Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their coloniesHowitt, William
History
Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their colonies
Howitt, William
Indians, Treatment of; Indigenous peoples
But the journey of the fathers did not end here. They could get no
redress; and therefore hastened to Rio Janeiro; and succeeding no
better there, went on to the Bay of All-Saints, to Don Diego Lewis
Oliveyra, governor and captain-general of the kingdom. The governor
ordered an officer to repair with them to Santo Paulo; but it was too
late, the prisoners were distributed far and wide, and the commissary
could not or dared not attempt to recall them. News also of fresh
enterprises meditated against the Paraguay Reductions, by these hideous
man-hunters, made the fathers hasten away to put their brethren upon
their guard.
The story of the successive devastation of the Reductions is long. The
Jesuits were compelled to retreat southward from one place to another
with their wretched neophytes. The magistrates and governors gave them
no aid, for they entertained no good-will towards them; and they were,
even in the central ground between the Parana and Uruguay, compelled
to train their people to arms, and defend themselves. It is not only
a long but sorrowful recital, both of the injuries received from the
Paulistas and from their own countrymen—we must therefore pass it
over, and merely notice the manner of their final expulsion.
The court of Spain ordered the banishment of the Jesuits, and the
authorities, only too happy to execute the order, surrounded their
colleges in the night with soldiers, seized the persons of the
missionaries,—their libraries and manuscripts, which in time became
destroyed, an irreparable loss to historical literature. Old men in
their beds even were not suffered to remain and die in peace, but were
compelled to accompany the rest, till they died on their mules in the
immense journey from some of the settlements, and across the wildest
mountains to the sea. The words of Mr. Southey may well close this
strange and melancholy history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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