Samuel Fritz (1654 - 1728), was a Jesuit missionary born in Trutnov, Bohemia, what is now part of the Czech Republic. He took orders with the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, in 1673. As a young Jesuit with missionary ambitions he was educated in humanistics, philosophy, and probably cartography. In 1683, he requested a missionary post in the New World and was sent to Quito where his superior, Father Lorenzo Lucero, assigned him to incorporate the Omagua tribes between the Rio Negro and the Napo River into the Maynas Missions. He spent 42 years in South America, and founded thirty-eight missions along the length of the Amazon River, in the country between the Rio Napo and Rio Negrond. His aid having been sought by the Viceroyalty of Peru in its boundary dispute with the State of Brazil, Fritz mapped the missionary territory on the Upper Maranon between Peru and Quito, resulting the first approximately correct chart of the Maranon territory. Both his map and the account of his imprisonment as a suspected Spanish spy were widely disseminated in the 18th century.