ABSTRACT
When Samuel Fritz was lying ill in 1689 during the season of high flood in the mission settlement of the Jurimaguas, his Journal thus recounts1 the visit of a body of strange natives, who came to trade on the Amazon:
While I was wearily struggling with my sickness a troop of Manaves, who are heathen Indians, came in some ten canoes to trade with the Jurimaguas... . Their lands are in the northern direction, on a stream called Jurubetts, to be reached by the river Jupura. They usually come out at the time of the flood, because those two rivers then communicate, owing to the abundance of water, so that they can go from the Jurubetts into the river Jupura by canoe. The trade, which these Manaves have with the Aysuares, Ybanomas and Jurimaguas consists in some small bars of gold, vermilion, yuca graters. . . . They do not extract the gold them selves, but proceed along the river Jurubetts and enter the Yquiari, where they trade for it, and this is the most celebrated river for gold among these heathens.
