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
“Bucarelli shipped off the Jesuits of La Plata, Tucuman, and
Paraguay, one hundred and fifty-five in number, before he attacked
the Reductions. This part of the business he chose to perform in
person; and the precautions which he took for arresting seventy-eight
defenceless missionaries, will be regarded with contempt, or with
indignation, as they may be supposed to have proceeded from ignorance
of the real state of things, or from fear, basely affected for the
purpose of courting favour by countenancing successful calumnies. He
had previously sent for all the Caciques and Corregidores to Buenos
Ayres, and persuaded them that the king was about to make a great
change for their advantage. Two hundred soldiers from Paraguay were
ordered to guard the pass of the Tebiquary; two hundred Corrientines to
take post in the vicinity of St. Miguel; and he defended the Uruguay
with threescore dragoons, and three companies of grenadiers. They
landed at the Falls; one detachment proceeded to join the Paraguay
party, and seize the Parana Jesuits; another incorporated itself with
the Corrientines, and marched against those on the eastern side of the
Uruguay; and the Viceroy himself advanced upon Yapeyen, and those which
lay between the two rivers. The Reductions were peaceably delivered up.
The Jesuits, without a murmur, followed their brethren into banishment;
and Bucarelli was vile enough to take credit in his dispatches for the
address with which he had so happily performed a dangerous service; and
to seek favour by loading the persecuted Company with charges of the
grossest and foulest calumnies.”
The American Jesuits were sent from Cadiz to Italy, where Faenza and
Ravenna were assigned for their places of abode. Most of the Paraguay
brethren settled at Faenza. There they employed the melancholy hours
of age and exile in preserving, as far as they could from memory
alone (for they had been deprived of all their papers), the knowledge
which they had so painfully acquired of strange countries, strange
manners, savage languages, and savage man. The Company originated
in extravagance and madness; in its progress it was supported and
aggrandized by fraud and falsehood; and its history is stained by
actions of the darkest dye. But it fell with honour. No men ever
behaved with greater equanimity, under undeserved disgrace, than the
last of the Jesuits; and the extinction of the order was a heavy loss
to literature, a great evil to the Catholic world, and an irreparable
injury to the tribes of South America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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