The missionaries' privilege was to console humanity for a part of the evils committed by the conquistadores; to plead the cause of the Indians before kings, to resist the violence of the comendadores, and to gather nomadic Indians into small communities called missions (42) to help agriculture progress. And so, imperceptibly, following a uniform and premeditated plan, these vast monastic establishments were formed into extraordinary regimes, always isolating themselves, with countries four or five times larger than France under their administration.

There is exciting chemical and physiological work to be done in Europe with the effects of New World poisons once we are sure that different poisons from different areas are properly distinguished. As far as our botanical knowledge about these poisonous plants is concerned we could sort out the differences only very slowly. Most Indians who make poison arrows completely ignore the nature of poisonous substances used by other tribes. A mystery surrounds the history of toxics and antidotes. Among wild Indians the preparation is the monopoly of piaches, who are priests, tricksters and doctors all at once; it is only with Indians from the missions that you can learn anything certain about such problematic matters. Centuries passed before any Europeans learned, thanks to Mutis's researches, that the bejuco del guaco is the most powerful antidote to snake bites, and which we were the first to describe botanically.