Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
be “seized” by a “consuming” and “consistent passion for souls.”
31
This
desire ideally “overwhelmed” the self; it was “something that should mo-
nopolize us completely.”
32
That is, the ideal missionary was not a rational
collector but someone who had surrendered his intellect and reason in
the headlong pursuit of souls.
But this was fraught ground. It meant coming face-to-face with the
Devil, the original owner of yellow and brown gold alike, who threatened
to beguile the faithful with lightning-quick shifts between the apparently
human, the divinely valuable, and the eternally doomed.
33
Slavery
Dealing with the Devil for Indian souls meant abandoning any clear dis-
tinction between dark and light. Missionary work depended on acquiring
reliable interpreters. And there were plenty to be had for the right price.
Seventy years after Padre Cardus was loaned an Ayoreo slave to guide
him to Echoi, American missionaries discovered that captive
Bárbaros
abounded in towns like San José, San Juan, Santo Corazón, and Roboré.
The missionary passion for Indian souls was mirrored in the thriving
market for Indian slaves among the townspeople.
Jean Dye Johnson, widowed when Ayoreo warriors killed her husband
and his four companions in 1943, wrote of the inhabitants of Roboré that
they “were shameless in their desire to get their hands on some Ayoreo
who would become a laborer without pay.” She described how ranchers
familiar with Ayoreo slavery eyed the recently contacted Ayoreo bands
and “looked them over calculatingly, picking out likely prospects.” This
hunger for captive Ayoreo-speaking people was so pronounced that mis-
sionaries feared that truckloads of armed townspeople would raid the
fledgling missions to slaughter or enslave Ayoreo.
34
And after the initial
contacts with Jnupedogosode and Direquednejnaigosode bands in the
late 1940s, missionaries went to elaborate lengths to hide
Bárbaro
groups
and transport them to the missions before word got out: “Joe is working
desperately to contact these savages before they show up again because
many of the people now want to capture some of them. Others hope to
shoot at them.”
35
Is it surprising, then, that local residents initially mistook New Tribes
missionaries for slave traders and contact for enslavement? Jean Johnson
complained that the same people who supported missionary efforts could
not seem to distinguish between these two activities. “People,” she noted
in the October 1948 edition of
Brown Gold
, “again and again criticize us
