Editing Jesuits (section)

====Northern Spanish America====
{{More citations needed section|date=August 2020}}
[[File:Acosta2.jpg|thumb|upright|Acosta's {{lang|es|Historia natural y moral de las Indias}} (1590) text on the Americas]]

In 1571, the Jesuits arrived in the [[Viceroyalty of Peru]]. It was a key area of the [[Spanish Empire]], with a large indigenous populations and huge deposits of silver at [[Potosí]]. A major figure in the first wave of Jesuits was [[José de Acosta]] (1540–1600), whose 1590 book {{lang|es|Historia natural y moral de las Indias}} introduced Europeans to Spain's American empire, via fluid prose and keen observation and explanation, based on 15 years in Peru and some time in [[New Spain]] (Mexico).{{sfn|Brading|1991|p=185}}

The Viceroy of Peru [[Francisco de Toledo|Don Francisco de Toledo]] urged the Jesuits to evangelize the [[Indigenous peoples of Peru]], wanting to put them in charge of parishes, but Acosta adhered to the Jesuit position that they were not subject to the jurisdiction of bishops and to catechize in Indigenous parishes would bring them into conflict with the bishops. For that reason, the Jesuits in Peru focused on education of elite men rather than the indigenous populations.{{sfn|Brading|1991|p=185}}

[[File:StPeterClaver.jpg|thumb|[[Peter Claver]] ministering to African slaves at [[Cartagena de Indias|Cartagena]]]]
To minister to newly arrived African slaves, [[Alonso de Sandoval]] (1576–1651) worked at the port of [[Cartagena de Indias]]. Sandoval wrote about this ministry in {{lang|es|De instauranda Aethiopum salute}} (1627),{{sfn|Sandoval|2008}} describing how he and his assistant [[Peter Claver]], later canonized, met slave transport ships in the harbour, went below decks where 300–600 slaves were chained, and gave physical aid with water, while introducing the Africans to Christianity. In his treatise, he did not condemn slavery or the ill-treatment of slaves, but sought to instruct fellow Jesuits to this ministry and describe how he catechized the slaves.{{sfn|Brading|1991|pp=167–169}}

[[Rafael Ferrer (Jesuit)|Rafael Ferrer]] was the first Jesuit of [[Quito]] to explore and found missions in the upper [[Amazon River|Amazon]] regions of [[South America]] from 1602 to 1610, which belonged to the [[Audiencia Real|Audiencia]] (high court) of Quito that was a part of the [[Viceroyalty of Peru]] until it was transferred to the newly created [[Viceroyalty of New Granada]] in 1717. In 1602, Ferrer began to explore the Aguarico, Napo, and Marañon rivers in the Sucumbios region, in what is today Ecuador and Peru. Between 1604 and 1605, he set up missions among the Cofane natives. In 1610, he was martyred by an apostate native.

In 1639, the Audiencia of Quito organized an expedition to renew its exploration of the Amazon river and the Quito Jesuit (Jesuita Quiteño) [[Cristóbal de Acuña]] was a part of this expedition. In February 1639, the expedition disembarked from the Napo river. In December 1639, they arrived in what is today [[Pará]], Brazil, on the banks of the Amazon river. In 1641, Acuña published in Madrid a memoir of his expedition to the Amazon river entitled {{lang|es|Nuevo Descubrimiento del gran rio de las Amazonas}}, which for academics became a fundamental reference on the Amazon region.

In 1637, the Jesuits Gaspar Cugia and Lucas de la Cueva from Quito began establishing the [[Mainas missions]] in territories on the banks of the [[Marañón River]], around the [[Pongo de Manseriche]] region, close to the Spanish settlement of [[Borja, Peru|Borja]]. Between 1637 and 1652 there were 14 missions established along the [[Marañón River]] and its southern tributaries, the [[Huallaga River|Huallaga]] and the [[Ucayali River|Ucayali]] rivers. Jesuit de la Cueva and Raimundo de Santacruz opened up two new routes of communication with Quito, through the [[Pastaza River|Pastaza]] and [[Napo River|Napo]] rivers.

[[File:The Marañon or Amazon River with the Mission of the Society of Jesus WDL1137.png|thumb|upright=1.05|[[Samuel Fritz]]'s 1707 map showing the Amazon and the [[Orinoco]]]]

Between 1637 and 1715, [[Samuel Fritz]] founded 38 missions along the length of the Amazon river, between the Napo and Negro rivers, that were called the Omagua Missions. Beginning in 1705, these missions were continually attacked by the Brazilian [[Bandeirantes]]. In 1768, the only Omagua mission that was left was San Joaquin de Omaguas, since it had been moved to a new location on the Napo river away from the Bandeirantes.

In the immense territory of Maynas, the Jesuits of Quito made contact with a number of indigenous tribes which spoke 40 different languages, and founded 173 Jesuit missions, encompassing 150,000 inhabitants. Because of the constant epidemics of smallpox and measles and warfare with other tribes and the [[Bandeirantes]], the number of Jesuit Missions were reduced to 40 by 1744. The Jesuit missions offered the Indigenous people Christianity, iron tools, and a small degree of protection from the slavers and the colonists.<ref name="Cambridge University Press">{{cite book |last1=Taylor |first1=Anne Christine |title=The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas |chapter=The Western Margins of Amazonia from the Early Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century |date=1999 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0521630757 |pages=225–226 |doi=10.1017/CHOL9780521630764.005 |chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521630764.005 }}</ref>

In exchange, the Indigenous had to submit to Jesuit discipline and adopt, at least superficially, a lifestyle foreign to their experience. The population of the missions was sustained by frequent expeditions into the jungle by Jesuits, soldiers, and Christian Indians to capture Indigenous people and force them to return or to settle in the missions.<ref name="Cambridge University Press"/> At the time when the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America in 1767, the Jesuits registered 36 missions run by 25 Jesuits in the Audiencia of Quito – 6 in the Napo and Aguarico Missions and 19 in the Pastaza and Iquitos Missions, with a population at 20,000 inhabitants.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cipolletti |first1=Maria Susana |last2=Magnin |first2=Juan |title='Nostalgia del monte'. Indigenas del Oriente peruano segun un manuscripto del jesuita Juan Magnin (Borja 1743) |journal=Anthropos |date=2008 |volume=103 |issue=2 |pages=509 |doi=10.5771/0257-9774-2008-2-507 |jstor=40467427 |issn=0257-9774 }}</ref>