Like many other captains of those days, the idea of Chaves was to make himself quite independent of authority; so, striking into the interior, he founded the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. After many adventures he was killed by an Indian, who struck him with a club whilst he was sitting eating without his helmet. Irala died at the little village of Itá in 1557, and was buried in the cathedral at Asuncion, which he was building at the time. With him expired the generation of the conquering soldiers of fortune, who, schooled in the wars of Italy, brought to America some of the virtues and all the vices of the Old World. After him began the reign of the half-caste Spaniards who were the progenitors of the modern occupants of the Spanish-American republics. At Irala’s death the usual feuds, which have for the last three hundred years disgraced every part of Spanish America, began. Into them it is unnecessary to enter, for with Irala died almost the only Governor of Paraguay who showed the smallest capacity to make himself obeyed. True indeed that Arias de Saavedra, a native of Paraguay and Lieutenant-Governor under Ramirez de Velasco, the Governor of Tucuman, displayed some traces of ability and of intelligence. He it was who first appealed to Spain for missionaries to convert the Indians. Whilst Alvar Nuñez and Irala, with Nuflo de Chaves and the other captains, had been conquering and building towns, the Jesuits had been preaching in the wilderness and gathering together the Indian tribes. Not ten years after the foundation of their Order,[49] or about 1550, they had landed at San Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. In 1554, in the district of Guayrá, on the upper waters of the Paraná, and above the cataract, the towns of Ontiveros, Ciudad Real, and Villa Rica, had been founded by Don Ruy Diaz de Melgarejo. In 1586 Fathers Alfonso Barcena and Angulo left the town of Santa Maria de las Charcas (Bolivia) at the request of Francisco Vitoria, Bishop of Santiago, who had appealed for missionaries to the Society of Jesus. They reached the province of Guayrá, and began their labours. Shortly afterwards they were joined by Fathers Estezan Grao, Juan Solano, and Thomas Fields; Solano and Fields had already visited some of the wandering tribes upon the Rio Vermejo in the Chaco. In 1593 others arrived, as Juan Romero, Gaspar de Monroy, and Marcelino Lorenzana. Shortly after this they founded the college in Asuncion. Then Fathers Ortega and Vellarnao penetrated into the mountains of the Chiriguanás, and began to preach the Gospel to the Indians.