PUTUMAYO AND PARAGUAY

New Zealand Tablet, 5 September 1912, Page 23

PUTUMAYO AND PARAGUAY

RISE AND FALL OF AN INDIAN MISSION The publication by Sir Roger Casement, British Commissioner, of the terrible brutalities inflicted by the officials of a rubber company on the Indians in the Putumayo district of Peru, was promptly followed by the statement (writes the Rev. M. Kenny, S.J., in America) that religion alone could supply the remedy and only Catholic missionaries could exercise religious influence on the Indians, Accordingly an appeal has been made to the benevolent for sufficient funds to establish and maintain Catholic missions in Putumayo. It is a striking coincidence, that early in 1911, more than a year before Sir Roger Casement had issued his report, Pope Pius X. had also sent a Commissioner, Father Genocchi, of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to inquire into the condition of the Indians, not merely in Peru, but in all the States of South America, and his account not only confirms the British Commissioner’s, but shows that the outrages cover a still wider area. His formal report has not been published, but a letter, dated February 11, contained this passage; ‘ The search for rubber, which is here called black gold, has given rise to worse abuses in these districts than in the Congo. In some parts of South America, in spite of the laws, the most shameful slavery prevails, with massacres, sales, atrocious tortures, and every other iniquity of which brutalised and degenerate' man is capable when free from the control of law. The Catholic Missions, the only barrier to the wholesale destruction of the Indians, are lacking where they are most urgently needed. For this the Holy Father wishes to make provision, and the . idea is worthy of the highest praise.’ Pius X. Issues An Encyclical, His Holiness had, in fact, done so before the Putumayo outrages were given to the world. No sooner had Father Genocchi returned to Rome and made his report in person, than Pius X. embodied its contents in an encyclical to the Archbishops and Bishops of South America, directing them to bend all their energies—by their personal exertions, through religious organisations, and by co-operation with the various States in any movement for the protection of the Indians—to the correction of abuses, and the promotion of the moral and social betterment of that oppressed and much neglected people. Sir Roger Casement and his fellow-commissioners looked for reform to the same sources, for they regard the Roman Catholic mission as the sole feasible step that can be taken by those interested on humanitarian grounds in the welfare of the Indians.’ That nonCatholics should so conclude has shocked some good people among us; but it will astonish no one who is acquainted with the historical associations of that locality. These should be known to a wide circle of nonCatholic as well as Catholic readers. Stretching south of Putumayo and east of the Peruvian mountains lay the famous Paraguay Reductions, embracing most of the immense territory of the present Argentine Republic, the greater part of Brazil, much of Uruguay, and the present Republic of Paraguay, in fact, as Muratori described it in 1750, * the whole interior of South America ’; and how the . Jesuits established throughout these wide regions in the sixteenth century and maintained for two hundred years the happiest and most flourishing colonies, of Christian Indians that the world has witnessed, has been sung by Southey, described historically by Cunninghame Graham ( A Vanished Arcadia) and the Anglican Bishop Ingraham Kip Old Jesuit Missions), and . spoken of with eloquent eulogy by Macaulay and many other nonCatholic writers. The most charming as well as / authoritative History of the Ahipone's, by Father Dobrizhoffer, S.J., himself a laborious Paraguayan missionary, who writes of what he saw and wrought, was published in English by Murray (London, 1822), but is unfortunately out of print, as is also the celebrated Muratori’s Relation of the Missions of Paraguay, Wrote originally in Italian and now done into English. The

translator withholds his name, being motived only by the hope that those who sincerely desire the progress and glory of religion will peruse it with real pleasure, and those who read purely to be informed may find something that will satisfy their curiosity.’ The hope would still be realised by readers of Muratori and Dobrizhoffer, and the publisher who will provide them the gratification'should profit by his enterprise. • The First Reduction of Loreto was formally established in 1610, but for fifty years previously the district from the Amazon to the furthest limits of Patagonia was traversed by Jesuit missionaries, who, under the jurisdiction of the Bishops of Peru, had established many populous if somewhat migratory Christian settlements among the nomadic, barbarous, and often cannibal aborigines. In 1550, they had landed in Brazil, of which Father Joseph Anchieta, the Xavier of South America, became soon the ‘Apostle and Thaumaturgus,’ A companion for ten years in his astoundingly extensive and perilous travels, and the first fruit of his training, was Father Thomas Field, who joined him_ in 1577, and by whom he was sent to Tucuman and Paraguay. Father Field appears to have been the first to penetrate the Chaco and learn the language of the Guaranis, and of all the Paraguay tribes. Sometimes he was accompanied by Fathers Solani, Grao, de Ortega, or another, but, in every missionary expedition, covering hundreds of leagues through barbarous and hostile lands, we always find his name; We read in the Annual Letters ’ of the Society of Jesus for 1592, that Fathers de Ortega and Thomas Filde converted more than two thousand of the Guaranis,’ and, 1594, 1 Fathers Thomas Filde and de Ortega have a residence established at Villa Rica (in the province of Guayra) whence they go out in missions to give spiritual help to innumerable peoples,’ They converted ten thousand Ibirayara cannibals, from whom they . rescued many prisoners who were being fattened for consumption, and their next expedition resulted in 3500 baptisms. In every place they evangelised they erected a church with the aid of their converts, and commenced the domestication of the Indians, in which they had notable success at Villa Rica. This was the seed of the Reductions. The Missionaries Were Picked Men from all the nations of Europe, but the hardships were great, and they soon died, some of fever, some at the hands of the natives, and early in 1605 Father Field was the only Jesuit left in Paraguay. However, he was joined the same year by Fathers Cataldino and Maceto, and later by Father Torres, the Provincial, and fifteen others. Already they were a prey to calumny for refusing to lend themselves to the exploitation or enslavement of the Indians, and Father Valdivia, who had for this reason been expelled from Santiago, was sent to Madrid to secure the authority of the King for the protection and isolation of the Indians. In 1608, Philip 111. issued letters patent to the Society of Jesus for the conversion of the Indians, and in 1610, on the soil cultivated by Fathers Field and de Ortega, the Reduction of Loreto was established among the Guaranis on the banks of the Paranapane. Thither the Indians flocked in such numbers that a second, San Ignacio, was soon found necessary, and then a third, till they grew to thirty-one, comprising 200,000 souls, virtuous, prosperous, and happy. Jesuit volunteers poured in from Europe to meet the growing needs, and these were quickly made ready for the work by Father Field, who, in his seventieth year, after five decades of gigantic toil, devoted himself to teaching the new recruits the language and habits of the natives and the secrets of missionary life. The Indians named him- ‘ the man without vices,’ but he was also adorned with apostolic virtues, and ‘ is more fit, perhaps,’ says Father Hogan, S.J. Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth Century) * than any other Irishman of nearly a thousand years to take rank with the early missionaries on the Continent )of Europe.’ . He is variously written Filde and del Campo, and Graham makes him ‘a Scotchman,’ but he was born in Limerick, in 1549, of Dr. William Field and Joanna Creagh, studied philosophy and theology in Paris and Louvain,

entered • the Society in • Borne, in 157.4,' and at once volunteered for the Indian Missions. He was accompanied by Father Yate, an English fellow-novice, who writes of him as ‘ the Yrisheman,’ adding that ‘ he did always edify by his virtuous life,’ and he was pleased to be able to send him, .*. the roll of his countrymen that be. of our Company.’ He was entered in the Irish Catalogue as ‘Thomas Field, Paraguay, 1617.’ When Father Field died in 1626, the harvest he had sown was flourishing beyond his hopes. The communal life established in the Reduction is now admitted to have admirably suited the conditions. The church, their "grandest building, was the centre of their lives. There all _heard Mass in the morning, and after their labors in the field they returned singing hymns at noon and in the evening, and Rosary and Vespers finished their day. They were separated according to sex and age, and all had to work, but bands and dances and . grand fiestas lightened and varied their labors. Two Fathers and a lay Brother, assisted by native Begidors of their own. appointment, governed each Reduction, and though the Spaniards on the coast often sought their aid against foes, the Reductions never needed any. Their pious exercises did not prevent them from prospering .in fruits and herds and well-stored granaries. They had simple food and clothing in plenty, paid; tribute in kind to the King, and even supplied armed warriors when required.

This Apparent Prosperity was the Ruin of the Missions. The many greedy Spaniards on the Peruvian coast who, says Muratori, ‘ did not go to America with the desire of being saints’ and ‘ would rather die of hunger and want than hold a plough,’ and the ‘ Mamelucos ’ of St. Paula motley collection of half-breeds ‘ and Portuguese, Spanish, English, Dutch, and Italian robbers and refugees ’ —began to make slave expeditions on the Indians and treat them after the fashion recorded of Putumayo. However, * the governors and bishops and higher officials' were worthy men,’ and in 1690, Prince Santo Bueno, Governor of Peru, inflicted heavy fines and penalties for such crimes, on the petition of Father de Arce, and empowered the Father to establish a new Reduction ampng the Chiquitos, who were most oppressed. But the more the colonies prospered, the more the stories grew of the gold and wealth and treasonable intents of the Jesuits. ‘Let the zeal of any class of men be what it may,’ says Graham, ‘if they oppose themselves to slavery and at the same time are reported to have lands in which is gold and resolutely exclude adventurers from them, their doom is scaled,’ In 1750, the Indians of the seven flourishing Reductions of Uruguay were forcibly transplanted to the forests by the troops of Portugal and Spain, who possessed themselves of these towns; and because the Indians resisted and a Jesuit (Thaddeus Ennis, most probably an Irishman) remained with them to the end as priest and physician, a new pretext was found against the Jesuits, and so in 1-767, without charge or crime, by Royal Edict, they were ‘ carried off in chains from the territories which they and their Order had civilised and ruled for almost 200 years.’ No gold nor treasure was found; only the Indians, and these were so maltreated that those who could returned to the woods. In thirty years the work was undone, and now little vestige remains except the field crosses here and there that tell how a martyred missionary ‘ Hie occisus est.’ That neither Paraguay nor Putumayo is typical of the general treatment of the Indians by Spaniards or Portuguese or their descendants seems-proved by the fact that the population of Peru is 57 per cent, pure Indian, and 30 per cent, mixed, and elsewhere like conditions obtain, but this outline' of the rise and fall of the greatest of all Indian missionary enterprises will give a general idea of what should be done and what avoided in the establishment * and maintenance of effective Catholic missions among the Indians.