Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/771

 REDUCTIONS

691

REDUCTIONS

The houses were arranged in separate groups {vici, of the Crown consisted, for the first reductions, of a

insula) of six to ten dwellings each, to diminish the danger of fire. The "college" was separated from the plaza bj' a wall and a small courtyard, and by another wall from the adjoining buildings, which con- tained the schools, workshops, store-houses etc. Be- hind lay the carefully-kept garden of the Fathers.

The churches, mostly three-aisled, built of massive blocks of stone, with a richh'-decorated facade, a main door, and several wide entrances, convey an impression of grandeur even as ruins (Ave-Lallemand, "Reisen durch Siid-Brasilien", Leipzig, 1859; Gay, op. cit., 321 sq.; Hernandez, in "Raz6n v F^", VI, 224; V, 235; VII, 236). In the massive belfries, which mostly stood apart from the churches, hung six or even more bells, which latterly were cast in the Reductions. The rich interior furnishings would have graced any cathedral. Besides the chiu-ch, each village had one or more chapels for the dead, in which the corpses were exposed and whence they were taken away, also a church- yard chapel. The cemetery, laid out alongside the church and enclosed by a wall with a pillared hall, was, with its rows of orange trees and its wealth of flowers, truly "a sacred garden of the dead" (Sou they, " History of Brazil ", 3 vols., London, 1819, II, 414). To the left of the ceme- tery, isolated and surrounded by a wall, stood the coii- guazu (the big house), which served as an asylum for the widows, who lived there in common ; as a reformatory for

women; as a home for cripples; and as a common Bpinning-room. Beyond the village, just at the village limits, stood the chapel of St. Isidore, the ramada or lodging-house for travelling Spaniards, and farther ofT the tile-kilns, mills, stamping-mills, tanneries, and other buildings devoted to industry. The villages

mostly lay open; only the Reductions more exposed placedinthecommonstore-house.andwereusedpartly to the inroads of bands of savages, and the estancias for the support of the poor, the sick, widows, orphans, or farms, and the cattle-corrals were protected by Church Indians, etc., partly as seed for the next year, moats, palisades, walls, or thorn hedges. To facilitate partly as reserve supply for unforeseen contingencies, communication and traffic between the various vil- and also as a medium of exchange for European goods lages, serviceable roads were laid out, often to great and for taxes (see below). The yield of the private distances. Besides, the splendid network of rivers fieldsandof privateeffortbecametheabsoluteproperty served as an excellent waterway, the mission operating of the Indians, and was credited to them individually no less than 2000 boats of various kinds on the in the common barter transactions, so that each re- Parand alone and approximately as rnany on the ceived in exchange the goods he desired. Those Uruguay (Cunninghame Graham, "A Vanished Ar- abamba plots which gave a smaller yield because of cadia", London, 19^1, 200) with its own wharves, as, fault}' individual management were exchanged from

Rms

moderate appropriation out of the state treasury (algun estipendio moderado, Deer. Philip III, 20 Nov., 1611; see Monner-Sans, loc. cit., 49) and of beUs and articles for use in the church, and later were reduced to a temporary tax exemption, and a small salary for the missionaries doing parish dut\'. In the eigh- teenth century this salary amounted to 300 pesos annually for the cura and his assistant (F. and A. L'lloa, "Voj'age de I'Amerique merid.", Amsterdam, 1752, I, .548). Consequently the natural resources of the fertile soil had to be exploited, and the Indians, lazy and careless by disposition, had to be trained to regular work.

(1) Conditions of Property. — The economic basis was a sort of communism, which, however, differed materially from the modern system which bears the same name, and was essentially theocratic. "The Jesuits", writes Gelpi y Ferro, "reahzed in their Christian commonwealth all that is good and nothing that is bad in the plans of modern Socialists and Com- munists" (Monner- Sans, loc. cit., 130; cf. "Stimmen aua Maria-Laach", loc. cit.). The land and all that stood upon it was the property of the community. The land was ap- portioned among the caciques, who allotted it to the f am ihes under them. Agricultural instru- ments and draught- cattle were loaned from the common supply. No one was permitted to sell his plot of land or his house, called abamba, i. e. "own possession". The individual efforts of the Indians, owing to their indolence, soon proved to be inadequate, whereupon separate plots were set aside as common fields, called Tupamha, i. e. "God's property", which were cultivated by common labour, under the guid- ance of the Padres. The products of these fields were

e. g. at Yapej'u. The population varied widely in the different villages, ranging between 350 and 7000 souls.

B. The Economic Systetn nf lite Reductions. — The plan of the Jesuits of forming, with rude tribes of nomads, a large commonwealth, separate from the Spanish colonics, and far in the interior of a covmtry but little explored, placed before them the difficult problem of making the commonwealth economically indopenilent and self-sustaining. If the Indians were obliged, day by day, to gather their means of su.s- tenanee in the forest .-iiid nn the plain, they would never have been lifted out of their nomad life and would have remained half-heathens. The financial support

time to time. The herds of live-stock were also com- mon property. The caballos del Santo, which were used in processions on festal occasions, were especially reserved. Thus the Reduction Los Santos Apdstoles at one time owned .599 of these.

(2) Products. — The Indians themselves were con- tent, for their needs, with the cultivation of maize, manioc, various indigenous tuberous plants and vege- tables, and a little cotton. Hu( I lie work conducted by the coinniunities continued roiistuntly to assume larger pro|)c>rtions, and surpassed by far the work of the Spanish colonies, both in regard to the variety of the products and to rational cultivation. Besides the common cereals (wheat and rice were grown