Rafael Ferrer (b. at

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

, in 1570; d. in 1610) was a Spanish Jesuit missionary and explorer.

Life

His first mission was to

Pasto Pasto, officially San Juan de Pasto (; "Saint John of Pasto"), is the capital of the department of Nariño, in southern Colombia. Pasto was founded in 1537 and named after indigenous people of the area. In the 2018 census, the city had app ...

in 1598, where he encountered the Cofanis, and found them peaceful and receptive. In 1599 was sent to Quito,

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ' ...

. He went on another expedition in 1604. In 1606 he was made a master of novices in Quito. In 1608 he was permitted to begin another expedition, and returned to the Cofanis. His death reportedly came at the hands of the Cofanis, who had been persecuted by colonisers since their first encounter with Father Ferrer, and blamed him for this. It was reported that whilst crossing a makeshift bridge of two logs high over a churning river, some members of the Cofani shook the logs, causing Ferrer to fall to his death. His body was never recovered.Cantillon (1938), p. 167 An exaggerated and semi-fictional account of his life appears in ''

Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography ''Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography'' is a six-volume collection of biographies of notable people involved in the history of the New World. Published between 1887 and 1889, its unsigned articles were widely accepted as authoritative f ...

'', which was then replicated in the ''Catholic Encyclopedia''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferrer, Rafael 1570 births 1610 deaths 16th-century Spanish Jesuits Spanish Roman Catholic missionaries Spanish explorers Jesuit missionaries in Ecuador