{
  "id": "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-1641",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Cristóbal de Acuña, Nuevo descubrimiento del gran rio de las Amazonas (Madrid, 1641)",
  "summary": "A Jesuit sent by royal provision of the Audiencia of Quito came down the whole Amazon in 1639 with a Portuguese armada and printed the survey two years later: the tributaries, the peoples named one by one, a cold site measured against wheat-growing. The same sheets print what the voyage was also being used for. Number LXVII is Acuña's own formal protest against the slave-taking his escort intended, and number LII refuses the pretext offered for it.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "amazon",
    "exploration",
    "quito",
    "jesuits",
    "slavery",
    "ethnography",
    "books",
    "seventeenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cieza-cronica-del-peru-1553"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "gumilla-orinoco-ilustrado-1745"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "montoya-conquista-espiritual-1639"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "iberian-crowns-1580-1640"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "new-laws-of-1542"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "oviedo-historia-general-y-natural-de-las-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is Cristóbal de Acuña's Nuevo descubrimiento del gran rio de las Amazonas?",
    "Who ordered the first Spanish survey of the Amazon in 1639?",
    "What did Acuña say about Portuguese slave raiding on the Amazon?",
    "Did Acuña believe the Amazon peoples were cannibals?",
    "Why did Acuña recommend the Amazon route to the Spanish crown?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page reads \"NVEVO DESCVBRIMIENTO DEL GRAN RIO DE LAS AMAZONAS. POR EL PADRE CHRSTOVAL de Acuña, Religioso de la Compañia de Iesus, y Calificador de la Suprema General Inquisicion. AL QVAL FVE, Y SE HIZO POR ORDEN de su Magestad, el año de 1639. POR LA PROVINCIA DE QVITO en los Reynos del Perù. AL EXCELENTISSIMO SEÑOR CONDE Duque de Oliuares.\" The imprint at the foot is \"Con licencia; En Madrid, en la Imprenta del Reyno, año de 1641.\" The book is therefore a state commission reported back to the man who ran the monarchy, and it says so before the first page of text.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Number LXVII prints the commission in the form of a legal instrument. Acuña and Andrés de Artieda, both of the Society of Jesus, were persons to whom the king \"por vna Real prouision, despachada por su Real Audiencia de la ciudad de san Francisco del Quito, en los Reynos del Peru, a veinte y quatro dias del mes de Enero deste presente año de mil y seiscientos y treinta y nueue\" ordered that, having come in company of the Portuguese armada down the whole river, they should take \"noticia suficiente, y la mas clara que ser pueda, de las naciones que en el habitan, rios que se le juntan, y lo demas necessario, para que en el Real Consejo de las Indias, se haga pleno concepto desta empressa\", and then pass to Spain to give account of everything to His Majesty.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The same number states, in the author's own printed words, what the expedition was also being used for. Acuña had understood from many, and from the sails being prepared, that Captain Major Pedro Teixeira and the other captains and senior officers of the armada \"en cuya compañia venimos por mandado de su Magestad intentan dilatar mas el viaje, entrandose por el Rio negro, en cuya boca al presente nos hallamos; con desinio de rescatar piezas esclauas del, para lleuarlas por tales a sus haziendas del Parà, y Marañon; como acostumbran hazer en todas las entradas que desde el dicho Parà hazen a los naturales que habitan en sus confines.\" The routine character of the practice is asserted by the man reporting it, not inferred here.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Page 34 sets out the grounds of the protest and they are legal and moral before they are prudential. Of the slaves it was intended to take, \"ay mucha dificultad si se puede hazer con buena conciencia (exceptos los que fuessen necessarios para lenguas) porque esta tierra es nueua\"; and although there were said to be royal cédulas for taking slaves, \"esto es en la juridicion circunuezina del Parà, y Marañon, y con las demas calidades que se requieren: y estos deste rio no se sabe a que juridicion pertenezcan.\" A prudential argument follows - the captives could be \"la total ruina, y destrucion de todos\" - and the two Jesuits then formally require Teixeira and his officers to allow no delay and to proceed to Pará so that they may pass to Spain. The interpreter exception is Acuña's own and is printed here with the rest.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Number LII, on the use the Aguas made of the captives they took, ends by refusing the justification offered for enslaving them. Acuña reports that he questioned two Indians, natives of Pará, who had gone up with the Portuguese, had fled from Quito and been eight months captive among the Aguas: \"Estos aseguraron, que jamas les auian visto comer los esclauos que traian.\" He does not turn this into a general denial - \"No quiero con esto negar que ay en este Rio, gente Caribe, que en ocasiones, no tiene horror de comer carne humana\" - but denies the trade's premise: \"Lo que quiero persuadir, es no ay en todo el carnicerias publicas en que todo el año se pesa carne de Indios, como publican los que a titulo de euitar semejante crueldad la vsan ellos mayor, haziendo con sus rigores, y amenaças, esclauos a los que no lo son.\"",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The book's argument for the river is commercial and it is stated as a figure of speech that became famous. Having listed the rivers descending from near Potosí, from Huánuco, from Cuzco, from Cuenca and from the Nuevo Reino de Granada, Acuña writes on page 16: \"Si este Rio pues, es la calle mayor, y el principal camino por donde se sube a las mayores riquezas del Perù: bien puedo afirmar, que es el principal dueño de todas.\" Number XXXV, opening on the same page, is headed \"Son quatro mil leguas de circuito lo descubierto\" and gives the circuit of the region \"segun buena Cosmographia, al pie de quatro mil leguas\" - an estimate the author defends rather than a measurement he made.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The same page shows how much of the book is hearsay carried forward, and the reader should weigh the rest accordingly. Acuña writes that if the gilded lake has the gold opinion attributes to it, if the Amazons dwell there as many testify, if the Tocantins are so famed for precious stones, then \"En este gran Rio, està todo encerrado: aqui el lago dorado, aqui las Amazonas, aqui los tocantines: y aqui los ricos Omaguas\", and here finally is deposited the immense treasure God has kept to enrich the Majesty of Philip IV. El Dorado and the Amazons enter the report on the same footing as the tributaries.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Against that, the descriptive numbers are specific in a way that is checkable. Number LIIII, \"Rio Putumayo, y naciones que en el, y en Yetaù ay\", places the Putumayo sixteen leagues from the settlements on the north bank, notes that thirty large rivers enter it before it reaches the Amazon, that the natives at that point call it Vza, that it descends from the cordilleras of Pasto towards the Nuevo Reino de Granada, and names the provinces inhabiting it: \"Yurunas, Guaraicùs, Yacariguaras, Parianas, Ziyus, Atuais, Cunas\", with the Omaguas as lords of the river, whom the Aguas of the islands call \"Omaguasyetè, que quiere dezir, Omaguas verdaderos\". The same passage records that Spaniards who went down that river a few years before withdrew with some loss.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Number LIII is a piece of natural inquiry rather than of narrative. At about a hundred leagues from the first Aguas settlements, three degrees from the equator, the party spent three days in a village so cold that men born and raised in the coldest parts of Spain had to add clothing. Told by the inhabitants that this happened every year for the space of three moons, Acuña was not satisfied: \"yo aun no bien satisfecho de su dicho, quise con mas fundamento hazer Inquisicion de la causa de frio tan penetrante; y hallè que lo era vna gran sierra, o paramo, que a la vanda del Sur la tierra adentro està situada\", the winds of those three months passing over its snow. He draws a practical inference - that wheat and the seeds and fruits of the Quito district would do well there - and supports it by the analogy of Quito itself, under the line yet tempered by airs off snow-covered hills.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The closing argument on page 46 is strategic and it names a rival. Acuña quotes a Latin authority twice on Dutch designs and concludes \"que el dilatar el Olandes la conquista deste gran Rio de las Amazonas ... es a mas no poder\", warning the king to forestall such grave harms \"que este su fiel vassallo le propone\". He then offers the river as an alternative artery: were its passage subdued and its entrances from Peru cleared, the crown would save great sums on \"los inmensos gastos, que seran inescusables mientras durare el tragin de Panamà, y Cartagena\", and would secure its fleets from corsairs at least as far as Pará, from which the run to Spain was twenty-four days by open sea in galleons built on the river itself.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "What this object rests on should be stated plainly. Eight leaves of the 1641 Madrid printing were opened and read as page scans - the title page and printed pages 16, 25, the leaf following 25, 26, 33, 34, 40 and 46 - out of a text running to eighty-three numbered sections on forty-six leaves. Nothing here is taken from a later edition or translation. The volume is a memorial as well as a description: it is dedicated to Olivares, it argues throughout for occupation and evangelisation, and its author was a party to the enterprise he reports. The protest of number LXVII is printed by the man who made it, and no independent record of its effect is cited here.",
      "sources": [
        "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-amazonas-1641"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "In English the 1639 descent of the Amazon is usually met through Clements Markham's Victorian Hakluyt Society translation, and Acuña is quoted for one line about the river being the high street to the riches of Peru. This object opens the 1641 Madrid sheets themselves and gives the numbered section for each quotation, so the reader can see what the famous line sits next to. The commission is quoted as the legal instrument it was - a real provisión of the Audiencia of Quito dated 24 January 1639, ordering a report clear enough for the Council of the Indies to form a full conception of the enterprise. The cost is quoted from the same author on the same page: his escort meant to enter the Río Negro to take slaves for their estates in Pará and Marañón, \"como acostumbran hazer en todas las entradas\". And the passage most often lost in summary is given whole - Acuña's refusal of the cannibalism pretext, including the part that cuts against him, where he declines to deny that there are people on the river who eat human flesh and denies instead that there are public shambles weighing out the meat of Indians all year, \"como publican los que a titulo de euitar semejante crueldad la vsan ellos mayor\". Set beside that, the object prints the book's credulity too: El Dorado and the Amazons are catalogued on page 16 alongside the tributaries.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-15",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-1641",
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  "jsonld": {
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    "name": "Cristóbal de Acuña, Nuevo descubrimiento del gran rio de las Amazonas (Madrid, 1641)",
    "description": "A Jesuit sent by royal provision of the Audiencia of Quito came down the whole Amazon in 1639 with a Portuguese armada and printed the survey two years later: the tributaries, the peoples named one by one, a cold site measured against wheat-growing. The same sheets print what the voyage was also being used for. Number LXVII is Acuña's own formal protest against the slave-taking his escort intended, and number LII refuses the pretext offered for it.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-1641",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-15",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Nuevo descubrimiento del gran rio de las Amazonas. Por el padre Chrstoual de Acuña, Religioso de la Compañia de Iesus, y Calificador de la Suprema General Inquisicion. Al qual fue, y se hizo por orden de su Magestad, el año de 1639. Por la Provincia de Quito en los Reynos del Perù",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=R28BAAAAQAAJ&pg=PP7"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Cristóbal de Acuña, Nuevo descubrimiento del gran rio de las Amazonas (Madrid, 1641)"
  }
}