Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/369

Rh made an irruption into the province, which they laid waste, on the pretext that an Indian of a distinguished class had been scourged with rods by the Jesuits. The pride of some, and the ignorance of others, prevented the pacific negotiations which might have been entered on with the Indians. Every thing was to be accomplished by the point of the lance; and peace was to be purchased on no other condition than that of the extermination of the enemy. Don Antonio de Texerina, Don Juan de Echalar, Don Martin Ascue, &c. took the field at different times.

These expeditions resembled those of the ancient feudal governments of Europe; each of the soldiers entering on the campaign, at his own cost, for a determinate number of days, and returning whenever he had exhausted the small store of provisions he had drawn from his necessitous abode. To explain this subject still better, they were undertaken without system, order, discipline, or subordination; and having for their sole aim the ancient and deplorable mania of conquest, the soldiery penetrated into the territory occupied by the Indians, where they put to death or captured a few of them, as the fruit of their enterprize, and returned to their homes. It is by no means surprizing, that, in the prosecution of so irregular a plan, all the martial attempts should have been unsuccessful, and should not have produced any other effect beside that of impoverishing the country.

The useless desire to exterminate the Chirihuanos, and to subdue them by the dint of arms, was abandoned in Tarija several years ago. The love of humanity, philosophy, and the enlightened policy of the more recent governors, have dissipated the ideas of coercion and violence, and have succeeded in