The Indian Chief: The Story of a Revolution

These missions, at first insignificant and a great distance apart, insensibly increased. The Indians, attracted by the gentle amenity of the good fathers, placed themselves under their protection; and there is no doubt that if the Jesuits, victims to the jealousy of the Spanish viceroys, had not been shamefully plundered and expelled from Mexico, they would have brought around them the majority of the fiercest Indios Bravos, have civilised them, and made them give up their nomadic life.