Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/139

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AND CHRISTIANITY.
123

tries in exact order of time. Having with this chapter dismissed the Spaniards, we shall next turn our attention to the Portuguese in the neighbouring regions of Brazil, and then pursue our inquiries into their treatment of the natives in their colonies in the opposite regions of the world.

The Spaniards entered this beautiful country with the same spirit that they had done every other that they had hitherto discovered;—but they found here a different race. They had neither creatures gentle as those of the Lucayo Islands, nor of Peru, nor men so far civilized as these last, nor as the Mexicans to contend with. They did not find the natives of these regions appalled with their wonder, or paralysed with prophecies and superstitious fears; but like the Charaib natives, they were fierce and ferocious—tattooed and disfigured with strange gashes and pouches for stones in their faces; quick in resentment, and desperate cannibals. When Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the Plata in 1515, he landed with a party of his men in order to seize some of the natives; but they killed, roasted, and devoured, both him and his companions. Cabot, who was sent out to form a settlement there ten years afterwards, treated the natives with as little ceremony, and found them as quick to return the insult. Diego Garcia, who soon followed Cabot, came with the intention of carrying off eight hundred slaves to Portugal, which he actually accomplished, putting them and his vessel into the charge of a Portuguese of St. Vincente. Garcia made war on the great tribe of the Guaranies for this purpose, and thus made them hostile to the settlement of the Spaniards. In 1534, the powerful armament of Don Pedro de Mendoza,