ACUÑA, CRISTÓBAL de. - Jesuit missionary and explorer. Born at Burgos about 1597, he entered the novitiate at Villagarcía in 1612. In 1620 he went to the vice-province of Chile, then, in 1634, to that of Ecuador, where he founded the college of Cuenca. In 1639 took place the famous exploration with which his name remains associated: commissioned by the viceroy to accompany, together with Fr. Artieda, the Portuguese captain Pedro Teixeira, who was returning by way of the Amazon River, he methodically studied its entire course (except for the upper stretch, which he confused with the Rio Napo). From Pará he continued to Spain, in order to report his discoveries to the Court.
At Madrid in 1641 he published his account, Nuevo descubrimiento del Gran Río de las Amazonas (reprinted in 1891 at Madrid 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 shortly afterward drew a map of the river according to A.'s data (Paris 1680). After having been procurator of his province at Madrid and Rome, he returned to America (after 1651), first to the New Kingdom (Colombia), then, after 1659, to Peru. He died at Lima on 13 Jan. 1670.