draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

9.1 Jesuit Interactions with the Omagua in Maynas
In this section we summarize the history of interaction between the Omagua and the Jesuit missionaries
who worked with them, 298 with the goal of providing information relevant to contextualizing
the textual practices which gave rise to the ecclesiastic texts analyzed in previous chapters.
Although there were sporadic efforts to missionize the Omaguas of the upper Napo region in
the 1620s and 1630s (see Chapter 1), sustained interaction between Jesuits and Omaguas dates
to the arrival of Samuel Fritz 299 (b. 1651 Trautenau, Bohemia 300 – d. 1725 301 Jeberos, Peru) in
1685. 302 When Fritz arrived in their territory, the Omagua inhabited the islands in the middle of
the Amazon River, in a region stretching approximately from the confluence of the Amazon and
Napo to the confluence of the Amazon and Juruá (Myers 1992:134). Fritz founded almost 40
mission settlements (Anonymous [1731]1922), the most important of which was San Joaquín de
Omaguas, founded in the first years of Fritz’s missionary activities, and then moved, by January
1689 (Anonymous [1731]1922:59), to the mouth of the Ampiyacu river, near the modern-day town
of Pebas in the Peruvian Department of Loreto (Espinosa Pérez 1955:236). 303
In the decade following Fritz’s arrival, relations between Omaguas and Jesuits appear to have
been amicable, and the Omagua communities experienced relative peace. By the 1690s, however,
slave raids, originally launched intermittently from Pará (modern-day Belém, Brazil), became so
intense and frequent that the downrivermost Omagua, as well as neighboring Yurimaguas and
Aisuaris, fled to the comparative safety of the Jesuit mission settlements nearer the mouth of the
Napo River, including San Joaquin de Omaguas. This influx of Omagua refugees coincided with
the deterioration of the relationship between the Jesuits and the longer-term Omagua residents of
the mission settlements. 304 By 1697, Omagua unhappiness with the Jesuits reached the point of
open conflict, and Omaguas in several settlements rose up against the Jesuit missionary presence,
under the leadership of the Omagua cacique (indigenous leader) Payoreva. At Fritz’s behest, a small
298 Historical works focusing on interactions between Omaguas and Europeans in the early colonial period, and on
what can be inferred about immediately pre-contact Omagua society include Jorna (1991); Myers (1992); Newsom
(1996); Oberem (1967/1968); Porro (1981, 1983, 1994); Reeve (1993); Grohs (1974) and references therein. See
also Chapter 1 for an overview of early population distributions and estimates of the total number of Omagua.
299 Fritz detailed his early missionary activity among the Omagua in a set of personal diaries written between 1689 and
1723. Lengthy passages from these diaries were compiled and interspersed with commentary by an anonymous
author in the time between Fritz’s death and 1738, when they appear in the collection of texts that comprise
Maroni ([1738]1988). They were first published in English in 1922 by George Edmundson, who located a Spanish
copy of the diaries in the Biblioteca Pública de Évora in Portugal (Anonymous [1731]1922).
300 We here adopt Jouanen’s (1943:732) birth date and place, as his data generally appears reliable.
301 There are discrepancies surrounding the date of Fritz’s death (e.g., Edmundson (1922:31), de Velasco
([1789]1981:507). Although a thorough review of these claims (and those surrounding Fritz’s birth) is outside
the scope of this work, we side with Astrain (1925:414), Jouanen (1943:732) and Sierra (1944:161) in providing
1725. Astrain (ibid.) cites a tribute to Fritz in the cartas anuas of that year that appear to prove his claim
without a doubt. For the narration of events surrounding Fritz’s death, see Maroni ([1738]1988:370) (there are
some significant errors in Edmundson’s English translation of this passage).
302 There are discrepancies in the dates given for Fritz’s arrival among the Omagua (e.g., de Velasco ([1789]1981:501)
and Edmundson (1922:5)). Fritz himself states that he began missionary activities among them in 1685 (Anonymous
[1731]1922:130). Astrain (1920:615), citing a letter dated 10 December 1685 from Heinrich Richter, another
Jesuit who arrived in Maynas in company with Fritz, claims Fritz’s arrival in Maynas to have been 18 November
1685. Astrain (1920:615-616) cites another letter from Juan Lorenzo Lucero, then Jesuit Superior, dated 31 December
1685, in which Lucero describes the locations to which the recently arrived fathers had dispersed, indicating
that Fritz has gone downriver to establish 10 mission settlements (Sp. pueblos) among the 31 communities (Sp.
pueblecitos) in which the Omagua were then divided.
303 For additional summaries of Fritz’s missionary activities, see Jouanen (1943:397-410) and Sierra (1944:153-161).
304 See Jouanen (1943:397-407) and Grohs (1974:76-78) for summaries of Omagua uprisings and displacement and
Anonymous ([1731]1922:99-114) for details.
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