The Important Role of the religious orders in the evangelization and colonization of Spanish America is recognized by all historians. In both Mexico and Peru the Franciscans, Dominicans and Mercedarians were the earliest friars upon the scene. They traveled down from Panama to Tumbez and to San Miguel de Piura in Peru as early as 1531 when the conquest of that country was scarcely under way. Those were heroic days, when men braved the incalculable terrors of the unknown, the hostility of the natives and the rigors of extreme altitudes swept by angry winds and snows in the bitterness of winter.