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Requena and the Japurá: Some Eighteenth Century Watercolors of the Amazon and Other Rivers*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Robert C. Smith
Robert C. Smith*
Affiliation:
Sweet Briar College
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Extract

Spain and Portugal during the eighteenth century made two attempts to establish official boundaries between their possessions in America. Through the treaties of 1750 and 1777 joint commissions were appointed by these powers to procede with the task of determining lines of demarcation, in the Amazon region as well as in other parts of the South American domain. Neither of these two undertakings was successful. In spite of the preliminary treaties, the expeditions, the explorations, the reports, and the maps that had been made, the commissioners of Spain and Portugal could never agree upon a common boundary satisfactory to their conflicting claims. At the close of the century, therefore, the problem of the Amazon boundaries, which had so long remained a point of contention between the two Iberian nations, was still unsolved.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , April 1947 , pp. 31 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1947

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Footnotes

*

The writer gratefully acknowledges the valuable assistance received from the following persons in preparing this study: Dr. Manoel Cardozo, The Catholic University of America; Dr. Julian Stewart, Chief, Bureau of South American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution; Mr. James Aldrich, Division of Maps, Library of Congress; Don Diego Angulo Iñiguez, University of Madrid; Mr. Salvatore Mangiafico, Dr. Florence Robinson, Mr. Jovan de Rocco, and Dr. Hildegard Stücklen, Sweet Briar College.

References

1 de Varnhagen, Francisco Adolfo, Historia geral do Brasil (3rd ed., São Paulo, n. d.) IV, 346.Google Scholar The text of the treaty of 1777, known as the preliminary treaty of San Ildefonso while that of 1750 is called the treaty of Madrid, can be read in the following works: Calvo, Carlos, Recueil complet des traités, III (Paris, 1862), 130–167 Google Scholar; de Castro, José Ferrara Borges, Nova collecção de tratados, convenções, contratos e actos públicos celebrados entre a corôa de Portugal e as mais potências (Lisboa—Coimbra, 1890–1917), III, 230–267 Google Scholar; Perreira Pinto, Antônio, Apontamentos para o direito internacional, III (Rio de Janeiro, 1866), 526–545 Google Scholar; Quijano Otero, J. M., Límites de la República de los estados-unidos de Colombia (Sevilla, 1881), pp. 117–139.Google Scholar

2 These negotiations were continued until war was declared between Spain and Portugal in 1801. The cause of the dispute is the following: Spain claimed that by the treaty of Tordesillas the whole Amazon belonged to her. Nevertheless, she had permitted the Portuguese to found Belém do Pará in 1616 and to continue establishing missions and forts up the river and its tributaries until by 1777 Portuguese outposts existed as far west as Tabatinga on the Amazon and as far north as Maravitanas on the Rio Negro. Confronted by this fait accompli, and lacking the force to expel the Portuguese (Otero, Quijano, op. cit., pp. 62–63 Google Scholar), Spain sought to prevent further encroachment upon her territories of Popayán and Peru on the one hand and the Orinoco on the other. By the treaties of 1750 and 1777, which engaged the whole question of boundaries between the American possessions of the two Iberian nations, the Amazon region was assigned to the third and fourth divisions of the total commission. The field of their activities was generally defined as beginning at a point in the Rio Madeira midway between the mouth of the Rio Mamoré, a tributary of the Madeira, and the point where the latter enters the Amazon. From there, according to article 11 of the treaty of San Ildefonso, it should continue due west to a point on the east bank of the Rio Javari, down whose waters it should pass until that river meets the Amazon. From there the line should stretch down the Amazon to the most westerly mouth of the Rio Japurá, which enters the great river from the north. In article 12 it is stated that the boundary line should follow up the Japurá far enough “to cover the Portuguese establishments on the banks of the Rio Japurá and the Rio Negro as well as the communication or canal which the same Portuguese used between these two rivers at the time of the signing of the boundary treaty of January 13, 1750.” The boundary should then extend, according to this article, through those lakes and rivers which join the Japurá and Negro to the east to meet a range of mountains which was thought to exist between the Orinoco and the Amazon. On this note of vagueness ended the instruction of the treaty for that part of the boundary commission of interest to this paper.

The boundary problems with which the commission was concerned will be considered here only when they specifically involve the route followed by Francisco Requena and his companions. For an account of the later boundaries of this area see: Tapajós, Torquato, Estudo sobre o Amazonas; limites do estado (Rio de Janeiro, 1895)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Spanish case in the boundry dispute is stated fully by Quijano Otero in his work already cited. This position is attacked by Lourenço da Silva Araújo e Amazonas, a Brazilian writer, in his Diccionario topográphico, histórico, descriptivo de Comarca do Alto-Amazonas (Recife, 1852), which includes a history of Portuguese colonizing in the upper Amazon region (pp. 225–272), from 1757 to 1823 the Portuguese Capitania de São José do Rio Negro. See also Arthur Ferreira Reis, César, Historia do Amazonas (Manaus, 1931)Google Scholar. The section of the Amazon between Ega and Tabatinga is known as the Solimões or Solimones; the part above Tabatinga is called the Marañón.

3 Among the Spanish archives, the Archivo de Indias of Seville in particular; in Brazil, the Arquivo Militar, the archives of the Itamarati, the Biblioteca Nacional, the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro at Rio de Janeiro and the Arquivo Público do Pará in Belém; in Lisbon the archive of the Biblioteca Nacional (Reis, op. cit., p. 132, note 37).

4 von Spix, Johann Baptist and Philipp von Martius, Karl Friedrich, Viagem pelo Brasil, tradução de d. Lucia Furquim Lahmeyer (Rio de Janeiro, 1938), III, 366 Google Scholar. Spix reports the longitude and latitude of many places visited by the commission as determined by Costa (ibid., III, 366–367). Varnhagen (op. cit., IV, 346), mentions a collection of eight maps of the Amazon from the Rio Tapajoz to the Rio Negro in the Itamarati archive made by J. J. V. da Costa. Another entitled “Configuração da porção do rio Solimões entre a fos do Auati-paraná e do furo que passa por Fonte-Bôa, dedusida tão somente da agulha pelo dr. José Joaquim Victorio da Costa” and dated Tefé, December 8, 1782, is in the Pará archive (“Catálogo das plantas, mappas e desenhos manuscriptos existentes na primeira secção da Bibliotheca e Archivo Público do Pará,” Annees da Bibliotheca e Archivo Público do Pará (Belém), IV (1905), 137).

From 1806 to 1818 Costa was governor of the former Capitania de São José do Rio Negro (Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., pp. 263–264). He also held the rank of capitão di mar e guerra in the Portuguese navy. In 1808 Costa founded the village of São João do Príncipe on the Rio Japurá (Spix and Martius, op. cit., III, 322).

Another distinguished figure associated with the Portuguese commission was the Bahian scientist Dr. Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira (1756–1825), the so-called Brazilian Humboldt, who was sent by the Portuguese minister Martinho de Melo e Castro to record the natives, flora and fauna of the Amazon (1783–1793) as part of a broader project embracing the whole Portuguese empire. Accompanied by the draughtsmen Joaquim José Codim or Codina and José Joaquim Freire and the botanist Agostinho Joaquim do Cabo, he sojourned temporarily with the commission before proceeding to the Rio Madeira. Before his return to Portugal he assembled a Jarge collection of illustrations to accompany hit manuscript “Diario da viagem philosophica” (sec V. Corrêa filho, Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira; vida e obra do grande naturalista brasileiro [S. Paulo, 1939], pp. 220–221, for a list of published extracts). The “Ferreiriana” at the Biblioteca Nacional in Rio de Janeiro hai been catalogued by Alfredo do Vale Cabral (“Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira; noticia das obras manuscriptas e inéditas relativas á viagem philosóphica do dr. Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira pelas capitanias do Grão-Pará, Rio-Negro, Matto-Grosso e Cuyabá, 1783–1792,” Annaes da Bibliotheca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro [Rio de Janeiro], I [1876], 103–129, 222–247; II, [1877]. 192–198).

5 His full title at this time was Don Francisco Requena y Herrera, teniente coronel de infantería, ingeniero ordinario de ejército, plaxas y fronteras, gobernador de Maynas y comandante general de su provincia y de las de Quixos y Macas, primer comisario de la quarta división de límites por su magestad católica (Quijano Otero, op. cit., pp. 236, 264).

6 The ten watercolors, which are the subject of this study, are in the collection of the Oliveira Lima Library of The Catholic University of America. They are separately described on pages 50 to 65. These watercolors were purchased by Senhor Lima in 1914 from Martijnus Nijhof at The Hague, who had acquired them in Spain.

The eight Requena maps came to the Division of Maps of the Library of Congress in 1943. They are numbers 11 to 18 of a collection of manuscript maps of the period, seventeen of which have to do with Spanish and Portuguese boundaries in South America following the treaty of San Ildefonso. Seven of them (11 to 17), drawn to a scale of about 1:300,000, represent the Amazon and the Rio Japurá and its tributaries. All are strip maps overlapping to greater or less degree. All bear the inscription “Levantado por el coron. e yngen.° D.n Fran.co Requena primer comisario de la quarta partida española de límites y reglada su construcción a las observaciones de los astrónomos de la partida portugeza.” They are crisply executed in fine penmanship with clear and brilliant washes. The two Amazon maps are based on the prime meridian of Paris, while the five maps of the Rio Japurá all employ “longitudes orientales de la Isla de Ferro” (Lawrence Martin, “South American cartographie treasures,” The Library of Congress quarterly journal of current acquisitions [Washington], I, no. 3 [Jan.-March, 1944], 30–39).

The titles, in irregular orthography, read as follows: (11) “Mapa de vna parte del ryo Marañón ô de las Amazonas comprehendida entre la boca del Rio Yauari, y del caño Auatiparaná. … Ega, 21 de agosto de 1788” (129 × 48 cm.); (12) “Mapa de vna parte del ryo Marañón ô de las Amazonas comprehendida entre la boca del caño de Auatiparaná y la villa de Ega ó Tefé … Ega, 8 de septiembre de 1788” (146 v 49 cm.); (13) “Mapa de una parte del rio Yapura comprehendida desde su entrada en el rio Marañón por sv boca mas occidental hasta el pueblo de San Antonio de Maripí … Ega, 12 de octubre de 1788” (60 × 83 cm.); (14) “Mapa de una parte del rio Yapurá comprehendida desde la boca del caño de Avatiparaná immediata al pueblo de Maripí hasta la boca del rio Apaporis proxima al salto de Cupati … Ega, 12 de obtubre de 1788” (45 × 218 cm.); (15) “Mapa de una parte del rio Yapurá comprehendida desde la boca del rio Apaporis hasta el salta grande, ó cachoeira de Vuia … Ega, 12 de octubre de 1788” (60 × 200 cm.); (16) “Mapa de una parte del rio Apaporis comprehendida desde su entrada en el rio Yapurá hasta la poplaciín de los yndios Corotos Ega, 12 de octubre de 1788” (34 × 59 cm.); (17) “Mapa de una parte de los rios de los Engaños o Commuri, Mesay, Cuñare, Javiya y Rufari … Ega, 1 de enero de 1788” (77 × 59 cm.).

Each map of this series is attractively decorated with rococo ornament around the title. Number 11 has a framing cartouche composed of fragments of columns, trees and shells, to which tropical birds, a putto, and an Indian cling, while a tropical squall of rain pours down at one corner. The cartouche of number 12 is a mantle crowned by a rococo device and sustained by a trumpet-blowing female statue atop a fountain on one side and a palm tree on the other. A mantle is again used in number 13, this time held by a flying bird and a woman with a cornucopia of fruit and cereals. Below it a crocodile regards a group composed of a commissioner who touches the arm of an Indian and a seated woman with a child in her arms. Number 14 has a vignette showing a commissioner attended by Indians and a leaping dog shooting at a flock of waterfowl. (Fig. 16.) The motif of a mantle reappears in number 15 with details of rococo architecture and ornament. (Fig. 2.) Two scenes are represented below. In one two commissioners are sketching; in the second a group of Indians and animals are represented. On number 16 an Indian is hunting beneath jungle trees. A surveyor ornaments the last map of this series. The letters of the titles are in black and red; those of the word mapa are in some playfully composed of snakes, pelicans, and Indians.

A final map (18) is entitled “Mapa de parte de los virreynatos de Buenos Aires, Lima, S.ta Fe y capitanía grãl de Caracas en la América meridional con las colonias portuguesas limítrofes para acompañar al proyecto, y reflexiones sobre la mejor demarcación de límites entre las dominios de ambas coronas dispuesto, y construido por el Brig.r e Yngen.° en gefe D.n Francisco Requena (77 × 64 cm.). It was made in Spain in 1796 (ibid. p. 33) after Requena’s promotion to brigadier, and is drawn to a scale of approximately 1:4,500,000. On this map is clearly teen the line of demarcation which the commissioner proposed as the border between the Spanish and Portuguese territories. This line is accompanied by numerous single letters to which the key is not provided on the map. These symbols unfortunately do not agree with those used in explaining the boundary in Requena’s “Memoria histórica de las demarcaciones de límites en la América entre los dominios de España y Portugal, compuesta por D. Vicente Aguilar y Jurado, oficial segundo de la secretaría de estado, y D. Francisco Requena, brigadier é ingeniero de los reales ejércitos, para acompañar al mapa general, construido por este último, de todos los países por donde pasa la línea divisoria, con arreglo al tratado preliminar de límites de 1777” (Calvo, op. cit., IV, 126–230) so that it seems unlikely that the map at the Library of Congress, though closely related, could have been the one made to illustrate this report.

In the upper left hand corner of the map of 1796 there is a composition of Indians beside a canoe. It is of special interest that all trace of the rococo borders and fantasies of the other maps in the Library of Congress by Requena is now gone and in place of shells and rockwork a severe, curtain-draped frame is substituted. Requena, who had retained during his years in America the style he had learned in his youth, became a neo-classicist straightway upon his return to the Spain of Charles IV.

7 The distinguished Spanish historian of the fine arts and archivist, Don Diego Angulo Iñiguez of the University of Madrid, informed the writer on October 18, 1945, that he was unable to find information about the origins of Requena. Noting that in the region of Valencia the name of Requena is not infrequently encountered and that in the eighteenth century military engineers from the Levante frequently came to America, he suggests that Requena may have been a native of this part of Spain.

8 The following bibliographical details are drawn from Quijano Otero (op. cit., p. 152), who does not reveal the source of his information. The expedition mentioned below, which was under the leadership of the mariscal de campo, Don José Dibuja, was called off before it set out, according to Requena’s own report (Padre fray Bernardino Izaguirre Ispizúa, Historia de las missiones franciscanas, VIII [Lima, 1924], 44–45).

9 D. Pedro Metía de la Cerda, marqués de la Vega de Armijo (1700–1783), a distinguished naval figure appointed viceroy in 1758. For a discussion of this and other viceroys of Nueva Granada under whom Requena served see Ernesto Restrepo Tirado, Gobernantes del Nuevo reyno de Granada durante el siglo xviii [Publicación del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, no. 65] (Buenos Aires, 1934).

10 The writer regrets that, although he was informed by Dr. José Gabriel Navarro that a copy of this map exists in Quito, he was not able to obtain a photograph of it to compare its decoration with that of the Library of Congress maps.

11 Otero, Quijano, op. cit., p. 152.Google Scholar

12 President of the Real Audiencia de Quito, 1778–1783. For a possible explanation of his loss of the Amazon command to Requena see note 64.

13 Maynas, a government dependent at this time upon the viceroyalty of Nuera Granada and included within the Real Audiencia de Quito. The territory, which takes its name from an Indian tribe, was discovered in 1616 by Diego Vaca de Vega, who served as its first governor. The capital was at San Francisco de Borja, which was founded in 1634. Its lands, which in Requena’s time measured almost 1,100 miles from east to west (Antonio de Alcedo, Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias occidentales ó América, III [Madrid, 1788], 23–23), are now divided between Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. “Its limits, both toward the north and south, are little known, being extended far among the countries of infidel Indians; to that all the account which can be expected is from the missionaries employed in the conversion and spiritual government of the wild nations which inhabit it (Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, A voyage to South America, translated from the original Spanish … by John Adams [London, 1806], 363). In the eastern territories of Maynas the Jesuits had founded some 80 missions caring for about 15,000 souls before their expulsion in 1767 (José Chantre y Herrera, Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en el Marañón español, 1637–1767 [Madrid, 1901], 578–580). Requena recorded in 1783 a total of only 29 settlements and a population of 9,331. This decline was probably caused by the withdrawal of the Jesuits. The Franciscan writer Francisco María Compte mentions the disappearance of forty missions (Varones ilustres de la orden seráfica, II [Quito, 1883], 253). See also the account of Ricardo Beltrán Rózpide, “Las misiones de Maynas,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia [Madrid], LXIX [Sept.-Oct., 1911], 262–272).

Colonial Maynas produced principally palm wax, cacao and sarsaparilla. For a description of its trade with Portuguese America see Spix and Martius, op. cit., III, 274–276.

14 Beside Requena the other officials were: Felipe de Arechúa y Sarmiento, capitán de milicias de Quito, who served as second commissioner; Juan Manuel Benítez, teniente de milicias de Quito, who held the post of quartermaster or treasurer of the expedition; Gaspar Sentistévan, cadete habilitado de oficial, who acted as secretary; the adjudant, Juan Salivas; the chaplain, Padre Mariano Bravo; the physician, Manuel Vera; and a guarda-almacén Justo Munar, whose rank was that of cabo de aquadra (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 163).

The limited personnel of this commission is in marked contrast to the organization created to determine Spain’s Amazon boundaries after the treaty of 1750. That commission, under the leadership of Don José de Iturriaga, consisted of three commissioners, three mathematicians, four engineers, three draughtsmen, one instrumentalista, a lieutenant and two subalterns, four sergeants, and 100 soldiers (ibid., pp. 86–87). The explanation of the reduction of the staff of the second commission was primarily one of economy. Spain had declared war on England in 1779 and consequently needed to conserve manpower and provisions. The Spanish government may also have felt that the earlier expedition was unnecessarily large for the demands of its duties. By such a radical reduction of personnel, however, the authorities placed Requena in the difficult position of assuming both the command of the commission and responsibility for the details of many of its technical functions. The Spanish party found itself at a severe disadvantage vis-à-vis the Portuguese expedition, from which it was constantly obliged to ask assistance.

15 de la Condamine, Charles-Marie, Relation abrégée d’un voyage dans l’intérieur de l’Amérique méridionale (Maestricht, 1778), pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

16 Founded by Diego Palomino in 1549, capital of its government, Jaén served at a principal point from which provisions were sent to the Spaniah commission between 1781 and 1790. For a contemporary description of the town see de Alcedo y Herrera, Dionisio, Plano geogràfico y hidrográfico del distrito de la Real audiencia de Quito (New York, 1915), pp. 48–49.Google Scholar

17 Otero, Quijano, op. cit., p. 148.Google Scholar Several early travelers recommended this route in their writings (Descobrimentos do rio das Amazonas [S. Paulo, 1941], pp. 216, 219).

18 Francisco Orellana in 1542 was the first European to descend this river. Nearly a century later, in 1637, the Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira went up its waters to Quito.

19 Otero, Quijano, op. cit., p. 148.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., p. 153. In 1799 Requena, recalling his voyages from Maynas in a report for the Supremo Tribunal de Indias, stated that he had established himself at San Joaquín de Omaguas ia 1779 (Izaguirre Ispizúa, op. cit., VIII, 39).

21 Col. Joaquim Tinoco Valente, who as second governor of the capitania from 1772 to 1788 maintained his residence at Barcelos, under the jurisdiction of the governor of Pará.

22 See page 56. For a description of the region as it is today see Villiers, Cecil H., “The lower Ucayali river,” Peruvian times (Lima), Feb., 1942, pp. 39–43).Google Scholar

23 São Francisco Xavier de Tabatinga, founded by order of the governor of Pará, Fernando da Costa Ataíde Teve in 1766 “em huma ponta assaz saliente, que põe a outra banda do rio ao alcance de huma bala de espingarda” (Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., p. 337) on the aproximate site of the abandoned Aldeia de São Francisco Xavier do Javari, occupied by Jesuit missionaries between 1752 and 1755 (Leite, Serafim S.J., Historia da Companhia de Jesús no Brasil, III [Rio, 1943], 420–421)Google Scholar. Here the Portuguese maintained a fort in the form of an irregular hexagon equipped with nine pieces of artillery and projecting into the Rio Solimões. There is an eighteenth century map of this fort in the archive at Belém (“Catálogo das plantas,” loc. cit., p. 154). Tabatinga is not mentioned by La Condamine in his descent of the Amazon in 1743, but was visited by a number of nineteenth century travelers. Dr. von Spix, who was there in January, 1820 included a view of the place in his illustrated atlas; Professor Agassiz described it in 1865 (Louis Agassiz and Mrs. Agassiz, A journey in Brazil [Boston, 1868], p. 207).

24 See page 58.

25 Loreto de Paranapuras, founded in the seventeenth century by the Jesuit Raymundo de Santa Cruz, missionary of the Chayavita and Muniche Indians, has given its name to the Peruvian department in which Iquitos is situated (Villiers, Cecil H., “Iquitos and the department of Loreto,” Peruvian Times, Feb., 1942, pp. 35–38)Google Scholar. Antonio de Alcedo wrote in 1787 that near it was the first Portuguese outpost. He may have meant Tabatinga (op. cit., II, 610).

26 Veigl, Franz Xavier, “Gründliche nachrichten über die verfassung der landschaft von Maynas, in Süd-Amerika,” von Murr, Christoph Gottlieb, ed., Reisen einiger missionarien der gesellschaft Jesu in Amerika (Nürnberg, 1785), pp. 81–83.Google Scholar

27 Otero, Quijano, op. cit., p. 159.Google Scholar

28 This commission, known as the fourth division of the general boundary commission, served under the captain general of Mato Grosso, João Pereira Caldas, former governor of Píauí and Pará, who had the title of Comissário geral da terceira e quarta divisão and who maintained his residence at Barcelos. To the third division was assigned the task of bounding Mato Grosso.

Historians disagree as to the membership of the Portuguese Amazon commission in its original form. Requena, as reported by Quijano Otero (op. cit., p. 164) mentions in his garbled Spanish spellings in addition to Chermont the names of the engineers Henrique Wilkens, the second commissioner, Eusebio Sosa [Sousa] and Pedro Alexandrino; the “astrónomos” Josef Juaquin Bitorio [José Joaquim Viterio de Costa] and Joseph Simon Caraballo [José Simões de Carvalho]; the treasurer, Antonio Coitiño [Coutinho]; the secretary, Sebastián Josef Prest; the chaplains Ramón Lorenzo [Lourenço] and Domingo del Rosario; the physicians Francisco Gómez Almeida and Josef Ferreira; the escribano. Custodio Matos; the guardalmacén, Cleto Marquez; the commander of the troops, Francisco Silveira, with his lieutenant, Francisco Coitiño, two sergeants, two corporals, and forty-five soldiers as well as “doscientos veinte índios bogas y artesanos de todos oficios para el servicio de esta partida.” Araújo e Amazonas (op. cit., p. 252) gives the names of the engineers aa Henrique João Wilkens, Eusébio Antônio Ribeiro, and Pedro Alexandrino Pinto de Sousa and mentions two others, who did not come to Tabatinga, Silva Pontes and Almeida Serra. These latter are identified by V. Corrêa filho (op. cit., p. 17) as Antônio Pires da Silva Pontes, astrônomo, and Ricardo Franco de Almeida Serra, commander of the troops. Differing with Requena, he lists the names of J. Bernardes Borracho as almoxtrife or treasurer; Padre Alvaro Loureiro da Fonseca Zuzart as chaplain; Antônio José de Araújo Braga as first physician; Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida ai astrônomo. Whatever the exact formation of the commission may have been, it was considerably larger than the Spanish contingent. On the other hand, it was not so numerous a party as the commission appointed by the Portuguese government following the treaty of 1750 when the general commissioner Francisco Xavier de Mendonça Furtado, captain general of Maranhão and Pará and brother of the Marquis of Pombal, had 200 soldiers, a host of impressed Indians, and thirty-seven ships for his mission (Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., p. 244; Quijano Otero, op. cit., pp. 87–88).

29 Ibid., p. 159. This was H. J. Wilkens, who according to Quijano Otero (p. 164) was then exploring the Rio Japurá. His findings are apparently contained in his manuscript, now at the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, entitled “Diario que fez Henrique João Wilkens … partindo da villa de Ega no dia 23 de fevereiro de 1781 por ordem de sua magestade,” mentioned by Reis (op. cit., p. 129) and Varnhagen (op. cit., IV, 346). The latter adds that Wilkens published a work called Muhraída, ou a conversão e reconciliação do gentio (Lisboa, 1819). The Portuguese Francisco Xavier Ribeiro de Sampaio had already charted the Japurá in 1773, according to his map in the Pará archive (“Catálogo das plantas,” loc. cit., pp. 43, 51).

30 Quijano Otero, op. cit., pp. 159–163. Flores was viceroy from 1775 to 1782.

31 No stone was available.

32 The unsuccessful revolt of Tupac-Amarú (José Gabriel Condorcanqui), which began on November 4, 1780 at Tungasuca, Peru, and ended with the execution of this so-called Inca leader at Cuzco on May 18, 1782.

33 Ibid., pp. 160, 165, 169. Requena argued that since by both the treaties of 1750 and 1777 the line of demarcation was to come down the Rio Javari and then descend the Solimões to the most westerly mouth of the Rio Japurá the territory to the north of the point of confluence, on which Tabatinga is situated, had to belong to Spain.

34 Requena claimed that the Portuguese were secretly exploring the Rio Javari in search of a means of communicating with Mato Grosso and warned that if they were to continue to have access to it and the adjacent Río Ucayali, they could menace the bishoprics of Arequipa and Cuzco and the region of Lima itself (“Memoria histórica, loc. cit., pp. 139, 181–113, 198).

35 On June 8, 1781 Requena sent a plan of this building and an estimate of its value to the viceroy (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 167). A plan in duplicate, signed by both Requena and Chermont and dated July 18, 1781, is in the archive at Belém (“Catálogo das plantas,” loc. cit., p. 137). Spix saw the ruins of the structure in 1820 (Spix and Martius, op. cit., III, 290).

36 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 166. Requena was already establishing a colony and beginning to farm but was unable to obtain Indian settlers from the missionaries “… se desmontó el terreno, se formaron chacras, se hicieron casas, se cubrió de nuevo la Iglesia, se procuró tapar las goteras del palacio, se dió declive a las calles, formando canales para las lluvias en todas ellas, y es tabelecer un misionero para las familias de los índios …” (ibid., p. 169). Apparently the Portuguese at first permitted Requena and his men to take charge of the town. After the refusal of Caldas to give up Tabatinga, however, which came after the commissioners had been there three months (ibid., p. 165), their attitude was sharply modified because Requena records that they seized some of his settlers and interfered with the activities of his men, even forbidding them to obtain food from the Indians (“Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., p. 228).

As for the line of separation on the Rio Negro, Requena wanted it, beginning on the south bank of the Rio Japurá above the mouth of the Apaporis, to pass between the Spanish forts and the Portuguese outposts of São Gabriel and Maravitanas founded in 1763 (ibid., p. 201). It is so indicated on his 1796 map at the Library of Congress. For a description of the fort at Maravitanas see Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., p. 191.

37 “Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., pp. 181–184.

38 Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., p. 191; Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 166.

39 It was dated July 5, 1781 (“Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., p. 140).

40 Op. cit., III, 300, note xi.

41 In making the decision to leave Tabatinga Requena was opposed by his second in command, Felipe de Arechúa, and Benítez, who argued that the commission should remain there until the question of the possession of the town should be officially decided by superior authorities (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 175).

42 “A St. Paul, now commençâmes à voir au lieu de maisons & d’Eglises, des roseaux, des chapelles & des presbytères de maçonnerie, de terre et de briques, & des murailles blanchies proprement. Nous fûmes encore agréablement surpris, de voir au milieu de ces déserts, des chemises de toile de Bretagne, à toutes les femmes Indiennes, des coffres avec des serrures, & des clefs de fer dans leurs ménages, & d’y trouver des aiguilles, de petits miroirs, des coûteaux, des ciseaux, des peignes, & divers autres petits meubles d’Europe, que les Indiens se procurent tous les ans au Pará, dans les voyages qu’ils y font pour y porter le Cacao qu’ils recueillent sans culture sur les bords du fleuve. Le commerce avec le Pará donne à ces Indiens & à leurs Missionaires, un air d’aisance qui distingue au premier coup d’oeil les Missions Portugaises, des Missions Castellanes du haut du Maragnon, dans lesquelles tout se ressent de l’impossibilité où ont les Missionaires de la Couronne d’Espagne, de se fournir d’aucune des commodités de la vie, n’ayant aucun commerce avec les Portugais leurs voisins, en descendant le fleuve; & tirant tout de Quito, où à peine envoyent-ils une fois l’année, & dont ils sont plus séparés par la Cordelière, qu’ils ne le seroient par une mer de mille lieues.” op. cit., p. 87). La Condamine made the journey here from Pevas in three days without seeing a single habitation, for this was over twenty years before the founding of Tabatinga. Mrs. Agassiz noted the ridge on which the village stood, “which rises quite sharply from the river and sinks again into a ravine behind” (op. cit., p. 206).

43 Ibid., pp. 204–205. La Condamine saw islands in the region (op. cit., p. 84).

44 Otero, Quijano, op. cit., p. 176.Google Scholar

45 Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., pp. 66, 196.Google Scholar

46 “Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., p. 141.

47 Still unconvinced, the Portuguese retorted that although in September the waters of the Solimões entered the channel the process was reversed at another season. Requena adds that the Portuguese were never willing to return and prove their claim. The exact date of the placing of this marker it not certain. Quijano Otero, following Araújo e Amazonas, says that it was on September 16, 1781 (op. cit., p. 178). Inasmuch as Requena wrote to García León y Pizarro in Quito on September 11, from the “Bocas del Yupurá” (ibid., p. 176), it must have been earlier, because the Spanish commissioner, with the strong opinions he held concerning the Auati-Paraná, would hardly have called it in an oficial report the mouth of the Rio Japurá.

48 Ibid., p. 178.

49 This town was also known as Tefé, which is the name it now bears.

50 Also written Yapurá and Yupurá by Requena and Quijano Otero. Marthit says that local Indians pronounced the first letter with a “ch” sound (op. cit., III, 305, note I). The spelling Japurá, however, which is used by Araújo e Amazonas, is the official Brazilian orthography. This form is used throughout this paper because the mouths of the river, which are the first part of the river mentioned in Requena’s narrative, are in Brazilian territory. The same practice is followed with other rivers. When a stream is Brazilian, or principally Brazilian, the word rio is here written without the acute accent. An accent is supplied where the river is entirely or predominantly in Spanish-American territory.

The Rio Japurá rises in the Colombian Andes. Its upper course is called the Río Caquetá. From the falls of Vuiá (Araraquara), the point on the river most distant from Ega to which the commission penetrated, Martius gave the distance to the mouths as approximately 480 miles (op. cit., III, 377). Estimating the mileage of the visits to the Río de los Engaños and Rio Apaporis as roughly 150 miles each way, the total round trip distance of Requena’s voyage may have been over 1,200 miles. According to Martius, Requena and Chermont were the first to navigate the upper reaches of the Rio Japurá (ibid., p. 366, note I).

51 Here they were to carry out those vague instructions of article 12 of the treaty of 1777, namely to locate a point from which a line could be drawn that would protect the Portuguese establishments on the Japurá and Negro and the canal which in 1750 the Portuguese said they used between these rivers. The identity of this passage Chermont would not divulge. Requena believed it was th Rio Puapuá (“Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., p. 195). It may have been the Rio Ajuana.

52 Salinas, Benítez, Santistévan, and José Mazorra, a secretary (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 182). Requena himself experienced pains in his head and shoulders.

53 Ibid., pp. 178–179.

54 On several occasions Requena was refused permission for himself and his men to enter the Rio Negro region en route to the Orinoco (ibid., p. 181). Impatiently he wrote to García León y Pizarro, his immediate superior, “Parece este el imperio de la China, donde hay varias jerarquías de mandarines á quienes es necessario, uno despues de otros, irles (con un ceremonial impertinente) abordando” (ibid., p. 182).

55 Ibid., p. 178.

56 Ibid., pp. 180–181.

57 On February 14 he wrote to the riceroy “Para ésta entrada al Yupurá voy escaso de víveres, con un solo soldado en cada canóa, por tener pocos para el servicio de esta expedición, y muchos enfermos; sin ningun Astrónomo, ni Ingeniero que me ayude, pues con los primeros hubiera agitado la comisión, y hubiera enviado á observar los ríos que entran al Yupurá por el rumbo del Norte, á fin de no permitir se adelanten loa portugueses … con muy pocas canóas, y éstas malas, compuestas aquí con la mayor prisa, y escaso de víveres, pues desde que yo mandé dos años hace á Jaén á buscar los que me sirvieron para emprender la marcha, no ha venido ninguno de los socorros pedidos á aquel Gobierno … (ibid., p. 186). He added: “Pero sin embargo del esudo en que me hallo, previendo que cuanto más se espere me expongo á impossibilitarme más, voy á hacer éste viaje arriesgado, pues de detenerlo, ya no se podría emprender hasta el año que viene, por no permitir aquel río con su vaciante transitarse, y ésta es la estación, según dicen, más sana y propria.” Martins said that the river is at its highest level in July and at its lowest in December (op. cit., III, 318).

58 Felipe de Arechúa was left behind to tend the sick along with the Spanish physician and to reroute Requena’s despatches to the authorities (ibid., p. 184). The Spanish commission thus undertook its journey without medical supervision.

59 Requena observed that the Portuguese were infinitely better equipped than his party (ibid., p. 198).

60 Don José de Gálvez (1729–1786), Marqués de la Sonora, Ministro universal de Indias in 1775. Ibid., p. 188. As Requena confessed (ibid., p. 190), none of the Spaniards knew the river beyond its mouths and in its upper reaches of Caquetá. They were thus again at a disadvantage before the Portuguese, who had spent at least a year in careful exploration.

61 Ibid., p. 188.

62 Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., p. 60. This author considera that it was the basic disagreement over the relation of the Rio Apaporis to the boundary that doomed the negotiations after the treaty of San Ildefonso. The present boundary between Brazil and Colombia is below this river along the Rio Taraira. The Apaporis is in Colombian territory. See also Spix and Martius, op. cit., III, 372–373.

63 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 189. The mouth of this river is actually far above the mysterious Japurá-Rio Negro passage, if it was the Rio Ajuana. For a discussion of that question see ibid., pp. 261–291.

64 The conflicting views of the two commissioners about this question are concisely set forth in the “Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., pp. 199–203. It was the so-called “tenth dispute” arising between Spain and Portugal from the whole boundary affair. In spite of all his arguments involving direction and width of rivers and the rapids they contained, Chermont was struggling to gain more territory for Portugal and to bring his country’s possessions closer to the Spanish settlements of Santa Fé and Popayán. This Requena fully realized and vigorously opposed with such statements as these: “… si a los portugueses no se ponen límites en la América meridional, llegarán muy en breve á dominar ellos solos en ella …” and “… es de esperar que desde luego [el ministerio español] tomará las más activai y eficaces providencias para detener el cáncer que llegará á destruir nuestra dominación en aquella parte del mundo.” (“Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., pp. 203, 231). Quijano Otero suggests that the Portuguese, by insisting upon going on to the Engaños and Mesay, may have been hoping to find a link with the Rio Negro there (op. cit., pp. 274–275). Had they insisted further that such a link was the passage used in 1750 they would have had a claim to vast territories far within the Spanish domain. In 1779 García de León y Pizarro, then governor of Maynas and leader of the Spanish commission to the Amazon, had almost given away these territories by reporting to the viceroy in Bogotá (who communicated the opinion to Madrid and Lisbon) that the line should ascend the Japurá “hasta más arriba de sus saltos de Cupatí, Ubiá y otros muy per cima del rio Apaporis.” (“Memoria histórica,” p. 193). Araújo e Amazonas thinks that this statement, when its implications were realized at Madrid, may have cost Don Ramón his post (op. cit., p. 255).

65 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 189.

66 Ibid., p. 236.

67 Also known as the Río Comiarí or the Río Yarí.

68 This document, published by Quijano Otero (op. cit., pp. 235–239), signed by the two commissioners on March 26, 1782, records their agreement to explore and chart the Engaños and Apaporis before submitting the question of the boundary to their superiors in Europe.

69 Ibid., p. 191.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 In 1820 Dr. von Martius saw an Indian near Maripi on the Rio Japurá wearing a blue European coat and parrying a Spanith walking stick given to him by the commission (op. cit., vol. 3, p. 324).

74 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 193. This report is dated from Ega on August 30, 1782.

75 “Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., p. 144.

76 Requena sent back 119 men (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 194).

77 Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., p. 340.

78 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 195.

79 Requena complained about this incident because, he said, it was part of a practice the Portuguese were following of destroying villages in territories claimed by Spain and resettling the inhabitants in other places. This he asserts they did at São Fernando de Andinas on the north shore of the Amazon near the mouth of the Río Putumayo and at São Joaquim on the south bank of the Rio Japurá (“Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., pp. 226–227).

80 La Condamine had noted the presence of savage Indians in the Japurá region almost forty years before (op. cit., p. 81). Martius mentioned them again in 1820 (op. cit., vol. 3, p. 306). A more recent writer records that some of the Indians were still at war with the whites (Constant Taatevin, “Statistique du Japurá,” Géographie [Paris], XXXV, no. 2 [Feb., 1921], 173).

81 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 196.

82 Ibid., p. 197.

83 Ibid., p. 199. Requena indicated in a letter to Garcia León y Pizarro dated August 28, 1782 that he suspected the Portuguese of carefully postponing a decision (ibid., p. 198).

84 Ibid., p. 246. Meanwhile the Portuguese themselves continued to explore their own and Spanish territories both openly and in secret. Requena insists that Lobo de Almada, one of the Portuguese commissioners, disguised as a common soldier who had lost his way, penetrated as far as the Rio Negro establishments of Spain (“Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., p. 230). Some of Lobo de Almada’s maps and those of the soldiers Raimundo Maurício, Inácio Rodrigues, and Desidério Luiz Lobo, dated in 1785 and 1787, are in the Pará archive (“Catálogo dot plantas,” loc. cit., pp. 59, 64, 69, 72).

85 Archbishop Antonio Caballero y Góngora, viceroy from 1782 to 1785.

86 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 201.

87 Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., pp. 254–255, 257.

88 Quijano Otero, op. cit. Don Diego Calvo took his place as firtt commissioner and governor of Maynas. The commissions were not officially dissolved until 1801 (Ibid., p. 220).

89 Reis, op. cit., p. 131, note 36.

90 Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., p. 261. This was probably the engineer José Simõet de Carvalho, a member of the Portuguese commission, who some time before had been ordered by the governor to explore the Riot Uapes, Ixié, and Japurá (ibid., p. 258).

91 Reis, op. cit., p. 131, note 36.

92 After his return to Spain Requena was raised to the rank of brigadier (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 212). He later became a member of the Consejo Supremo de Indias, a post in which he continued to follow closely the affairs of Maynas. He was largely responsible for the transfer of this area from the viceroyalty of Nueva Granada to that of Peru and for the creation of the first bishopric of Maynas in 1802 (Francisco Quecedo, El ilustrísimo fray Hipólito Rangel, primer obispo de Maynas [Publicación del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, no. 78], Buenos Aires, 1942).

93 It is apparent that from the start the Spanish officials in these places were not prepared to furnish Requena the aid he needed, either in outfitting and maintaining his expedition or in supporting his interpretations of the treaties. Their attitude can probably be explained in large measure by the fact that for the greater part of the life of the commission Spain was at war with England and, needing Portugal’s neutrality, the government was loath to do anything to antagonize that country. The Portuguese ministers seem to have taken full advantage of this situation and their point of view was reflected in the actions of the Portuugese commission in America. On leaving office in 1785 the archbishop viceroy hinted that Requena was to be criticized for following too closely the letter of the treaties of Madrid and San Ildefonso (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 222).

94 Reis, op. cit., p. 131. On this point Araújo e Amazonas says “… o Commissario Requena, mascarando com a pertinacia sua perfidia, domiciliou-se na mesma Villa, onde, assim como no lago Cupacá, procedeu á fundação de estabelecimentos, como fábricas de algodão e farinha, armazens e estaleiros de embarcações, e grandes plantações de farinha, algodão e tabaco ….” (op. cit., p. 256). Requena himself mentions “unas sementeras hechas para la subsistencia de la partida,” from which his soldiers were forcibly evicted by the Portuguese (“Memoria histórica,” loc. cit., p. 228). He also claims that boats bringing provisions and men from Maynas were intercepted and turned back at Tabatinga and that the Spaniards were not permitted to pass beyond a certain restricted area at Ega.

95 Ibid.

96 Reis, op. cit., p. 131; see also Bates, Walter Henry, A naturalist on the river Amazon (London, 1930), p. 276.Google Scholar

As Requena with his family stopped on November 15, 1783 at Tabatinga, the Portuguese outpost he had failed to win for Spain, the commandant, Francisco Vitório José da Silveira, saluted them with a curious sonnet:

Meanwhile the Portuguese soldiers addressed Doña María Luisa in high-flown language half Spanish and half Portuguese: “… Mira Madama Suberana hessa Graça Ermusura hesse Niebe mucho puro que My Sra. E. Leva La-Halem. Mas que Diana Ribirente My Juizo Lomescierto Porfitiso Habeis de ser e ter nos sigollos Gosadora de Lo Paraiso (“Catalogo das plantas,” loc. cit., pp. 138–140).

97 Reis, op. cit., p. 131.

98 Spix and Martius, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 261–262; Bates, op. cit., pp. 256, 269; Agassiz, op. cit., pp. 212, 224–225. In 1883 Damian Freiherr von Schütz-Holzhausen, finding there a population of 1200, called Ega “ein kleines Paris” (Der Amazon [Freiburg in Breisgau, 1883], p. 175). When Dr. von Spix described it in 1820, Ega had 600 inhabitants. He says that during the residence of the commissions it was twice this size and was called the “corte do Solimões.” Several hundred Indians were brought from their villages to serve the commissioners. Bates, who was in Brazil between 1848 and 1859, found a man in Ega who could remember those days.

99 “Descripción del gobierno de Maynas y miliones en él estabelecidas, en que se satisface a las preguntas que se hacen en la real orden de 31 de enero de 1784.” It was sent to the viceroy a year later. The manuscript, which appears to have been lost, is in part transcribed by Quijano Otero (op. cit., pp. 202–209).

100 Ibid., p. 212. His work was praised by the archbishop viceroy, Don Antonio Caballero y Góngora, who in 1785 commented to his successor on the inactivity of the commissions at Ega (ibid., p. 222).

101 See note 6.

102 Joaquim de Sousa-Leão filho, Frans Post (Recife, 1937); Roben C. Smith, “The Brazilian landscapes of Frans Post,” Art qiurttrly (Detroit), I, no. 4 (autumn, 1938), 239–268.

103 The watercolor numbered 3 by the writer was identified as “lamina III” by Requena, number 4 as “lamina IV,” 6 as IX, 7 as. XVI, and 10 as XVII.

104 Perhaps the “Memoria histórica.”

105 Juan and Ulloa call them also jungadas (op. cit., book IV, p. 111).

106 Which derive their name from a kind of light, resilient wood. Ibid., pp. 182–184.

107 A pliant jungle vine used by the Indians for cords. For a description see ibid., pp. 210–211.

108 And can be used to negotiate rocky rapidi, “les pièces d’un radeau n’étant ni clouées ni enchevêtrées, la flexibilité des lianes qui les assemblent, fait l’effet d’un ressort qui amortiroit le coup, & on ne prend aucune précaution contre ces chocs à l’égard des radeaux” (La Condamine, op. cit., p. 45).

109 See also the description of Dionisio de Alcedo y Herrera: “… and they give them unusual sort of rudder, called guare, not known elsewhere among all kinds of nautical inventions, because it is a composition of five boards each fourteen feet long and four feet wide, which when put in the water between the logs which form the after part of the raft … can be easily managed with a tiller, like the old pizote [?] which was used before the invention of the wheel, which makes the raft surely and simply handled, firm to the bowline and ready to surmount the whirlpools of rivers and the waves of the sea, although it generally bears a load of from 500 to 750 pounds” (Compendio histórico de la provincia, partidas, ciudades, astilleros, ríos y puerto de Guayaquil en las costas del mar del sur [Madrid, 1741], p. 45).

110 Op. cit., p. xxvi: book VI, p. 468.

111 Op. cit. For Veigl’s description of a balsa see page 24.

112 Op. cit., book IV, pp. 179–181.

113 “Method of expanding a tree trunk so as to form the entire shell of a boat.”

114 “Ils le fendent premiérement, & l’évuident avec le fer; ils l’ouvrent ensuite, par le moyen du feu, pour augmenter sa largeur” (La Condamine, op. cit., p. 89).

Requena himself, in a letter written in 1792 to Padre Manuel Sobrevida of Ocopa describes the method used on his expedition in such detail that there can be no doubt that he was illustrating the same process in this watercolor. “In order to put the wooden hull to the fire you suspend it by its ends with four big crossbars arranged like open scissors, and when it is about two and one-half feet high you strengthen each of these crossbars with three forked poles driven deep in the ground. Into the hull you heap earth and over it you place small pieces of dry wood, and on the ground you put two layers of other larger wood so that it occupies a bigger space than the hull. This is the first to be lighted and as soon as the opening of the hull begins to expand somewhat you also set fire to the wood inside so as to speed the operation. But it is necessary that this fire be kept equal all around in such a way that no part of the wood fails to get an even heat without burning. To avoid this, mops on long rods are used to apply water to the parts that grow too hot. As soon as the sides begin to be perpendicular to the ground you apply to them pieces of wood five and a half feet long and five inches in diameter, open down the middle to the center, where they are tied with bejuco vines so that they do not split entirely. These pieces of wood serve as forceps to mold the sides gently downward and are kept in the position desired by means of cords which hang from the sides and are sufficiently removed from the fire so that the vines cannot burn. Finally by means of these forceps you can shape the wood, made pliant by the heat, as you see fit. And by opening and closing one or the other of the crossbars you can give the wood whatever turn you want from bow to stern, paying attention to the opening already made in the wood to which gravity gives a downward thrust in relation to the expansion produced by the fire. When the workman has attended to these two matters, he lets the fire begin to die down; and before it has grown cold, without removing either crossbars or side boards, he installs wooden stanchions and seats straight across the opening so as to support the form which the hull has been given, without allowing it to change or close up again. It should be remarked, however, that this work must be done in quiet weather, because if the flames whipped by the wind heat some parts more than others, then you cannot obtain the uniform expansion so necessary to this curved wooden member which is to serve as the base of the boat” (Izaguirre, op. cit., VIII, 32–36).

115 The white and red uniform was introduced for the Spanish infantry by the Bourbons. In a plate showing uniforms of 1769 the Conde de Clonard illustrates an outfit similar to this one. In another representing the military fashion of six years later the trousers are red instead of white (Historia orgánici de las armas de infantería y cabellería españolas, [Madrid, 1851], VI, plates 1 and 2). An identical white uniform worn by a soldier of the Morenos Artilleros de Panamá is illustrated in Espasa Calpe (Enciclopedia universal ilustrada, XXI [Barcelona, 1923], 541). Blue uniforms were worn by grenadier guards (Clonard, op. cit., V, plate 17):

116 Op. cit., p. 86. La Condamine describes these shelter canoes in slightly different terms, locating the covering at the rear (op. cit., p. 61).

117 They are called in the legend for the eighth watercolor “(B) botes que fueron de reconocimiento.” The stern is obviously not that of a canoe.

118 “These canoes, big and little, the Omaguas know how to hew from a single trunk. Generally they prefer them to be so small and light that two persons can easily carry them upon their shoulders up to their houses. So small are they that they are rightly to be called the Indians’ postnags” (op. cit., p. 82).

119 “Canoas de Indios Omaguas, sirviendo estas de prácticas.”

120 Antonio de Alcedo calls it San Joaquín de la grande Omagua (op. cit., III, p. 374.

121 It was frequently visited and mentioned by the great colonizer Father Samuel Fritz (Journal of the travels and labours of Father Samuel Fritz in the river of the Amazons between 1616 end 1723 [London, Hakluyt society, 1922]).

122 This division in 1767 included eighteen missions (Chantre y Herrera, op. cit., pp. 578–580).

123 Quecedo, op. cit., pp. 67–68.

124 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 204.

125 This tribe of Omaguas, from which the mission took its name, in the sixteenth century lived far up the Napo and Aguarico Rivers. In the seventeenth it was one of the most powerful nations of the Tupí-Guaraní people. Its villages extended from the Pastaza to the Tefé. Veigl praised the skill of the Omaguas in handling their canoes (op. cit., pp. 81–82). La Condamine marvelled at their rubber bottles, boots, and balls (op. cit., p. 77). They were called by the Portuguese “Cambebas.” Araújo e Amazoou records that São Paulo de Olivença before 1759 bore their name and calls them “a nação mais recommendavel do Solimões” (op. cit., p. 249). Well disposed toward the Spaniards and intelligent enough to be easily taught, they were at the same time fierce warriors, hence valuable allies. In 1732, armed by the Spanish, the Omaguas repelled a major Portuguese invasion. Already declining in the eighteenth century, the tribe numbered only 120 or 150 in 1925, according to the Bureau of South American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Since then the Omaguas have fused with the caboclo, or half-breed population of the Rio Solimões.

126 Op. cit., p. 68. Requena remarked upon the deterioration of these mission churches after the departure of the Jesuits (Izaguirre, op. cit., VIII, 52).

127 This was then an uncharted region avoided for its bad climate. In 1794, at the mitigation of Requena, the Ucayali was visited by the Franciscan Narciso Girbal y Barceló (ibid., pp. 11 et seq.).

128 Although Paul Marcoy (Laurent de Saint-Crique) illustrates a Conibo Indian, whom he identifies with the Ucayali in such a hat (Voyage à travers l’Amérique [Paris, 1869], pp. 646–647), it is unlikely that this was an Ucayali Indian.

129 The costume of the Omaguas as described by Pedro Teixeira in 1637 consisted of long painted cotton shirts with sleeves (Descobrimentos do Rio das Amazonas, p. 110). Such a costume is seen in a watercolor made for Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira in the late eighteenth century (Edgardo Roquette-Pinto, Seixos rolados [Rio de Janeiro, 1927], p. 122). Araújo e Amazonas, however, speaks of a “sleeveless tunic without a collar” (op. cit., p. 79), which seems to resemble these green mantles of Requena’s Indians.

130 An inscription at the bottom of the watercolor reads: “Canoas de Ynfieles que atacaron la Población hallandose con poca gente el Comisario y fueron rechazados con muerte de algunos de dichos Ynfieles.” Requena, commenting much later on the event, adds that the repulsed Ucayali continued up the Amazon to attack some Christian Indians near Laguna (Izaguirre, op. cit., VIII, 39).

131 Requena, in the long description of canoes he made for Father Sobrevida, evidently referred to this kind of boat when he spoke of those with a “cómodo camarote” for sleeping and cooking (ibid., p. 35). After his return from the Japurá, however, in a letter to the president at Quito, he called his garita “a leaking hole” (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 198).

132 Op. cit., p. 89.

133 A photograph of a modern house with a similar roof in this region was published in the Peruvian Times, Feb., 1942, p. xvii.

134 La Condamine, op. cit., p. 81. Requena mentions Indians of these tribes; Caumaris, Caguachis, and Yaguas (Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 204).

135 And is thus related to the colonial mission churches of the Andean area.

136 The legend on the watercolor reads: “A . . Yglesia. B . . Casa del Cura. C . . Quartel. D . . Embarcaciones de la expedición aseguradas en un estero. E . . Campamento en una quebrada por lo reducido del Pueblo.”

137 Gunter Teuman placet this tribe within the old Pevas nation. He saw these Indians wearing ornaments of palm fibres on their arms, necks, and legs (Die Indianer nordost-Perus [Hamburg, 1930], p. 460).

138 Op. cit., pp. 82–83.

139 Tessman records no such tribe in this region. The nearest approach to this name is that of the Muritanos of the Río Pastaza. These wear long hair like the Indians of Requena’s watercolor (op. cit., p. 282).

140 On his map of the Rio Japurá at the Library of Congress (no. 16) Requena gives the position as Lat. 1° 18′ south; Long. 307° 51′ (west of the Isla de Ferro).

141 Op. cit., vol. 3, p. 331.

142 On the back of the frame of the watercolor appears this key: “A . . Comisario español y portugués. B . . Embarcaciones pasando a la liga después de descargadas en que se herieron algunos soldados. C . . Pongo, o estrechura muy correntosa.”

143 From the above inscription it seems that several of them were injured in the operation. The rock is grey itacolumite (ibid., p. 379). On map no. 16 the position is given as Lat. 1° 18′ south; Long. 307° 46′ (west of the Isla de Ferro). The latitude is confirmed by J. J. Vitorino da Costa. For a comparison of his positions with those of the Spanish on various points of the journey see ibid., pp. 366–367.

144 Ibid.

145 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 191.

146 At the bottom of the watercolor is inserted this inscription: “A . . Salto de agua en que se perdieron doa embarcaciones. B . . Canos recojiendo los náufragos. C . . Esuro que servia de Puerto, y por donde te pasaron por tierra algunos Botes, y todas las cargas.”

147 According to Requena Lat. 0° 38′ south; Long. 304° 2′ (west of the Isla de Ferro). Here Martius found aged Indians who could still remember the commissioners’ visit (op. cit., III, p. 350).

148 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 192.

149 “A . . Salto invadeable para canoas. B . . Garitea [sic] con el dibujante español. C . . Otra con Yngeniero y Astrónomo portugueses, quienes encontraron una canoita con gente del Pueblo de S.ta María.” Although Requena does not mention the fact, it is apparent that the Portuguese commissioner insisted upon tending his men along. The contrast between their equipment and the appearance of the Spanish draughtsman is notable.

150 From available documents it is not possible to identify this man.

151 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 192.

152 The first of three rapids in this river. Lat. 0° .08′ south; Long. 304° 56′ (west of the Isla de Ferro).

153 Le nom d’Omaguas … signifie tête plate; en effet, ces peupla ont la bizarre coutume de presser entre deux planches le front des enfants qui viennent de naître, pour leur procurer cette étrange figure, & pour les faire mieux ressembler, disent-ils, à la pleine Lune” (La Condamine, op. cit., p. 70). For other curious descriptions see: Juan and Ulloa, op. cit., book VI, pp. 294–295; Araújo e Amazonas, op. cit., p. 79.

154 Requena gives their position as Lat. 0° 20′ north; Long. 304° 33′ (west of the Isla de Ferro).

155 Op. cit., p. 194.

156 For a description of the activities of the Friars Minor of the province of San Juan de los Llanos see José Manuel Groot, Historia eclesiástica y civil de Nueva Granada, II (Bogotá, 1890), 213–215. The region is described in Walker, A., Colombia (London, 1822), I, 312–313.Google Scholar

157 Quijano Otero, op. cit., pp. 192–19). On the fear of the Omaguas for Portuguese slavers see: Joaquín Borda, José, Historia de la Compeñía de Jeiús en la Nueva Granada (Poissy, 1872), I, 69.Google Scholar

158 Lat: 0° 53′ south; Long. 307° 33′ (west of the Isla de Ferro).

159 Quijano Otero, op. cit., p. 195.

160 The inscription reads: “A . . Faladura y Cam.° que se abrió en el Bosque para pasar a la parte Superior del Salto las Embarcaciones. B . . Paraje donde se anegó la Capitana Española.”