Chapter 34 - The Grand Bear Hunt by Mayne Reid
The Old Missions
Passing many scenes of interest, and meeting with several other strange incidents, our travellers at length arrived at Archidona—a small town at the head of boat navigation upon the Napo, and the usual port of embarkation for persons proceeding from the country around Quito to the regions upon the Amazon. Up to this place they had been journeying through a complete wilderness—the only exceptions being some missionary stations, in each of which a monkish priest holds a sort of control over two or three hundred half christianised Indians. It would be absurd to call these missions civilised settlements: since they are in no degree more advanced, either in civilisation or prosperity, than the maloccas, or villages of the wild Indians—the “infidels,” as it pleases the monks to call those tribes who have not submitted to their puerile teachings. Whatever difference exists between the two kinds of Indians, is decidedly in favour of the unconverted tribes, who display at least the virtues of valour and a love of liberty, while the poor neophytes of the missions have suffered a positive debasement, by their conversion to this so called “Christian religion.” All these monkish settlements—not only on the Napo, but on the other tributaries of the Amazon—were at one time in a state of considerable prosperity. The missionary padres, backed by a little soldier help from the Spanish Government, were more able to control their Indian converts, and compel them to work—so that a certain amount of prosperity was visible in the mission settlements, and some of them had even attained to a degree of wealth. This, however, was but an apparent civilisation; and its benefits only extended to the monks themselves. The Indian neophytes were in no way bettered by the wealth they created. Their condition was one of pure slavery—the monks being their masters, and very often hard taskmasters they proved themselves—living in fine conventual style upon the sweat and labour of their brown-skinned converts. The only return made by them to the Indians was to teach the latter those trades, by the practice of which they themselves might be benefited, and that was their sole motive for civilising them. On the other hand, instead of endeavouring to cultivate their intellectual nature, they strove in every way to restrain it—inculcating those doctrines of duty and obedience, so popular among the priests and princes of the world. They taught them a religion of the lips, and not of the heart—a religion of mere idle ceremonies, of the most showy kind; and above all a religion, whose every observance required to be paid for by toll and tithe. In this manner they continued to filch from the poor aboriginal every hour of his work—and keep him to all intents and purposes an abject slave. No wonder, that when the Spanish power declined, and the soldier could no longer be spared to secure the authority of the priest—no wonder that the whole system gave way, and the missions of Spanish America—from California to the Patagonian plains—sank into decay. Hundreds of these establishments have been altogether abandoned—their pseudo converts having returned once more to the savage state—and the ruins of convents and churches alone remain to attest that they ever existed. Those still in existence exhibit the mere remnants of their former prosperity, and are only kept together by the exertions of the monks themselves—backed by a slight thread of authority, which they derive from the superstitions they have been able to inculcate. In fact, in the missions now existing, the monks have no other power than that which they wield through the terrors of the Church; and in most cases, these padres constitute a sort of hierarch chieftaincy, which has supplanted the old system of the curacas, or caciques.
At one period the missions of the Napo were both numerous and powerful. That was while they were under the superintendence of those active apostles, the Jesuit fathers; but most of their settlements have long ago disappeared; and now only a few sparse stations exist along the borders of the great Montaña.
In ascending the Napo, our travellers had an opportunity of visiting some of these old missionary establishments; and observing the odd rigmarole of superstitions there practised under the guise, and in the name of religion—a queer commingling of pagan rites with Christian ceremonies—not unlike those Buddhistic forms from which these same ceremonies have been borrowed.
One advantage our travellers derived from the existence of these stations: they were enabled to obtain from them the provisions required upon their long riverine voyage; and without this assistance they would have found it much more difficult to accomplish such a journey.
Beyond Archidona the rest of the journey to Quito would have to be performed on horseback, or rather muleback; but they were not going direct to Quito. Between them and the old Peruvian capital lay the eastern Cordillera of the Andes, and it was along its declivities, and in the valleys between its transverse spurs, facing the Montaña, they would have to search for the haunts of the bear.
On the Napo itself, still higher up than Archidona—where the stream, fed by the snows of the grand volcano of Cotopaxi, issues from the spurs of the Andes—there were they most likely to accomplish the object of their expedition, and thither determined they to go.
Having procured mules and a guide, they proceeded onward; and after a journey of three days—in which, from the difficulty of the roads, they had travelled less than fifty miles—they found themselves among the foot-hills of the Andes—the giant Cotopaxi with his snowy cone towering stupendous above their heads.
Here they were in the proper range of the bears—a part of the country famous for the great numbers of these animals—and it only remained for them to fix their headquarters in some village, and make arrangements for prosecuting the chase.
The little town of Napo, called after the river, and situated as it is in the midst of a forest wilderness, offered all the advantages they required; and, choosing it as their temporary residence, they were soon engaged in searching for the black bear of the Cordilleras.