These priests labored with devoted zeal to convert the natives. Their exertions were productive of great effect; a change has been gradually wrought, and the cannibal propensities, among those tribes that still remain independent, are no longer indulged.
Many missions, as they are called, that is, villages, where a priest resides and instructs the Indians in agriculture and the most essential arts of civilized life, as well as in their Catholic duties, were established by the Jesuits, and are still continued. One very unfortunate circumstance has done much to alienate the independent tribes from their white neighbours. It was thought best to make slaves of the savages, in order to civilize them. Walsh thus describes the decree and its effect.
“The Indians were, as late as 1798, the occupants of the woods, and were generally found resident on the banks of the rivers and streams which intersected the country. An elderly gentleman, who was secretary to the undertaking, informed me that it was necessary for the commissioners and workmen to go constantly armed, to be protected against their hostility. The Puvis lay on the River Parahiba, and others on the streams which fall into it.
“By a mistaken humanity, however, permission was afterwards given to the Brazilians to convert their neighbours to Christianity; and for this laudable object, they were allowed to retain them in a state of bondage for ten years, and then dismiss them free, when instructed in the arts of civilized life, and the more important knowledge of Christianity. This permission, as was to be expected, produced the very opposite effects.
“A decree for the purpose was issued so late as the year 1808, by Don John, and it was one of the measures which he thought best to reclaim the aborigines, who had just before committed some ravages. He directed that the Indians, who were conquered, should be distributed among the agriculturists, who should support, clothe, civilize, and instruct them in the principles of our holy religion, but should be allowed to use the services of the same Indians for a certain number of years, in compensation for the expense of their instruction and management.
“This unfortunate permission at once destroyed all intercourse between the natives and the Brazilians. The Indians were everywhere hunted down for the sake of their salvation; wars were excited among the tribes, for the laudable purpose of bringing in each other as captives, to be converted to Christianity; and the most sacred objects were prostituted to the base cupidity of man, by even this humane and limited permission of reducing his fellow-creatures to slavery.