Note 3 — Letter from Father Cristobal de Lara to Father Felipe de Cardenas

The Paraguay missions, among the most famous of the Society of Jesus, and an offshoot of those of Brazil, were founded in 1588. The reductions formed from the converts early in the seventeenth century, formed what has been called “the republic of Paraguay.” There the religious instructed them not only in religion, but in various trades and industries, the products of their work being communal. The great prosperity of the reductions was arrested (1631–32) by the heathen tribes of Brazil, whereupon the Christian Indians abandoned them and founded new missions at the Grand Rapids of the Parana River. In 1656 there were said to have been more than twenty towns all civilized, each containing 5,000 or 6,000 Indians, and many other towns partly civilized. Each reduction was governed by two priests. After the expulsion the missions declined rapidly. See Jesuit Relations (Cleveland reissue), xii, p. 276.