 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a native chief, Alvarez II, sent one of his relatives, a marquis, as his representative to the papal court.The ambassador arrived in Rome in a dying condition, and expired the day after his arrival, the eve of the Epiphany, 1608.Pope Paul V, who personally assisted the ambassador in his last moments, gave him a magnificent state funeral, and erected to his memory a monument at St. Mary Major's.