ACUÑA, CRISTÓBAL de. - Jesuit missionary and explorer. Born in Burgos around 1597, he entered the novitiate at Villagarcia in 1612. In 1620 he was sent to the vice-province of Chile, and in 1634 to that of Ecuador, where he founded the college of Cuenca. In 1639 took place the famous expedition with which his name is associated: commissioned by the viceroy to accompany, together with Fr. Artieda, the Portuguese captain Pedro Teixeira on his return journey by the Amazon River, he methodically studied the entire course of the river (except for the upper stretch, which he mistook for the Rio Napo). From Pará he continued to Spain to report to the Court on his discoveries.
In Madrid in 1641 he published his account *Nuevo descubrimiento del Gran Rio de las Amazonas* (reprinted in Madrid in 1891 in the *Colección de libros que tratan de América raros o curiosos*; translated into French in 1656, 1682, 1716; into English in 1661, 1698, 1859; into German in 1758, etc.). Nicolas Sanson soon after drew a map of the river based on Acuña’s data (Paris 1680). After serving as procurator of his province in Madrid and Rome, he returned to America (after 1651), first to the New Kingdom (Colombia), and after 1659 to Peru. He died in Lima on 13 January 1670.