A year later more than 300 had died in a measles epidemic. Many of the Guaycura were still semi-nomadic and the efforts of the Franciscans to make of them toilers of the soil on mission lands was a failure as many ran away.
The passage describes a year after a measles epidemic that killed over 300 people among the Guaycura tribe. The Franciscans attempted to make the Guaycura farm on mission land, but many of them ran away.