet lead a life of innocence not inferior to that 
 of the first Christians.” 
 
 It would be easy to multiply evidence of 
 this kind; but what has already been quoted 
 is more than enough to convince us of the 
 reality of the conversion that was wrought in 
 the lives and hearts of these savages. And 
 truly when we compare this description of 
 them with their former miserable condition, 
 we cannot for a moment doubt but that this 
 change could only have been wrought by the 
 
 42 
 
THE JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 power of the Spirit of God. The missionaries 
 must have been, as St. Paul speaks, only 
 “ God’s coadjutors they “ planted and 
 watered,” but it was He that “ gave the in¬ 
 crease.” 
 
 What a wonderful and convincing testimony 
 then does this history afford to the divinity of 
 the Catholic Church! It was she that received 
 the commission to go unto the whole world 
 and preach the Gospel to every creature, and 
 to her was the promise made that Christ would 
 be with her even unto the end of the world; 
 it is by her, therefore, and by her alone, that 
 the commission has ever been faithfully ex¬ 
 ecuted, or the fulfilment of the promise ever 
 been truly realized. There is not a single Prot¬ 
 estant sect in the world, however numerous or 
 however zealous, which can produce so manifest a 
 proof of the presence of Christ’s blessing upon 
 their labors .f 
 
 * 1 Cor. iii. 9. 
 
 t See the sixth and seventh of Cardinal Wiseman’s “ Lec¬ 
 tures on the principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholie 
 Church.” Dolman, London. 
 
 43 
 
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