If Father Ennis really thought the Indians could hold head to both the Spaniards and the Portuguese, or if he thought that the rising would draw attention to the injustice of the treaty, is difficult to say. Whether, indeed, he headed it himself, or if he merely accompanied the Indians as their spiritual guide, giving them now and then the benefit of his advice on matters temporal, after the fashion of the ambitious churchman of all time,[282] is now unknown. Whatever his opinions were upon this matter, Father Ennis showed himself almost from the first irreconcilable. He refused to meet the commissioners, and in his place sent a _cacique_ (chief) of the Indians, one Sepe Tyaragu, an official of the reduction of San Miguel. This chief, seeing the escort of the commission was but small, ‘put on his boots’,[283] and took high ground, daring to talk about the rights of man, of the love of country, and said that liberty consisted in being allowed to enjoy his property in peace, sentiments which, though admirable enough in a white man’s mouth, for men of colour are but fit for copy-books. The _cacique_ firmly refused to vacate his lands, and said the King of Spain, as he lived far away, could not have understood the bearing of affairs in Paraguay. Such arguments as these, together with the perhaps offensive tone of the _cacique_, had such effect on the commissioners that, after having threatened him with vengeance, which at the time they had no power to carry out, they both withdrew out of the territory. As Funes[284] well observes, the Spaniards had established themselves in these parts (the River Plate and Paraguay) to obtain a limitless submission from the Indians. Any resistance drove them to fury, and excited them to take revenge. As all the Indians’ crime was their unwillingness to quit the lands on which they had been born, it seemed a little hard to slaughter them, even before their petition to the King had been refused. Most probably all had been prepared before, for Valdelirios at once issued an order, which he had the power to do under a sealed letter from the King, to the Governor of Buenos Ayres, Andonaegui, to prepare for war. Active hostilities broke out in 1754, and Father Ennis has preserved a day-by-day account, written in priestly Latin,[285] of what took place. After some skirmishes, which at the first were favourable to the Indians, who took great courage from them,[286] the first encounter of a serious nature occurred on February 24, 1754. Quite naturally, the victory was on the side of the best-armed battalions, and the Indians lost many of their best men, and their largest piece of ordnance.[287]