Fritz, Samuel b.April 9, l654;Trautenau (Eastern Bohemia),Austria d.April 20, l725;Jeveros, Peru
Jesuit who worked as a missionary in the Amazon and produced the first accurate map of the Amazon River.
In 1673, Samuel Fritz joined the Soci- etas Jesu (Jesuits). In 1685, after an arduous two-year journey, he arrived in the Spanish colonies on the upper Amazon (Maranon) to work as a missionary among the Omaguas and Yurimagua tribes.
Until 1689 he did missionary work in a vast territory between the Rio Napo and Rio Negro and founded about forty reducciones (secure villages where Jesuits attempted to resettle forest-dwelling natives in order to convert and train them while protecting them from attacks). While traveling into Portuguese territory in order to complain about the raids on his settlements, he was held in custody in Para for eighteen months. Upon his return, he endeavored for over twenty years to protect his mission from Portuguese raids, but he received no support from the Spanish administration. Finally, in 1714, he was transferred to Jeveros, where he worked for another eleven years as a parish priest. The settlements and mission stations established by him were largely destroyed by the Portuguese. His scientific significance stems from the results of his trip in the Portuguese-controlled section of the Amazon. The manuscript map he drew on his return trip in 1691 accurately depicts, for the first time, the course of the stream from the headwater region to the mouth. The map was first published in 1707 in Quito in an altered form. In 1743, the French mathematician Charles Marie de la Condamine (1701—1774) brought the original to the National Library in Paris, and it was reproduced in 1893 by Gabriel Marcel.Heinz-Peter Brogiato
See also Brazil
References and Further Reading
Egghardt, Hanne. Osterreicher entdecken die Welt. Forscher, Abenteurer, Idealisten. Vienna: Pichler, 2000: 72-84.
Gicklhorn, Renee. “Fritz Samuel.” Neue Deutsche Biographie. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1961, 5:632-633.
Henze, Dietmar. Enzyklopadie der Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1983, 2:296-298.