I do not mean to say that they exhibited Christianity in all the splendour of its unadulterated truth;—no, they had enough of the empty forms and legends, and false pretences, and false miracles of Rome, about them; but they exhibited one great feature of its spirit—love to the poor and the oppressed, and it was at once acknowledged by them to be divine. I do not mean to say that they adopted the soundest system of policy in their treatment of the Indians; for their besetting sin, the love of power and the pride of intellectual dominance, were but too apparent in it; and this prevented their labours from acquiring that permanence which they otherwise would: but they did this, which was a glorious thing in that age, and in those countries—they showed what Christianity, even in an imperfect form, can accomplish in the civilization of the wildest people. They showed to the outraged Indians, that Christianity was really a blessing where really embraced; and to the Spaniards, that their favourite dogmas of the incapacity of the Indians for the reception of divine truth, and for the patient endurance of labour and civil restraint, were as baseless as their own profession of the Christian faith. They stood up against universal power and rapacity, in defence of the weak, the innocent, and the calumniated; and they had the usual fate of such men—they were the martyrs of their virtue, and deserve the thanks and honourable remembrance of all ages.
In strictly chronological order we should have noticed the Portuguese in Brazil, before following the Spaniards to Paraguay; as Paraguay was not taken possession of by the Spaniards till about twenty years after the Portuguese had seized upon Brazil: but it is of more consequence to us to take a consecutive view of the conduct of the Spaniards in South America, than to take the settlement of different countries in exact order of time. Having with this chapter dismissed the Spaniards, we shall next turn our attention to the Portuguese in the neighbouring regions of Brazil, and then pursue our inquiries into their treatment of the natives in their colonies in the opposite regions of the world.
The Spaniards entered this beautiful country with the same spirit that they had done every other that they had hitherto discovered;—but they found here a different race. They had neither creatures gentle as those of the Lucayo Islands, nor of Peru, nor men so far civilized as these last, nor as the Mexicans to contend with. They did not find the natives of these regions appalled with their wonder, or paralysed with prophecies and superstitious fears; but like the Charaib natives, they were fierce and ferocious—tattooed and disfigured with strange gashes and pouches for stones in their faces; quick in resentment, and desperate cannibals. When Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the Plata in 1515, he landed with a party of his men in order to seize some of the natives; but they killed, roasted, and devoured, both him and his companions. Cabot, who was sent out to form a settlement there ten years afterwards, treated the natives with as little ceremony, and found them as quick to return the insult. Diego Garcia, who soon followed Cabot, came with the intention of carrying off _eight hundred slaves to Portugal_, which he actually accomplished, putting them and his vessel into the charge of a Portuguese of St. Vincente. Garcia made war on the great tribe of the Guaranies for this purpose, and thus made them hostile to the settlement of the Spaniards. In 1534, the powerful armament of Don Pedro de Mendoza, consisting of eleven ships and eight hundred men, entered the Plata, and laid the foundation of Buenos Ayres. One of his first acts was to murder his deputy-commandant, Juan Osorio; and one of the next to make war on the powerful and vindictive tribe of the Quirandies, who possessed the country round his new settlement: the consequences of which were, that they reduced him to the most horrid state of famine, burnt his town about his ears, and eventually obliged him to set sail homeward, on which voyage he died.