The Portuguese who colonized Brazil in the sixteenth century were already the professional slave-dealers of Europe, and their settlements along the coast soon became a rendezvous for a lawless class of slavers, pirates, and other desperadoes.
Intermarrying with the women of the wild tribes, they produced the mixed breed of Mamelucos, which combined the courage and persistence of the white race, and the woodcraft and linguistic faculty of the Indian, with a cruelty untempered by any restraining influence whatever.
In the Orinoco missions the same destruction was wrought by slavers from Pará, ascending the Rio Negro and engaging the wild cannibal tribes as their allies, until checked by the heroic enterprise of Father Roman in 1744, and finally made impossible by the establishment of Spanish frontier garrisons about 1756.
Mamelucos, which combined the courage and persistence of the white race, and the woodcraft and linguistic faculty of the Indian, with a cruelty untempered by any restraining influence whatever.
Mameluco army advanced again, but was scattered by the neophytes led by the Fathers themselves.
Mamelucos turned in another, and began a series of raids upon the flourishing Chiquito missions of Southern Bolivia, of which the first had been established by the Jesuits in 1691.
Feeds |
Contact