Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/161

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AND CHRISTIANITY.
145

CHAPTER XI.


THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL.


Though we now make our first inquiry into the conduct of the Portuguese towards the natives of their colonies, and enter upon so immense a scene of action as that of the vast empire of Brazil, our notice may happily be condensed into a comparatively small space, because the features of the settlement of Paraguay by the Spaniards, and that of Brazil by the Portuguese are wonderfully similar. The natives were of a like character, bold and warlike, and were treated in like fashion. They were destroyed, enslaved, given away in Encomiendos, just as it suited the purpose of the invaders; the Jesuits arrived, and undertook their defence and civilization, and were finally expelled, like their brethren of Paraguay, as pestilential fellows, that would not let the colonists "do as they pleased with their own."

Yanez Pinzon, the Spaniard, was the first who discovered the coast of Brazil, in A.D. 1500, and coasting northward from Cape Agostinho, he gave the natives such a taste of the faith and intentions of the whites as must have prepared them to resist them to