A Tour Through South America

by A. S. Forrest

The early history of the State of São Paulo has a romance running through its pages which can never cease to be of interest, and the beginnings of its prosperity are traceable to the friendly relationships established in the beginning of the sixteenth century between a shipwrecked Portuguese sailor, João Ramalho, and Tybiricá, the chief of the Guayanás, a tribe who dominated the country.

Ramalho married the chief’s daughter, and this alliance cemented a friendship with the chief and his tribe, over which the castaway soon acquired so great an influence that when Martin Affonso arrived at the head of an expedition he met with a friendly welcome. For his good offices Ramalho was rewarded by the Portuguese Crown with a grant of the lands which he and the tribe were occupying, the new-comers establishing a settlement at St. Vincente, near Santos, and erecting a fort on the island of St. Amaro at the entrance to the bay. From the union between the Portuguese settlers and the Guayanás there sprang the race of half-breeds known first as Mamelucos and later as Paulistas, a race that accomplished much in the exploration and development of various parts of Brazil.

The village of St. Andre, where Ramalho and his father-in-law Tybiricá lived, rapidly grew until in 1533 it was raised to the position of a town, and these two settlements of St. Vincente and St. Andre were the forerunners of the cities of Santos and São Paulo which afterwards arose upon adjacent sites.

The Jesuits, who arrived upon the scene in 1554, proved an important factor in suppressing the invasions of savage tribes who threatened the little colonies from time to time, and in organising the settlements by the construction of a road connecting that at the coast with the mission station which they established at São Paulo. This mission station grew in power and importance until finally it usurped the position of St. Andre, which was destroyed at the instigation of the priests.

The history of the two succeeding centuries is filled with the contests between the lay Paulistas and the Jesuits, their methods being in constant opposition, for whilst the former desired native labour to cultivate their lands and work their industries, they found that the missions absorbed most if not all of the available natives. These were gathered under the protection of the missions upon the communistic plan so successfully practised under the Jesuits in other parts of the continent, the natives meeting with fair and considerate treatment, although practically reduced to the position of slaves working for the common good. The laymen sought to bring the natives into the condition of slaves for their own personal interest, and to treat them as property to be used for their own aggrandisement, and professed to see little or no difference in their doing individualistically what the Church did communistically.

The association of the whites and their half-Indian progeny with the pure native Indians was also the cause of much dissension, and led to numbers of the latter withdrawing from the settlements and forming new ones antagonistic to the invaders. In all the quarrels Tybiricá stood loyally by his son-in-law’s fellow-countrymen, and even fought against his own brother when the latter led an attack upon São Paulo.

THE APPROACH TO SANTOS.

As the Mamelucos grew in numbers their demands for native labour increased, and its monopoly by the Jesuits came to be a grievance which the laymen determined to redress. Raids upon the Indians of the interior were consequently organised, and the adventurous Paulistas did not hesitate to risk their lives in the pursuit of tribes as far as the borders of Bolivia after the nearer districts had been cleared of natives, and in these expeditions even the mission settlements of the Guayaná were not spared. Immense numbers of natives were captured and brought down to the markets of São Paulo for sale, many of them being purchased to supply the demands of neighbouring States.

As this slave hunting went on unrestrained, the Jesuits removed their missions further west to escape the attentions of their enemies; but in 1641 a large party of the Paulistas invaded the Paraguayan missions and bore away many natives as captives. These Paulistas had become adventurous, and hardy, past belief, and were the most energetic race in the whole continent, opening up much of the country in the course of their expeditions—discovering diamonds in Minas, gold in Maranhão, and laying the foundations of towns and villages wherever they went.