Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/505

Rh of two thousand souls, who were settled in two towns, which did not subsist, however, for any considerable time. The commander of the escort being charmed with the climate of the mountainous territory, quitted the new settlements with his soldiery; and the treacherous Callisecas no sooner perceived that the priests were left unprotected, than they attacked them in the town named Chupasnao, the latter defending themselves against the invasion with fire-arms. They at length found it prudent to flee from the danger, and retreated to Tulumayo, with a hundred Setebos, who followed them with an anxious wish to become christians. Notwithstanding the necessity of this retreat, and the imminent danger to which the above missionaries had been exposed, father Alonzo Caballero did not abandon the hope of the reduction of the Callisecas. Having been joined by friar Manuel Biedma, he returned with a few soldiers in the year 1663; and in that of 1665, a town, provided with a church, was completed. In this place he left, as converter, the above-mentioned friar Manuel Biedma, who was succeeded by friar Rodrigo Vazabil. The establishment remained without any particular occurrence until the year 1667, when, for want of the necessary support, the conversion was most lamentably reduced: the Callisecas having entered into a confederacy with several other nations, made an irruption into the territory of the Payansos, where they put to death many christians, and among them the reverend fathers, friar Francisco Mexia, president of the Panataguas missions, and friar Alonzo of Madrid, together with five lay brothers. On this account, and in consequence of the small-pox, which raged with extreme violence among the converted Indians, from the above time to the year 1670, the conversions of Panataguas went on gradually diminishing, insomuch that in the year 1691, four towns only were to be reckoned, and in them not more than two hundred souls of either sex, and of the different ages, but so vicious, that scarcely a trace of Christianity was to be found among them. In the year 1704, these conversions were completely lost, by the death of friar Geronimo de los Rios, who was barbarously murdered by a band of infidels, conjectured to belong to the tribe of Casibos. Not any further vestige of them was now to be found, beside the little town of Cuchero, inhabited by a very few Indians.

In the year 1712, the venerable founder of the college of Ocopa, friar Francisco de San Joseph, native of the city of Mondejar in Alcarria, arrived at Huanuco, and seeing the impossibility of re-establishing the Panataguas missions, penetrated into