Few writers on Brazil have refrained from scourging the bandeirantes for their cruelty to the wretched natives and for their destruction of the Jesuit missions. It is true that they were brutal, but theirs was a brutal age, and in explanation, not extenuation, of their deeds it should be remembered that they, the white civilian colonists, were fighting for their own preservation against hostile Indians whose hand, quite naturally, was against the invader, and secondly against their economic ruin by the line of action taken by the Society of Jesus. Not only did the patient Jesuits coax and catechise the Indian, but they put him to work in the fields and sold abroad the product of his hands: when later on conflict raged in North Brazil between colonists and Jesuits the chief grievance was that the Society, for whose support the civilian community was taxed heavily, used the Indian labour denied by Royal decree to the settlers, and also maintained great stores (_armazens_) where every kind of European merchandise was kept. It was for this reason, and not because they were bad Christians, that the colonists of Maranhão once stood on the shore with guns in their hands and refused to allow a shipload of Jesuits to land until they had given a solemn promise to do nothing with the Indians except to convert them; they regarded the members of this religious body as business rivals. Nor were the Jesuits tactful in their dealings with colonists or colonial government authorities; secure in the support given them not only by the Pope but, especially perhaps in the period of Spanish rule in Brazil under Philip II, by the King, they made no concessions, defied the civilians, and apparently courted trials of strength: right or wrong, they were able to count upon judgment in their favour in any quarrel referred to Europe.