Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Horne, Antoine

HORNE, Antoine, Spanish missionary, born in Besancon, Franche-Comte in 1608; died in Bahia, Brazil, in 1697. He became a member of the Jesuit order in 1625, and was sent to the missions of South America. In 1629 he was attached to the missions of Para, and resided for several years on the borders of the river Tocantin, where he acquired a perfect knowledge of the different Indian dialects, and conceived a strong inclination for that people, who had been kept in a state approaching slavery by the Spanish and Portuguese colonists. He resolved to liberate the Indians, and asked the assent and support of his superiors. Although the Jesuits had greatly benefited in South America by the existing order of things, they resolved to give Father Horne full support. The latter travelled through the country in 1643, spoke to the Indians in every city, village, or farm he met on the way, and invited them to make their home in the vast country around the river Tocantin, where they would find freedom and abundance. The Indians came in great crowds, and, two years later, villages that had been prosperous were deserted, and many farms abandoned for want of laborers. The Portuguese colonists became incensed, and denounced Father Home as a republican agitator. The governor of Maranhão thought it necessary to order his arrest in 1646, and sent him to Lisbon, saying, in his official report, that Home's preaching constituted a danger to the authority of the crown, inasmuch as its result had already been the ruin of a formerly prosperous part of the country. John IV., being of a liberal turn of mind, sent for the imprisoned Jesuit, and, after a long conversation with him, expressed his willingness to let him return, but the council of state opposed, and, in spite of the protests of the patriarch of the Indies in behalf of Father Home, the latter remained in close confinement till 1655, when he was released and returned to Maranhão. This place was then governed by one of his former pupils, who allowed him to resume his labors among the Indians in 1656. In 1662 the governor, being satisfied that Horne's ideas would improve neither the Indians nor the country, ordered him to desist, and on his refusal arrested and sent him again to Lisbon as a prisoner. After three years of close confinement, the Jesuits obtained his release, in 1665, from the regent Luisa de Guzman under the condition that he would never return to America. Horne sailed, nevertheless, for Brazil, but, when he landed in Bahia in 1666, he was arrested and confined in a monastery, where he died. Home left several manuscripts, the publication of which was forbidden by the Portuguese government, but, through a fortunate circumstance, they fell, in 1844, at Rio de Janeiro, into the possession of Ferdinand Denis, who deposited them in the National library of Paris, and inserted several extracts from them in his numerous publications about South America.