The Indians generally believed in three great or chief gods. The sun was the god of the animal kingdom, the moon of the vegetable kingdom and Ruda was the god of love and reproduction. In addition to these chief gods there was a multitude of inferior deities who served various purposes. The fact that there was some idea of a future life, or a “happy hunting ground” in the beyond, is shown by the burial custom of depositing in the grave of the dead warrior the bow and arrow, and vessels in which to prepare food. It was also the custom to hang a number of friends or relatives upon the death of a chief, in order that the departed might have congenial company in the next world. The importation of negroes from Africa also brought in a great deal of superstition, and a tendency toward idolatry and fetichism, which can be traced in the religious and moral customs even to this day. It is impossible not to admire the early missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church. They followed side by side with those adventurers and explorers who pushed their way through trackless forests and almost impassable swamps in their search for earth’s treasures. It was the Jesuits who did most of the early evangelizing work in Brazil. This order was more humanely disposed toward the natives than some of the orders who accompanied the Spanish Conquistadores, for they endeavoured to protect the natives from injustice. It was in the middle of the 16th century that the members of this order began their evangelizing, work in Brazil. They plunged into regions hitherto unpenetrated by white men. They went out alone among the cannibal tribes who dwelt on these shores, and lived with them. They learned the languages, and soon were able to preach to them in their own tongues. These brave missionaries exhorted the Indians to lay aside their practice of cannibalism and polygamous marriages, and adopt the new faith. In order to appeal to their childlike natures every device and paraphernalia of pomp and procession was adopted in their services. Miraculous appearances and finds became common, so that sacred sites for the building of the religious edifices were frequently located by this means. In order to give an unprejudiced view of the methods and purposes pursued by the early Jesuit missionaries I quote from Baron de Santa-Anna Nery,[4] himself a Catholic: “The Missionaries did not insist upon any strict theological teaching, being sure that their orthodoxy would soon be disfigured; they had but one aim in view, to render gentle and good these unhappy human beings, who gave themselves up recklessly to every impulse of their violent passions.