Brazil today and tomorrow

by L. E. Elliott Joyce

The bandeira went always under the supreme command of a leader to whom implicit obedience was due; before setting out the bandeira in a body heard mass, the leader confessed and made his will, invariably including the phrase ... “setting out to war and being mortal and not knowing what God our Lord will do with me.”... A priest accompanied each bandeira, not only to shrive the dying and bury the dead, but by way of easing the conscience of the band regarding their mission and “reconciling it with the Divine Mercy.” The outfit for every man was made at his own cost, and if it is possible to judge by the baggage of Braz Gonçalves, who died on an expedition in 1636, and whose goods were scrupulously recorded and sold at auction, it was simple. His greatest possessions were three negro slaves, but he had also an awl, a bit and a hammer, a pair of worn slippers; some lead and gunpowder, one tin plate, a chisel, a mould for casting shot, a ball of thread, an old cape.

It was only possible to face what lay beyond the outposts of settlement when equipped and ready for war; the bandeirantes knew that there was constant risk of attack by Indians and that nature opposed them with as fierce a menace. The country through which they passed was likely to be foodless, and they were prepared to sow seeds of grain in green valleys, camp, and wait until the crop was harvested before going on their way.

The rivers of the interior plateau, flowing westward with the tilt of the sertão, themselves offered a great highway of adventure to the early bandeirantes, bringing them into Paraguay and the outskirts of Bolivia and the Argentine, but as they went farther afield the Paraná was left to the east, Goyaz and Matto Grosso were traversed, and the path of the pioneers led up unknown mountains, through untracked woodland; they marched across boundless prairies as if navigating the ocean, with only a sea-compass and the starry night to guide them. Nothing checked these explorers; had not the discovery of the General Mines turned their minds to gold-hunting, they might have followed Antonio Raposo across the Andes and disputed Peru with the Spaniards. Wherever they penetrated they established outposts and forts counting a collision with the Spanish as the best reason for creating a stronghold: it was the work of these untiring sertanistas that led the way to the present magnitude of Brazil.

The bandeira was the original creation of the Paulista, without parallel in history; not even the white pioneer of North America had the same functions: he neither wandered so far nor performed such deeds. João Ribeiro remarks that “as in the case of the caravans of the desert, the first virtue of the bandeirante was a resignation almost fatalistic, and abstinence carried to an extreme; those who set out did not know if they would ever return, never expected to see their homes again—and this often happened.” The bandeira in its greatest phase was a travelling city, a commune linked by mutual interests, that surged forward over the silent country; nothing deterred them, whether mountain passes, precipices, hunger, weariness, or constant fighting. If they had a path it was that of the crosses on the graves of the men who had gone before them. They went always on foot.

There is a long list of great sertanistas. It includes many names well known in Brazil today—Martins, Soares, de Souza, Barreto, Tourinho, Sá, Leme, Paes, Almeida, Dias, Ribeiro, Carvalho, Rodrigues, and a host of others; few men escaped the lure of the sertão, and some leave stories which are the Iliads of Brazil, putting these among the great adventures of all time. There is for instance Antonio Raposo, who headed a bandeira which left S. Paulo in 1628, and which was “the biggest and most devastating known.” Three thousand people composed the expedition, and its main object was the destruction of the Jesuit missions on the Paraná river, near Ciudad Real. One by one the missions, which had grown into thriving industrial communities, were attacked, besieged, and smashed; as they fell, escaping brothers or converts carried the warning to other convents, stiff fights were made, and in some cases long resistance was maintained. But in the end the Jesuits were broken and dispersed, and the bandeirantes went back to S. Paulo with thousands of Indian slaves. The courageous Jesuits went deeper into the interior, collected such remnants as they could of their property and their protégés, and began the work again.

Raposo, years afterwards, made another journey which brought him into fame as a legendary hero; he crossed the Paulista sertão by Tibagy, thence traversed the heart of Brazil from south-east to north-west, entered Peru, scaling the Andes, crossed to the Pacific and waded into those waters sword in hand; returning, he discovered the headwaters of the Amazon, sailed down it, and when at last after years of travel he came back to São Paulo no one recognized him.

A magnificent figure among indomitable bandeirantes is that of Fernão Dias de Paes Leme. Well may the wild sertão be haunted by the shade of such a man as this, or of his lieutenant, Borba Gato, or that father and son who were known among the Indians of Govaz as Old Devil the First and Old Devil the Second.

Fernão Dias, the “Hercules of the Sertão,” was the discoverer of the emerald mines of Sumidouro, after ten years spent in search. He was a famous slave-chaser of the sixteen hundreds, an extremely religious man whose zeal was only assuaged by much building of chapels and convents with the money earned in long raids; practical, astute, suave, he won his ends by tact rather than violence, among his exploits being that of leading the whole of the allied Goyana tribes to São Paulo. Approaching their territory Dias made no threats, but camped nearby, cultivated fields of cereals and vegetables, and so ingratiated himself into the confidence of Tombu the chief that one day the old Indian collected his people and agreed to go to the pleasant lands of which the Paulista spoke. Five thousand natives thus marched voluntarily into captivity; Tombu remained the worshipper of Fernão Dias until his death, but with the exception of runaways none of the Goyanas ever saw the sertão again.

This was in 1661. Three years later the Portuguese court, greatly desiring the discovery and development of mining regions which should yield tribute to Lisbon, offered special rewards to discoverers of mines, appointed an Administrator of Mines in Espirito Santo, where some coloured stones had been found, and Affonso VI wrote to Fernão Dias asking him to search the interior that he knew so well for the source of the “emeralds” whose beauty raised hopes of finding mines equal in value to those of the Spaniards in New Granada (Colombia), still today the cradle of the finest emeralds. As a matter of fact the green stones found in Brazil are the beautiful but semi-precious tourmalines.

Consenting, the famous bandeirante made some preliminary excursions and in 1676, when he was over eighty years old, led out a great comitiva; the first winter’s camp was made in a valley beyond the Rio Grande, the second at Bomfim, the third at Sumidouro. At last in the Serro Frio some showings of gold were located, and on the way back Dias died by the Rio das Velhas, in the far interior across Minas Geraes. The bandeira had gone through great suffering, and scores of men were buried by the way: at one time the remnants of the expedition had appealed to Dias to give up the hunt and return, and on his refusal made a plan to kill him. The conspiracy was headed by a young man who was the son of Dias by an Indian girl, and dearly loved by the old sertanista, but when convinced of his boy’s guilt Dias hanged him, pardoning the other plotters but driving them from the camp.