The great man of Peru and, subsequently, of Chile, was Father Luis de Valdivia, who was hailed by both Indians and whites as "the apostle, pacificator and liberator of Peru." The Indians had fascinated him, and he learned their language in a month or so. When he saw that the only difficulty in making them Christians was the slavery to which they were subjected, coupled with the immorality of their Spanish masters, he got himself named as the representative of the colonial authorities, and started to Spain to lay before Philip III the degraded condition of his overseas possessions. The king received him cordially, enacted the most stringent laws against the abuses, and appointed him royal visitor and administrator of Chile, where similar disorders were complained of. He also wanted to make him a bishop, but Valdivia refused. Returning to Peru from Spain, he gave 10,000 Indians their freedom. When that got abroad among the savages, all the tribes that were then in rebellion immediately came to terms, and on December 8, 1612, the grand chief Utablame, with sixty caciques and a half-a-score of pagan priests, all of them wearing wreaths of sea-weed on their heads, and holding green branches in their hands, descended from their fastnesses and the grand chief, their spokesman, addressed Valdivia as follows: "It is not fear that makes me accept the peace. Since my boyhood I have not ceased to defy the Spaniards, and I have withstood sixteen governors one after another. I yield now only to you, good and great Father, and to the King of Spain, because of the benefits you have bestowed upon me and my people." In spite of the difficulties and dangers of the work, as well as the calumnies of the slave-hunters and even the wrong impressions of some of his brethren, Valdivia succeeded in establishing four great central Indian missions, which evoked the commendation of successive kings of Spain. Before Valdivia went to Chile, Viga, who had been there since 1593, had already compiled a dictionary and grammar in Araucanian, and Valdivia followed his example by writing other books to facilitate the work of the missionaries. The colleges founded at Arauco and also at Valdivia--a town named not after the missionary, but to honor his namesake, the governor of the province--furnished a base of operations among the Araucanian savages, a fierce and, for a long time, indomitable people, who were united against the Spaniards in a league composed of forty different tribes. The work among them was slow and hard, and three of the priests were killed by them in the wilderness. Their success also aroused the colonists to fury, and a war of extermination of the Indians was resolved upon, but Valdivia opposed it, and not only succeeded in getting the Araucanians to agree to terms of peace, but brought in the Guagas, and persuaded them to lay down their arms. The great missionary was eighty-two years of age when called to his reward.