But still the Mamelucos ran their course, destroying town after town, so that in the short space of a year (1630-31) they destroyed partially the reductions of San Francisco Xavier, San José, San Pedro, and La Concepcion; and the two first founded, San Ignacio and Loreto, were ruined utterly. The wretched Indians, to whom by law the Jesuits were forbidden to serve out firearms, stood no chance against the well-trained Paulistas, with their horses, guns, and bloodhounds, assisted as they were by troops of savage Indians who discharged poisoned arrows from blowpipes and from bows. Small wonder that, as Montoya, Charlevoix, Lahier,[65] and Filiberto Monero[66] all agree, despair took hold of them, so that in many instances they cursed the Jesuits and fled back to the woods. When one reflects that many of the Indian tribes looked upon baptism as a poison,[67] it is not strange that they should have associated effect with cause, and set down all their sufferings to the influence of the malignant rite to which the Jesuits had subjected them. The isolated Jesuits ran considerable risk from their own sheep, and Padre Mola, after the ruin of San Antonio, was suspected by them of being in league with the Paulistas, and had to flee for safety to another town; and as a touch of comedy is seldom wanting to make things bitterer to those in misfortune, a troop of savage Indians, having arrived to attack the Reduction of San Antonio, and finding it already burning, instantly thought poor Padre Mola had been the instigator, and, starting on his trail, almost surprised him before he reached a refuge from their patriotic rage.