draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

9.5 Text History
The goal of this section is to combine our knowledge of the history of Jesuit interactions with
the Omaguas and our analysis of the Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts to identify likely Jesuit
contributors to the development of the texts, and to the degree possible, clarify how these texts
have come down to us in the present.
Our assessment of which Jesuits are likely to have contributed to the Old Omagua ecclesiastical
texts is based on: 1) the length of their engagement with the Omaguas ; 2) their fluency in Omagua,
as explicitly discussed in historical materials, or as implied by explicit mention of their involvement
in the preparation of descriptive linguistic materials; 3) the political and demographic stability of
the mission settlements in which the missionary in question worked; and, of course, 4) any explicit
mention of their having developed ecclesiastical texts (see Table 9.3). We emphasize, however, that
in no case is it possible to identify the contributors with certainty, as none of the manuscript copies
of these texts are known to be signed or annotated in any way that indicates their provenance.
Table 9.3: Reported Authors of Old Omagua Texts
Name Origin Period Location
Simón de Rojas ??? 1621 Aguarico River
Humberto Coronado ??? 1621 ""
Samuel Fritz Bohemia 1685-1704 San Joaquín and downriver
Wilhelm Grebmer Baden ?-1735-? Yurimaguas (Huallaga River)
The first Omagua catechism mentioned in the historical record dates to the Jesuits’ first major
encounter with the Omaguas, Simón de Rojas’ and Humberto Coronado’s 1621 expedition to the
Aguarico River basin (see Chapter 1). The ultimate fate of this document is unknown, although
given broader Jesuit linguistic practices (see §9.2), we expect that a copy of this catechism was
archived in Quito. Although the Catechism Fragment was located in Quito (see Chapter 5) we
do not believe that it is a copy of the Rojas and Coronado catechism, as there is, as we discuss
below, good reason to believe that the Catechism Fragment is a copy of a text in use in the Maynas
missions in the mid 18th century.
We also do not know if Samuel Fritz was aware of the existence of this first catechism when he
passed through Quito, en route to Maynas, in 1685 ((Jouanen 1943:732)), or whether he availed
himself of it. However, the fact that he does not mention the catechism in his correspondence, in
which he does discuss the linguistic diversity of Maynas, the fact that he was learning Quechua
in Quito, and the likelihood that he would be sent to work among the Omagua (Bravo Santillán
and Grosser 2007:69), suggests that he did not. We suspect, then, that de Rojas and Coronado
catechism was never incorporated into the main Maynas Old Omagua ecclesiastical text tradition,
possibly due to the fact that there was a significant break, both in time, and institutionally, between
Rojas’ and Coronado’s efforts to missionize the Upper Napo Omaguas, and Fritz’s engagement with
the Omaguas some 64 years later.
Samuel Fritz is of course the prime candidate for having initiated the Old Omagua ecclesiastical
text tradition. Fritz is reported to have a prepared an Omagua wordlist and grammar ((Hervás y
Panduro 1800:200)), which testifies to his linguistic abilities, and we deem it very likely that Fritz
came to be fluent in Omagua, given his complete immersion in Omagua society and the success of his
evangelical activities. We also have no reason to believe that Quechua was spoken by the Omagua
during the early years of Fritz’s work in their communities, meaning that Fritz probably did not
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