Samuel Fritz, a German Roman Catholic missionary, born in Bohemia in 1650, died in Jeberos, Ecuador, in 1730. Being sent as a missionary to the Omagua Indians of South America, he selected as his field of labor the district between the mouths of the Rio Napo and the Rio Negro on the upper Amazon, where in 1688 he had succeeded in attaching five other tribes to the Omaguas, among whom he had established 40 missions. The whole number of Indians to whom the gospel was thus preached was about 40,000. In 1710 the war of the Spanish succession which was occupying Europe seemed to the Portuguese of Para sufficient reason for making an irruption into the country of the upper Amazon, and of the Indians in the district of Father Fritz more than 20,000 were carried captive to Para, and most of the others fled to their native forests. Fritz made a large map of the river Amazon, which long maintained its authority.