PROVINCE OF URUGUAY. 



145 



CHAP. VII. 



PROVINCE OF URUGUAY. 



Foufidation of Aldeias, called Missions, by the Spanish Jesuits for the Tappe 

 Indians— Flourish till the Expulsion of that Sect— Subsequent Decay— War 

 between the Spaniards and Portuguese— Conquest of the Seven Missions by the 

 latter Power in 1801 — Governor sent— Boundaries — Mountains — Rivers — 

 Phytology — Zoology — Names and Population of the Seven Missions at their 

 Conquest. 



In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Spanish Jesuits entered the 

 territory to the east of the river Uruguay, and there founded seven large 

 villages, called redugdes, for the habitation of various hordes of Tappes, the 

 possessors of the country, in order the better to civilize and bring them to 

 Christianity, by the same means as were practised with those of the Paranna. 

 It has been already stated, that, in the treaty of limits of 1750, the exchange of 

 these missions for Colonia do Sacramento was agreed upon by their Faithful 

 and Catholic Majesties ; and also, that the Jesuits frustrated its execution in 

 the first instance, and that, on the sudden return to Rio de Janeiro, of Gomes 

 Freyre d'Andrade, in 1756, things soon reverted to their anterior state. 



These redugdes, which made a part of the spiritual Jesuitical kingdom, 

 flourished to the period of the expulsion of their founders, when they began to 

 decay, and thirty-four years of deterioration, by imperceptible degrees, could 

 not have transformed the whole more effectually ; in which state they were, in 

 effect, at the beginning of the present century, when the declaration of war 

 between the two crowns in Europe, caused the arming of the inhabitants of the 

 capitania of Rio Grande de St. Pedro, who, since the peace of 1777, had lived 

 in tranquillity. 



Almost at the same time that the Portuguese troops of the town of St. Pedro 

 passed the river of St. Gon^alo, in 1801, against the Spanish posts, in the 

 vicinity of the western margin of the lake of Patos, a corps of Portuguese 



u 



