Fritz (1654-1725) arrived to begin work converting the Cambeba to Christianity and within a few years had developed his own Cambeba catechism. When Fritz arrived in their territory, the Cambeba inhabited the islands in the middle of the Amazon River, in a region stretching approximately from the confluence of the Amazon and Napo River to the Juruá River. Towards the end of his first year among the Omaguas, he began a lengthy journey downriver to visit all thirty-eight existing villages, spending two months at each one. He renamed them using the names of patron saints, constructed several rudimentary chapels and baptized mainly children because he found most adults to be insufficiently indoctrinated, as well as "reluctant to give up entirely certain heathen abuses." At the conclusion of this journey, which lasted about three years, he conducted a baptismal ceremony over the entire tribe before returning to San Joaquín de Omaguas. He later concentrated indigenous peoples from forty different localities into so-called "Jesuit reductions." Cultural observations of Samuel Fritz Much of what is known about the Cambeba people was written by Samuel Fritz during the 38 years that he lived in the Amazon. Fritz described Omagua men as unusually "talkative and proud" in comparison with other Amazonian Indians. They were universally acknowledged to be the best canoemen on the river. They wore beautiful multi-colored cotton clothing including "breeches and shirts of cotton," while women wore "two pieces of the same kind, one of which serves them for a small apron, the other to form an indifferent covering for the breasts." Both men and women painted great portions of their bodies, faces and even their hair with the "juice, darker than mulberry, of a forest fruit called jagua." The Omaguas told Fritz with remarkable candor that before becoming Christians, they had enjoyed a kind of polity and government; many of them living a sociable life, showing a satisfactory subjection and obedience to their principal caciques, and treating everyone, men and women alike, with a certain consideration. According to Fritz, when Omagua girls reached puberty, they would be hung up in hammocks "within an awning fixed to the top of the house," and kept there for a month with nothing but a little water and dry farinha for their sustenance and some cotton to keep themselves busy by spinning. At the end of that ordeal, they were taken down and carried to the