A history of the Brazil

by James Henderson

BOTOCUDO INDIANS, ABOUT TO CROSS A RIVER.

The first donatory was succeeded by his said son, who did not live to enjoy it long. To Fernam do Campo Tourinho succeeded his sister, Leonor do Campo Tourinho, widow of Gregorio de Pesqueira, to whom the king confirmed the capitania by letter of the 30th of May, 1556. Two months afterwards she sold it, by permission of the Sovereign, to the Duke d’Aveiro, Don John de Lancastre, to whom the King, in the same law, granted licence, at his death, to nominate his son, Don Pedro Deniz de Lancastre, from whose successors it reverted to the crown in the reign of Joseph I. in a very bad state and with only two towns. One hundred milreas (about £25) de juro, or right, six hundred milreas (about £150) in money, and two moyos (about seventy Winchester bushels each) of wheat every year as long as the vendor lived, was the price stipulated in the writings of the sale. The Jesuits, who founded a house in the capital in 1553, with the intention of better reducing the Indians to Catholicism, only left two aldeias entirely Indian, of which they were the curates. Amongst the most able of those in the course of two hundred and five years, who became curates in these missions, many went there to be catechised previous to studying theology at the college of Bahia, in order to learn more perfectly the idiom of the Indians, who were not taught the Portuguese language, as they only treated or had intercourse with the curates, who were well acquainted with their language.

The Abatyra Indians, at the period before alluded to, destroyed, amongst other places, the towns of Juassema and St. Andre, founded by the duke. These Indians, now unknown, are said to be a horde of the Aimores, or perhaps this was the name by which the Tupininquins designated them in general. The Aimores are believed to have been a tribe of northern Tapuyas, who, in ancient times, in consequence of the wars, proceeded southward, and retired to the west of the serra which afterwards took their name. The neighbouring nations called them Aimbores, and the Portuguese, from corruption, Aimores; but, for a considerable time, they have had no other name amongst the Christians than Botocudos, in consequence of their custom of perforating the ears and lips. They always wander about, divided into parties of forty to sixty families, destroying game, and gathering wild fruits, their ordinary aliment. Some paint the body, at times, a green colour, at others yellow; and in order to free themselves from the attacks of the mosquito, at certain seasons, or in places where they most incommode them, they varnish the skin with the juice or milk of certain trees. Their arms are the bow and the arrow barbed on both sides. They have no other conveyance by water, but jangadas, or catamarans, rudely formed of the trunks of the jangada tree, and put together with very little care, with which they cross large rivers. Their combats, like those of all other Indians, are from ambuscades, and they commonly make the assault after dark, and only when they judge that they are taking their enemy by surprise. Some tribes, when they have determined to engage the foe, leave the aged, the women, and children, in some secure place in the centre of their district. Their barbarity has always produced the idea that they are much more numerous than they are really found to be. The garrisons newly established upon the eastern line of the province of Minas Geraes, and those in the centre of this, have obliged many to sue for that peace which had been so frequently offered them, and which they always rejected, secure in extensive woods, where there are few, if any, Christian colonists to subdue their wild habits, or mitigate their savage propensities.

Of all the provinces of the Brazil, this may be said to be the most backward in cultivation, and in the civilization of the aboriginal inhabitants. It is almost one wood of fine timber, and different species of trees, indicating, beyond a question, the great fertility generally of its soil. The want of good ports capable of receiving large ships is assigned as the cause of its present condition; but want of industry, and the requisite energy and spirit of improvement, as well as the deficiency, it must be allowed, of population, are the real causes. The Christianized population only possess the parts adjacent to the ocean, and few days pass in certain months of the year, that its coasts are not visited by the Indians in search of the eggs of the tortoise. From these people the Canarins are known, who are the nearest hordes to the towns of Caravellas, and Villaviçoza. It is said that they have an establishment of one vast house in the centre of the country, hid in a valley between two mountains. The Machacaris are masters of a country washed by the rivers Norte and Sul. In the western part are known the Cumanacho, Mono, Frecha, Catathoy, Aimore, and the Patacho nations; the last are more numerous than all the others together, and extend themselves, divided into tribes, from one extremity of the province to the other.

The Aimores are anthropophagi, and the dread of all the other nations except the Patachos.

From the river Doce, the southern limit of this province, as far as a league to the north of the Jucurucu, the lands are so flat, that they scarcely exceed the level of the highest tides. In the whole of this tract, (more than one hundred miles,) not one mountain, or even small elevation is seen. From this point nearly to the Buranhen, the shore is of a green or white colour, and of four to six yards in height; the remainder of the coast to the river Belmonte is in parts flat, in others rather more elevated. Fine woods are everywhere seen extending to the margin of the ocean.

Mountains.—Those in the central and western parts are unknown. At the northern extremity of the eastern side only is discovered the serra of Aimores, the highest portion of which, denominated the Mount of John de Siam, and the outer portion Mount Pascoal, is seen for many leagues at sea, being the principal land-mark in this latitude.

Mineralogy.—Gold, iron, granite, calcareous stone, white potters’ earth, with other argils, amethysts, topazes, and other precious stones.

Zoology.—Domestic animals are in all parts very rare, if we except the environs of the capital. In the woods are the deer, boar, tamandua, monkey, anta, with various other species of this region, generally very numerous. Ounces are here in the greatest number, and commit their depredations upon the sea-coast from April to August, in consequence, it is thought, of the cold, which makes them desert the western lands, and seek the vicinity of the sea, where it is warmer. Hunters find with much facility the mutun, juru, macuco partridge, jacu, jacutinga, aracuan, nhamba, capueira, parrot, and a diversity of the turtle bird. The araponga, bicudo, and sabio are well known. The pavo, or peacock, is little larger than the tucano, black, with the breast yellow and red. The crijoha is something larger than the blackbird, and its change of colours beautiful. The bees produce honey in the trunks of trees, supplying aliment to a great many.

Phytology.—Amongst many other trees of good timber are the vinathico, aderno, avariba, anhuhyba, aricurana, anhahyba de rego, angelim, of different colours; also the biriba, buranhen, camacary, caixeta, cedar, cherry, conduru, grapiapunha, guanandirana, hoyticica, jatahy; of the jacaranda, are the sorts called cabuina, mulatto and white; of the jucirana, white and green; the jiquitiba, inhuhybatan, and the clove; ipe, black and other sorts; piqui, black, yellow, otherwise mirindiba; the potumuju, bow wood, oil wood, Brazil wood, oanandy, sapucaya, sobro, sucupiracu, sucupira acary, tatagiba, white and green timbuhyba; the jabuticaba, the aracaza, the pindahyba, and various palm trees are well known; the Asiatic cocoa-nut tree is not very frequent. There is a tree, the leaves of which, when broken, exhale the aromatic smell of the clove. The tree which produces the pechurim, here improperly called mulberry tree, is rare, and its fruit not so fine as that of Para. The soil is good for the culture of mandioca, the most valuable produce of the country; Indian corn, rice, and legumes grow in some districts. Cotton trees prosper best in the vicinity of the sea, at least in many situations.