Pedro de Añazco

Born at Chachapoyas (Peru) in 1550; died at Asuncion, Paraguay, 1605. His father was Pedro de Añazco, a Spanish captain, companion of Belalcazar in the conquest of Ecuador; and through him, it is said, the first notice of the “Dorado” of Guatavitá reached the Spaniards in Ecuador. At the age of twenty-two, Añazco became a Jesuit. In 1577, he was sent to Julí, on Lake Titicaca. Thence he passed to the Chaco tribe among the Abipones and, in 1593, to Paraguay, where he died. He was an indefagitable missionary and a zealous student of Indian languages. Highly respectable authorities like Gonzalez Dávila and Lozano credit him with having composed grammars, “doctrines”, and catechisms in nine different Indian languages of South America. Dávila, teatro eclesiastico de la primitiva Iglesia de las Indias occidentales (Madrid, 1649); Lozano, Descripcion del gran Chaco (Cordova, 1733); Mendíburu, Diccionario; Torres Saldamando, Antiguos Jesuitas (Lima, 1882); Relaciones geograficas de Indias (Madrid, 1897), Appendix IV, None of Añazco’s linguistic works have been published, and it is to be feared that most, if not all, his manuscripts are lost.