The founding of the city of São Paulo and the Bandeirantes
1 Introduction
In this chapter we will study the founding of the city of São Paulo and its importance in the process of colonisation and settlement in colonial Brazil.
We will also examine the actions of the São Paulo bandeirantes in the process of internalising Brazilian territory and the consequent discovery of precious metals.
The founding of São Vicente and later São Paulo were milestones in the history of Brazil, as they allowed the emergence of regions inhabited by Europeans outside the Northeast.
The role of the bandeirantes of São Paulo was also crucial in this process, as they began to develop economic activities linked to the hunting of Indians and were later directly responsible for the extension of the Treaty of Tordesillas.
The Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided control of territories around the world between the Portuguese and Spanish, was an attempt to settle disputes over land ownership between the two nations, then world powers.
The discovery of America in 1492 made the need for an agreement between Portugal and Spain over the lands beyond the sea, including those yet to be discovered, even more urgent.
As the centuries passed, the borders drawn on paper were ignored and cannons and fortresses entered the arena of conflict in the Americas.
The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed on 7 June 1494 between Portugal and Spain. It was so named because the diplomats who discussed the terms of the document met in the town of Tordesillas, in the region of Castile and Leon.
The two nations had made agreements on other occasions, so it wasn’t a novelty to sit down and discuss them.
This time, the treaty defined an imaginary line about 1,780 kilometres (or 370 leagues) west of the Cape Verde Islands.
This line, called the Tordesillas meridian, was a point of reference: to the west of it, the land belonged to Spain; to the east, it belonged to Portugal.
At the time, neither nation knew exactly how much “land” was involved. Today there is even a landmark in Laguna, a town in the southern region of Santa Catarina, where the meridian passed.
2. The foundation of São Paulo
On 25 January 1554, a group of Jesuit missionaries led by Father Manuel da Nóbrega settled on a plateau called Piratininga, where they founded a school to evangelise the Indian population.
After the site was consecrated, it was given the name of São Paulo, as the day was dedicated to the apostle of that name.
The choice of the site, some 50 kilometres from the coast, was due to the natural conditions of the region and, above all, to the good reception given by the local leaders to the Portuguese presence and their openness to conversion to Catholicism.
The influence of João Ramalho, a Portuguese who had lived among the Tupiniquin Indians for several decades and married the daughter of one of the chiefs, was particularly significant. It was therefore a peaceful and consensual foundation, born of the missionaries’ desire to carry out their work autonomously, away from the influence of the authorities and the Portuguese settlers.
The city of São Paulo didn’t have just one birth, but several.
Let’s see what the scholar Eduardo Bueno (2004, p. 7) says about the founding of the city:
The first, completely informal, took place with the enigmatic João Ramalho, between 1510 and 1515, probably on or around the site of the future Santo André da Borba do Campo; the second was the work of the nobleman Martim Afonso de Sousa, in the summer of 1532, in an unknown place, but perhaps in the current historic centre, on the hill of Tabatinguera; the third was the initiative of Father Leonardo Nunes, who was responsible for the construction of the chapel of Santo André da Borba do Campo, in June 1550; the fourth, consecrated by classical historiography, came about with the mass celebrated by the Jesuits in the courtyard of the college on 25 January 1554; and finally, the fifth and definitive, occurred in 1560, when the inhabitants of Santo André moved to Piratininga, where until then there had been no village, let alone a town, but only the small Jesuit college and church.
For us, the birthplace of the city of São Paulo is not important, but we must be aware that the fact that the city was founded in the 16th century means that it was able to develop and participate in practically all the events of colonial Brazil.
This is the importance of the city, a true symbol of civilisation, which today is one of the largest cities in the world.
The foundation of the city of São Paulo represented an alternative form of colonisation, not necessarily based on the monoculture of sugar cane.
Its economy was diverse, but dominated by the bandeirantes’ roaming of the interior and hunting of Indians.
Situated in the interior, more than 750 metres above sea level, was the city of São Paulo de Piratininga, whose privileged geographical position predestined it to dominate the Brazilian Southern Plateau, in other words to lead the movement of penetration, exploration and conquest of the vast areas beyond the Tordesillas meridian (HOLANDA, 2007, p. 300).
There were several reasons why the coastal region outstripped the interior.
According to Sergio Buarque de Holanda (2007, p. 301), there are several reasons why the plateau region overtook the coastal region in the process of settlement and colonisation.
Thus, in the Vicentina region, the plateau overtook the coast because of the advantages it offered for colonisation.
The narrow strip of coastline, the lowlands of mangroves and swamps, the lack of rich soils comparable to the massapés of northeastern Brazil, and a tropical climate that generated endemic diseases, all contributed to driving people up the mountains, leaving the coastal area almost neglected.
Geographical factors therefore explain many of the reasons for the shift of the centre of colonisation from the coast to the plateau, the choice of location for the first cell of the São Paulo agglomeration and its subsequent development.
The region of São Paulo was favoured for its development because of its geographical position, which facilitated contacts with other regions of Brazil. From the São Paulo Plateau, travellers could reach the South, the Centre-West and the North-East.
To make this easier to understand, we’ll present a fragment from the book “História Geral da Civilização Brasileira” by the historian Sergio Buarque de Holanda (2007, pp. 302-303).
São Paulo de Piratininga is an area where the relief lines and the hydrographic system of the region converge. This was undoubtedly an important factor in the founding of the town and its pioneering destiny.
Three major passes left São Paulo, following the lines of the terrain that determined the guidelines for expansion:
- The passage to the northeast, through the Paraíba Valley, the route of the expeditions to Minas Gerais, to the São Francisco River, to the north and northeast of Brazil.
- The passage to the North, through Campinas and Mojimirim, towards Minas Gerais and Goiás.
- To the south and south-west, via Sorocaba and Itapetinga, towards the southern regions.
The first two are the result of the position of the Mantiqueira mountain range, which enters São Paulo from the north like a wedge, with the Jaraguá hill at its peak.
On either side is the northeastern passage of the Paraíba plain and the northern passage formed by the more or less flat land of the peripheral depression, which extends from the northeast of the state – Mococa, Casa Branca – to the southwest – Itararé, Faxina – forming a wide arc whose convex surface passes near São Paulo, through Campinas and Itu.
The terrain continues westwards after the Mantiqueira escarpment, north of São Paulo, and southwards after the busy topography of the Paranapiacaba mountain range.
The Pass to the South is the continuation of these almost uniformly shaped terrains, which continue towards the southern parts of Brazil, turning southwest towards Itapetininga.
It was the pass that allowed the Paulistas to enter the Paranapanema valley and its tributaries on the left bank, where the Jesuits settled in the upper Paraná in the 17th century.
The Sorocaba and Itapetininga fields are located in these areas, taking advantage of the communications established not only with the Paraná region, but also with Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, which were crossed and devastated by the Bandeirantes.
These three great natural passes, which converge on São Paulo, made the Piratininga a true nucleus of the topographical system of the region, allowing and channelling the expansion of exploration and colonisation in these directions towards the interior of Brazil.
In addition, São Paulo was the point of communication between the plateau and the coast.
The sea route, an old Indian trail, was the main way into the captaincy of São Vicente through the mountains, despite the great difficulties that stood in the way of free transit.
Even more so.
The presence of the Tietê River made São Paulo the natural centre of an important hydrographic system.
Accessible in colonial times via the Tamanduateí, the Tietê cut through the whole of São Paulo to the north-west and flowed into the Paraná, establishing river connections with the Mato Grosso region.
In the 18th century, the monsoons of Cuiabá sailed up here.
The Tietê River made São Paulo a privileged centre, as it flowed towards the interior. This river was a real waterway, facilitating the penetration of the bandeirantes into the interior.
In addition, several backwoods routes converged on São Paulo:
- The Paraíba Valley route, which led to the “general mines”;
- The southern route leading to the Jesuit missions;
- the northern roads leading to Goiás;
- The Tietê River route, which led to Cuiabá;
- the sea route, which went north and south.
From the above, we can see that the founding of São Paulo was no accident.
The city’s strategic location allowed the colonists to reach virtually every region of Brazil from a secure base.
São Paulo never suffered from pirate raids and pillaging because it was inland.
São Paulo was the first Brazilian urban centre far from the coast.
The social and ethnic typology of the city’s inhabitants was also unique. The paulista was the result of a mixture of whites and Indians, which made the paulista bandeirante a highly adapted person for the great colonisation expeditions.
In the next section, we will study the social typology of the paulista bandeirante and its importance in the process of colonisation and settlement of colonial Brazil.
3. The Bandeirantes
The poverty of the captaincy of São Vicente (now the state of São Paulo), due to the decay of the sugar cane plantations during the colonial period, stimulated the organisation of expeditions into the interior of Brazil, known as bandeiras and entradas.
Entradas e Bandeiras
The São Paulo bandeirante was not the romantic figure idealised and portrayed in painting and sculpture in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In reality, the bandeirante was a “rude” figure, a mixture of white and Indian (mameluco), who knew how to adapt to the hardships of the hinterland.
He usually wore the few clothes he had, walked barefoot like the Indians, and his image was very different from the one we are used to seeing in history books.
We also need to deconstruct the idea that the bandeirante was a hero. In fact, at many points in colonial history, he was a villain who enslaved the Indians, treated them with extreme cruelty and destroyed entire villages.
Despite this, the bandeirante was very important in Brazilian colonial history, as he was responsible for actions that led Brazil to extend the boundaries of the Treaty of Tordesillas.
He was also responsible for the discovery of precious metals in the Brazilian interior. Not to mention that several towns and villages were founded on his initiative in different regions of Brazil.
In the words of Eduardo Bueno (2003, p. 59)
They were the pirates of the Sertão. They roamed the shortcuts, the plateaus and the plains, armed to the teeth, with their war cries and their flags unfurled.
They were paramilitary groups, tearing through the jungle, hunting men, beyond the law, beyond borders, beyond ethics.
In their wake was a trail of devastated villages and towns; old men, women and children run through at the point of a sword; desecrated altars; blood, tears and flames.
Driven by greed and in the name of advancing civilisation, they enslaved indigenous people by the thousands.
Some São Paulo historians have defined them as a “race of giants” – and there is no doubt that they were intrepid and indomitable individuals.
They are seen as the main people responsible for Brazil’s territorial expansion – and they certainly were. Although they were Brazilian heroes, they also became the greatest criminals of their time.
In the first three decades of the 17th century, the Bandeirantes killed or enslaved some 500,000 Indians, not to mention destroying more than fifty Jesuit missions.
They took on the kings of Portugal and Spain, as well as the Pope himself.
They transformed their capital, São Paulo, “[…] into one of the largest centres of indigenous slavery on the continent, […] making it a lawless city, a kingdom of terror, greed and misery.
It was also the centre from which the whole of southern Brazil was able to grow and develop’ (BUENO, 2003, p. 58).
The history of the bandeirantes is a history of contradictions, because at the same time as they are hated and portrayed as criminals, they are also loved and held up as heroes.
São Paulo was a city that was born poor, but it had to “find a remedy for its poverty”, a remedy that would only be possible with the action of the bandeirantes.
It was then that São Paulo discovered Indian slavery as its main source of wealth.
The irony is that the São Paulo bandeirante was himself half Indian – perhaps savagery wasn’t a way of denying his origins?
According to Sergio Buarque de Holanda (2007, p. 307), racial mixing was a determining factor in the bandeirante’s character:
The Mameluco, in addition to the adventurous spirit, intrepidity, daring and mobility of their father, received from their mother the love of freedom, the restless and nomadic nature and the backwoods tendencies of the Amerindian, who was also endowed with extreme mobility.
They formed the bulk of the first families in São Paulo, the origin of a people with astounding qualities of fertility, longevity and virility, people whom Saint-Hilaire later called a “race of giants”.
These patriarchal, amestizo and Christian families were the mainstay of the social group that produced the human contingents of the bandeiras. For them, participation in one of these expeditions was a mark of prestige and a title of honour.
It was illegal to enslave the Indians reduced to slavery in the Jesuit missions, but the Paulistas didn’t respect this rule. They lived at the top of the plateau, isolated from the rest of Brazil.
They also felt abandoned by the Crown and didn’t respect the rules, eventually attacking even the most organised Jesuit reduction.
It was the Paulistas who destroyed the so-called “seven peoples of the missions” in Rio Grande do Sul.
These Jesuit fortresses were famous for their beautiful buildings and the spread of culture among the Indians, encouraged by the dedication and teaching of the Jesuit priests.
The bandeirantes were also the first to find precious stones in the interior of Brazil.
The Portuguese crown began to send royal letters encouraging the bandeirantes to organise expeditions to find gold.
The first expeditions were organised in the 16th century, but success did not come until the end of the 17th century.
The king’s letters to at least eleven famous bandeirantes certainly had an effect, as several expeditions were carried out.
According to Eduardo Bueno (2003, p. 103):
Some historians believe that the “psychological effects” that Pedro II’s royal missives (letters) had on the eleven sertanistas who received them should not be ignored.
But the fact is that the bandeirantes of São Paulo had no other way of sustaining their nomadic life than by prospecting for gold: their indigenous “corrals” were exhausted.
The king had no choice: years earlier, during the Iberian Union, the court had sent mining experts to investigate Brazil’s mineral potential.
The only one to survive the rigours of the sertão – the Spaniard Rodrigo Castelo Branco – was murdered by Borba Gato, Fernão Dias’s son-in-law, as soon as he reached the mine that the ’emerald hunter’ had just discovered.
After this crime, which went unpunished, anyone who wasn’t a bandeirante or from São Paulo wouldn’t risk travelling to the far reaches of Brazil.
It would be up to the Paulistas to find the largest gold deposit ever found in the world. But they wouldn’t be the ones to profit from it.
And so, around 1694, the bandeirantes of São Paulo made history by finding gold in the Brazilian interior. From that date, the history of Portugal and Brazil would change, as the reserves discovered were the largest in the world.
4. Further Reading – The Slave Ship
It would have been the worst place in the world, the belly of the beast and the belly of the beast, though for those in charge who were not there, it was the most profitable of deposits and the most saleable of stocks.
O Navio Negreiro
In the holds of the slave ships that crossed the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa to the northeast coast of Brazil for more than three hundred years, more than three million Africans made a journey of no return, the horrors of which created fabulous fortunes, family empires and a nation.
The bowels of the ships of damnation and death were the belly of the mercantilist beast: a machine for grinding human flesh, working ceaselessly to feed the plantations and mills, the mines and tables, the skulls and beds of the masters – and above all the coffers of the human traffickers.
The scene has been described in detail by hundreds of observers.
The more testimony one gathers, the harder it is to believe that such horrors could have lasted for three centuries – and that so many famous surnames were associated with such misfortune.
But that’s how it was, and that’s how it would have been had slavery not ceased to be such a lucrative business for purely economic reasons.
Castro Alves composed verses full of anger and rage.
Rugendas used dark tones and a surprising point of view to create an allegorical account.
However, both poet and illustrator may have given a bland version of the gruesome spectacle that actually took place in the holds of the slave ships – aptly named tumbeiros.
The accounts written by observers, most of them British, reveal an even more horrific picture than that painted by rhyme and colour.
Just one example.
In 1841, the British ship Fawn captured the ship Dois de Fevereiro off the coast of Brazil.
Smuggling had been illegal in Brazil since 7 November 1831, and British warships patrolled the coast.
After seizing the tumbeiro, the captain of the Fawn recorded in his log the scene he found in the ship’s hold: “The living, the dying and the dead piled up in a single mass.
Some wretches in the most pitiful state of smallpox, afflicted with ophthalmia, some completely blind; others living skeletons, dragging themselves with difficulty, unable to support the weight of their miserable bodies.
Mothers with small children hanging from their breasts, unable to give them a drop of food.
The way they had been brought to this point was astonishing: they were all completely naked.
Their limbs were bruised from lying on the floor for so long.
The stench in the lower compartment was unbearable. It seemed unbelievable that beings could survive in that atmosphere.
In fact, one in five slaves shipped from Africa didn’t survive the voyage to Brazil – they were literally perishable goods.
The rest didn’t live more than seven years on average.
But they were cheap and replaceable: there were plenty of others where they came from.
This is a nation built on six million slave arms – and over three million corpses.
SOURCE: Bueno (2003, p. 112)
In this chapter you have learned that
- The founding of the city of São Paulo was crucial in the process of occupying the interior of Brazil.
- The bandeirantes were mainly responsible for extending the boundaries of the Treaty of Tordesillas.
- The bandeirantes were responsible for hunting down the Indians and finding gold in the interior of Brazil.
See the following periods in the history of colonial Brazil:
- Brazilian Independence – Breakdown of colonial ties in Brazil
- Portuguese Empire in Brazil – Portuguese royal family in Brazil
- Transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil
- Foundation of the city of São Paulo and the Bandeirantes
- Transition from colonial to imperial Brazil
- Colonial sugar mills in Brazil
- Monoculture, slave labour and latifundia in colonial Brazil
- The establishment of the General Government in Brazil and the founding of Salvador
- Portuguese maritime expansion and the conquest of Brazil
- Occupation of the African coast, the Atlantic islands and the voyage of Vasco da Gama
- Pedro Álvares Cabral’s expedition and the conquest of Brazil
- Pre-colonial Brazil – The forgotten years
- Establishment of the Portuguese Colony in Brazil
- Periods in the history of colonial Brazil
- Historical periods of Brazil
