Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/88

74 mention a Bohemian, Father Samuel Fritz, who gained the special title of "The Apostle of the Omaguas." He was born in Bohemia in 1650, and in 1687 founded seven mission stations-among these Indians San Joaquin, Nuestra Señora de GuadaInpe, San Pablo, San Cristoval, San Francisco Xavier, Traguatua, and a seventh station which included twenty-seven small villages. Father Fritz spent fifty years on the forest-shores of the Amazon, shirking no danger, and died, one of the grandest figures in American missionary history, at the age of eighty years, among the Jeberos, in 1730. The constant attacks of the Portuguese hindered the prosperity of these colonies to an extraordinary degree. The suppression of the Society of Jesus at last terminated their existence, and the settled Indians went speedily to destruction. La Condamine visited the Omaguas at San Joaquin in 1743, and praised their industry and artistic skill. When Lieutenant Herndon visited them in 1852 there were only two hundred and thirty-two individuals left of the once numerous tribe.

Our knowledge of the northern group of the Omaguas is of the most indefinite character. All we have is derived from the reports of Philip von Hutten's expedition. We therefore take up again the thread of the story at the point where the German knight went on in the face of the warnings of the Uaupés, with only forty mounted men, in search of the Omaguas.

The little troop went southward in the best practicable order. They soon came to cultivated fields, in which natives were working. The Uaupés explained